Three new games in this version:
Hi-Way (Atari, 1975)
Single-player driving game that to this day maintains a small (but loyal) fan base...
Features quite complex graphics for a discrete logic game due to the use of a 1024-bit shift register to store the location of the road, shifting in new values periodically to give the effect of motion (Unfortunately causing simulator performance to vary wildly based on how curvy the road currently is!)
Indy 4 (Atari, 1976)
First color monitor using game in DICE! (Now if only someone would dig up the schematics for Color Gotcha...)
Features fairly unique gameplay for its time due to the ability to perform a handbrake turn to quickly skid around corners. And surprisingly runs at fairly playable speeds despite the large amount of players and road graphics!
Steeplechase (Atari, 1975)
First six-player one-button horse racing game? Each player tries to jump the pickets to reach the finish line first, competing with each other as well as the meticulously-computer-controlled white horse who never misses a jump (but runs less quickly).
Also new in this release:
- Configurable video options (anti-aliasing, vsync, status bar visibility)
- Fixed crash on exit
Download Links
32-bit Windows version (Required for 32-bit versions of Windows)
Source Code
Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteThanks Adam and thanks Rich. Atari Highway being emulated and with Ramtek Clean Sweep emulated earlier this year has made this a very good year.
signed,
'loyal' fan of Atari Highway.
Also, with the suspense of wondering what the next release will bring, I wanted to know what games were in mind. I was wondering if Flying Fortress, Maneater or Tank was going to be emulated in next release. I can't wait for next release!
Delete-Tayllor
> with the suspense of wondering what the next release will bring, I wanted to know what games
Delete> were in mind.
I can say Atari Outlaw is being worked on, but the emulation of the Outlaw cab's pistol component is still an obstacle that presents an emulation challenge. Although MAME emulates light guns or gun inputs, DICE cannot reuse MAME's code because the two are too different and also the method of how games are emulated in DICE and MAME are different as well even though couriersud is trying to bridge netlist emulation compatibility between MAME and DICE.
Other non-cpu games that could be emulated because the pcbs don't use any roms and logic schematics are also available online are: Atari Goal IV, Kee Games Pursuit, and Electra's UFO Chase, Midway Winner.
Other non-cpu games with proms already dumped and logic schematics accounted for include Allied Leisure's Street Burners and Ramtek Baseball. No idea when either of those two will be worked on.
Other logic schematics on hand and to be used later: Electra's Avenger, Midway Wheels and Midway Wheels II, and few other various pong clone games.
> I was wondering if Flying Fortress, Maneater or Tank was going to be emulated in next release.
The prom from a Tank pcb has been dumped a while ago, but no idea when Tank will be emulated.
Electra's Flying Fortress, PSE Maneater, and Sega's Fonz require finding pcbs of those games and dumping proms from those pcbs. It might be some time before any of those pcbs can be found.
Thanks,
DeleteSounds very interesting.
DeleteThanks for the update.
I have a question about artwork. Will DICE ever have inputs for artwork? Things like bezels or scanlines or feedback? I wanted to know.
DeleteGood question. I understand what you mean, like on MAME, You have an option for artwork like a bezel, a marquee, or a snapshot. I also think scanlines and feedback would also be nice to see.
DeletePersonally, I would just be happy to see a bezel overlay to Dice. That would be great, but I don't know when Adam decides to add an artwork input into Dice.
Remember that drawing out a bezel of Clean Sweep or Jet Fighter can take sometime. Unlike Pong, where it is simply a yellow border with black text on top, and a trapezoid-like opening for a screen. I'd like to see that first. It sounds like a good starting point.
Love to see Quak!
DeleteI agree, I would also love the sound emulated in Shark Jaws! Just hearing the "whale-like" or "dolphin-like?" sounds whenever you catch a fish. Or when you get eaten by the shark. Good times. :)
DeleteI definitely agree here! I hope the sound will be emulated in some future release!
