American Laser Games (Mad Dog McCree and others)

[Toni Wilen]

"don't work" reports are not acceptable.

Seems to work fine when using right/player 2 controls. (I guess it is single player but gun is connected to player 2 port)

[utri007]

Now that we've figured out how these work, is it possible to turn them into, say, a CD game for Amiga?

[phasermaniac]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

"don't work" reports are not acceptable.

Seems to work fine when using right/player 2 controls. (I guess it is single player but gun is connected to player 2 port)

In service mode you can enable 2 players

I don't know what to say, as with -log -ldlog 2 I don't see anything relative to input. Coins and starts work but I can't shoot with any of both guns.

But it's the only game I can't get to work. Are you using rom version 1.01 right?

[LanceT]

Originally Posted by phasermaniac

Triggers don't work.

I had the same problem "Slow Ram" must be set to none(0)
bogomem_size=0

Hope this helps

[phasermaniac]

Wow it worked!
How did you know that? was already commented?
Should I use bogomem_size=0 in the other games? What does it do?

[LanceT]

Originally Posted by phasermaniac

How did you know that? was already commented?

This was all Toni actually. I loaded my config then went to Quickstart and selected the ALG=TLBHv1.01 saved it. It worked, so I did a file compare to see the differences. Left side was my original.

As far as should all ALG games have this setting, I have some set to 2 and they seem to work. So "If it aint broke don't fix it"

[phasermaniac]

Thanks you both I haven't messed up with quickstart configs
And last, what about platoon? This one shows me unemulated commands in -log -ldlog 2 in some monents, also when it goes to a new segment of the video, it has a big delay until it plays.
Can I make something to make it work better?

[Toni Wilen]

Platoon (never tried to start the game until now) wants to use LD player's internal character generator (probably used for subtitles etc) to show some texts or something like that. (Huh? Why not use Amiga do that..)

Not sure if I am interested in emulating that, at least for now.. But I can add ACK reply to those commands without emulating any character generator features.

[LanceT]

Regarding Platoon, can someone confirm that it's not just my setup that errors.
When I press "RIGHT COIN" the "LEFT and RIGHT HOLSTERS" also activate, but when I press left and right holster buttons they don't register on the switch test. I believe the holsters are used in this game to reload? All other buttons seems to act the way they should.

[Toni Wilen]

Game seems to hang for few seconds without doing anything at all, not even sending any LDP commands. So far I have no idea whats wrong.

Holsters also work strangely (as reported in previous post). Also no idea how they are wired in this game. At least not yet.

[phasermaniac]

yes, it does what you say, when pressing right coin it activates left and right holsters.
But it seems to reload simply shooting offscreen

[mrbabbage]

Certainly Platoon used to work, and used the Amiga GFX as Damien and I spent some time trying to postprocess the video to align the targets. It's worth noting, though that Nova's other games heavily lent on the OSD text, to the extent of even using 1450 players for UK only releases, as there wasn't a 1450P player. COPS, for example, uses a '.' character positioned around the screen as the bullet mark, they got away without any true sprites in their entire laserdisc game range! They also relied on offscreen shooting for COPS, or rather, pretend that you had to shoot a specific part of the bezel to reload. It does make me wonder how much of a vestige of their original engine is here, maybe moving from the COPS hardware to ALG-like boards once they realised they needed more GFX than their rough and ready solution.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by mrbabbage

Certainly Platoon used to work

Used to work? In some older UAE version? (if it did, someone needs to check, I am not that interested) Actual arcade cabinet worked?

[mrbabbage]

Yes, in the last beta cycle - the game was very laggy, took a long time to load up but you could coin up and play it in WinUAE. Seek times were very, very long though, so it may be that there are underlying issues.

EDIT: When I say "long seek times", the game seems to get to the appropriate frame quickly enough, but not play it until some time later, like it's waiting for a status flag or something else to time out. I didn't think anything of it, because it's unreleased code, but it's slower than the other Nova setups. I'm looking at other games they made on their original hardware to see how they exercise the player, I will get back to people on that.

[Toni Wilen]

Platoon delays fixed. It didn't like too fast seek complete responses.

[phasermaniac]

Very nice, it's very playable.
I only have one problem:
Ingame you need to shoot bottom to reload. This works in double line mode but wont in single line mode.
Also very nice you can map a button to do this, setting trigger + lightpen down ( and increasing digital joy-mouse speed) (it doesn't work neither in single line mode)


In the coments here [ Show youtube player ]
Someone say he saw the arcade cab (might be a prototype) years ago, but there are no photos nor videos of it.
Also, people have done some version for Daphne singe, I was looking in case it shows some clue about those unemulated LD texts: [ Show youtube player ] or [ Show youtube player ] (omg these huds )

But they are so amateurish it isn't reliable in any way. It can't compare to how it works in winuae

[phasermaniac]

One question Toni:
In 5.0.0 new features, you say:

Added screen rotation support, to fully support Fast Draw Showdown (American Laser games) game that had 90 degree rotated display. D3D 9 and D3D 11 modes only.

I cant't find this option, I'm using d3d9. Where is it?

[Toni Wilen]

After few test plays, I noticed Platoon uses LDP char generator to show message "YOU'RE HIT!!". I have no idea what kind of font the LDP uses. If I decide to emulate this someday...

Now every edge of screen equals gun not pointing at the screen, allowing easier reloading. (Reloads happens if trigger is pressed without lightgun position detection)

Rotation: gfx_rotation=-90 in config file.

[mrbabbage]

Oh, I have the font, I've been thinking about HLEing the player as a MAME device for other things, and came across it. I'll send you directly, but it's probably a lot of effort to key graphics on top as well.

[phasermaniac]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

After few test plays, I noticed Platoon uses LDP char generator to show message "YOU'RE HIT!!". I have no idea what kind of font the LDP uses. If I decide to emulate this someday...

Now every edge of screen equals gun not pointing at the screen, allowing easier reloading. (Reloads happens if trigger is pressed without lightgun position detection)

Rotation: gfx_rotation=-90 in config file.

Many thanks, it works perfect.