Cabal Neo Geo Port

Neo Alec

Neo Alec

Onigami Isle Castaway
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I've been meaning to write this topic for a few weeks now. I'm running on a different schedule than the rest of the world.

iq_132 ported TAD Corporation's Cabal, along with Terra Cresta and Soldier Girl Amazon to the Neo:

TAD Corporation Cabal

TAD Corporation Cabal
neo-source.com

Latest MAME version:

Also working on Kid no Hore Hore Daisakusen (Booby Kids)

IQ's Patreon:
www.patreon.com

Get more from IQ_132 on Patreon

Creating Arcade/Neo-Geo ports, hacks, and a custom PGM BIOS
www.patreon.com www.patreon.com

Cabal and Terra Cresta do apparently work on real hardware, but I've had no luck getting it working on the NeoSD so far. Here's the .neo file I created using the third party tool neosdconv. Apparently this file works on the Mister, but I can't get it working on any of my systems with the NeoSD:

cabalng.neo

drive.google.com drive.google.com

Any help/ideas getting it working on the NeoSD appreciated.
 
Johnny16Bit

Johnny16Bit

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Cheers Fredy, very curious to try it. :) I love Cabal, and that port is about as weird as it's exciting.
 
S

slugger_dan

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Don't know how to put it on the available flash carts but I tried it on an AES and made a quick video capture. It does have graphics glitches that I don't see in the emulated video, audio seems ok. The title screen and high score display look fine but lots of glitches in gameplay.

 
city41

city41

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Neo Alec said:
Cabal and Terra Cresta do apparently work on real hardware, but I've had no luck getting it working on the NeoSD so far. Here's the .neo file I created using the third party tool neosdconv. Apparently this file works on the Mister, but I can't get it working on any of my systems with the NeoSD:

cabalng.neo

drive.google.com drive.google.com
Click to expand...

I created neosdconv. I've also had no luck with Cabal either. I found TerraOnion's neobuilder and neosdconv both build identical neo files, so there's something odd about Cabal itself it seems. We also talked about this a bit on the TerraOnion discord with so far no luck. As far as I know, no one knows why it doesn't work.
 
traveno

traveno

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I can confirm the same results. I am also inclined to believe it has something to do with the ROM set. That is, the ROM set is sort of a hack and isn't fully "hooked into" the NG environment. Just my educated guess coming from a background in low level software development.

The NeoSD likely has certain expectations for the ROM set that would be common to all commercial NeoGeo games. The Cabal ROM set falls short of these expectations, therefore the NeoSD fumbles when the real hardware asks what to do. However, the Cabal ROM set works fine when hooked directly to hardware. I still consider this the fault of the ROM set and not the NeoSD.

Again, just my surface level guess on why this doesn't seem to work.
 
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Burning Fight!!

Burning Fight!!

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It's really likely that Cabal just does stuff the wrong, or at least not expected, way. On the forums thread the dev itself said it doesn't work on AES and doesn't have the proper hooks for BIOS transitions like the eyecatcher. You guys will have to wait for a proper fix.
 
Neo Alec

Neo Alec

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Here's iq_132's comment about the NeoSD:

Yes, I suspect the way I am starting the game is the issue for the NeoSD. I hook into the vblank interrupt and take over the 68k as soon as it switches from the bios' vector table and starts using the game's vector table. I have not been able to get the standard jump table way to work for any of my ports. Here's a pseudo-code snippet of what I'm doing.
Click to expand...
Code: 
_vblank_callback
    ori     #$2700, SR               ; first item in vblank
    clr.b   $300001                ; kick watchdog
    move.w  #$7, $3c000c.l                 ; ack irq
    cmpi.b  #$1, $10d2ff            ; have we gone through init process?
    bne.s     _dont_use_game_vblank        ; no, jump to $122
    ; do game vblank here
 
geladobom

geladobom

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All TAD Corp. games maybe had possibilities to be on neogeo, like toki. :love:
5 Games in total.
Blood Bros.
Heated Barrel
Legionnaire
Toki
 
geladobom

geladobom

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iq_132 said:
Toki maybe. Blood Bros, less likely. Heated Barrel and Legionaire are very unlikely.
Click to expand...
Because Legionaire is a fighting game and we have a lot of them? :ROFLMAO:
Pinball Action and Super Pinball Action it can be on NeoGeo, those ones are really great.
 
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traveno

traveno

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geladobom said:
Pinball Action and Super Pinball Action it can be on NeoGeo, those ones are really great.
Click to expand...
Pinball games on the NeoGeo? It feels out of place, because if you're at the arcade, why would you opt for a pinball game on the NG if there's real machines around the corner? BUT... this scenario doesn't happen anymore because, you know, arcades pretty much dead as hell. These days, as a homebrew project I think it would be cool. I imagine something like Devil's Crush on TGFX16 but amped up to NG levels. Easily would become one of my favorite games.
 
geladobom

geladobom

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traveno said:
Pinball games on the NeoGeo? It feels out of place, because if you're at the arcade, why would you opt for a pinball game on the NG if there's real machines around the corner? BUT... this scenario doesn't happen anymore because, you know, arcades pretty much dead as hell. These days, as a homebrew project I think it would be cool. I imagine something like Devil's Crush on TGFX16 but amped up to NG levels. Easily would become one of my favorite games.
Click to expand...
Just an idea.
 
I

iq_132

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NeoCverA

NeoCverA

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This worked well enough (despite regions being way bigger than reality)

Code: 
FILENAME( cabalng, neogeo, 0, 0, 0, 0, 320 )
 REGION( 0x900000, CPU1, 0 )
 ROM( 0, cabal-p1.bin, 0x000000, 0x100000, 0xbb193926 )

 REGION( 0x40000, GFX2, 0 )
 ROM( 0, cabal-s1.bin, 0x00000, 0x20000, 0x45f0bc5e )

 REGION( 0x20000, CPU2, 0 )
 ROM( 0, cabal-m1.bin, 0x10000, 0x10000, 0xefd97334 )

 REGION( 0x1000000, SOUND1, 0 )
 ROM( 0, cabal-v1.bin, 0x0000000, 0x100000, 0x1a5bbc12 )
 ROM( 0, cabal-v2.bin, 0x0100000, 0x100000, 0xa2b9c011 )

 REGION( 0x4000000, GFX3, 0 )
 ROMX( 0, cabal-c1.bin, 0x0000000, 0x1000000, 0x9f5ea8bb, 1, 1 )
 ROMX( 0, cabal-c2.bin, 0x0000001, 0x1000000, 0xedf277f2, 1, 1 )
 
END
 
Johnny16Bit

Johnny16Bit

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Anyone knows if there's any progress on the boot up issues on the real hardware? :)
 
T

tcdev

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Wow, this is pretty cool. Many years ago I hacked the arcade Space Invaders to run on a TRS-80 Model 4P with Grafyx Solution hires board. More recently I hacked the ZX Spectrum Filmation games (Knight Lore etc) to run on it. I also hacked arcade Tutankham to run on the TRS-80 CoCo3, except for the scrolling. So I do have some experience in this area... but I never really considered the possibility of hacking 68K arcade games for the Neo Geo!?! 😯 Great effort!

I have done some coding on the Neo Geo, but not for some time. Last one was a transcode (to C) of the arcade Scramble. I need to finish my 68K transcode of arcade Donkey Kong... that was about 50% complete.

Was wondering whether there was much of a demand for tate games on the Neo Geo? I'm considering a transcode of the arcade Xevious... 🤔
 
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