Edward Massey - October 31, 1997... boo!
Welcome to MageX, the classic arcade game emulator for Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. The latest information regarding this project is always available from MageX Headquarters.
Ackowledgements
Known Limitations
NOTE: To get the Williams games started, you'll need to use the advance and auto-up keys (6 and 5, respectively) to get past the bootup configuration screens. For example, in Defender, when the game settings menu is displayed, press 6, followed by 5 and 6 simultaneously. In Stargate and the others, press 6 when the game says "Factory Settings Restored". Once you get the games setup the way you like, choose File Save to save the game state. As long as "AutoLoad" is enabled (enabled by default), MageX will automatically load the game state.
Since this is an emulation of the classic arcade games, the actual ROMs from these great machines are required for MageX to play them (just like a record). Please be aware that the ROMs are copyrighted material which can not be distributed with MageX and that I cannot provide them. Also, please do not ask me for ROMs.
MageX expects to find the ROMs in specific folders inside the current working folder (by default, it's the folder the magex executable file is in). If the system is unable to find a ROM, it'll tell you what it's looking for so you can infer what needs to be done. I've tried to stay consistant with MAME's ROM filenames.
Some of the games are capable of saving their state in a MGX file. By default, autoload is enabled. This means that MageX will attempt to load a saved game when it starts. In order for this to work, you must first save a game. You are allowed one game per game driver. Simply select, File Save and the current game state is saved (see the list above for the games that currently support this feature). If you want to restore from a saved game (MageX will do this automatically, if "autoload" is enabled), choose File Open.
Press "Alt+F" to invoke the File menu!
Press "Alt-F4" to close MageX (useful if menus are unavailable)
You'll need to get the sound samples from MAME if you want to hear sound for the Williams games. You'll also need sound samples for Donkey Kong (effect*.sam, tune*.sam) and Space Invaders (*.raw).
Most of the controls are common among all the games. Here's the basics...
Controls how the game is paced. Basically, it wastes time until the next frame need to be drawn.
Displays every other frame.
Resets the machine.
Automatically loads the game state when the game begins.
Loads the last saved game for the current game driver.
Saves the current game.
486/100 or greater running Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0. Most games run fine on a 486/66 (with VLB video). Gyruss, Time Pilot, and Ghosts 'n Goblins seem to be a bit more processor intensive (at the moment, optimizations are underway). Some games, such as Space Invaders, even run on a 486/33 with DirectX!
DirectX is recommended but not required. A decent video card (VLB or PCI) with fast video RAM is nice since it's really hard to push 3.84 MB/sec to your video card (256x256 resolution frames of animation for a raster game at 60 Hz) through the ISA bus. The vector games are a little less demanding of the bandwidth (~140KB/sec).
For vector games... these should be run full screen (DirectDraw enabled) since the vector code makes use of page flipping to do its thing. I've seen some cards (like the integrated video/motherboard from SiS) that apperently support page flipping by copying RAM, making MageX slower on these types of machines. It could be a DirectDraw driver problem on these systems, or the fact that they use system RAM for the video RAM could mean that they don't do page flipping like a normal video card would.
MageX was written to use DirectX if it is installed on your system. The best performance is obtained when DirectX is used. If it is not, or, if you prefer to run the games in a window, there is an option to allow this. My preference is to run full screen at either 400x300 or 320x240 with my ATI 3DXpression+.
DirectX is available for download from Microsoft at www.microsoft.com/directx.
Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Lunar Lander, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Defender, Stargate, Robotron, Joust, The End, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Pac Man (and variants), Ms. Pac Man, Time Pilot, Gyruss, Galaxian (and variants), Galaga, Scramble, Frogger, Space Invaders, Space Invaders Deluxe, Lunar Rescue, Phoenix, Pleaides, Mario Bros., Moon Patrol, Mr. Do!, Centipede
Although I am responsible for MageX development, numerous individuals have been indirectly involved. I would like to express my thanks here.
Edward Kauffmann - created the super cool MageX logo
Peter Clare - provided support for Carnival (sorry I haven't integrated your latest source yet!)
Marat Fayzullin, Marcel de Kogel, Alex Krasivsky - provided accurate Z80 and 6502
emulation source for the general public
Allard van der Bas - created the Repository
Robert Anschuetz - for his Arcade Emulator source, which started MageX going
Gary Shepherdson - Donkey Kong technical info
Ivan Mackintosh - Centipede hardware information, file menu code
Richard Davies - Phoenix emulator source code helped me with Phoenix
Ron Fries - Pokey sound emulation and Donkey Kong sound samples and algorithm
Michael Strutt - space invaders emu source code
Ville Laitinen - Congo Bongo hardware info (from Mame)
Nicola Salmoria - created MAME, a great source for concrete technical information
Mirko Buffoni - provided many MAME drivers in the past and now coordinates the project.
Marc Lafontaine, Steven Hugg, Mirko Buffoni - excellent work on the Williams games in MAME (my favorites!)
Ville Hallik - the sound chip (8910) code from the MSX emulator was very valuable in creating 8910 emulation in MageX. Thanks also to Mike Cuddy for his enhancements towards multi 8910 support.
Eric Smith - for the VECSIM code used in MAME, which served as my reference to the Atari vector generator.
Marc Lafontaine, Steven Hugg, Mirko Buffoni - for writing the Williams drivers in MAME
I apologize to anyone I may have neglected to mention.
Many thanks to everyone who's contributed to making the Repository great.
Many thanks to all the contributors to MAME. This is a wonderful project and has openned up the oppurtunity for me and other emulator developers to support many additional games thanks to the availability of the source code.
Copyright © 1997 Edward Massey. All rights reserved.
Thanks to Edward Kauffmann for the logo.
Send comments to edward@greenvillenc.com