Aleste 2 ROM

Champion (438)

17-01-2015, 02:26

I've been working on a ROM version of Aleste 2. Here's a beta for download:

http://www.ricbit.com/temp/aleste2.zip

Right now the intro demo kind of works and the first 4 stages are playable (on hard). I have removed some things that don't make sense anymore (such as loading screens, and screens asking for you to change the disks - this is automatic now). But I plan to add improvements to the game in the near future, such as playing the samples using the turboR PCM for a better sound quality.

Por Vampier

Prophet (2415)

17-01-2015, 07:47

Looks great! I played through all 4 stages and the I get to the 'insert disk b' screen.

One thing I saw that wasn't going as it should was the Aleste 2 intro screen. Looks like VDP reg 23 needs to be reset to 0.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jraAn_T9zcI

Por giuseve

Paladin (814)

17-01-2015, 07:59

Nice project. I think that a must to do would be to try to solve the flickerig when too much enemies are on the screen.
Anyway great job!

Por Manuel

Ascended (19687)

17-01-2015, 09:10

Fun project! I didn't see the reg23 issue though. Perhaps it depends on the MSX type used. (I used an MSX2.)

Por ARTRAG

Enlighted (6978)

17-01-2015, 09:21

Great project ! I'd love to see in rom more classics on disk.

Por ericb59

Paragon (1126)

17-01-2015, 17:55

Great !
I know what to do with your final rom !

(Well, if it not more than 2048K...)

Por valkyre

Paladin (704)

17-01-2015, 18:36

I like what your saying eric

Por ricbit

Champion (438)

17-01-2015, 19:41

@Vampier I think you found a bug on the original game. If I try to press space during the scrolling, using the original disks, the game freezes. I can fix this on my version, but it's curious no one noticed that before

@ARTRAG Regarding other classics, I would love if someone did the same to Xak 2. It annoys the hell out of me when the music stops to load the text some character is speaking. In a ROM version the music wouldn't need to stop.

Por ricbit

Champion (438)

26-01-2015, 14:08

I found two more bugs on the original code!

The first one is that the game starts on hard if you boot with the demo disc. I always thought this was by design, but turns out it is a bug. The game expects all ram to be zeroed out, but some machines will fill it with FF during boot. The game then interprets the FF as hard. If you boot from the first game disc, then it properly zero out the variable storing the difficulty.

The second one is that the game does not always wait until a vdp command is finished before issuing a new one. In fact, it assumes all disk reads are long enough for a command to complete (which of course is not true in my version reading from rom). I had to add a busy wait to fix some graphic glitches.

Por ricbit

Champion (438)

26-01-2015, 14:39

Here's the latest version, it fixes the two bugs described above, and reintroduces the sound stage (keep SELECT pressed during start):

http://www.ricbit.com/temp/aleste2.zip

Here's source code so far:

https://github.com/ricbit/aleste2

Por syn

Prophet (2135)

26-01-2015, 14:54

http://ips.tni.nl/dsk/fixes-other/ that demo disk bug was already fixed :)