Ville Linde from Mame Team had started the very hard stuff of decrypting graphs in Raiden Fighters 1,2,Jets ...... and then he stopped to concentrate on emulating Sega Model 3.
But the man who created Mame, Nicola Salmoria has decided to make the dream come truth. Have a look at his blog and you will understand what i mean
Yes , you're not dreaming : Raiden Fighters 1,2, Jet, Viper Phase one are about to playable at home for every one !!!!!! Nicola is working on the more difficult step : decrypting sprites, so please go and encourage him on http://mamelife.blogspot.com/
MOD EDIT: Updated topic title for MAME 0.93 release. -TF
Cool, but I still plan on buying the PCBs (of course). Only one I have played so far is RFII back in August and it was such a great shooter from what I played. The train level blew me away. It was enough for me that I can buy II and Jet at least in confidence.
Last edited by Dylan1CC on Sat Feb 12, 2005 10:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I don't even know what Raiden is, after Raiden DX...
There are NO arcades here at all! It would take an hours drive to get to an arcade, but I doubt they would have very many shmups...maybe a couple if that.
I take it that the newer Raidens are slightly similar to Caves stuff, then when compared to there earlier efforts in the style of Toaplan?
Ville wrote the ix86 core and the spi driver, but most of the tile decryption was originally carried out by another individual. Ville only worked on the tables although I believe Nicola has reduced the tables down a fair way.
These games are still a long way from being playable. The sprite decryption really could be a show stopper. A few incorrect bits in the tiles was nothing in comparison.. (although we do have boards for hw intervention..).
Twitch: the Raiden Fighters games are not technically part of the Raiden series (meaning Raiden series is Raiden, Raiden 2, Raiden DX, Raiden 3; Raiden Fighters series is Raiden Fighters, Raiden Fighters 2, and Raiden Fighters Jet).
In the Fighters series, there are multiple ships to choose from, medal-chaining, new scoring opportunities, bullet scratching if you want it, and small, often fast bullets. Some patterns are aimed, some are static, but few really reach the geometric complexity and bullet-count of most later Cave games. Some have described the Fighters series as "Raiden on Horse Steroids", which is a nice description.
That's some pretty hot and wet progress, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't ignite the fire in my shmup loins. I love seeing hardware / encryption that was thought to be impossible to emulate finally conquered.
Seibu SPI and Data East's encryption used on Cannon Dancer are the two I've been wanting to see broken for a long time now.
I'm excited about this. Very excited. I've got the Raiden Fighters 2 board and it is indeed an awsome game. I'm looking forward to playing Jet the most though, well that and Bee Storm : Dodonpachi II if it comes out this year.
Ord wrote:Bee Storm : Dodonpachi II if it comes out this year.
From what I understand, IGS encryption is really low on MAMEDev's priority list, so unless ElSemi gets bored I doubt we'll be playing Bee Storm anytime soon
Ord wrote:Bee Storm : Dodonpachi II if it comes out this year.
From what I understand, IGS encryption is really low on MAMEDev's priority list, so unless ElSemi gets bored I doubt we'll be playing Bee Storm anytime soon
The Raiden Fighters games aren´t like the Raiden games, but they´re not like Cave games, either. The average bullet speed is much higher, making the games much more hectic. Surprisingly, RF1 is even faster than RFJ, so you can probably say there was some Cave influence towards slower bullets going on, especially as the Raiden series practically had no slow bullets at all, while the Raiden Fighters series uses them, although sparingly.
I´m also one of those who last played them in an arcade about 6 years ago, so my memory of RF2 is thin (the other 2, I bought in the meantime). The graphical style is rather similar, but the score system requirements still make them very different to play, even though superficially it might seem similar.
For example, both RF1 and RFJ allow the player to pick up support ships called "slaves", that don´t only give additional firepower, but can catch a few bullets, too, similar to R-Types force unit, but they are not invincible - after a few hits, you lose them. The slaves are important for scoring, too:
In RF1, the number of slaves you have determines which kind of medals enemies will drop. Without a slave, they are worth 10-90 points, with one 100-900, with two 1000-9000. Each kind starts with the minimum value and can be pushed up by picking up and clearing the screen of them. Now, the game remembers the values you stopped at, for example you push up the basic medals until 50, then pick up a slave, so 100+ medals start appearing. When you do that and reach 9000, you will find it stops there. You can still get rid of a slave by dying or letting it get hit by enough bullets to push the smaller medals afterwards.
If you pushed each kind of medal to its maximum value, they will jump to 10.000 points. Now you are required to have 9 of these 10.000 point medals on screen without picking them up, at which point they all disappear, and afterwards you can push their value up to 100.000 points. If you don´t do the 9-disappear trick, they will simply stay at 10.000 points.
In RFJ, if you have slaves, all floating medals won´t fall out of the screen like they normally do, but float around your slaves and start fusing with other medals in their vicinity, getting bigger and bigger in the process and doubling its value each time. Your task is to not touch them until they reach maximum value. This is difficult because the slaves change their behaviour sometimes, and the medals have some latency in following them. If you picked up the medal at less than maximum value (2mio. points), the value will just reset to 10 points.
If you picked it up at 2mio., nothing seems to change. But if you do the 9-disappear trick described above, all medals switch to 10.000 points value and can be pushed to 100.000 immediately.
Both games have a lot of secrets, there are bonus scores for shooting enemies quickly, shooting 2 or more simultaneously, letting certain enemies live longer, hovering over certain places or using your bombs to keep a tank from shooting houses ("defended the house bonus"). One of the most useful secrets is the Miclus, the blue figure known from the Raiden series. The Miclus, when discovered and shot at, releases 9 medals in a quick row. This can either be used to perform the 9-disappear trick or to push medal value seriously.
