*** DragoNes 0.20 by Jonathan Ph‚nix aka Lone_Wolf*** *Introduction* DragoNes is a freeware DOS Nintendo emulator. With this program, you can play your old NES games (but still very good according to me). I know there is already good NES emulator (NESticle and iNES just to name them) but i wanted to create my own. My first idea was to make a emulator that will be able to run all the Dragon Warrior/Quest because any others emulator were able to run Dragon Warrior 3 and 4 and Dragon Quest 4. This is why this emulator is called DragoNes. Now, i don't want to emulate just those game, i want to make a near perfect emulator with feature that others emulator dosen't have right now (lightgun support, 4 player support... etc...). This emulator is written completly in C++ (expect asm soon!). Except for the major part of the 6502 emulation taken from VICE and the 256x224 VGA tweak taken from NESA, the rest is completly written from scratch. *What's Included* dragones.exe - the .exe file (the emulator itself). readme.txt - this file cart.nes - this is a freeware test cart for the NES created by ? cart.asm - the source of the cart.nes nesticle.pal - the NES palette, taken from NESticle 0.40 junkrom.nes - another freeware cart created by TYoung79@aol.com junkdemo.asm - the source of junkrom.nes Now, just take a look, there is no commercial games comming with it and i will never include one with because both of moral and legal reason, those game are still copyrighted. Don't e-mail me to asks me to send you games or www/ftp/... containing those game, i will ignore it. You can freely redistribute this emulator as long as this file and dragones.exe are unmodified and it is not packaged with commercial ROM. *How does it work?* You will need some .NES games in order to make it run. You can launch the emulator by typing: dragones <-options> [iNES file]. Type dragones without argument to see the options (there is a frame skipping option that can boost up the speed on slow computer like mine :( ) Those are the keys to play: Keyboard NES joystick Alt A Ctrl B X START Z SELECT UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT LEFT RIGHT RIGHT BACKSPACE enter 6502 debugger (for those brave CPU warrior!) F5 Realtime save, create a file called .nst in rom dir F7 Realtime load, load the current saved state F9 Snapshot, create a snapshot.pcx file in current directory *What hardware do i need?* -Minimal *386 IBM PC -Required for decent play *Pentium 133 MHz and up -The goal when all my code will be optimized *486 66MHz and up *Things emulated* -Complete 6502 opcode map -Sprites -Memory mapper #0,1(partial),2,3 -All the PPU registers -Battery-Backed RAM *Things not currently emulated* -2,3,4 player support -Lightgun -Sound -Many memory mappers *Versions* 0.20 (97/09/14) -Fixed 6502 bugs (still buged???) -Fixed 6502 stack -Implemented mapper 1 (MMC1) partial -Implemented name table mirroring -Implemented all the PPU registers -Rewritten rendering engine, become scanline based instead of tile based -Scrolling implemented (may glitch with splitscreen, due to NES timing) -Realtime load/save (F5 and F7) -Battery Backed RAM load/save -Snapshot (Screen Capture) implemented (F9) -ALL the sprites problem fixed -Palette is now in nesticle.pal -Many little fix here and here that I dosen't remember... 0.10 (97/08/14) Initial realease *Thanks* -Y0SHi (yoshi@parodius.com) for his excellent NES doc. -Marat Fayzullin (fms@freeflight.com) for his NES doc. -Loopy (loopy@itsnet.com) for his NES palette. -Trunks (ftrunks@microtec.net) for the DragoNes logo and HTML. -Sardu (bldlust@parodius.com) for the accurate NES palette and defining quality in emulation. -??? (TYoung79@aol.com) for realeasing a freeware ROM. -Undernet #coders and #emu people for moral support and help. -And finally you... for using DragoNes. *How can i be reached?* Before trying to contact me: NEVER asks me for NES ROMS, I will ignore you. FOR NOW don't e-mail me about the bugs, they are so easy to spot right now :) If you don't want to reach me for those reason my e-mail is lone_wolf@videotron.ca and i'm on Undernet #emu and #coders channel. You can always go to http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/3925/dragones.html for the lastest info and version of DragoNes! If you have any information how the NES joystick is really working, please send me a e-mail, i don't know how it works when the game write $C0 or $FF to $4017. You help will be appreciated. *Legal stuff* DragoNes is (C) 1997 by Jonathan Ph‚nix. Use this software at your own risk, I cannot be held responsible for any damages that might happens using it. I do not advocate the piracy of NES games. NES, Nintendo are trademark of Nintendo of America. Dragon Warrior, Dragon Quest are (C) Enix of America/Japan.