MiSTer FPGA Forum

If you are looking for some fun side-scrolling shooter arcade action this weekend, Darren (@Darren__O) has made his early development Zero Wing core public.

Please note over on Twitter Darren has stated it's 'playable but still a WIP.'

The GitHub for Zero Wing is here:

https://github.com/va7deo/zerowing

Is this board unique to Zero Wing or do any other toaplan shmups use the same board?

moonscience wrote: ↑Sat Jan 22, 2022 2:02 pm Is this board unique to Zero Wing or do any other toaplan shmups use the same board?

Quite a few do, like Fire Shark, Hellfire and Truxton.

Alarm wrote: ↑Sat Jan 22, 2022 2:22 pm Quite a few do, like Fire Shark, Hellfire and Truxton.

That's Toaplan v1 alright. There's another guy, Pramod Somashekar, who's been working on the v2 hardware with focus on the Raizing boards, but he has locked his twitter because people have apparently been too... pushy

i always wonder where that sense of entitlement comes from, or did people heavily invest money in his work?

actually... he he's been persistently refusing to open a Patreon, all the while people were insisting for him to do so.

well i guess it's a good reason for him to avoid these things, if it's a labor of love for him and he invests his personal time in it then people should leave him alone, but i guess some people just feel the need to bother him for anything they think they can?

Fire Shark is an excellent time on Genesis. Hopefully the arcade version's as tight!

Wave wrote: ↑Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:11 am Fire Shark is an excellent time on Genesis. Hopefully the arcade version's as tight!

Oh, it's even better my friend, even better!

I've head that the Genesis Hellfire is better than the arcade though!

Wave wrote: ↑Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:11 am Fire Shark is an excellent time on Genesis. Hopefully the arcade version's as tight!

I never played it before today... literally this post made me go try it. So glad I did!

Sorry to be dense, but how do you get this core? I just did an update_all and still not seeing zero wing. Does this have to be done manually because it is a WIP?

moonscience wrote: ↑Sun Jan 23, 2022 7:43 pm Sorry to be dense, but how do you get this core? I just did an update_all and still not seeing zero wing. Does this have to be done manually because it is a WIP?

You have to download it from the github link in the first post. See instructions there how to set it up.

Chris23235 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 23, 2022 8:03 pm

moonscience wrote: ↑Sun Jan 23, 2022 7:43 pm Sorry to be dense, but how do you get this core? I just did an update_all and still not seeing zero wing. Does this have to be done manually because it is a WIP?

You have to download it from the github link in the first post. See instructions there how to set it up.

I figured it out. Make sure mra.exe is in the same folder as romset zerowing1.zip and zerowing.mra then open command box and type "mra zerowing.mra"

moonscience wrote: ↑Sun Jan 23, 2022 7:43 pm Sorry to be dense, but how do you get this core? I just did an update_all and still not seeing zero wing. Does this have to be done manually because it is a WIP?

Getting this working was a small learning curve for me so I made a brief video outlining the basics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RxtIsJk_3M

XtraSmiley wrote: ↑Sun Jan 23, 2022 2:44 pm

Wave wrote: ↑Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:11 am Fire Shark is an excellent time on Genesis. Hopefully the arcade version's as tight!

Oh, it's even better my friend, even better!

I've head that the Genesis Hellfire is better than the arcade though!

Both Zerowing and Hellfire versions are better on Megadrive just for the music.

NeoNIcoN wrote: ↑Mon Jan 24, 2022 5:23 pm Both Zerowing and Hellfire versions are better on Megadrive just for the music.

And for the translation

Black screen for me, followed the video, seems to work ok but just a black screen on start up. Maybe wrong rom or something..

MikkyTee wrote: ↑Mon Jan 24, 2022 10:00 pm Black screen for me, followed the video, seems to work ok but just a black screen on start up. Maybe wrong rom or something..

He's working on the problem now according to Twitter, but for now you have to sometimes reboot the system and reload the core, then load the zerowing.rom that you made from the unmerged zerowing1.zip equivalent.

Looks like Darren has updated the core, the new release is available on GitHub.

Commit states 'fixed loading from mra. Was not handling ioctl_index in the rom loader'

https://github.com/va7deo/zerowing/tree/main/releases

Which Mame romset are you using? The one in the video is 564k but the one I get is 606k and I get a missing file error when I run the exe

I've tried a few different Mame rom versions. Created the rom file with no errors. But I just get a black screen when I try to play it

Aspie wrote: ↑Tue Jan 25, 2022 3:03 pm I've tried a few different Mame rom versions. Created the rom file with no errors. But I just get a black screen when I try to play it

Yeah this should be fixed now, download the new rbf and the new MRA files, and either run update-all to automatically get the roms or place the merged romset in the mame folder (should be zerowing.zip i think).

zerowing1.zip

OK thanks got it working now. I thought only the create rom file was needed. Didn't realise I had to have the zerowing1.zip in the mame folder as well

You do not need the rom file any longer alongside the games/zerowing directory. You can delete them.
You just need the mra in _Arcade, the rbf in _Arcade/cores and the zip in games/mame.
Now you can start the core like any other arcade, using the mra and the zip the rom will be built on the fly directly in memory.
You will notice that in the OSD the Load rom entry is still there but it is no longer usefull. If for some strange reason you still wanted to use it you would have to keep the games/zerowing directory and the rom file.

Not all Toaplan V1 hardware is identical. However, there's an official conversion of Zero Wing to Out Zone. You can squeeze that what's currently in the core. Mind you, it's a mame port. There's tV1 stuff in the works from several peeps. But Out Zone is up and running.

Got zerowing working last night, enjoyed a wee run at it. Outzone is another great game from TP.

I got the Mra and rbf latest from GitHub. I understand update all now looks for the mame file .. but I get a black screen . I can see the zero wing core menu but the game won’t load any idea ? Do I need to rename the mame zip after it’s downloaded from update all to zerowing1.zip ? Many thanks and for bringing us this game to mister !!

The zip has to be named zerowing1.zip but if the zip you have has another name it may not be the good one. Try to rename it and see what happens.

When I was searching for the Mame rom at first I could only find zerowing.zip. After searching further I found zerowing1.zip, which contains two extra files inside.