Cannonball 0.14 - Japanese Tracks & Scanlines

As mentioned in my previous post, Japanese tracks are now supported. And yes, the Japanese version really does have those violent horizon changes - it's not a bug! You can enable Japanese tracks in the Settings -> Game Engine menu.

You will need to copy the following files to your roms subdirectory:

epr-10380.133
epr-10382.118
epr-10381.132
epr-10383.117
epr-10327.76
epr-10329.58
epr-10328.75
epr-10330.57

These files should match the romset known as outruno in MAME.

Each set of tracks has its own high-score table, as their difficulty varies. Clearing high-scores in the settings menu now clears the scores for the track you have selected.

Scanlines are also supported. I was initially reluctant to offer scanline support. I view MAME as the optimal solution for playing games with filters if you want to simulate that CRT experience. However, it was the most requested feature (alongside analog control support), so I decided to press ahead with them. And to be honest, I quite like the result.

It's the Japan course map, with scanlines.

You can toggle the scanline intensity in the config.xml file. Scanlines have two caveats: they are disabled in 'stretch mode' (i.e. when the final image is stretched to fill the entire screen, losing its proportions). In full-screen mode, there may be additional bordering to ensure the scanlines are even. Scanlines are disabled by default. 

Bugfixes: Two minor bugfixes; an issue with numerals when changing the music selection text and a bug where the Ferrari didn't rev at the start line when using custom WAVs. 

I would also like advice on a good force-feedback wheel to purchase for the PC. Ideally something we can easily hook up to Cannonball.   

Japanese Track Support

The original Japanese release of OutRun had different track layouts to the final Western release. Overall, the game is tougher with sharper unforgiving hills, and more aggressive turns. 

This selection of tracks is less polished; Coconut Beach is nowhere near as rich in terms of design and the overall difficulty curve doesn't feel as good. 

However, it's great to see the evolution of the track design between versions. And Gateway has some cool twists and turns that were removed due to it becoming an easier stage in the Western version. 

The next Cannonball release will optionally allow you to play both versions of the game. It needs a little more testing (i.e. playing) before it's safe to release. 

Devil's Cannon is known as Walls in the Japan version. The layout and sky colour are different.

Japanese Course Map

Japanese Coconut Beach. Not as cool as the final version.

Cannonball 0.13 - Custom Music, Menu System & More

Cannonball 0.13 is out!

There are a lot of changes, so it's possible there are also bugs. Please report anything you find.

Music Customization

Configure Cannonball to play WAVs instead of using the inbuilt game music. Configure the name of the replacement tracks for full ingame integration!

Please note, I do not intend to support additional file formats like MP3. This is a decision to avoid bloating the codebase with third party libraries. Convert your files with a free audio editor like Audacity.

Menu System

Now you can configure Cannonball without editing the config.xml manually. Note that some options are only available in the config.xml though. 

High Score Saving

Scores are saved to a human editable hiscores.xml file. Edit the high score table manually!

Control Enhancements & Gamepad Support

Digital gamepads are supported. You can even change the digital sensitivity, so you can recreate the twitchy Sega Saturn conversion experience if you desire. Be sure to connect your gamepad before starting Cannonball.

All keys and joypad buttons are fully configurable.

I will support analogue whenever I buy a controller for testing. Or if you're in a hurry you can donate me one. :)

More Options & Bug Fixes

There's an app icon, ability to toggle extra level objects, fixes to the mingw compile and more. 

Check out the commit history for more detail. 

I will update the online manual tomorrow. 

Space Harrier Wiwi Jumbo Music Data In OutRun?

Whilst creating Cannonball, I uncovered a large section of unused YM2151 music data in the Z80 program code. Initially, I was excited - could this be an unreleased Hiroshi Kawaguchi classic? 

Unfortunately, after hacking the code to play the data it sounded like garbage. I wasn't sure if this was a problem with MAME's emulation, so I asked Alex of the OutRun bootloader project to play the sound on hardware. He sent me the results, which you can download here as an MP3. 

It still sounded wrong, so at this stage I stopped investigating. It wasn't until later that night when I randomly happened to be playing the Space Harrier soundtrack on vinyl, that I came across the following composition:

I wonder if this is the Space Harrier Wiki Jumbo track embedded, but playing incorrectly due to other modifications to the sound code? It's a shame, because otherwise we could have hacked OutRun to have an additional tune. Perhaps it's still possible with some additional work...

This maybe isn't a big surprise, we've already uncovered other segments of Space Harrier in the OutRun code.  

Cannonball news - I'm implementing a nice front-end menu, with lots of cool configuration options. Expect a new version after Christmas. 

Cannonball: Widescreen Support

The play area can now be extended to widescreen. The internal resolution is set to 398x224, which is approximately a 16:9 aspect ratio. This means the screen is 25% wider and you get to experience more of the game world. The widescreen mode can be played windowed or full-screen as normal.



There are some things to note about this mode:

• The music selection screen and course map screen still display at 4:3, due to art limitations.
• The tilemap x-scroll position is different, to compensate for tilemap wrapping. So the backdrop position will be slightly different to the normal mode.

I've updated the source code and the Visual C++ binaries. 

OutRun In Widescreen

Hey, guess what I'm working on.... and this is just 60 minutes of work...

Still a number of bugs to be fixed and things to be figured out before I release this :)

Update: It's done. It's actually quite awesome to play OutRun like this. I'll post some binaries later this week after further testing, or you can build right now from the develop branch... 

Cannonball: Open Pandora Port

Congrats to Seb, who has ported Cannonball to the Open Pandora handheld. 

Download it from the Cannonball binaries page. More details, including the source code, can be found in the thread here.

Currently, it's running at 30fps but does support the other bells and whistles. Reportedly, it's a better experience than playing OutRun under emulation on this platform. I've rolled some optimizations into the develop branch on github, which should help ports of this nature.

I apologise for the lack of updates recently. Sadly, my house got broken into so I've been busy organising personal matters lately. Some OutRun memorabilia was stolen too which was a real shame as it is probably not replaceable  and will no doubt just be junked. On a positive note, I'm going to investigate a genuine wide-screen mode for Cannonball as my next endeavour.