Adventure Vision

[Moondandy]

So the Adventure Vision was a fairly obscure Vectrex style console from 1982, with a vast cartridge library of a whopping four games:

Defender, based on the Williams Electronics arcade game of the same name
Super Cobra, based on the Konami arcade game of the same name
Turtles, based on the Konami arcade game of the same name (similar to Pac-Man)
Space Force, based on the Venture Line arcade game of the same name (similar to Asteroids)

Untitled-2.png (680.9 KiB) Viewed 18307 times

There is a core for this on the NT Mini already, the technical specs are:
CPU: Intel 8048 @ 733 kHz
Sound: National Semiconductor COP411L @ 52.6 kHz
RAM: 64 bytes (internal to 8048), 1K (on main PCB)
ROM: 1K (internal to 8048), 512 bytes (internal to COP411L), 4K (cartridge)
Input: 4 direction joystick, 4 buttons duplicated on each side of the joystick
Graphics: 150x40 monochrome pixels
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entex_Adventure_Vision

Not the most exciting console, however it seems that a core for it already exists here:
https://github.com/FPGAArcade/replay_release

Would it be doable to port this core to Mister? If so, would it be difficult?

[Moondandy]

Clearly not a lot of interest in the Adventure Vision! Is anyone able to shed some light on if it would be technically possible to port the existing core linked to the Mister?

[LamerDeluxe]

I'm very interested in this, as it is a very rare machine that I'll probably never see in real life.

[gwobcke]

The version of Turtles on the Entex was actually fairly decent, and very red - but it's an interesting device especially with the rotating mirrors used to make the display with the LEDs.

[Sorgelig]

I don't know about this console and its internals but i like cabinet design
Would be a good case for MiSTer. Just replace screen to LCD.

[LamerDeluxe]

Yeah, I love the design of Entex tabletops, I have a couple of them.

[Moondandy]

Is anyone more FPGA savvy than me able to tell if this Adventure Vision core is indeed open source, and if it could be ported over to Mister?
https://github.com/FPGAArcade/replay_release

[lomdar67]

Is anyone more FPGA savvy than me able to tell if this Adventure Vision core is indeed open source, and if it could be ported over to Mister?
https://github.com/FPGAArcade/replay_release

Maybe I'm just blind, but I don't see any source code there, only binaries...

[LamerDeluxe]

It's always exciting to see something new that I've not heard of. It seems that they made Pac-Man for the system too but they "forgot" to acquire the license so it was never released or maybe it was transformed into Turtles.

There are actually quite a few interesting table top style LCD systems from around this period although unlike this I think most of them are single game setups though. Having said that, for companies like Tomy with their handheld series and maybe Nintendo Game & Watch too, I do wonder if having one hardware build available would enable all games in that particular series?

Tomytronic3-D.jpg (216.53 KiB) Viewed 18310 times

EDIT:
Sorry, taking it off topic there. The Adventure Vision just got me thinking about these things.

I have a couple of those Tomy games, they are 3D LCD based and really fun. They could be part of the G&W core. If an over/under 3D option would be added that would be great for 3D displays.

[Moondandy]

I inherited a couple of those type of machines also, need to dig them out when I am able to travel back home again.

Might be worth asking the chap working in the G&W core about potentially supporting in the future.

[Moondandy]

Turns out I have the maroon Tomytronic game, that was cool to unearth when I was back home last. I wouldn't be surprised if we see cores for these at some point, the chap doing the G&W core has been working on a few of these type of LCD games on the side. Would be nice to see them preserved.

[aberu]

FPGA Arcade has a core, but it's unfortunately closed source at the moment. Would be nice if it were opened so other projects could have it ported over for many more people to enjoy.

[macro]

I have a copy of the source from a while back if anyone wants a copy to look at / work from

[Moondandy]

I have a copy of the source from a while back if anyone wants a copy to look at / work from

Oh, interesting, would there be any legal or ethical issues porting that to MiSTer?

[aberu]

I have a copy of the source from a while back if anyone wants a copy to look at / work from

What's the licensing on that? If there is no license specified at all in the source, then it's under a copyright:

https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/

[macro]

from the COPYING doc with it, it is "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE - Version 2, June 1991"

from one of the source files ...