DeleteHere is the link showing of the arcade machine and gameplay. Also there is a neat echo to every sound. (The fish being captured, the background radar sound effect, and the screaming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHUMNTpUMoE
>Other non-cpu games that could be emulated because the pcbs don't use any roms and logic schematics are also available online are ... Midway Winner.
DeleteI had read that Midway just licensed Ramtek's Wipeout and put it in their own cabinet to create Winner, so essentially DICE already emulates Winner. Midway also licensed Atari's Space Race to create Asteroid, and they licensed Taito's Basketball to create TV Basketball. In fact, I don't think Midway actually developed very many of their own video games during that period, they mostly just licensed (or copied without licensing like Paddle-Ball/Pong) the work of other companies.
I was misremembering. Midway's LEADER is Wipeout. WINNER is a Pong clone.
DeleteHello I had a question about freeing RAM. I run 32-bit Windows XP and have .99 Megabytes of RAM on it. I can play Breakout at 45 FPS. Pong and Wipeout at a full 60. But favorites (not to say they are all favorites of mine) like Clean Sweep and Hi-way run at about 12 FPS. Does anyone have any idea on how to free up a little RAM. Thanks!
Delete>>I can say Atari's Outlaw is being worked on.
DeleteOh. Great, but, does this include the backdrop?
Quoting Anonymous
Delete"Hello I had a question about freeing RAM. I run 32-bit Windows XP and have .99 Megabytes of RAM on it. I can play Breakout at 45 FPS. Pong and Wipeout at a full 60. But favorites (not to say they are all favorites of mine) like Clean Sweep and Hi-way run at about 12 FPS. Does anyone have any idea on how to free up a little RAM. Thanks!"
Well, try denying some applications using task manager and try expanding your RAM. 0.99 Megs of RAM won't really get you anywhere. I used to have a Celeron as a processor which was... bad. Horrible.
But if you want to play at full speed you may need an I3 processor like I have yet this does cost some money. And trust me, If you are using anything lower than a Pentium, you won't get vary far.
But that's with 32-bit. If you have 64-bit edition, then you should be fine with a Pentium. But go for anything higher.
Thanks, guys - this is another awesome release. Indy 4 is a really great game.
ReplyDeleteLooks like OSX builds are broken again under current XCode and CLI tools under 10.9.2. At work right now so don't have output to paste in; I'll add it when I get home.
Okay, have some output of the error. This happens after the giant call to g++ to build everything, right when the linker is invoked:
ReplyDeleteld: warning: option -s is obsolete and being ignored
ld: internal error: atom not found in symbolIndex(__ZN10GameWindow10TextLayoutC2EjiN4nall6stringE) for architecture x86_64
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
make: *** [dice] Error 1
Seems to work if you remove the "-s" option from the LIBS define in the Makefile (Thanks to Phil Bennett for the tip!)
DeleteCan someone please tell me the options DICE has in the command line
DeleteSo far, I only know of the -window command
Way to go Adam & Rich. Please keep it up.
ReplyDeleteworks brilliant i have every single game working now what would be nice if you can make it happen for the next release to put computer player support in so we can play against cpus rather then players only
ReplyDelete>put computer player support in so we can play against cpus rather then players only
DeleteWhat is described (player versus computer option) would only be supported if the actual arcade game does have that feature when the game was widely available at the time.
Most arcade emulators, including DICE, emulate an arcade game from logic schematics that show what the chips are on a pcb and the circuit logic functions of what a game is supposed to do. Logic schematics are either in printed, stapled arcade game service manuals or from foldout D size blueprint sheets that came with the arcade game.
A player versus computer option was a very limited feature and only a few arcade games supported that option. The two games that come to mind are For-Play's Rally (a 2 player pong clone) and Digital Games Model 474 (another pong clone). There are a couple other arcade games besides those two arcade games, but it was an option that most arcade games did not support.
