Arcade game developement?

[Sasupoika]

Oh hello.
For last week I have been wondering how can you make a game for arcade-board or something similar. But, finding information how it's done is very little.
I have found dev-enviroment for various Jamma-boards ( Neogeo, CPS-2, X6800, etc ), but I believe they don't produce those boards anymore.
Making own arcade-board is very hard I guess.
Another way to do it of course is a computer-based board, but that can be costly.
Easiest way would be making a minimalistic Windows or Linux bootdisc containing the game.

So I ask you Shmup.System11, how are arcade-games done.

[agustusx]

As you say making your own board can be expensive so a lot of studios these days are using pc based platforms. Once nice advantage is they even use USB drives to update the game. I could be wrong but I think Shiro 3 and DS2 use pc systems.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong

Compared to specialized systems, a pc board actually would be pretty cheap. If designed right you wouldn't need a "good" processor at all which would keep the cost/size down quite a bit.

[emphatic]

They German production team behind Last Hope are working on an MVS cart release for the NEO-GEO. From what I understand, NEO-GEO is a pretty nice platform for developing your own games. I don't know how they are manufactured though, but as the Chinese are still making bootleg carts with 100-in-1 games on them, there are surely people who can make them still.

If you can program a good game in DOS, you could use a pretty cheap computer and use FreeDOS to avoid any licensing etc. If you have a CF-Card -> IDE reader, the game data can be distributed on CF-Cards, but this would of course be very easy to copy if it was a commercial game.

I have a Multi-Game PCB that actually has a Pentium II processor and one of those CF-Cards as a HDD. I would love to be able to play anything else than MAME on it, but as I can't use a keyboard or a CD-rom with it, I haven't been able to install anything else than the DOS 7.1 that came with it. These PCBs cost about €150.

[Ex-Cyber]

As you say making your own board can be expensive so a lot of studios these days are using pc based platforms. Once nice advantage is they even use USB drives to update the game. I could be wrong but I think Shiro 3 and DS2 use pc systems.

Most new games do. The problem is that cutting-edge chips keep getting more and more expensive to produce (for modern 45nm/65nm processes it's reportedly over $1 million up front before you can even start making the chips, and that's not counting the similarly expensive design/validation tools or engineer salaries), and arcade games can't amortize that over a large volume. So to keep up with new technology they've been moving away from custom architectures and toward re-purposing console and PC hardware. This has been going on for about the past 15 years. A PC/DirectX-based platform is attractive because you don't need custom devkits (just use a standard PC with the same CPU and GPU) and the code ports relatively easily for Windows and Xbox 360 releases.

I'd have to agree that MVS is probably the best option if you want to make a "real" arcade game. An MVS cart does require two medium-sized PCBs, but compared to the game boards for most platforms it's fairly simple and there's no mandatory protection/encryption (and if you're sufficiently skilled/devious you can come up with your own). From what I've heard it seems that G-Net might also be an option (since it can use CompactFlash as a medium), but I haven't looked into it.

There are also other options if PC hardware is too boring/bulky/expensive for your tastes. For example, the Beagle Board offers a lot of power in a pretty small form factor and at relatively low cost.

[Sasupoika]

Getting any "real" arcade board as NeoGeo would be pain for single developer. They probably have some policy of minimum order.

Yeah, the best way would be PC-based. I can't find any place where to buy Pentium II or Pentium III.
If the game is 2d and doesn't use any fancy tricks ( alpha, 3d or something ) you can basically use CPU for the graphics and use allegro or SDL as library.

Anyway, Beagle Board looks nice. Is there other similar boards like that?

[agustusx]

Hi res graphics support, PowerVR, Opengl ES, people using it with android and other OS's. that beagleboard sounds pretty sexy. I couldn't do a thing with it personally since I'd have to pick up that OMAP for dummys book.

[Taylor]

Sega NAOMI would probably be the easiest way to do this, for development and distribution. It's not very powerful, though

[ISODee]

In my understanding MVS carts are pretty simple to make you just burn eeproms and install them to board on right places like code, graphics and sounds.

[emphatic]

I just found this interesting site:
http://arcadedev.emuvibes.com/#Games

And also:
http://www.neogeoprotos.com/games/homebrews.htm

[Ex-Cyber]

In my understanding MVS carts are pretty simple to make you just burn eeproms and install them to board on right places like code, graphics and sounds.

If you want to do a production run of a new cart it's not quite that simple. There's a kind of protocol involved in reading the cart; it's not just sticking ROMs on a bus. However, it shouldn't be a huge task to reverse-engineer the necessary stuff, maybe from one of the early carts which AFAIK are 100% off-the-shelf chips and are mostly non-collector-item titles. Various bootleg manufacturers have apparently already done this multiple times, and there seem to be a handful of people in the Neo scene who have basically figured out the protocol.

edit: as for Neo dev sites, don't miss http://www.neobitz.com

[the2bears]

Sega NAOMI would probably be the easiest way to do this, for development and distribution. It's not very powerful, though

Not sure what you mean by this, though. Not powerful relevant to what? It's the board that was used for quite a few very sophisticated shmups, and is "good enough" for most projects.

Bill

[emphatic]

If found this today: http://www.fpgaarcade.com/

It looks very promising.

[Ed Oscuro]

So I ask you Shmup.System11, how are arcade-games done.

How is JAMMA formed?