Cosmic Core Under Development

[macro]

Games that run on the 'Cosmic' core in Mame

basically Space Panic, Cosmic Alien, No Mans Land, Magical Spot and Devil Zone

Also (but separate core) Cosmic Guerilla (as it uses a different CPU) but a lot of the remainder is in common.

I have the first game well underway, need to add support for a variety of additional video hardware to implement the other games

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[dazzer69]

Great news. Space Panic is another true classic.

[LamerDeluxe]

Space Panic, awesome! I mentioned that one somewhere in a topic about which cores you'd like to see. When I was a kid, they had the cabinet where we stayed on a school trip.

[Minpin]

Fantastic news. I love Space Panic.

[Alkadian]

Same here, looking forward to it!

[AndreasWachter]

Fantastic !
Still remember playing it ... 40 years ago !

[macro]

Space panic is basically working, needs some more testing and possibly some tweaks here and there, but I just plugged in the next game for the core, Magical Spot, a few memory changes and that now fires up and runs, need to sort out controls, DIPs and sound (looks to be just a DAC)

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[macro]

Magical spot now done, despite the lack of information about the sound (since mame basically ignores it, fortunately someone posted a video of the real hardware playing on you tube) - I don't have a PCB for Magic Spot so couldn't refer to it (I have all the others except Devil Zone)

so next to be plugged into the core is Cosmic Alien - this needs the hardware for the star circuit adding in as well as the usual controls / sound / dips

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[macro]

Cosmic alien pretty much sorted, so on to the next of the two (Z80 based) games left.

this will be Devil Zone, another for which Mame has no sound information.

The schematics show the sound board as being the same as used by Magical Spot, not sure if this is true, but easy enough to test.

(plus I was wrong earlier, I do have a Devil Zone PCB, so I can double check against that as well, although I will need to fix it first, along with the no mans land since neither seem to do much at the moment!)

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[Alkadian]

Great, thanks for the heads up! Looking forward to the final product

[macro]

Devil zone background video sorted (it uses RLE graphics, it was interesting getting it to draw upside down for cocktail screen flip)

I've not added sound yet (may need to fix the PCB first) , but until then, added the MRA for the final z80 based game, No Mans Land, which again has a background video circuit for the river and trees.

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There are video's on you tube for both games, but I think I may need the pcbs working to get samples of some of the sounds. Will see how it goes.

[LamerDeluxe]

I'm really looking forward to this core. RLE graphics, interesting, just like the Atari Lynx can do with its sprites.

[Alarm]

Space Panic is a classic, really looking forward to playing it again, and playing the other titles.

[macro]

I still have sound to sort out on a couple of games (Devil zone and No mans land) and there may be some other problems I am not aware of yet, but I'm now going on holiday for a few weeks.

so, did you want to wait until it's all done or shall I release the core now without those two games ?

[LamerDeluxe]

I still have sound to sort out on a couple of games (Devil zone and No mans land) and there may be some other problems I am not aware of yet, but I'm now going on holiday for a few weeks.

so, did you want to wait until it's all done or shall I release the core now without those two games ?

RELEASE THE KRAKEN! I mean the core. I'd love to play Space Panic on MiSTer.

[Alkadian]

I still have sound to sort out on a couple of games (Devil zone and No mans land) and there may be some other problems I am not aware of yet, but I'm now going on holiday for a few weeks.

so, did you want to wait until it's all done or shall I release the core now without those two games ?

Same here, I would love to play Space Panic. Thanks!

[dazzer69]

+1 for Space Panic sooner rather than later!

[macro]

Well it's now out there, will work on bug fixes, CPU timing and other two games when I get back from Holiday

[Alkadian]

Thanks a lot and enjoy your holidays

[lamarax]

Thank you @macro and congrats for the release!

Space Panic might have been the one arcade game which influenced my subconscious the most

[LamerDeluxe]

I just tried all three games, really cool. Space Panic is really fun and its sound effects are really odd. I like how these games have such a strong early eighties feel, like games on the VIC-20.

[macro]

Minor update

Z80 CPU speed is now correct for all games
Magical Spot now has correct coinage from the dip file
Buttons are described in the MRA files

now onto the sound for Devil Zone and No Mans Land!

[lamarax]

Thank you so much! \o/

You're one of the unsung heroes of MiSTer!

[macro]

Updated SYS so that the screen mask feature is now available.

I also change how PAUSE works, since I managed to crash it whilst testing the masks, no guarantee it is fixed, but I couldn't get it to die after the change!

[LamerDeluxe]

Updated SYS so that the screen mask feature is now available.

I also change how PAUSE works, since I managed to crash it whilst testing the masks, no guarantee it is fixed, but I couldn't get it to die after the change!

Fantastic! If I'm not mistaking this is the first arcade core to support the official shadow masks. Looking forward to seeing other arcade cores receive support as well.

[ConkerKing]

[/quote]
Fantastic! If I'm not mistaking this is the first arcade core to support the official shadow masks. Looking forward to seeing other arcade cores receive support as well.
[/quote]

Wow Nice!!
Just a short question in general: Is it possible to make a "Global" Arcade Core setting for ALL Arcade Games to set the same Filter´s, Joystick Mapping and stuff like the Console, ao486 etc. Cores? Thx

[LamerDeluxe]

The update didn't get picked up by update_all here yet. Downloaded manually and it looks fantastic! Shadow mask patterns really help improve the look of these old games.

[lamarax]

Dear Macro,

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Please correct the typo in the last release. The downloader script is pulling the penultimate core each time, and it's-a-driving me crazy

[rcade]

Thanks for this. There was a Cosmic Alien in a laundromat near where I grew up. The marquee said "Cosmic Alien" so I always knew the game name wrong. Also, there is no title screen that mentions the name...

[macro]

I updated the SYS again since the masking has changed and hopefully named the RBF correctly this time!