The player versus computer option is a logic function that is not something that can easily be added and supported like other options (artwork support, hardware input support) because the circuits on a pcb are already fixed. It would practically take rewriting an entire netlist support code (example Quadrapong) in order to create a feature (player versus computer) that never existed in the first place.
And any games that do use roms and proms....the game code from a prom or rom is already fixed and would not recognize (player versus computer support) because it never existed for that game to begin with. The roms and proms came from actual pcbs. Nothing created from scratch other than the code in DICE that runs the net list code that is derived from actual logic schematics.
It is not easily possible to alter a game that was originally produced 40 years ago to have a feature that it never began with. And what DICE is doing is using the exact info that was produced during 1970s.
Games I would like to see in future releases:
DeleteTank by Kee Games
Computer Space by Nutting Associates (A.K.A Syzygy)
Death Race by Exidy
Flying Fortress by Electra
Maneater by PSE
and Pursuit also by Kee Games
Maybe Quak! by Atari
If I wanted another PONG clone let it be Wimbledon by Nutting Associates. :) best of luck.
Ha! Quak! I remember me and one of my buddies walking into some pizza joint in around 1977-1978 and seeing a few arcade machines there. I remember seeing this "Super Buggy" game, and Quak! I tried Quak! first as it seemed the most interesting. When I was done there, some kid tried to yank the gun off and an alarm had been set off from inside the machine. The kid ran off, and I was the one who was busted. Good Times.
DeleteThere's already a fairly accurate emulation of Computer Space. As well as Death Race emulation. The Death Race emulation could do better job at emulating the game. Quak would be nice. Wimbledon? ehhh... I'd rather see Paddle Derby... I have played the game recently. The game can hold up to 4 players playing their own of smash. Whoever hit their paddle the most was the winner. Obviously the game got increasingly more difficult as you played. Paddle Derby used a color overlay too. Scoring was also different. Instead of basic numeric scores like you see in Pong, Gotcha, Space Race etc. Paddle Derby had 4 different bars representing each of the players. Every time a player hit a paddle the "bar" of that certain player got longer. Whoever's bar reached the end of the screen started flashing and the game was over. Player 1's playfield was red, Player 2's playfield was blue Player 3's was Yellow? And 4's was Green....I think. I'm yapping again, I just thought I'd tell you about Paddle Derby since it's nearly impossible to find.
DeleteHello. Thank you for your great job!!!
ReplyDeleteI noted a problem when I click "start" on someone of the new three games of this 0.9 version. A message appears and it says: Rom files... not found. Game will not function correctly! Why??? Is there something wrong? (PS: I use 32bit version).
Thank you!
Best Regards!
You are missing the roms necessary to play the game. When you find them make sure they are named correctly. Google is your friend.
ReplyDeleteGreat job, guys!
ReplyDeleteRunning Windows 8 64 Bit, Dice 64 bit, getting this 90% of times.
ReplyDeletehttp://i.imgur.com/CWa9430.gif
The other 10% the games start.
Tips?
I'm running Windows 8 64 bit also. Dice crashes 75% I try to play a game.
ReplyDeleteYou probably will never read this, but I had the same problem and solved it by running it from the command line. The readme instructs you how to do this in the dice folder.
DeleteI tried to reply once and I don't think it worked. If you run it from the command line (directions on how to do this are in the dice folder) then it might work. I had the same problem.
DeleteSame here. Dying constantly on Windows 8 64-bit no matter which version I use.
ReplyDeleteAlways happy for another release, great job! I love this whole concept!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteNot bad. I like it.
DeleteI like your work, MrFatGamer. I wonder what will become of this. :)
DeleteI recommend this. I wouldn't call it any third party program. But a utility. :)
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteIt's still a nice frontend anyway :)
Deletehttp://sourceforge.net/projects/dicegameselector/
Great work! Again!!
