Lu

MiSTer FPGA News – Out Run is Public, New Core Releases & More

Posted on by Lu

Possible 3DO Core

A user on the MiSTerFPGA forums, with software engineering experience, wants to work on an FPGA implementation for the 3DO game console. However, they are using a Xilinx-based FPGA board instead of the DE10-Nano. If the resulting core is open source, it could potentially be ported to MiSTer in the future. However, development hasn’t started yet and the developer is new to console core development, so we shouldn’t expect a core anytime soon. They have been invited to join the 3DO discord, where they can receive advice and documentation from experienced emulator devs, homebrew devs and 3DO fans.

 

PCFX

David Shadoff, who has worked on several MiSTerFPGA cores, was recently interviewed by the PC-FX Fan Club on YouTube.
The topic of creating a PCFX core for the MiSTerFPGA does come up, but overall, it’s a really good interview that also dives into other developments that David has made like an adapter that allows you to use a USB mouse on the PC-FX, a non-volatile backup memory board for the PC-FX and more.

 

NARC

Pram0d, who is working on NARC, had previously posted about needing to do optimizations to get NARC to fit in the FPGA.
He’s now been able to get the logic usage down to 84% and can still do more optimizations.
Other issues were build times taking too long, but now looks to get it to build in a reasonable time.

 

The Next Space

Darren__O has given an update to the progress of The Next Space, an SNK vertical shooter.
Most of the work had to do with debugging the video system.
Currently, sound or input hasn’t been implemented yet.

 

MiSTex Update

Hans Baier, has made progress in adapting MiSTer for use with other FPGA boards. Currently, cores for Bombjack and Qbert are available. The cores appear to be running on QMTECH boards with one powered by the Xilinx Artix 7 and another running on the Cyclone V FPGA found on the DE10-Nano. The project is still in the very early stages and Hans mentions things aren’t very usable yet.

 

Pierco is Back!

Core developer Pierco has released cores five new games on Patreon. This is a public post so anyone can download the cores. The games released are:

– Jack the Giantkiller
– Super Casino
– Freeze
– Tri-Pool
– Zzyzzyxx

The next game on the agenda is to continue work on Kick and Run, a soccer/football game. Also Pierco does plan on continuing work on Rodland in the future.

 

Out Run

The Out Run core is now public. The framebuffer has has been implemented and now sprites are displaying properly. If you check out Jotego’s Patreon, you can find out more information on what exactly was the problem and how the frame buffer was implemented with DE10 nano’s DDR RAM. Additionally, there are still a few other bugs that need to be addressed, such as a sound bug when cars pass by, but they should not be difficult to fix.

 

Konami CPU

Jotego’s team has finished the Konami CPU design. The first core to come out of this will be the arcade game Haunted Castle, which is part of the Castlevania series. There are many more games that use this CPU and you can see a list of them from the CPU’s GitHub page. Notable games are, The Simpsons, Aliens and Pariodius Da!.

 

CPS3 Custom Chip Traced

The first CPS3 Custom chip has been traced. You can see an image of the traced chip on Jotego’s Patreon page. This will help with later FPGA code development.

 

Exerion

Anton Gale has made the following updates to the Exerion core:

1. Removed the gaps between background layers
2. Extended play area (as highlighted below)
3. Updated the aspect ratio
4. Updated to the latest MiSTer main to support @MikeSimone3’s Y/C video output

 

Battle Zone

A new arcade core for Atari’s vector arcade game Battle Zone has been released by Alanswx.

 

Red Baron

Another core for an Atari vector arcade has also been released. This one is for the flight game Red Baron, also released in 1980. It’s a first person flight sim game that takes place during World War I and you take control of a bi-plane battling other planes. However, there might be issues with this core.

 

Irem M92

An Alpha core for the M92 core has been released! Not all games are working but MRA’s for the following games are available:

Blade Master (World).mra
Gunforce – Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island
Gun Force II (US).mra
Hook
In The Hunt
Lethal Thunder
Mystic Riders
Ninja Baseball Bat Man
R-Type Leo (World)
Undercover Cops