GNGEO(1)GNGEO(1)NAMEgngeo - emulate a SNK Neo-Geo game system
SYNOPSISgngeo [options] ROMSET
DESCRIPTIONgngeo is a program that emulates the SNK Neo-Geo game system. It uses
SDL and optimized assembly CPU emulation cores on i386 platforms.
OPERATION
A Neo-Geo BIOS image set is required to play commercially-released
games. Unfortunately, the BIOS images are copyrighted and may not be
distributed with gngeo.
Like MAME, the memory layout of each game is defined by a driver, which
is simply a plain text description of the game's characteristics needed
by the emulator. The driver database is installed in
/usr/local/share/gngeo/romrc. If a new program is wanted to be run in
gngeo, it must be added to that database.
The simplest form of operation is the following:
$ gngeo <game>
where <game> is the MAME name of a Neo-Geo ROM set corresponding to a
game.
Examples: mslug, garou, kof99
You can also use the folowing form of operation:
$ gngeo <file>
where <file> point to a zip that contain the Neo-Geo ROM set.
However, it is more likely that you will need some of the following
command line options in order to properly locate your ROM collection
and Neo-Geo BIOS images.
By default, gngeo looks for the BIOS images and ROM collection in
/usr/share/gngeo. This can be changed with the -i or --rompath option.
For example:
$ gngeo-i /home/flurbly/neogeo/roms mslug2
The ROM location, as well as any other options, can be persistently set
in the $HOME/.gngeo/gngeorc. A sample gngeorc can be found in
/usr/share/doc/gngeo; copy it into your .gngeo directory and adapt it
to your needs.
OPTIONS
These programs follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with long
options starting with two dashes (`-').
All boolean options can be disabled with --no-OPTION (Ex: --no-sound
turns sound off)
-l, --listgame
List all games that gngeo has recognized and are available to
play.
--autoframeskip
Enable auto frameskipping. The program will determine the best
frameskip value to avoid lagging the gameplay on a machine that
is too slow to emulate at full speed.
-b, --blitter=STRING
Use the specified blitter. -b help will provide a list of avail‐
able blitters. soft, opengl, and yuv are typical choices.
-c, --convtile
Convert graphics tiles into internal format at load time
(default on).
--country=STRING
Set the country code to japan, usa, or europe.
-D, --debug
Enable gngeo's internal debugger, for hacking, cheating, or fix‐
ing bugs.
-e, --effect=STRING
Use the specified video effect. -e help will provide a list of
available effects.
-f, --fullscreen
Start gngeo in fullscreen mode.
-H, --hwsurface
Use a SDL hardware surface for the emulator's video. This can
improve performance if your video hardware/drivers are fast.
-I, --interpolation
Enable interpolation from one frame to the next. This can make
the display look "smoother", but has a performance penalty.
--invertjoy
Invert joystick order. (need more details)
--joystick
Enable joystick support.
--libglpath=[path]
Use STRING as libGL (default should normally be okay).
-P, --pal
Use PAL timings. This currently has bugs.
--p1key=ARRAY
--p2key=ARRAY
--p1joy=ARRAY
--p2joy=ARRAY
Player 1 and Player 2 keyboard and joystick mappings, respec‐
tively. (need more details)
-r, --raster
Enable the raster interrupt. (need more details)
-i, --rompath=[path]
Give the path to locate the ROM collection. The default is to
look in /usr/share/gngeo, but your ROM collection is most likely
not there. :)
-d, --romrc=[path]
Give the path to locate the romrc file. This defines the layout
of the games and is required to run any Neo-Geo games.
--sound
Enable sound emulation.
--showfps
When the emulator is started, show a frames-per-second count.
This can be used to gauge a baseline performance for the emula‐
tion.
--sleepidle
Enabling this option will cause the emulator to give up time to
the system when it is idle. It can incur a performance penalty,
but can also make the emulator "nicer" to the rest of the sys‐
tem.
--system=STRING
This option allows you to set the type of the emulated system to
home or arcade, depending on how you prefer to play your games.
There are some differences in many games if they detect a home
system instead of an arcade system.
--scale=N
Upscale the resolution by N. For example, if N is 3, the Neo-
Geo output, which is normally 320x224, will become 960x448. You
may encounter a mode which is not hardware accelerated when
using this option.
--samplerate=N
Set the sound sample rate to N. N will typically be 11025,
22050, 32000, or 44100.
-t, --transpack=STRING
Use the specified transparency pack (need more details)
-h, --help
Show summary of options.
HARDWARE
The SNK Neo-Geo system was cartridge-based and was sold to arcades as
well as homes. It has a 68000 CPU, a Z80 for sound, and custom graph‐
ics hardware, and its main claim to fame was that it has the highest
megabit count of any cartridge-based system in history, allowing for
detailed animation and huge sprites.
MVS, the arcade system, had mainboards which could accept up to six
cartridges at once. The user could choose one of the games to play by
simply moving the joystick. This allowed arcade operators to maximize
the choice of games available to players without taking up floor space
with more dedicated cabinets.
AES, the "Advanced Entertainment System", was the home Neo-Geo system.
It sold for hundreds of dollars at launch and the cartridges generally
cost around $200 a piece. However, there was no truer way for players
to have the "arcade at home" experience in 1990. The joysticks were
authentic arcade joysticks and the cartridges were huge. The car‐
tridges, while shaped differently, had the exact same data stored in
them as the MVS arcade cartridges. Some companies sold adapters to use
MVS cartridges (which typically could be found cheaply on the used mar‐
ket) on the AES console.
The Neo-Geo introduced the idea of a memory card, which could be shared
between the MVS and AES systems (as the hardware was essentially iden‐
tical). The user could take his/her high scores and other saved data
between the arcade and home.
Some later cartridges used some hardware bootleg protection that had to
be first understood and then worked around. New software is still
released even today for the MVS and AES systems, though SNK itself
finally went bankrupt in 2001.
NOTESgngeo is fast, but still has some bugs. Visit the homepage at:
http://m.peponas.free.fr/gngeo/
if you would like to help development or submit bug reports.
Some planned features are netplay support, better game compatibility,
and better portability, as well as more i386-specific optimizations.
AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Ryan Underwood <nemesis@dbz.ice‐
quake.net>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others).
June 26, 2003 GNGEO(1)
