neo geo developement kit???

O.K. here is some thing that has been driving me fucking nuts. there has to be A dev kit for snk to make neo geo games. so. what is this dev kit? what does it look like, how much do you think it would cost now, do you think any of us could get our hands on one. I would love to get my grubby little mits on one to create the character designs that I have drawn, and animate them like the "rips" that you see on the various neo related web sites(garg's temple for example)just the thought of it is just to much for me to take in at once. the same goes for A neo pocket dev kit. I want one of those too!!!

mabe www.vectorlogic.com
or neogeo jap
anyone know

Mitch,

Is that what you really look like? Damn, you look better than some of my friend's wife. hehehe :-)
Thanks for that info on Shock Trooper 2.

Pichai

Yes, there must have been a dev kit at one time, but I doubt it gets used at all for the likes of MOTW, KOF, or Metal Slug. Remember that the machine is using a chip similar to a Z80. Most games now-a-days are straight assembly, otherwise they would never push so much out of such an under powered porocessor. IF you would like info on coding for the Z80 or the Zilog family, check out their website for compilers, assemblers, and linkers. There is a huge market for z80 programers to this day, not only in the world of Engineering, but also for systems like GameBoy Color which has a modified Z80 chip. I know Vector Logic has a link for one, but if they in fact have one I doubt it is in C/C++ and I also doubt it is cheap
-Nick

I'll not mess around with Neo develop kit....it'll raise up too many problems


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Strength and Honor

Silent_Scope
"You have to defeat Goemon and Yae to stand a chance"

well I have heard 2 Stories of the neo dev kit. wether they are true or not I can not say since all the infromation has come second hand.

1. it is a device that plugs into the cart slot of the Neo and the your PC. I guess it could be true I would think there would need to be some memory storage device that you would dump the neo game code to from the pc and then you use the neo to read the info and try out the games. but I have never seen one so this may also be someone just ranting wanting to sound like the know what they are talking about.


2. the other is it is more of a rom burning type system where you actually program the carts and then plug them in. Now I have a Proto super spy cart, rev b or c I think and it is entirley made of eeproms.


I think if you consider the technology when the neo was released back in 1989 or so , the dev kit would have to have been thought out and made either in 1988 or early 1989. the best pc at the time if I remember was a 386 16mhz which by no means could emulate a neo so I would think the program would have to be done in some sort of linking fasions. the cd system was not even thought of back then so i would assume the neo dev system went through several upgrades and changes over the years. 11 years is a long time to use the same type of dev system. obviously some computer programing is done to even get the graphics imported in like the 3d models.

I would also like to add thinking a little more about it, the computer to link does not necessarly have to be a pc. COuld be a 68000 amiga for atari st for All I know. the processor of those machines at least was the same as the neo. But these is all speculation. I imagine a jump at some time to a Intel based pc would have had to be made but not necessairly. this is all I know on the subject and as you can tell it is mostly guess work. just trying to add a little.

OK

SNK did not make a development kit as such - you would be absolutely astounded if you saw what they worked with in Osaka - I was

The basis for Neo Geo development is assembly language programming - the code/graphics etc is assembled onto flash cards and then inserted into a flash card interface module that inserts into a home system motherboard.

Debugging etc is carried out via one of 2 ancient In-Circuit Emulators - it is highly outdated and very difficult to work with.

Now....we will soon have a set of development tools and manuals to enable development and execution/emulation/debugging running on a single PC platform. The data can then be transferred to a cart for production. This software and associated documentation will be made available to 3rd party companies for 3rd party development - it will cost and won't be that cheap - sorry - but we do intend to release a string of games this year and next, internally and externally - the AES will also be supported.

