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New Release of DICE, the CPU-Less Arcade Game Emulator, Adds Four Games

Posted by Unknown on from the knew-you-got-that-16-core-machine-for-a-reason dept.

KingofGnG writes "DICE is a small emulator dedicated to recreating on a modern computer the arcade games based on discrete circuits: ancient and bizarre entertainment machines where the electronic components required for the game experience were soldered individually on the circuit board and where there was no trace of integrated circuit or CPU. It's an obscure and fascinating kind of emulation, and the offering of emulated games grows richer with each release." Released a few days ago, DICE 0.8 adds support for four new games: Atari's Crossfire and Pin Pong, and Ramtek's Clean Sweep and Wipe Out.

43 comments

  1. Dice again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Now that DICE.com bought slashdot everything is about dice nowadays!

    1. Re:Dice again? by ynp7 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Way too many DICEes these days. DICE.com, that DICE video game developer summit, DICE (formerly Digital Illusions CE), this DICE emulator thing. Come on guys, it's not even a cool name!!!

    2. Re:Dice again? by Ken_g6 · · Score: 2

      Way too many DICEes these days.

      Yeah. It's a CPU-less Arcade Game Emulator. It emulates a box with a lot of wires. They should have called it CAGE.

      --
      (T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
    3. Re:Dice again? by Buck+Feta · · Score: 0

      Yeah. It's a CPU-less Arcade Game Emulator. It emulates a box with a lot of wires. They should have called it CAGE.

      YOU DON'T SAY?

      --
      I am Audience.
    4. Re:Dice again? by cayenne8 · · Score: 1
      Wow....wish they'd port over the old game "Death Race"....that was fun, and quite controversial at the time because you'd drive your car over the walking people and a small tombstone would appear. The later changed it to running over zombies to placate the parents, but we all knew what it was about.

      Its a rare game to find now.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    5. Re:Dice again? by Sowelu · · Score: 1

      Selwyn Larcher agrees.

  2. Fuck DICE fuck BETA. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Fuck DICE fuck BETA.

    1. Re:Fuck DICE fuck BETA. by Buck+Feta · · Score: 0

      Fuck DICE fuck BETA.

      Hey now, let's be civil about this.

      --
      I am Audience.
  3. Monaco GP Please! by ArcadeNut · · Score: 5, Informative

    Although I own the real thing, I would love to see it emulated... It would provide a wealth of technical information about the game that would help with future repairs!

    --
    Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
    1. Re:Monaco GP Please! by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 1

      I don't have modpoints right now, but I would mod you up.

      Monaco GP and the Pro version PLEASE!
      My 5 year old inner-child begs for it to be done!

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      READY.
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    2. Re:Monaco GP Please! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm fairly sure Monaco GP had an integrated circuit or CPU.

    3. Re:Monaco GP Please! by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 2

      It definitely had no CPU. If it did, MAME would have kept it in their list of emulated machines.

      In fact, there was once a point in MAME history where they were including discrete circuit "simulations" including PONG and a semi-functional version of Monaco GP.
      Then they decided to concentrate onto emulation and drop the simulations, hence their simulation of "Pong" and "Monaco GP" disappeared in later versions.

      The Monaco GP simulation looked like the real deal, but had controller issues and a few other things IIRC.

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      READY.
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    4. Re:Monaco GP Please! by Nutria · · Score: 2

      Close-up HD photos of the innards of your "real thing", from multiple angles, would probably be of great help to the DICE team.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    5. Re:Monaco GP Please! by ArcadeNut · · Score: 1

      Monaco GP is all TTL logic, No CPU. Pretty cool considering how awesome the game is!

      --
      Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
    6. Re:Monaco GP Please! by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 1

      Just out of curiosity, I found the MAME simulated version of Monaco GP before it was removed from MAME.
      It's from some hacked version of MAME 0.127

      The game simulation was buggy in that state (poor collision detection, no analog controls, no gears working, cars not staying on bridge, ice doesn't slip car, extended play message stays on the screen)
      Since it was bugged you could play it and cheat until you reached a max score of 9999, at which point the score stays at 9999 and you enter a seemingly infinite tunnel that never ends.

      Not sure if the original machine ever did that. Perhaps the thread starter became good enough at the game to confirm?

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    7. Re:Monaco GP Please! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The owner's manual includes schematics so pictures would probably not be necessary.

    8. Re:Monaco GP Please! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And it's also a boat load of TTL chips too!

    9. Re:Monaco GP Please! by ArcadeNut · · Score: 2

      Photos would not have the information they need. They will need to look at the Schematics for the game, and those are not exactly the best.

      The Schematics are here if you want to take a look at them:
      http://arcarc.xmission.com/PDF...

      Hand drawn, somewhat hard to read, but at least they exist.

      If they do emulate Monaco GP, that means they will have a very good understanding of how the hardware works, which will help with future repairs.

      --
      Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
    10. Re:Monaco GP Please! by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 1

      In case you or anyone is interested, someone has made an entertaining simulation of the game, but you need some bin files in order to get it to work.

      http://forum.arcadecontrols.co...

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      READY.
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  4. Broken links by Qzukk · · Score: 3, Informative

    Crossfire, Pin Pong, and Clean Sweep all link to the same page.

    Pin Pong appears to be http://www.arcade-history.com/...
    Clean Sweep appears to be http://www.arcade-history.com/...

    --
    If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  5. DICE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ...ancient and bizarre entertainment machines where the electronic components required for the game experience were soldered individually on the circuit board and where there was no trace of integrated circuit or CPU.