ReplyDeleteHi guys! Thanks for the additional games, very appreciated. What I couldn't find out yet -- any hints, on how I could make the Atari paddles work with the games? I have tried Joystick X-axis for the first, Y-axis for the second, but the paddles on the screen don't move. It works with a digital joystick though. If I could ask for a new feature for the next version, it would be some sort of improvement to the input configuration. I can select all kind of stuff but I'd like to have a config similar to MAME, where I just move around with the joystick / paddle to configure a certain input. And/Or some sort of "debugging" / "testing" feature, that shows me, if I move the paddle what I have to configure to make it work. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteFound a killer, yet, gutted Pong cab, wondering if Dice will have Mala support soon. Keep me updated! I would like to play Hi-Way with arcade controls. Keep me updated!
ReplyDeleteDICE works fine with Mala already. You just need to create a batch file for each game (for example "hiway.bat" which contains the text "dice hiway"). Then in Mala, go to Options, Other Emu Config. Create a new emulator called DICE. Leave "Executable" blank, set the ROM path to your DICE directory (where your batch files also are) and set the ROM extension to BAT.
ReplyDeleteat first when i saw this project i tought it wouldn't fly, i mean... sorry to say it...only three games and all laggy and stuff! but now... i'm impressed! many games and half of them working good and at right speed, and even the slower ones not so slow.... keep it up Adam! this is a very good project! it would be nice to see death race and bazooka in the 0.10 version
ReplyDeletehi
ReplyDeleteHate to sound like a broken record, but it looks as though DICE won't build under OS X 10.10 and XCode 6.1:
ReplyDelete@interface NSWindow : NSResponder ' with an lvalue of type
'CocoaDelegate *'
[NSApp setDelegate:cocoaDelegate];
^~~~~~~~~~~~~
/System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/Headers/NSFileManager.h:109:47: note:
passing argument to parameter 'delegate' here
@property (assign) id delegate NS_AVAILABLE(10_5, 2_0);
^
106 warnings and 1 error generated.
make: *** [phoenix/phoenix.o] Error 1
roflcopter:dice.0.9.src casm$
This is on a completely cleanly-installed machine with libsdl 1.2.15 native installed. Not sure what it may be; any pointers appreciated.
Looks like I compiled 'something' on OS X 10.9.5 (Xcode 6.1.1) but with 21 warnings.
DeleteSome kind of
'control may reach end of non-void function [-Wreturn-type]'
and
'enumeration values not handled in switch: 'LogicalNot', 'Positive', 'Negative'... [-Wswitch]'
but also some (maybe?) bad ones like
'comparison of unsigned expression < 0 is always false [-Wtautological-compare]'
or
'stat64 is deprecated since OS X 10.6'
or
'format specifies type 'int' but the argument has type 'size_type' (aka 'unsigned long') [-Wformat]'
...
At the end there comes a
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
make: *** [dice] Error 1
which looks like it wasn't compiled successfully at all. :(
I'm not a developer so I have no idea how to fix this, also if I would run this in verbose mode ...
Maybe someone with more knowledge about Xcode, BSD and OS X could build a ready-to-use binary of DICE for OS X here and give us a link to download?
Would be nice! :)
Ups, reply to my own entry now, haha.
DeleteCompiled fine as I've removed the "-s" option from the LIBS define in the Makefile.
Now I have a working dice.app for OS X. :)
PS: If anybody is interested, I've put it into my Copy-Cloud, available for everyone.
Deletehttps://copy.com/s7puAkgvvwwLz7aO
Inside the 'DICE 0.9 for OS X' folder you will find 'dice.app.zip'. Enjoy.
Things have been pretty quiet here lately...
ReplyDeleteIt's been a while since the last update. I wonder what's happening behind the scenes
Agreed, It's been approximately 10 months since the release of 0.9, and the tension for the next release is killing me!
ReplyDeleteGiven that it was almost four-and-a-half years between 0.2 and 0.3, ten months isn't too bad ;)
DeleteZzz...
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if this is still an active project, sure hope so, it's fantastic at last being able to play the missing chapter of gaming history I remember.
