2gen header

[tails92]

I've been quite of a lurker here lately and I've also been playing with stef's md dev kit and I've just found the right time for registering.
Sik, Shiru is right, the probability that an homebrew game will be commercial quality and will introduce totally new gameplay elements is very low.
And who needs a new header, anyway? It's not like the genesis will ever be sold again. Who makes you say those statements? They just make you look stupid in my opinion.

[Sik]

Sik, Shiru is right, the probability that an homebrew game will be commercial quality and will introduce totally new gameplay elements is very low.

The discussion was about using the hardware capabilities, not implementing new kind of gameplay (which isn't even needed, I just said "good gameplay", not "innovative gameplay") :/

And who needs a new header, anyway? It's not like the genesis will ever be sold again. Who makes you say those statements? They just make you look stupid in my opinion.

Did I ever said anything about making money with it? Oh, c'mon, you just prove what I said. If you want to make a MD game, you need hope, because people only say things like you said, people will never encourage doing so except those that program for it already.

EDIT: can we get back to the header discussion? I'm quite sure you won't use the same kind of hardware inside a cartridge that was used to do before (specially Tiido), and having a new header that can contain this data is useful. In fact we could convince Aamir to support this new header, and Regen would be able to emulate those devices while normally you would be required to use the real hardware no matter what.

Oh, also, before I forget, Tails92, the Mega Drive is still being sold here.

[Shiru]

When I was talking about homebrew having better quality than commercial games, I wasn't talking just about the Mega Drive.

But we here speak about SMD, not about modern platforms. And even on modern platforms many of homebrew games is very low quality. There is probably many thousands of homebrew game projects for PC (thanks to gamemaker etc), but only very few have good quality.

But c'mon, what I see is that it seems like you lost the hope.
...

I didn't get which hope I must have, and why. For me, to develop for any platform you need only wish, some knowledge and free time.

Also, people here does not have SMD as only platform for developing. For me it's just a hobby. If you visit my homepage, you'll see list of platforms which I used to program, it includes modern platforms as well as retro ones.

Do you know what? Then you can't be here.

I think, you can't point to me, where I can be.

can we get back to the header discussion? I'm quite sure you won't use the same kind of hardware inside a cartridge that was used to do before

Don't know about others, but I personally don't want to use any new hardware on cartridge for my SMD projects, and thus don't need for new header.

Oh, also, before I forget, Tails92, the Mega Drive is still being sold here.

You forgot to say where it 'here'.

[TmEE co.(TM)]

I have extra HW in my game's cart, but its solely for game saving purposes... and a bit anti piracy too...

[Sik]

can we get back to the header discussion? I'm quite sure you won't use the same kind of hardware inside a cartridge that was used to do before

Don't know about others, but I personally don't want to use any new hardware on cartridge for my SMD projects, and thus don't need for new header.

Sure, you'll use the same old technology for SRAM I guess that at this point there should be some decent and simpler to deal memories that can be used. Also some people may want to use mappers, through the mapper from SF2 could do as well, 32MB is way better than just 4MB.

Oh, also, before I forget, Tails92, the Mega Drive is still being sold here.

You forgot to say where it 'here'.

Where I live, Argentina

Anyways, I guess the first main difference you may find between a 2gen header and an old header is that here the proper specification of SRAM is a must, so if your game has SRAM, you must set it properly in the header (unless you want to be bad with emulators, that is). So if a 2gen header is found, an emulator could detect this and assume that whatever is in the SRAM fields is safe to be taken into account, hence not hardcoding it to a specific address and size.

[tails92]

Isn't there a little space in the original header that we can use to check what SRAM is it using? If that can be done without intefering with original identification, I don't see the usefulness of a new header.
There could even be a single free byte that we can use for that purpose, and that could have 16 value (4-bits) for mapper and another 4 bits for sram.
Think about what I've said.

[Sik]

Isn't there a little space in the original header that we can use to check what SRAM is it using? If that can be done without intefering with original identification, I don't see the usefulness of a new header.

