161in1 understanding its logic.

Razoola

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I have got this working really well now. So much so that some people would probably would not understand what the setup was if it was enclosed inside a cab with only six games to choose from. That is how good its working (bar the fact its hacked games running).

I can now confirm this mode will be included in the next unibios release and I am leaning towards calling the feature "Neo Pick 'N Mix" :) To enable you simply hold down the start button when you power on the MVS (its probably still best to give the original 161in1 UI the priority).

I think I have got all the features I wanted to get from it working.... Yes that includes the automatic saving of highscores (and other important attract mode data) from all 98 games into backup RAM using just 6 of the 8 game stores available. So providing your battery is good and you don't plug in another cart everything is saved. :)

I also got softDIP saving working a little better so it saves to the cart from within testmode (when you exit the game softDIP menu).

As far as I can tell its only little things left to do like adding support for different types of 161in1 (if they don't all work already). I'm trying to decide if I should add the following 4 hacks to the list also (not including the SVC already there)... King of Gladiators, Crouching tiger Hidden Dragon, Kof 10th Annisversary and Lansquenet 2004). I'm just not sure.

I might take this for test run this weekend at our yearly Finland NeoGeo groupie.
 
Last edited:

kuze

Akari's Big Brother
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Awesome news, Raz! Will there be a spot in the Unibios settings to permanently enable the feature?

Personally I'd be happy never seeing the original 161in1 menu again. If not, maybe you hold start to disable the feature and have it on by default?
 

wyo

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Yea, this is simply a quick hack to turn a MVS into a 98SLOT MVS board on the cheap. If nothing else its really cool just leaving it running in attract mode watching it randomly choosing games as quick as a real MVS multislot.

I like what you're doing here, man. Just making a bad "logic" joke/pun :D
 

pulstar

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This is some superb work again, Raz. Looking forward to the new Uni Bios release :D
 

[OCEAN]

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I have got this working really well now. So much so that some people would probably would not understand what the setup was if it was enclosed inside a cab with only six games to choose from. That is how good its working (bar the fact its hacked games running).

I can now confirm this mode will be included in the next unibios release and I am leaning towards calling the feature "Neo Pick 'N Mix" :) To enable you simply hold down the start button when you power on the MVS (its probably still best to give the original 161in1 UI the priority).

I think I have got all the features I wanted to get from it working.... Yes that includes the automatic saving of highscores (and other important attract mode data) from all 98 games into backup RAM using just 6 of the 8 game stores available. So providing your battery is good and you don't plug in another cart everything is saved. :)

I also got softDIP saving working a little better so it saves to the cart from within testmode (when you exit the game softDIP menu).

As far as I can tell its only little things left to do like adding support for different types of 161in1 (if they don't all work already). I'm trying to decide if I should add the following 4 hacks to the list also (not including the SVC already there)... King of Gladiators, Crouching tiger Hidden Dragon, Kof 10th Annisversary and Lansquenet 2004). I'm just not sure.

I might take this for test run this weekend at our yearly Finland NeoGeo groupie.

That's awesome work and news Raz, very excited about this! As said before by other members, just not having to deal with the horrible 161 in 1 menu is a huge improvement :D

Personally I wouldn't mind having the mentioned hacks on the list as a curiosity, but I'd be totally OK with them completely gone too.
 

Razoola

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Awesome news, Raz! Will there be a spot in the Unibios settings to permanently enable the feature?

Personally I'd be happy never seeing the original 161in1 menu again. If not, maybe you hold start to disable the feature and have it on by default?

Its a tuff one, I don't think it would be a good idea to flip it like you say simply because its not known it will work for everyone and there is no space for another option. Ill have a think on it though to see if there is some other way I can do it.
 

Razoola

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Here is another crappy quality video showing how I have the popup gamelist working. I would like some feedback on it please. not sure if I should keep the 'UNIBIOS' and 'PICnMIX' texts or not presently. Border is yellow to match the 161in1 cart color.

Watch how I can use the popup to flip attract mode sequences for single games.

 

daskrabs

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Here is another crappy quality video showing how I have the popup gamelist working. I would like some feedback on it please. not sure if I should keep the 'UNIBIOS' and 'PICnMIX' texts or not presently. Border is yellow to match the 161in1 cart color.

Watch how I can use the popup to flip attract mode sequences for single games.


Nice work on the attract mode flip. Maybe keep the Unibios text and add a version number, but lose PICnMIX. Also, you can probably delete Fighters Swords and Last Soldier from the list, since not sure why anyone would want censored roms. Adding (Proto) to MotW might be useful as well.
 

[OCEAN]

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Here is another crappy quality video showing how I have the popup gamelist working. I would like some feedback on it please. not sure if I should keep the 'UNIBIOS' and 'PICnMIX' texts or not presently. Border is yellow to match the 161in1 cart color.

Watch how I can use the popup to flip attract mode sequences for single games.

That looks great, I love the clean and direct interface... leaps and bounds better than the stock one.

Perhaps I'd keep the UNIBIOS message on top and replace the PICnMIX with a quick button guide (A select / B Cancel?), even though it's completely unnecessary.

Maybe it would be cool also to be able to order the game list by genre or year too, although, as mentioned above, completely unnecessary.
 

donluca

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For the sake of visibility of the entire titles of the games on top and bottom, I'd remove both texts.

The yellow border is a nice touch. This is pretty cool tbh, great work Raz.
 

Razoola

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That looks great, I love the clean and direct interface... leaps and bounds better than the stock one.

