Lu

MiSTer FPGA News & Updates – PSX Accuracy, GUN4IR, Dragon’s Lair & More

Posted on by Lu

GUN4IR Native Support

If you’re interested in playing lightgun games on your MiSTer on your modern television, we now have another option. The GUN4IR will soon be natively supported. There is currently an unstable build with support so if you own the light gun then head over to the MiSTer FPGA discord and download the build to try it out.

 

New SNK TNK III Beta Core

RndmnkIII has released a new core  based on the arcade game TNK III. The naming of this game is weird. It was called TANK in Japan, but released as TNK III in North American arcades. So I’ll just be calling it TANK III from now on. The core is currently in beta status, but you will still get it the next time you update your MiSTer.

 

New Athena Beta Core

In addition to the TNK III core, RndMnkIII has also released another new beta core for the arcade game Athena by SNK. This core will also be merged with the SNK Triple Z80 core once it’s out of beta.

 

Game & Watch Directory Name Change

A change to the Game & Watch core was made that will probably make your game list disappear next time you try to load one. The core name was renamed to the text that you see on screen for the MiSTer.ini file. It’s important that you rename your Game & Watch directory to this new name.

New installation won’t have to do this, but if you’ve had the core since before this update, then it’s most likely you will have to make this change.

 

Wickerwaka’s Pixel Repetition

This is a development that’s been available for a while. Developer Wickerwaka, has added pixel repetition to MiSTer. This feature has specific use cases and most people won’t need it, but can be useful in certain cases.

What is pixel repetition?
Well the HDMI chip on the DE10 Nano has the ability to double or quadruple the input data. So the scaler would output a resolution like 1280×1440, and when pixel repetition is enabled, your TV will actually see a resolution of 2560×1440.

 

Dragon’s Lair core

While browsing the MiSTerFPGA discord I came across a message about a Dragon’s Lair core that’s in development by dentnz. Currently the developer has the beginnings of a laser disc player module and some basic messaging features. Since it’s so early in development, we can not expect a core release anytime soon, but it’s nice to know the game is being worked on.

 

DonPachi Beta

Nullobject has a beta for Donpachi with working sound. Currently, it’s only available for Patreon subscribers, but after all the final kinks have been ironed out, a public release will follow.

 

PSX Core Accuracy

Even with an injured hand, Robert Peip, the PlayStation core developer, is still doing work related to the core. He’s currently implementing a set of tests that will compare the accuracy of the core to that of a real Playstation. These tests already have helped make improvements to the core such as fixing the timing for CPU math processing, which was verified against a real Playstation. Also F1 2000 is now playable thanks to these tests. These tests will be open source and available on his github, so we will also be able to perform them ourselves.

 

PSX Multitap Support Coming

In more Playstation core news, markun on discord has been able to get multitap working. I mistakenly mentioned before that this will allow you to attach a real multi-tap. What this support actually means is multi-tap support within the core, so you can use your more than 2 USB or bluetooth controllers. You wont need a real multi-tap.

 

Commodore 128

The in-development Commodore 128 core has received some updates. Eriks5, the developer, posted some screenshots showing its progress on the MiSTerFPGA forums and given updates on what’s implemented and things left to do.

 

PCXT Core

The PCXT core has been in constant development and there is now beta version 0.7 available for download. You can obtain it from the project’s GitHub page.

 

Track & Field Core Public

Jotego’s Track n’ Field core is now available free to the public. You can either download it from his jtbin Github or you can install the update_all script to download it for you automatically.

 

Super Pang

Jotego has also released a new beta core to his Patreon subscribers. He now followed up his Pang core with Super Pang. As with all his cores, he first releases them in private beta to his Patreon subscribers. As soon as they are stable enough, he releases them to the public. Jotego also doesn’t abandon his cores once they are made public. Updates to all the older cores are constantly being made.

 

Other Miscellaneous Updates

And other miscellaneous MiSTer fixes and updates are:

Birdybro updated the framework for Turkey Shoot, Joust, Mystic Marathon and Joust 2 to support wickerwaka’s new HDMI pixel repetition method.

For the Game & Watch core, pierco fixed reset between games.
Moved load file to top menu option.
And remember to rename your Game & Watch directory to “GameNWatch”

For the Compukit UK101 core, danielb updated the framework and fixed the menu.

The 32X core had its framework updated and fixes made by srg320.

For the SNK Triple Z80 Arcade hardware, support for two game controllers was added and there was some code cleanup.

For the Ondra SPO 186 core, Ondra SD was implemented in the core for faster and more convenient software loading.