Overall Progress
The team is back in full force after some holidays in July, with two extra full-time people joining for a month to help out. The short-term plan has the assistant focusing on NGPC work, while the lead will progress toward CPS3 (Capcom Play System 3) by tackling Golfing Greats, then Run and Gun, and finally CPS3.
Updates and Release Schedule
NGPC will likely see several updates as more games and features are worked on.
Golfing Greats and Run and Gun are both scheduled for release this August.
A beta for CPS3 is expected to take a few weeks, with a likely release in October.
Team Focus
The two new hires will be a big help:
- One is focusing on framework development, creating an automatic test for all cores. This will catch issues when a new core is worked on, improving the user experience and reducing the need for manual testing.
- The other will tackle easy but time-consuming issues. This includes the Analogue Pocket issue with OutRun, for which they are getting Pocket units on loan, and a CPS2 GFX issue.
During this time, the team will continue to fix small bugs as they are reported but will avoid any task that takes more than a couple of days to complete, especially if it doesn’t align with the autumn CPS3 goal.
Golfing Greats WIP First Look
Background Graphics: The background is currently glitched because the game requires up to eight times more SDRAM access than a typical game. The team is implementing a new buffering scheme to fix this.
Sound: The core’s sound is correct, but it was previously broken in MAME. This was due to an unimplemented feature on a Konami chip. Jotego found the schematics, verified them on a real PCB, and submitted a fix to MAME.
Ball Tracking: The game’s ball-tracking is handled by a unique hardware trick that MAME does not yet support. This will be implemented in the FPGA core first. Jotego will inform the MAME team on how to fix it, so the game will be playable on FPGA before it’s playable on MAME.
Shared Chipset: The pseudo-3D chip used in this game is also found in Blazing Tornado, Dragon Ball Z 2, F-1 Grand Prix, Gaiapolis, Lethal Crash Race, Monster Maulers, Premier Soccer, Run and Gun, and Super Slam.