-- Copyright (c) 2006, Arnim Laeuger (arnim.laeuger@gmx.net)
--
-- All rights reserved
--
-- Redistribution and use in source and synthezised forms, with or without
-- modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
--
-- Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
-- this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
--
-- Redistributions in synthesized form must reproduce the above copyright
-- notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
-- documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
--
-- Neither the name of the author nor the names of other contributors may
-- be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without
-- specific prior written permission.

[Kitrinx]

I've ported the core. I'll be submitting the code to the mister repo in short order after a little QA.

Roms go in the AVision folder, no other setup required.

[RascalUK]

Ah Kitrinx. Legend as ever.

[LamerDeluxe]

Fantastic! Really happy to see the core appear so soon. I like that it has a mirror option, it gives more of an impression of the real thing.

Super Cobra has some odd vertical tearing with its scrolling, no idea if the original has that as well.

[djsquare]

Wow, thank you so much Kitrinx!

[Kitrinx]

Fantastic! Really happy to see the core appear so soon. I like that it has a mirror option, it gives more of an impression of the real thing.

Super Cobra has some odd vertical tearing with its scrolling, no idea if the original has that as well.

As far as I can tell (the original is pretty hard to get good recordings of) this is an aspect of the game, having to do with how the edge of the screen and the mirror worked and how it chose to scroll. I'm not really sure how to mitigate it.

[LamerDeluxe]

Fantastic! Really happy to see the core appear so soon. I like that it has a mirror option, it gives more of an impression of the real thing.

Super Cobra has some odd vertical tearing with its scrolling, no idea if the original has that as well.

As far as I can tell (the original is pretty hard to get good recordings of) this is an aspect of the game, having to do with how the edge of the screen and the mirror worked and how it chose to scroll. I'm not really sure how to mitigate it.

The real thing jitters left and right a lot, so it is very hard to see indeed. I can imagine it is being caused by a lack of sync between the (non-linear) mirror sweep and the video hardware / game software. If it could somehow be mitigated, that would be good to have as an option.

[seastalker]

@Kitrinx

THANK YOU for this core!

The documentation mentions there are 4 commercial games and TWO homebrew. I found a title called Code Red in two versions I'll try. I saw a YT video that had a Pacman hack out of 'Turtles'. Are these the two HB titles mentioned? Thanks.

[Moondandy]

I second that sentiment, thanks so much Rysha!

I actually didn't realise it had been released, weirdly it never came down for me, I think because I had a test build on there. It also wasn't mentioned on the release thread so didn't appear in the news feed - worth a post there still as a lot of people have likely missed the release. I don't think it has been mentioned in Lu's weekly news videos that get recapped by retrorgb each week. Be a shame for this core to go missed by a lot of people.

Did you manage to add in palette support in the end?

[Kitrinx]

I second that sentiment, thanks so much Rysha!

I actually didn't realise it had been released, weirdly it never came down for me, I think because I had a test build on there. It also wasn't mentioned on the release thread so didn't appear in the news feed - worth a post there still as a lot of people have likely missed the release. I don't think it has been mentioned in Lu's weekly news videos that get recapped by retrorgb each week. Be a shame for this core to go missed by a lot of people.

Did you manage to add in palette support in the end?

I have been kind of busy with other things but I can look at it sometime

[Alarm]

@Kitrinx

THANK YOU for this core!

The documentation mentions there are 4 commercial games and TWO homebrew. I found a title called Code Red in two versions I'll try. I saw a YT video that had a Pacman hack out of 'Turtles'. Are these the two HB titles mentioned? Thanks.

As far as I am aware, these are the only 'homebrew' releases for the AV:

Code Red - scene demo
Pac-Man - hack of Turtles
Table Tennis - new game
Break Vader - new game, only available on cartridge

[Kitrinx]

I didn't know about code red or pac-man (I don't usually count hacks as homebrews, but we can be pretty liberal with this system )
It's a shame break vader isn't more available

[Atmosfear]

Those who have a hard time to find the Pac-Man Hack can find it via the Wayback Machine here :

https://web.archive.org/web/2014*/http: ... 02008).bin

[Alkadian]

@Kitrinx,

Many thanks for this core. It's brilliant. I have just tested it with all the 4 games!

[Alarm]

You can find Table Tennis and details about Break Vaders here.