This info will be released to trade press after the holidays in the UK

Jeff F

Jeff,
Any chance you will be making a Flash Writer to go with that Neo Geo Dev Kit. I am thinking similar to the one sold for Gameboy and Neo Geo Pocket Color. They were great for the hobbiest since someone could by one Flash cart, burn and re-burn code to it, and then test on a real machine. Plus, the simple interface meant burning the code quickly and painlessly to the cart. Also, are you working on a debugger? I know there is a debug BIOS, how worthless is it?

I am interested, but at a hobbiest level for this kit. I know you said you would release more later this year, but I guess I was wondering how much you could divulge before then. Finally... does anyone but hobbiest care about this? Have you seen a market for people wanting an easier way to program on the Neo Geo... I thought most companies regarded this as a dead platform. To me it is almost like someone coming out with a SNES Dev Kit today... um, who is it going to interest but the programmers who want to have some fun with old hardware. Well, let me know,

-Nick

I cant wait for your news brief this holiday season vector...
You can count me in, I don't care about the price...
L8R

Yes the flash option is something that I am currently looking at, in conjunction with ST Microelectronics. It may also be a commercial possibility for production carts -providing suitable security is installed on the MVS carts.

There is no need for extra debuggers as all will be built into the software that co-ords development, debug and testing. We are just finishing off the first game now and once will collate all of the lessons from that, we can use the info to produce a better end product for development.

BTW SNK have been offered games, dev tools and kits, 3rd party developers etc etc for the last 18 months, but tried to stitch us up with this - hence we are now going it alone without them.

More news will follow soon - sent some screenshots of dev w.i.p last week so I will post some publicly very soon

jeff.ferrier@vektorlogic.com

WHOOOOOOOOOOSSSSHHHH!!! All right over DK's head.

WOW! thanks for all the imput every body!
its cool to finaly see this thread answered
actualy I found out all the info about A month ago. for anyone looking to buy A dev
kit...YOU CANT! it costs A hundred grand and then some to rent A neo dev kit from snk if you want to develope A game. OUCH!

I love you man

Well, to tell you the turth Orpheus, hardly any ever pays for a Dev Kit. The companies will give them to big name developers just to get them to develope for the system. The price is set unrealistically high so people can not just go out and make a crappy game for the system, thus tarnishing it's name. The real money comes from licensing the product... Also, kits can not be transfered... lots of Yaroze kits have dissapeared off of ebay thanks to Sony having a stick up it's butt

-Nick

Yea ll the big name companys get kits given to them. Since the hardwear people WANT them to develop, I think the only people that really have to buy the kits are REALLY small 3rd party developers. And yea the price is that high so just not everyone can get a dev kit and make crappy games... or use it for other purposes.

Companys can probobly get sued by selling off old dev kits. I think the only dev. kit ive ever seen up for auction somewhere, was one of the Panasonic M2 dev kits. The system never came out so...

I don't even know if the dev kit worked our not.

Jeff,

Would it be possible to use an emulator like NeoRage to test the games you develop using your new Neo-Geo dev kit?

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Vektorlogic Ltd:
OK

SNK did not make a development kit as such - you would be absolutely astounded if you saw what they worked with in Osaka - I was

The basis for Neo Geo development is assembly language programming - the code/graphics etc is assembled onto flash cards and then inserted into a flash card interface module that inserts into a home system motherboard.

Debugging etc is carried out via one of 2 ancient In-Circuit Emulators - it is highly outdated and very difficult to work with.

Now....we will soon have a set of development tools and manuals to enable development and execution/emulation/debugging running on a single PC platform. The data can then be transferred to a cart for production. This software and associated documentation will be made available to 3rd party companies for 3rd party development - it will cost and won't be that cheap - sorry - but we do intend to release a string of games this year and next, internally and externally - the AES will also be supported.

This info will be released to trade press after the holidays in the UK

Jeff F

Click to expand...

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NeoLord
Neo-News and much more!
http://neonews.cjb.net

No - because the boards will have additional hardware that is not emulated by Neo Rage X or MAME (nor will I release that info ;-))

- I was never too fond of SNKs copy protection - hence we worked on some new techniques.