In both games, you can choose from several ships, but while RF1 does what most shmups do (try to balance the ships´ strengths and weaknesses and keep all scores in a combined hall of fame), RFJ doesn´t even bother with that: ship power varies enormously, but each ship has its own hiscore being kept.
RF1 has a conventional stage order of 7 stages in total. The 3rd, 6th and 7th stage are pretty long, with very tough endbosses and a bonus score reward for beating it. The order of 1st and 2nd stage is determined randomly, as is that of the 4th and 5th stage.
RFJ has about a dozen stages, but you can´t see them all in one game. Depending on your performance (lives lost, bombs used) the game will determine the next stage after each stage you played. Similar to Psyvariar, it´s not possible to creditfeed your way through the game and see all of it.
Recognizing how different RF1 and RFJ are, I´m pretty curious how RF2 fits in between. Could someone describe it in a similar way, please?
Ord wrote:Bee Storm : Dodonpachi II if it comes out this year.
From what I understand, IGS encryption is really low on MAMEDev's priority list, so unless ElSemi gets bored I doubt we'll be playing Bee Storm anytime soon
***sob***
From what I understand, you're not missing much.
As for the RF games..this is VERY exciting, and does top the emulation of Progear.
Ive got RF1, and I will be honest its not my favourite PCB. Music is great, the pace is good, the bullets come at you think and fast. The only thing I don't really like about it is those laser weapons.
That and the fact that alot of the time your enemies are on your side or behind you. Its very good overall though, definately worth the money.
There are better games out there, but there are far worse too.
This industry has become 2 dimensional as it transcended into a 3D world.
The only thing I don't really like about it is those laser weapons.
you said that before on the old board, didn´t you? Well, why don´t you choose a ship without laser weapons, then? I´m usually playing with the Judge Spear, the weapon is as straight as it gets, but strong, and being fast helps a lot as you need to be all over the screen all the time.
RaidenFighter wrote:But the man who created Mame, Nicola Salmoria has decided to make the dream come truth. Have a look at his blog and you will understand what i mean
The only thing I don't really like about it is those laser weapons.
you said that before on the old board, didn´t you? Well, why don´t you choose a ship without laser weapons, then? I´m usually playing with the Judge Spear, the weapon is as straight as it gets, but strong, and being fast helps a lot as you need to be all over the screen all the time.
Judge spear hey, will keep it in mind.!
This industry has become 2 dimensional as it transcended into a 3D world.
Great news! I have a Raiden Fighters II PCB, and it's an excellent game. The replay value is immense due to the large number of different ships, each one with fairly unique weaponty.
RaidenFighter wrote:Ville Linde from Mame Team had started the very hard stuff of decrypting graphs in Raiden Fighters 1,2,Jets ...... and then he stopped to concentrate on emulating Sega Model 3.
But the man who created Mame, Nicola Salmoria has decided to make the dream come truth. Have a look at his blog and you will understand what i mean
Yes , you're not dreaming : Raiden Fighters 1,2, Jet, Viper Phase one are about to playable at home for every one !!!!!! Nicola is working on the more difficult step : decrypting sprites, so please go and encourage him on http://mamelife.blogspot.com/
Well, technically, they're no more or less playable, now than before, since the tile decryption was mostly done, but they sure look better. RF is perfectly playable as-is, except for being ugly and distorted and the powerups being illegible.
But it's great to see the tile encryption finished off, because now there's nothing left to do but tackle the sprite encryption, which is the nastier and more important piece of the puzzle. We could well see a breakthrough very soon,
http://mamelife.blogspot.com/2005/02/first-results.html.
Okay, that was a bit too quick.
However, the sprite roms encryption on the rf2 board was from a (c)2000 el-cheapo board rather than an original so it could turn out to be different as we don't have a dump from the original.
PsikyoFan wrote:http://mamelife.blogspot.com/2005/02/first-results.html.
Okay, that was a bit too quick.
However, the sprite roms encryption on the rf2 board was from a (c)2000 el-cheapo board rather than an original so it could turn out to be different as we don't have a dump from the original.
Yea, it's a shame that it's the 2000 version but it's still better than nothing. Amazing work on that bad boy, that's for sure. Can't wait to see what comes next
Hmmm...last october, I played the 2000 version of RFJet in a rest stop with the band( High School marching band, to be exact). It was the first shmup I've played in the arcades in 6 years, not including Centipede.
I was given no bombs, and the music was purely 5 second loops.... I'm not sure how this compares to the original RFJet.
Ed: He asked for mustard Eddy! Do you have corn in your ears mister?
okay i'm confused is the game dumped or completed rom and what emulator does it require Seibou Spi or mame, any info also was Raiden Fighers ever released on MAME
shariar07 wrote:okay i'm confused is the game dumped or completed rom and what emulator does it require Seibou Spi or mame, any info also was Raiden Fighers ever released on MAME
The rom was dumped a while back, they just fixed the encrypted graphics from what I understand. Since Nicola Salmoria is the one who decrypted it, and he created MAME, I would say it would probably be the emulator of choice.
shariar07 wrote:okay i'm confused is the game dumped or completed rom and what emulator does it require Seibou Spi or mame, any info also was Raiden Fighers ever released on MAME
The SPI games have been dumped and supported in MAME for sometime. However, because of the graphics encyption the games looked really bad. Basically the graphics were scrambled garbage. Ville made some progress decrypting them so that the backgrounds were only partly garbled,but the sprites were just static.
Now it looks like at least Raiden Fighters 2 is completely decrypted and working, and the others have working backgrounds and the rest will probably follow soon. So look for SPI games in MAME.. probably within the next week, seeing how often MAME updates these days. By the end of the month at least.
