Continue plugin v0.19

[10yard]

I have developed a "continue" plugin for MAME. The plugin adds a continue feature to the following arcade games.

• Pac-Man
• Ms.Pac-Man
• Galaga
• Galaxians
• Frogger
• Q*bert
• Robotron
• Sinistar
• Defender
• Scramble
• Donkey Kong
• Donkey Kong Junior
• Missile Command
• Centipede
• Berzerk
• Space Invaders
• Crazy Climber
• Battlezone
• Asteroids

Other variants of these games are also supported including Pac-Man Plus, Super Galaxians, Super Missile Attack, Moon Alien, DK II Jumpman Returns and the DK remix editions. Pac-Man, Ms.Pac-Man and Galaga Speed Up Hacks.

A continue option will appear before your game is over with a 10 second countdown timer. Simply push the P1 Start button to continue your game and your score will be reset.

A tally of the number of continues made will appear on screen.

I would like to add support for more classic games. Does anyone have any requests?

You can get the plugin from my github releases page at https://github.com/10yard/continue/releases

To install, you simply extract the continue folder from the ZIP and copy it over to your MAME plugins folder.

The plugin is run by adding "-plugin continue" to your MAME arguments e.g.

mame mspacman -plugin continue

or

you can enable the plugin in your MAME ini configuration. Then it will just work for all roms that support it.

More information at https://github.com/10yard/continue

Jon

10yard2022-04-09 10:41:57

 

[10yard]

I have now added support for Galaga and my original post was updated. This was taxing to get working. The Galaga ROM disassembly resources were not great so I had to dig into the MAME debugger and trial and error to figure out most things for myself. Anyway, this gives me confidence to tackle other classic roms if there is any demand.

 

[Hitesh]

Thanks for this Jon

I have tried it with Donkey Kong Twisted Jungle and it works a treat.

I was finding the game too tough but, thanks to you, I can practice as much as I want and see levels I'd never have seen

Keep up the good "Lua" work. It is appreciated.

 

[10yard]

That's great Hitesh . It's good to hear that it is helping you explore DK Twisted Jungle. It should work with all the DK rom hacks but I haven't got around to testing them all individually yet!

 

[10yard]

Frogger [/b]and Robotron[/b] are now supportedby the plugin.

Tested with these Robotron roms:

- Solid Blue Label (robotron)
- 2015 Tie-Die (robotrontd)
- 1987 shoot-in-the corner fix (robotron87)
- Wave 201 Start Hack (robotron12)

Jon

 

[10yard]

• Centipede
• Missile Command
• Berzerk
• Battlezone

are now supported by the plugin.

I'm currently working on Sinistar.

Any requests?

Jon

 

[Hitesh]

To the members who have not looked into this, it seems to work well. You have best of both worlds, you can ignore the continue option and save High Scores or continue and see, in my case, levels I'd never see otherwise.

Great! Berzerk and Frogger would have been on my requests list. I am a real old skool gamer.

10Yard : The plugin has a little issue on Berzerk. The "Press P1 To Continue" comes on at the same time as machine says its "death" comments. The death comments become distorted. If the plugin kicking in could be delayed by a couple of seconds or so, this could work better....?

Hope it makes sense.

Keep up the good work 10yard

 

[pooman2084]

This is really cool, well done!

 

[10yard]

To the members who have not looked into this, it seems to work well. You have best of both worlds, you can ignore the continue option and save High Scores or continue and see, in my case, levels I'd never see otherwise.

Great! Berzerk and Frogger would have been on my requests list. I am a real old skool gamer.

10Yard : The plugin has a little issue on Berzerk. The "Press P1 To Continue" comes on at the same time as machine says its "death" comments. The death comments become distorted. If the plugin kicking in could be delayed by a couple of seconds or so, this could work better....?

Hope it makes sense.

Keep up the good work 10yard

Hi Hitesh,

I've made a fix to resolve your reported sound distortion issue with Berzerk. You should redownload the plugin to get this fix. Note that the fix will only work with MAME versions from v0.212. I recommend you update MAME if you're running an earlier version.

Thank you Hitesh!

 

[10yard]

This is really cool, well done!

 

[10yard]

Sinistar was added!

It was a big technical challenge to figure out this games logic and to get the plugin working. It has been one of the most difficult tasks that I have ever undertaken. There was not a rom disassembly available BUT surprisingly, I was able to locate the programs original source code at https://github.com/historicalsource/sinistar

The plugin allows you to continue after losing your last life and will reset your score. The sinibombs are retained! I figure hoarding sinibombs will help you take on the more difficult later levels.

Jon

 

[10yard]

Scramble and Defender were added to the latest version of the continue plugin.

10yard2022-04-09 10:45:37