MAX 256 MEGA
PROP-GEAR SPEC

About

NeoYume is a NeoGeo AES emulator for Parallax P2 micro-controllers with appropriate external memory (Currently supported: 4xQPI PSRAM, as on P2-EC32MB (owie ouch, that retail price), 2xQPI PSRAM, 1xQPI PSRAM (not recommended), 1xHyperRAM).

Features include:

• Low latency framebuffer-less high-level emulation
• Pretty good audio
• Video output over VGA, DVI, HDMI(including audio), YPbPr, S-video, Composite or 6bit RGB bus (ILI9342 LCD)
• Low-latency USB input (Keyboard and select gamepads, see below) or direct hookup to discrete switches.
• Bugs. But not that many.

Forum thread, chronicalling development and other interesting info: https://forums.parallax.com/discussion/comment/1538689/#Comment_1538689

Usage

SD Setup

Note: all filenames and paths are case-insensitive. The FAT driver without LFN always sees uppercase 8.3 names.

• Make sure your card is formatted to FAT32
• Create a NEOYUME directory on the root of the card
• Place at least one supported BIOS into /NEOYUME/NEOGEO/
  • neo-epo.bin for the international AES BIOS
  • neo-po.bin for the japanese AES BIOS
  • uni-bios.bin for UniBIOS (can be downloaded at http://unibios.free.fr/download.html - don't forget to change file extension to .bin)
  • The BIOS you want to use can be set in the config. You can also change it by pressing B on the game selection screen.
• Unzip your MAME-style game ROMs into the NEOYUME directory, such that the paths look like this: /NEOYUME/MSLUG/201-C1.BIN. All files must have a .bin extension, rename them if they have .c1,.v1,etc kinda extensions!
• Some games have multiple romset variations. You will need the one matching the game list entry.
• Some games (noted in the compatibility list) require decryption/patching. To do this, use the romfix tool (see below)

Using the romfix tool

romfix.rb is a Ruby script that automatically decrypts/patches ROMs that need it. As a bonus, it also takes care of any renaming that may be neccessary. To use it:

• Make sure you have a recent Ruby interpreter installed (On Windows, you can use RubyInstaller)
• Copy romfix.rb into your NEOYUME directory.
• Open a command prompt there and run ruby ./romfix.rb. You may also use ruby ./romfix.rb --cleanup to have it automatically delete unneeded files.

Notes on acquiring ROMs legally

As an alternative to illicit acquisition of game ROMs, you may also purchase a PC release on a store such as gog.com and copy out the files.

For DotEmu releases:

• Download the MacOS X version, which is a ZIP file
• Unzip it
• Find the ROMset inside (for Metal Slug, it is at MetalSlug.app/Contents/Resources/mslug.zip, for Last Blade it is LastBlade.app/Contents/Resources/lastblad.zip, for Twinkle Star Sprites it is TwinkleStarSprites.app/Contents/twinspri.zip etc)
• Proceed as usual (don't foget to run romfix.rb or change file extensions to .bin manually).

For CodeMystics releases:

• Currently only The Last Blade 2 is supported
• Install the game or use the innoextract package to unpack the installer
• Copy the game files from Data/rom into your NEOYUME directory
• Run romfix.rb (see above) to convert the files to MAME format

Note that the AES BIOS ROM (neo-epo.bin) is not included, so you'll have to find it elsewhere. don't feel bad. DotEmu's BIOS zip appears to originate from a pirate torrent (check the ZIP comment: TORRENTZIPPED-347ABA77 lmao.) and contains unibios in violation of its license.

(Also note that I have not tested every single available game, YMMV)

Compiling

• Configure video, audio, input and RAM in config.spin2
  • The comments hopefully explain the settings
  • See RAMCONFIG.MD for details on the RAM configuration
• Make sure you have flexspin 6.4.1 or newer installed
• Run build.sh
• Load the resulting neoyume_lower.binary

The game menu

After loading, a menu will show a list of all detected games. The entries are colored:

• White entries are normal.
• Gray entries require more memory than is avaliable
• Red entries are games known to be broken
• Yellow entries are games known to have issues.

You can select a game using Player 1's virtual controller. Pressing A or Start launches the selected game, pressing B toggles the BIOS region and pressing D brings up the credit/info screen.

Command-line options

Certain options can be passed using the $FC000 "ARGv" convention. This can, for example, be done using the -a switch of loadp2.

To start directly into a particular game, skipping the menu, a game ID can be passed. Ex: loadp2 neoyume_lower.binary -a mslug

You can also force the BIOS by passing a second parameter of export, japan or unibios. Ex: loadp2 neoyume_lower.binary -a mslug japan

Game Compatibility

Due to the nature of NeoGeo ROM dumps, the emulator requires prior knowledge of all games. Thus games not listed here (or rather, neoyume_gamedb.spin2) just will not even try to load.

Note 1: I haven't tested every game thoroughly. Don't complain if the victory screen crashes and burns your house down.

Note 2: I sometimes gloss over very minor issues that don't significantly impact the enjoyment and/or are somewhat difficult to reproduce.

Note: RAM requirements are rounded to the next highest of 4MB, 8MB, 16MB, 24MB, 32MB, 48MB, 64MB, 80MB, 96MB

USB Controllers

Many different kinds of USB controller are supported. For multiplayer, a USB Hub must be used.

The default input map is as follows:

Gamepad maps can be user configured through a PADMAP.TXT file placed in the SD card root.

Each line may have the following format:

neoyume <VID and PID> <C> <D> <B> <A> <ignored> <ignored> <also C> <also D> <Select> <Start> # <Comment>

For example:

neoyume 20D6A713   4  3  2  1  5  6  7  8  9  10 # PowerA Switch controller

Mappings for the NeoGeo mini controller (ID 0E6F1112) and RetroBit USB controllers (ID 0F0D00C1) are built-in to NeoYume, but can still be overridden using a PADMAP.TXT rule.

For more information on PADMAP.TXT, see the usbnew documentation.

Keyboard controls can currently not be reconfigured (except by editing the source code). The keyboard always controls Player 1, independently of any connected game controllers.

NeoYume uses usbnew for usb input support, see the usbnew wiki for info on further information on device compatibility.

About

NeoYume was programmed almost entirely by me, Ada Gottensträter, though taking clues from existing projects (mostly MAME). The AY/SSG core is adapted from work by Johannes Ahlebrand. The USB driver was written by Garry Jordan, with additional work by Marco Maccaferri, The loader memory driver (psram16drv.spin2 and friends) was written by Roger Loh.