Perhaps I'd keep the UNIBIOS message on top and replace the PICnMIX with a quick button guide (A select / B Cancel?), even though it's completely unnecessary.

Maybe it would be cool also to be able to order the game list by genre or year too, although, as mentioned above, completely unnecessary.

The popup works by button release rather than button trigger which I guess the videos do not show well. This means a quick press of button A will cycle to the next game and button B to the previous game, the popup will not show. However, if you keep button A (or B) pressed the game will not cycle and the popup will appear. You then use the joystick while your button is still pressed. Once you have the game you want you simply release the button and the new game will start. It might sound weird but once you use it you'll understand this way makes perfect sence and it means the popup will not stay open forever unless you keep the button pressed forever.

With that in mind I'm not sure button info wouls be helpful on the screen. I could put arrow up and down though or something like that. I also though about putting credit info there (given you can add credits even while the popup is open, this would mean a credit counter on both sides though when in USA region.
 

Razoola

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For the sake of visibility of the entire titles of the games on top and bottom, I'd remove both texts.

The yellow border is a nice touch. This is pretty cool tbh, great work Raz.

Yes this is my concern also but to be honest it looks better than the video shows. Ill have to see if I can do a better quality video.
 

Razoola

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I'm struggling to get a good quality video of the popup, this is a little better to see how it looks but not by much.

 
Last edited:

c0nn0r

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I'm struggling to get a good quality video of the popup, this is a little better to ses how it looks but not by much.


Looking very nice. Can you share a new video of the system working in random attract mode?
 

Razoola

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ok, here are a couple of other attempts to get the popup and a random run through attract mode.



And below a random run through attract mode for c0nn0r. (popup caught quite well from about 7 minutes).

 

xardion

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Would have been awesome if this could be added to the unibios in the mvs-magic key converter.
 

Heinz

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What is stopping someone from making a better xxx-in-1 cart that doesn't have the shortfalls of the 161-in-1 ? is that even possible?

Excellent work Raz, always good to see new features on the Neo even if it's adding better functionality to a hack cart!
 

nam9

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This is awesome!
Could a similar approach work for the 120 in 1 as well?

Actually... the 138 without daughterboard would be a great application for this given its game list...
 

Razoola

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What is stopping someone from making a better xxx-in-1 cart that doesn't have the shortfalls of the 161-in-1 ? is that even possible?

Yes, that is wat NeoGeo Land was about.
 

c0nn0r

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Thank you for the video of the attract-mode. It's interesting to see that the Neo Geo MVS must know about the state of the game in attract mode because it never switches before the game demo shows the high-score screen. Not a simple timer. SNK engineers really put a lot of thought into the MVS!

The video also answered my questions about weather or not we would still see the "NEO GEO PRO GEAR SPEC" splash screen. Looks like attract mode will not show us this. If there was a way, it would be awesome to have the system spec message pop up once in a while... Just to remind people of the power in their hands. This is just wishful thinking however. I'm pretty sure this is not something that can be done.
 

Razoola

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Thank you for the video of the attract-mode. It's interesting to see that the Neo Geo MVS must know about the state of the game in attract mode because it never switches before the game demo shows the high-score screen. Not a simple timer. SNK engineers really put a lot of thought into the MVS!

The video also answered my questions about weather or not we would still see the "NEO GEO PRO GEAR SPEC" splash screen. Looks like attract mode will not show us this. If there was a way, it would be awesome to have the system spec message pop up once in a while... Just to remind people of the power in their hands. This is just wishful thinking however. I'm pretty sure this is not something that can be done.


The way the neogeo works its the game that tells the system when its attract mode has ended so that side of things is very easy.

On a 6SLOT you'll only see the neogeo jingle once its cycled through all 6 games. Because there are 98 games I decided to make it so the jingle only shows once at power on. It would not be hard to make it show the jingle once every so often but I don't see the point.
 

c0nn0r

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The way the neogeo works its the game that tells the system when its attract mode has ended so that side of things is very easy.

On a 6SLOT you'll only see the neogeo jingle once its cycled through all 6 games. Because there are 98 games I decided to make it so the jingle only shows once at power on. It would not be hard to make it show the jingle once every so often but I don't see the point.

Ahh, very cool. Thanks for the insight into how the demo mode works. I'm learning a lot from this thread.

I think it would be nice to see the NEO GEO jingle more often than 1 in 98. I think a lot of us have a certain affinity for the jingle. Its sound is a staple part of the arcade experience IMHO. With that said I would vote (if there was a vote) for the jingle to be heard more often than the current settings. Perhaps once every ~15 or ~20 games.

Anyone else feel the same way about this?
 

Razoola

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Ahh, very cool. Thanks for the insight into how the demo mode works. I'm learning a lot from this thread.

I think it would be nice to see the NEO GEO jingle more often than 1 in 98. I think a lot of us have a certain affinity for the jingle. Its sound is a staple part of the arcade experience IMHO. With that said I would vote (if there was a vote) for the jingle to be heard more often than the current settings. Perhaps once every ~15 or ~20 games.

Anyone else feel the same way about this?

I have made it so it does the 'giga power' logo at startup in MVS mode and then after every 6th game where the bios chooses a game at random. If you manually swap games, those will not count to show the logo again. In console mode it will show the 'max 330 mega' logo once at power on and then the logo will appear never again (this is how it is on real AES).

I also made it so at power on it boots to a random game providing you let the jingle complete. If you manually swap games before it completes it will assume its 2020 super baseball (first game in the list).
 
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