> Am I oversimplifying things by thinking you could have a seperate table
> containing all the mame drivers with a unique ID (1,pacman.c 2,glaxian.c
etc),
> and then each of your game level entries references one of those records
(1 or
> 2 etc).
Yes, this is probably a likely scenario now.
[Game Entry] 1 --- oo [MAME Virtual Machine]
+ 1 --- oo [Addy Entries]
> You could I guess potentially have two entries, one for the mame driver
memory
> map and one for the actual memory map if it's different. I think this is
then
> leaning towards A.
Something that I thought about. I'd probably roll it right into the Game
Entry table (or the equivalent). *OR* have a mechanism to verify/validate
the map generated from MAME. How important is it to be able to refresh the
"MAME Virtual Machine" from new versions of MAME? If I want to keep updating
the database with new version, then I probably want to keep that part
separate (even if it is inaccurate) and then have "actual" real world
hardware rolled right into the Game Entry table. That would be where guys
like us put in things by hand. The MAME Virtual Machine would be
auto-refreshed once a quarter or something.
> SO, you would have, a table of driver files, which would exist on a many
to one
> basis (one or more games referencing each driver file). Then you would
have a
> memory map table which is referenced on a one to many basis with the
drivers
> table (each driver has at least one memory map within it).
Yes. Gets a little more complicated because each MAME driver has one or more
CPUs (not illustrated in my drawing), with each CPU having its own memory
map. But, yes, that is what I'm thinking too.
Okay, so I am leaning towards Method A (MAME data is referenced and matched
up to my entries), as it allows people to browse the MAME entries and review
the implementation right down to the source code. And that does not preclude
me building out the part that has real world references to individual boards
and components. Something that is lost in MAME...
--James Bright
www.QuarterArcade.com
Restored Arcade Games for your Home
Received on Tue Sep 16 09:21:31 2003
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