This file forms a revision list for SAGE. It will also include any new instructions required to get a newer version working over an old one. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.16  Added music and sound effects to scramble. It now also needs a different ROM set. Its the ones that are just named with a letter and a number.  Fixed the star-field on Galaga so it can now travel backwards.  Added YM2203 emulator courtesy of Ishmair. It is also better than that in other emulators. You will need an OPL3 compatible sound card, but that includes Soundblaster and AdLib. Commando and GnG are now spot on.  Trimmed down the massive memory overhead used by my last system. SAGE should now run on an 8Mb machine as it always should !  Memory is now dynamically assigned on a per game basis. This means that SAGE should run on lower rammed machines and can also support very large games if you have enough space, but not interfere with smaller ones.  Games now load up *much* faster when run under windows than they did before. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.15  Added support for GHOSTS 'n' GOBLINS.  Added support for 'GALAGA'. This is the bootleg version as it was the only ROM set I have. I can see no differences in gameplay to the original, although if you know of any, do point them out.  Nicola pointed out that the sprites in Commando jerked a bit. Now sorted by buffering up the positions.  GnG has better colours than other versions.  Added WindowsSoundSystem driver for increased sound support.  Added a scanlines option to make the PC monitor look more like an arcade display. This is selectable from the options menu in the GUI. Note that this makes the 'smooth' refresh rate do nothing - games will run at accurate rate only.  Fixed a few glitches in Commando. Nothing that effected gameplay, but its done now.  Finally gotten around to adding multi-6809 support. Roll on another stack of great games :) Many thanks to L.C. Benschop for his stirling work. Additions by Marcel De Kogel, Nicola Salmoria. Major optimisations by Andy Clark and Paul Johnson.  Commando window-tiles flip. This only shows up on the high-score screen. Now fixed.  Fixed another bug in that some of the older games didn't use the user-defined key mappings.  jAYdEE submits a new title screen. Many thanks.  Added an explosion sound for Galaxian games.  Speeded up the games - some quite considerably.  Doubled the volume range for the sound system. There is now a global volume control on the keypad '+' and '-' keys. These values are remembered across executions of SAGE  Finally fixed the long broken Invaders Revenge, thanks to a suggestion from Mirko. I know one person at least that will be over the moon about this ;)  If the Game frame-rate drops below the actual video-refresh and synching is enabled, the game loses lots more speed. I now automatically turn off syncing if this would happen. Note that this is not permanent, so for faster games it will come back on.  Added a GUI option whereby pressing a number or letter key will scroll through the game selections starting with that initial. The menu is getting larger now after all. :)  Added functionality to remove large memory copies when games perform ROM paging. This speeds up GnG and 1942 quite a bit. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.14a  Patch to fix the bug whereby running 1942 or Commando through the GUI would cause a hang when run a subsequent time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.14  Commando arrives. 'Nuf said :)  Added accurate processor time-slicing to facilitate better interaction within multi-processor systems.  Fixed it so that when sound is disabled, any slave CPU's dedicated to sound processing are not executed. This makes the games run a heck of a lot faster if you don't/cannot use audio.  Added a tight-loop bug-out feature for slave CPU's. No more wasting precious time waiting for something that's not going to happen.  Further enhancements to the sounds for 1942. Now at correct speed and cleaner than other emulators (IMHO)  The sprites in 1942 are now correct. A silly problem I should have spotted earlier. Never mind !  Fixed a bug in the AY-3-8910 emulator that allows rogue register writes (above 15) to corrupt memory. Commando does this a lot :( This should have cleared a possible bug in 1942 too. How is it now Len ?  Added a new file "games.txt" listing the games supported and the accuracy of the emulation.  Neatened up the 'missing ROMs' display. Nicely aligned now, and only displays the ones that are missing.  Version number now printed up on the title screen.  Better display of controls and stuff in the red panel. It now cycles, but can be stepped through by pressing cursor left/right  Directories now match those of MAME at the request of many. Sorry if you weren't one of them, but you will have to move your ROMS around. The directory names appear in the "games.txt" file. This will hopefully not happen again. Maybe Mirko will immitate my directories in future ;) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.13  Added support for 1942  Added a new text file "frontend.txt"  Added a method for third parties to write alternate frontends See the included "frontend.txt" file for more information  Reorganised the games list alphabetically  Multi-Z80 support added. Support for other processors to come soon, namely: 6809 6502 68000 8086 The games now run slightly slower, but still blindingly fast. Note this only refers to the unsynced speed.  Thanks to further info from Chris Hardy, Firebird now has a better palette, and apparently there should be a star-field. Its on the often missing sound-board. I've just stuffed in the Galaxian one for now  Added new title screen courtesy of Paul Desmond. Thanks paul :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.12a  Fixed the overkill on joystick optimisations ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.12  Added support for MrDo and MrLo. Thanks to Nicola for his help with the palettes and sound.  Added a pause key. Press F4 or 'P' to pause, any key to unpause.  