    Well, that certainly explains all the "Powered by DICE" tags I see on Slashdot.

  6. Re:THAT YOU JACKASS!!! by rubycodez · · Score: 1

    Your last attempt at a sentence is not grammatically correct, nor a sentence.

  7. Connecticut Leather Company by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

    I remember the first Colecovision emulator some guy made -- he had a bitch of a time because one of the chips was analog and it's kind of hard to get the CPU cycles for near-infinite speed.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    1. Re:Connecticut Leather Company by Immerman · · Score: 2

      I don't see what the problem is, just periodically run through a delay loop a negative number of times.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  8. interesting. Perfect analog only 10 giga inches by raymorris · · Score: 1

    That's interesting. It got me thinking, I'd expect old analog devices to have much higher latency than modern XGhz CPUs. Analog devices do take time of course - witness your CFLs, which take 200 ms to start to turn on, several seconds to reach full brightness, and several minutes to turn off completely.

    Even if the analog device itself were perfect, it takes time for the electrical signals to travel from one compotent to another. If the components are two inches apart, signals can travel that two inches at no more than 5 Ghz theoretical maximum. The speed of light / electricity is 10 giga inches per second in copper.

    1. Re:interesting. Perfect analog only 10 giga inches by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the components are two inches apart, signals can travel that two inches at no more than 5 Ghz theoretical maximum. The speed of light / electricity is 10 giga inches per second in copper.

      That doesn't stop you from sending a much higher frequency signal down that line, or small components along the line or at the ends from interacting with higher frequency. You can take two 10 GHz transistors and separate them by a meter of cable and have them interact or work on signals, just any sort of feedback will take multiple cycles. If anything, this is less of a concern with a carefully designed analog system, in the sense it will continue to do something, while digital logic needs to handle the delay more carefully (care may still be needed in the analog circuit so that that something is what you want).

      The more practical limit is that circuits have finite bandwidth, that above some frequency gates can't switch fast enough, amplifiers can't amplify, and parasitic capacitance drains power away or inductance gives too high of an impedance. Short of having a system mixing devices of different bandwidths or a few special cases trying to create a noise source, you can limit greatly narrow what frequency range you want to look at, and for many circuits, simulate them in real time on a modern computer.

  9. Death Race? by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 2

    I wonder if we'll ever see a simulation of this discrete logic gem? (likely inspired by the terrible Sly Stallone 70s movie of the same name)
    This game was doing the whole "running over people in cars" thing long before Carmageddon and GTA.
    It came with it's own brand of controversy too.

    http://www.arcade-museum.com/g...

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    1. Re:Death Race? by kamapuaa · · Score: 1, Funny

      Death Race was a classic, get the fuck off Slashdot.

      --
      Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
    2. Re:Death Race? by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 1

      Not everyone liked it: http://homepages.sover.net/~oz...

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    3. Re:Death Race? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That was a poor way of wording it on Neo-Rio-101's part. Obviously, what they meant to say was "the 70s movie with the terrible Sly Stallone."

      (Or possibly "the Sly Stallone movie from the terrible 70s.")

    4. Re:Death Race? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is that link a joke?

  10. As long as by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dice doesn't release beta, they can release anything they want

  11. So I read that wrong.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I was expecting to see a wall full of resisters that did nothing but play Mario, and room full that did nothing but play Doom. And four that played Doom 3. As it is just a black screen! Go me for topical jokes!

  12. "No integrated circuits?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fail on the editors' part. Even these games used heaps of ICs, they were just typically your standard 4xxx or 74xx-series parts. Hell, some of them even used ROM chips to store things like graphics data or timing information. The only thing missing was a CPU.

  13. 900MB required? Is that a joke? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

    Pin Pong (Atari, 1974)

    Beware that due to the difficulty of optimizing the background graphics this game requires about 900 MB of RAM to function, although this should allow it to run at full speed on a reasonably fast machine.

    Why so much?

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  14. DICE Game Names? by Buck+Feta · · Score: 1

    Besides Clean Sweep and Wipe Out, I hear DICE supports the following classics:

    Backlash!
    White Space
    Fuck-em-Up
    Alpha 2.0
    Timothy's No Good, Very Bad Day

    I for one, can't wait for these "new, cleaner looking!" games.

    --
    I am Audience.
  15. Holy real-time 74xx logic batman! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Holy real-time 74xx logic batman! Yes, they built games out of 7400 based TTL logic chips back in the day. None of this CPU context switch nonsense, game hard with real-time controls. There wasn't even a hard real-time operating system:: there was no operating system. Silvered single side and two side circuit boards rivalling todays largest motherboards, dedicated rom chips with machine sockets so if you wanted to upgrade the system, you just get an IC extractor, pull out the old rom chip, and put in a new one (with the new software). Sure, most of the time they were fusable links, but it worked! One giant circuit board, and if you wanted a different game, put in a different circuit board (but that might not be so easy, because the wiring might not be quite right, you may need more power connectors, more space or different controls to connect. Yes it seems arcane compared to modern stuff, but it was ultra-modern super-duper high-tech at one time. ...That time has passed.

  16. again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Another Dice slashdvertorial? Seriously?

  17. Guess what DICE stands for? by Comboman · · Score: 1

    You are correct; no CPU but loads of ICs. In fact, the name of the emulator is Discrete Integrated Circuit Emulator (DICE).

    --
    Support Right To Repair Legislation.
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