Flick 0.1.3: IWL's sound (work in progress)

Work in progress. IWL gets its sound back.

Fixed: IWL - Interstellar Wrestling League's missing sound. IWL plays its sounds on one of the SPU's hardware channels and, after starting one, checks the channel's status register to see whether it is still playing. Flick (like the MAME build it grew from) answered "stopped", so the game cut every sound off after its first few milliseconds: the intro video's voice track, among others, was silent. The status and stop registers now behave as on the Sunplus SPG2xx family, and IWL's voices play.

The other four games sound exactly as before (byte-identical output), and with MAME's timing (F3) nothing changes.

If you play IWL further (menus, matches) and something is still silent, please tell us, here or on GitHub.

As before you need the HyperScan BIOS (hyperscan.bin) and your own disc images, neither included. See the README, and the 0.1.1 notes for the Linux build's requirements.

SHA-256:

• flick-0.1.3-win64.zip: fb20f3e2db2e76771758cb2437556b0eb10d8d4d72058a113dcc0a90eedf2c02
• flick-0.1.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz: 124d3ff675a230bd3ab767dc1028b31c7e8ebf589a7f3d7165e0755557777985

Flick 0.1.2: quickload for homebrew (work in progress)

Work in progress. A small release with one addition for homebrew.

New: --quickload FILE runs a HYPER.EXE directly, as MAME's quickload does, without the BIOS. With it Flick plays hs-lba, Little Big Adventure ported to the HyperScan:

flick --quickload HYPER.EXE --cd hslba.iso --card card_blank.bin

The intro movie, the title screen and the game run with sound. (--card keeps the card's writes in memory only.)

Nothing else changes for the retail games: as before you need the HyperScan BIOS (hyperscan.bin) and your own disc images, neither included. See the README, and the 0.1.1 notes for the Linux build's requirements.

SHA-256:

• flick-0.1.2-win64.zip: 478d00ca20457ee17fdae85c603355dc26a19a78eb4d4ebe9cf5b93d26faa5d2
• flick-0.1.2-linux-x86_64.tar.gz: a7a7e9831f1e2c36af4aabb0e21910e71bcbbbe81d6b23c0b0bd0be12a0929fe

Flick 0.1.1: Linux build (work in progress)

Flick now runs on Linux too. Work in progress.

New: Linux build (flick-0.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.gz)

• x86-64 with glibc 2.34 or later (Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, Fedora 35 and newer).
• Uses the system's SDL2: libsdl2-2.0-0 on Debian and Ubuntu, SDL2 on Fedora, sdl2 on Arch.
• The BIOS and disc dialogs use zenity or kdialog. With neither, start it once with ./flick --bios /path/to/hyperscan.bin and drop discs on the window.
• Unpacked in a folder you can write to, it keeps its settings, cards and screenshots there; otherwise in ~/.config/flick and ~/.local/share/flick.
• Checked under WSL (Ubuntu 24.04): the BIOS boot is identical to MAME's instruction by instruction, and the games run at the same speed as on Windows. Not yet tried on a real Linux desktop: reports are very welcome.

Windows (flick-0.1.1-win64.zip): the same as 0.1.0 for players.

As before you need the HyperScan BIOS (hyperscan.bin) and your own disc images; neither is included. See the README.

SHA-256:

• flick-0.1.1-win64.zip: bd4271e68fd1afdaa68da4da46e42bb6686bad6dba6a78141dd2f90bfdd59a8e
• flick-0.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.gz: 4692bcd097756c6ae5175d8cb1e0067a6b6c1d6d65b79c3e9759544e6f8faf07

Flick 0.1.0 (work in progress)

The first public build of Flick, a Mattel HyperScan emulator. Work in progress.

All five retail games boot and play with sound: X-Men, Marvel Heroes, Ben 10 and IWL have been played with cards (Marvel Heroes and Ben 10 also by two players), and Spider-Man reaches gameplay.

What you need: Windows 64-bit, the HyperScan BIOS (hyperscan.bin, the console's 1 MB flash, as in MAME's hyprscan set) and your own disc images (.cue/.bin or .iso). Neither is included.

Getting started: extract the zip, double-click flick.exe. The first time it asks for the BIOS, then for a disc.

Highlights

• Sound: the SPG290's 24 hardware voices and the DAC FIFO, including the BIOS boot jingle.
• RFID cards: all 445 known cards in a panel (F1). Cards the games write to are saved; X-Men keeps your characters' experience.
• The games' real frame rate (X-Men fights at 30 fps, as on real consoles), with MAME's timing one key away (F3).
• Game controllers and two players, a remappable keyboard and controller (F4), full screen, screenshots.

Known issues

• IWL: some of the sound is missing.
• Loading times follow MAME's instant CD drive, not the real console's.
• No save states yet.

See the README for controls and details.

SHA-256 of flick-0.1.0-win64.zip: 31ea6b78acd02782e3925fc212a1f28335fafaee32bef94bd8073f66a0594999