ReplyDeleteHowever, not sure if anyone's around that can help, but I'd love to add this to my Mame cabinet so I can uses it's controls to play.It's a dual core 1.6gz, 1GB ram, runs XP, and uses Game Launcher (command line based frontend, yeah I know it's old, but I like it!), but I can't get this to work.It runs fine using it's own GUI, but from the frontend I just get a black screen, unless I go to task manager and quit the frontend running in background, and then the game appears, perhaps some kind of conflict?
I've installed VB, and even tried calling .BAT files for each game, but still the same problem.If anyone has had any experience of using this via a command line based frontend, I'd welcome any ideas on what may be wrong.
I should've added that it's running Tiny XP, not the completely stripped version, but minimized services and so on, although not sure there's anything missing, unless this needs .NET framework or any other dependencies?
DeleteI don't think the problem is with the way the frontend 'calls' the .BAT file (e.g. "dice pong"), which it is set to use like a ROM, as the game is there, but in the background as the dice window is on the taskbar, and as I said if I then via Task Manager shut down the frontend, the Dice game screen comes up.Maybe it's a priority thing, and it there's some way of setting it to stay on top of other windows? but then all are set to use fullscreen, even tried adding it as a parameter in the .BAT file.I'm not programmer, so this is pretty much the limit of my understanding, but I hope someone with more knowledge maybe able to help when they next stop by.
I can't believe I can play Stunt Cycle (via the GUI at least), it's the 2nd videogame I ever played after I think a Williams Paddle Ball, or some other Pong clone, so all credit to the Adam, as I never thought I'd ever be able to play them again.
Can no one help with this issue? ...please!
DeleteThat frontend is near 12 years old! Your best bet is to change to a newer one. There are a lot of nice frontends out there.
DeleteIndeed, I'm well aware of all the great front ends around, but I like simplicity and versatility of Game Launcher, even if it is old, although I also lime MaLa.
DeleteMaLa is also pretty old now, and command line based so perhaps there'll be someone who managed to get working with that, presumably using a batch file of some kind.I also wondered since I'm using TinyXP, if I have any missing required system files.
As an emulator, Dice is really incredible, so all the more frustrating I can't seem to make it work from the frontend, shame.
Another year has gone by... and I'm still the one by your side... after everything that's gone by there's still no one saying goodbye though another year has gone by -Another Year Has Gone By- (Celine Dion)
ReplyDeleteAlso MAME start to emulate discrete systems (with Adam's help). It now emulates Pong, Pong doubles and Breakout.
ReplyDeleteIt's Fantastic!!! :-)
Is this project abandoned? They were doing so well!
ReplyDeleteHas this project been abandoned? Adam! Is everything alright? It's been a year and a half!
ReplyDeleteWhere's Adam? :)
ReplyDeleteAdam, Rich - any WIP news? DICE is awesome and we love the work you've put into it, but wouldn't mind a tidbit or two about what's in the pipeline :)
ReplyDeleteCan we asume by now that version 0.9 is the last and definitive version ? If so, thanks again Adam for your hard work. Before DICE we could only dream of playing this Golden Age Arcade classics on our Pc's and having 18 of those games available, wow! that's really really not bad at all.
ReplyDeleteAlmost 2 years. Maybe he is making new GUI for the program. Maybe.
ReplyDeleteIt would be good if Coleco Telstar and Telstar Ranger were emulated
ReplyDelete����. What happened??? There was so much progress followed by so much nothing!
ReplyDeleteHi! Can you at least help mame to be on par with dice? They are so lazy and think only about refactoring, refactor and refactor again. Without make any progress.....
ReplyDeleteHello.
ReplyDeleteI have several mice in win7 system namely one normal (normal mouse), the next is trackball,
the third and fourth as spinners.
Made by yourself.
One is made left / right and the roads are up / down.
I have a problem with the DICE emulator because when I restart my computer it randomly changes my spinners and is unplayable.
Does anyone know how to get around this?