Little issue: a lot of games from the 1gen have a wrong SRAM header, hence emulators simply hardcode it. Actually it's developers' fault for not following the header specs :/ I want it to be correct always for 2gen >_>

There could even be a single free byte that we can use for that purpose, and that could have 16 value (4-bits) for mapper and another 4 bits for sram.
Think about what I've said.

You know, the 2gen header doesn't necessarily need to be bigger than the current header. First let's fill up current reserved fields, then let's expand.

Having said this, any suggestions for the values of SRAM and mapper types? (not just him, anyone )

[TmEE co.(TM)]

I have no SRAM... I have MicroWire EEPROM, something totally unseen on MD as of now. No emulator emulates it, and most likely (and hopefully) never will.

[Sik]

I'm using SRAM as a generic term here. While it normally means "static RAM", we could say it actually means "save RAM" here But seriously, you know that SRAM doesn't need to be emulated exactly to work. Don't the SRAMs in games normally lose their charge after being read and have to be rewritten? Now, do emulators do that? No, but still those games work. You get the idea

[TulioAdriano]

I sort of disagree with the naming convention of 2gen because in MD age we've seen more than 1 generation of games, as we have seen them on every single console up to today. You can cal 1st Generation the one that was release within the 1st year of the console, usually featuring less complex graphics and sound. The 2nd Generation of MD games were mainly the 16 Mega games such as Streets of Rage II, and finally a final 3rd Generation were we saw a few games with bigger roms and hardware being more explored such as Vectorman, Pulseman, Sonic 3D, and even the Super Street Fighter that pushed to the at the time unthinkable 40 Mega.

To me you could call it NextGen or something similar... will be more precise in my opinion.

Now regarding to the homebrew quality... haha... just wait and see Pier Solar debut! According to your definition, even thought we might not adopt the header standard, probably that will be the first true Next-Generation game.

Good luck.
Tulio

[Sik]

Then you forget the fourth generation, which is made of crappy pirate games Stilll, the term "next-gen" won't work. Basically, when this new generation starts working, it will stop being the next generation to become the current one

Anyways, we could as well said that 1gen was when the console was officially supported by Sega, and that the 2gen is supported by the homebrew community... or whatever, I'll find something

By the way, yup, Pier Solar could be easily considered 2gen. I may even consider the game Shiru released today (assuming it gets finished), which isn't very good technically but at least looks very good

This reminds me, how long is Pier Solar going to take? I may try to get the 2gen BIOS (or at least the interface) ready before it's released. I plan to include internal SRAM support in it, through not sure if it'll be enough for Pier Solar.

[TmEE co.(TM)]

I'm using SRAM as a generic term here. While it normally means "static RAM", we could say it actually means "save RAM" here But seriously, you know that SRAM doesn't need to be emulated exactly to work. Don't the SRAMs in games normally lose their charge after being read and have to be rewritten? Now, do emulators do that? No, but still those games work. You get the idea

EEPROM is not Save RAM, its not RAM...

DRAMs lose their charge when read... SRAM is writable ROM to say so as long as there's some juice for the chip.

[Sik]

It's just a generic term, OK? -_- Anyways if I'm not wrong EEPROMs wouldn't be hard to emulate, so watch out And still, savestates exist in any decent emulator, unless you use EEPROM for security check too. I think you'll be better by lying in the header (but then don't use the 2gen one unless you want emulators to mess up with the SRAM addresses in the new header too).

This is what I got from the 2gen BIOS. It really has nothing, except the boot loader (meaning you can use it and games will load). No menu, no SRAM support, nothing, I have to program that yet :/

http://srb2town.sepwich.com/junk/2genbios.bin

[TmEE co.(TM)]

my method is undocumented (well, it was documented a bit, but I removed all for one reason...) and I'll not help emulate it... and its for security too...

[tails92]

Is it the "anti-piracy" bit you mentioned earlier? Sorry to be harsh, but "anti-piracy" stuff doesn't belong where people research stuff about hardware (like here). That totally defeats the purpose.
And if you don't want to disclose information about your cartridge, if you sell them, people will reverse-engineer them the same and will emulate it, and you'll get a bad reputation.