AAE (Another Arcade Emulator)
AAE is a
primarily vector based arcade system emulator/simulator written using C and
OpenGL. It strives to recreate the experience of playing the games as they were
in the arcade, and requires the original game ROMS in order to run. In some
cases copies of the original sound files and artwork are required to complete
the emulation experience. It provides for simulation options that are not
available in MAME ™, and offers several features that are not available in MAME
™ due to their arcade preservation charter, such as advanced hardware based
drawing and motion blur.
Although AAE
is written to feel much like the MAME ™ Documentation Project, (www.mamedev.org)
it is a very different emulator, based in part on sources from the old emulator
Retrocade. (I have been working on
this for a long time!)
Much credit
needs to given to MAME ™ for without its documentation and the hard work of
many, many people I could not have written this. See CREDITS.TXT for a full
credit list. If I missed anyone, I’m sorry!
AAE is a
work in progress emulator, and no games are guaranteed to run correctly or even
at all. Some games run (in my opinion) quite well, and provide an excellent
representation of the arcade experience.
3/30/08 Getting closer, if nothing else I found a
really good way to take a video card to its knees. It’ll be a few more weeks;
time is at a premium right now. In the meantime, here are a few screenshots:
2/18/08 Found some free time, see the changelog for details.
Expect a release in a couple of weeks, all goes well.
1/27/08 Well, getting time to work on the emulator
has been difficult, but things are progressing. Expect another month at least
before a release though.
In the meantime, Check this out:
(Original) 
(AAE Beta 2 Emulated)
I still can’t quite get
the brightness to blinding levels, but it’s getting closer….. Obviously it’s
adjustable, and with gamma correction can look even better…….
12/22/07
Please note that this
program is a beta, and a work in progress. What is currently available for
download is not the final product, and will hopefully get better soon. My goal is to EVENTUALLY provide an
experience similar to playing a real vector arcade machine, without the hassle
of trying to keep one of the nearly 30 year old monoliths running. This program
looks much better on a projection system, plasma TV or presentation monitor. I
don’t recommend running anything except the B/W vector games on a PC screen.
Your mileage will vary.
The next release will
feature several bug fixes, including no more crashes when running the ATI Omega
drivers, FAR better raster graphics support with perfect transparency control,
better menus, Atari Quantum support (my first 68000 based game!!), and maybe,
the start of some very nice vector brightness/bloom effects. Look for it mid January.
SCREENSHOTS:
Asteroids Deluxe (with
phosphor persistence)
Lunar Lander (test mode,
NOW working in MAME!)
Download it HERE:
AAE Beta1 Binary, including
required Artwork and Sound files (Not MAME Standard) Beta 1, updated Nov 11th 2007 (51MB) UPDATED to include Update 4.
AAE Beta1
Updated Exe Unzip to your aae directory.
Fixes mouse/key speed adjustment in the Sega vector games, and snapshots.
(oops!)
AAE Beta1
Updated Exe #2 Unzip to your aae
directory. Adds cocktail and 1 player support to Space Duel. All supported
cocktail games should flip correctly now.
AAE Beta1
Updated Exe #3 Unzip to your aae
directory. Warlords is playable now. Things will look a lot better when I get
shader support finished.
AAE Beta1 Update #4
(13MB) Unzip to your aae directory,
overwrite the artwork files that are present. See changelog.txt for all
changes.
AAE Beta1 Update #5 (2MB)
You need to install #4 FIRST!. Unzip to
your aae directory, overwrite the artwork files that are present. See
changelog.txt for all changes. This is a significant update. Many fixes,
including a complete rewrite of Battlezone and Red Baron support.
USAGE:
Unzip AAE to
the root of your hard disk, and either copy your current, split full mame
romsets to the ROMS directory, or hand edit the aae.ini (sorry) to point to
your mame rom directory. Run AAE.EXE to start the built-in GUI, or aae gamename
to run a specific game. See gamelist.txt for a full supported gamelist.
NOTES:
AAE ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES a current video
card to run properly. A current midrange ATI or NVIDIA video card with factory
drivers should work fine.
Wells D9200
Owners should set the program to 800x600, 4x smoothing, no bezel artwork for
best results.
HIT
<TAB> in the GUI or in-game to access the menu system. All settings are
done there. ALL SYSTEM WIDE SETTINGS NEED TO BE SET BY RUNNING THE BUILT-IN
GUI.
HELP ME MAKE THIS PROGRAM BETTER!!!
Email me at aae@suddenlink.net if you can provide any
of the following:
1.
A nice AY-8910 chip emulator
completely divorced from MAME and doesn’t require timer callbacks.
2.
Any missing Cinematronics sound
samples.