Added a "slowmo" key. Hold in 'S' to see how crap the collision detection used to be in some of these games ;)  F12 will now save the screen out as a .GIF file called SNAPSHOT.GIF  Decreased the time spent in the joystick polling loop. Thanks to Len Shikowitz for his assistance with this issue. Please moan if joysticks no longer work for you. This is very much trial and error  Spent ages trying to figure out why my screen updates were jerky. Turned joysticks off and voila. Now moved where they are polled and everything is as a babies bottom :)  Firebird is now totally finished. Sound might make it in one day if I can ever figure it out. Anyone with a schematic of this seperate board ?  Scramble now uses correct bullets, and is finished apart from sound which will be coming soon - awful at the moment ! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.11  Added support for Space Firebird. The game is fully playable, but many things are wrong with it. Please no bug reports on this one I have only left it in because people are so keen to play it. IT IS NOT FINISHED YET !!! Also note that the ROMS available on various sites are incomplete, so don't blame me if you cannot get it working. I am trying to get this situation addressed, but please don't badger me. Like I say all over the place - mails regarding ROMS are annoying and will not even be fully read, just deleted ! Many thanks to Chris Hardy who has helped quite a bit with the schematics and some coding issues. This game is a bitch to emulate, believe me. A game so simple should not be such a mess !  Scramble is coming along, but again not finished. Rather than simply cancelling these options, I thought I'd leave them in as a kind of work in progress. If you have a ROM set containing loads of directories, copy the contents of the \WORKING set into the directory above it (SCRAMBLE\)  Changed the colouring to the front-end slightly. Makes things a little clearer.  Put a timer on the title screen, so it doesn't stay there all day. Still no improvement on the content though :(  Added support for Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys for the game launcher menus. I'm sure you can figure out what they do for yourselves !  Changed the credits list to reflect newer input - particular thanks to Phil Morris for his tireless endeavours in the field of playtesting and making interface suggestions.  Fixed a bug whereby printing of messages such as FPS counter reset the clipping rectangle to full screen.  Changed the directory name for the JAPIREM game as it overspills my text window. You must use "RENAME GALAXIAN\JAPIREM GALAXIAN\IREM" from DOS, or change it using explorer or whatever in windows. Sorry for this bit of messing about. I try to keep this sort of stuff to a minimum  Changed the GALAXIANS game names to GALAXIAN ! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.10a  Fixed the joystick support. It had apparently gone South. I must reiterate that you should not specify a joystick if you don't have one plugged in at the time - slows the games loads. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.10  Fixed clipped sound in invaders variants  Fixed non-looping ufo noise in invaders  Fixed bottom line colours in invaders  Made code much smaller and efficient for smaller download - hence the significant number increase in the version code.  Removed the need for .DRV files. Delete them if you have an earlier version  Temporarily disabled the DIP switches. They will return :)  Added a simple title screen. This will improve and feature a small animation, though nothing taking up much space or time. Wait and see ;)  FPS counter now moved onto the F1 key. Press it during a game to show the current frames-per-second rate. It will dissappear again after around 5 seconds. Note that this does not work in the invaders variants as they don't have a frame-buffer to measure !  Pressing F2 during a game will now toggle the update method between accurate and smooth. On subsequent runnings of SAGE, the default settings from the 'options' selections will return. Change them there to make it permanent (as in earlier versions).  Pressing F3 during a game will toggle the sync on and off. You will see a brief message confirming your actions - not that you'll need it ! Again, these three keys are worthless in invaders !!!  Space firebird nearly made it into this version. With a bit of luck and a following wind, maybe the next one. Quite a way off the star of approval at the moment ;)  Games now launch much quicker ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.04  Added support for: JAPIREM (aka Space Battle) Nothing else. That really is it ! The reason this code has been released with so little new stuff in it is that I am about to drastically alter all aspects of my code. This will make future downloads much much smaller, as well as decreasing start-up times for the games themselves. As ever, watch this space :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.03  Added support for: MOON CRESTA WAR OF THE BUGS PISCES  Fixed the sound - suffered from tinnyness before, mainly due to a poor mixing frequency.  First attempt at a web-site. This is by no means finished - merely tidied up as the last one was an insult to surfers ! Sorry if the web-counter slows the main page down a bit. I need to know that my efforts are worthwhile. I have accounted for this by putting no pictures on it instead.  Created this file. Should have done it ages ago  Fixed the speed of the space invader variants - was too fast ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.02 This is mainly a maintenance release, tweaking existing features  Simplified the sound setup to use blaster only for all flavours  Tidied up the spawning process for launching games. There was some screen corruption if "dos4g=quiet" wasn't set  Made it easier to select joysticks  Added an 'accurate' game speed as well as a smooth vsync one  Left in an early attempt at Moon-Cresta ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Version 1.01 The first version to hit the internet. Games supported are: PHOENIX PLEIADES SPACE INVADERS INVADERS REVENGE SPACE ATTACK EARTH INVASION GALAXY WARS LUNAR RESUE GALAXIANS (Midway) GALAXIANS (Namco) GALAXIANS Part 1 GALAXIANS Part 4 GALAXIANS Turbo SUPER GALAXIANS This version also had the first attempt at a user front-end, though contained a few glitches. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Many thanks for all your support, PAUL JOHNSON. mayhem@cix.co.uk