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***************************************************************************
** **
** -- == MIRACLE == -- **
** Version 0.10 **
** **
** A Fast Sega Master System Emulator for the Acorn Platform **
** **
** by Richard Talbot-Watkins (rst20@cam.ac.uk) **
** and Matthew Godbolt (matthew@willothewisp.demon.co.uk) **
** **
** 17th March 1998 **
** **
***************************************************************************
Contents
========
1) Terms and conditions of use
2) Disclaimer
3) About !Miracle
4) Instructions
5) Known problems
6) Future releases
7) Contacting the authors
8) Acknowledgements
Terms and conditons of use
==========================
!Miracle is FREEWARE and may be freely distributed, provided no charge
other than the medium used to transfer it is made. You may only use
!Miracle for your own personal and non-commercial purposes. The code
remains the intellectual property of Richard Talbot-Watkins and Matthew
Godbolt.
Disclaimer
==========
The authors cannot be held responsible for any damage caused by the use of
!Miracle, and it is recommended that any work is saved before it is run.
This software is not an official Sega product, and is not endorsed by Sega
in any way.
It is an infringement of copyright to use SMS cartridge 'images' without
also owning the original cartridge, and the authors do not condone such
activities. We are not liable for the misuse of cartridge images on this
emulator.
Sega, Master System, Game Gear and Mark 3 are trademarks of Sega.
About Miracle
=============
Until recently, it was impossible to play the majority of Sega Master
System games on your non-StrongArm Acorn machine. Now thanks to a
completely Acorn specific Sega Master System emulator, written in 100%
hand-optimised ARM assembler, anyone with an Acorn machine can enjoy all
those Sega classics.
Miracle is a near-perfect emulation of a Sega Master System, emulating
everything a real European SMS could do perfectly. If you have an ARM3
or above, you can enjoy these games in real-time, with best results on an
ARM7 or StrongARM.
Miracle has been in constant development since Autumn 1997, and is being
continually worked upon. This version (Version 0.01) has been released
"due to popular demand", but as yet, still contains a number of rather
obscure bugs, and is by no means stable! A list of known problems with the
current version is included later on in this document. However, this
version should nevertheless permit the correct operation of 95% of SMS
titles.
In order to run Miracle, all that is required is an Acorn machine with at
least 2Mb of RAM - it will even run on an ARM2 (albeit slowly!) - but
many games are reasonably playable on even an ARM250 (most of the emulator's
development was on an A3010!). Of course, Risc PCs will give the best
performance.
Instructions
============
OK, so you've extracted the files from the archive - now what? If you own
a Risc PC, it will be necessary to install the monitor definition file
provided (called "MonDef", inside !Miracle) before Miracle will run. It is
simply a 256 x 192 x 8bpp mode, with about an "inch" of border round the
edge - if the supplied file is not appropriate for your monitor, it should
be possible to create a suitable monitor definition file of your own with
the mode editor.
The other task which may be necessary is to set the "frame skip" value.
This is a way of coaxing a little more speed out of slower machines by
having the emulator only refresh the screen periodically. This is usually
set to "automatic", and on ARM6 and above, should not need altering. On an
ARM250/ARM3 it may be worth setting manually: do so by editing the !Run file
and changing the value given to SegaEmul$FrameSkip (3-4 is recommended for
ARM250/ARM3).
I know this is maybe not satisfactory, but remember, it *is* an early
release!!
Miracle will run any SMS cartridge (i.e. any .SMS file). At the moment,
Game Gear (.GG) files are not supported, but in a later release a Game Gear
emulator will also be provided.
Simply run an SMS image file by setting its filetype to &0AE (not an
offical filetype) and double-clicking on it (having first let the filer see
Miracle of course).
Control keys are as follows:
Player 1 Left: Z Player 2 Left: Copy/End
Right: X Right: Page Down
Up: " Up: keypad 8
Down: ? Down: keypad 4
Fire1: Space Fire1: keypad 0
Fire2: Return Fire2: keypad 9
Also - Pause: P Reset: f12 Quit: Escape
Known problems
==============
As already mentioned, it's still an early form of the emulator as yet, so
there are still bugs being ironed out as you read this! Here's the list
of SMS games which are known not to work at all:
Alex Kidd - the Lost Stars: Screen goes black
Altered Beast: Hangs on title screen (we know why, but not the best way to
fix this one yet)
Sega Chess: Hangs up eventually
Speedball 2: Screen goes black
Time Soldiers: Sprites incorrectly positioned
Xenon 2: Crashes with black/red screen
Zool: Hangs up at start of "playing" section
and here are the ones that suffer more minor ailments:
Bart Simpson vs Space Mutants: Some corrupted graphics
Marble Madness: Main sprite not correctly animated
Miracle Warriors: Sprite positioning problem
Space Harrier: Sprite masking problem
+ a few others with rubbish at the top left of their title screens
These are being looked into RIGHT NOW!!
Future releases
===============
Eventually, Miracle will sit on the iconbar, maybe multitasking in a
window if you want, and provide all the usual save/load snapshot type
facilities. Plus support is planned for 9 channel FM sound, and Game
Gear compatibility.
Watch Miracle's website (http://www.willothewisp.demon.co.uk/SMS) for the
latest news and releases.
Contacting the authors
======================
If you have any useful information, bug reports, praise, criticism, MONEY,
or indeed anything else you think we might be interested in, then feel free
to get in touch :-
Richard Talbot-Watkins (rst20@cam.ac.uk)
Tel: 01223 500 997
or Matthew Godbolt (matthew@willothewisp.demon.co.uk)
Acknowledgements
================
Thanks are due to the following people who have helped make this emulator
possible in one way or another:
* Marat Fayzullin, author of MasterGear and an SMS technical document which
has proved invaluable during development.
* Someone called "Jon", the author of another hugely useful SMS document
* James McKay, author of Massage.
* Gareth Moore, author of the Acorn port of MasterGear, and whose icons
we've nicked for the moment (hope you don't mind!)
* Mark Rison, for providing answers to the more subtle aspects of Z80A
emulation.
* Dave Sharp, for his excellent Acorn emulation page (http://www.come.to/
emulate) and for making sure we got a move on with this project!
* Super Magik Spiral Crew for their SMS documentation.
...and everyone else out there (you know who you are) who have kept us
(in)sane during the last few months and kept the flow of alcohol/caffeine
coming...
Enjoy.
- RTW/MG 17/03/98