WWF Wrestlefest DC news

Lemme tell ya something Mean Gene, Warmtoe has posted some updated info on his progress with the single game arcade version of WWF Wrestlefest, here’s what he had to say:

I have managed to get WWF Wrestlefest working on the DC – but let me tell you, it’s not a pretty story!!!!

It needs 16MB by default to decode 8MB of gfx ROMS – that’s 24MB that should need to be in the DC’s 16MB just for graphics! not counting the other roms, MAME executable, assorted data areas etc etc.

Impossible task – or so I thought – first the 16MB can be brought down to 8 using the same technique as SIMPSONS and XMEN – still won’t do it – then I tried decoding the graphics in place, over the original ROMS, that doesn’t work either because the 2 areas are layed out differently.

So, this new trick, which is really not for n00bs – is, to take a modified build of PC mame, run WWFWFEST on it, and have it output the already decoded graphics to 4 files on your PC. Then the DC version, doesn’t even try and load the non-decoded roms, it skips that and loads the decoded data from the files produced on the PC!!!!

Works like a charm – apart from only being able to squeeze 7 of the 8 meg (after the SIMPSONS hack) into memory at once, what this means is that Mr Millionaire (or whatever his name is) looks a bit ill.

Problem I have now is, in order for you to be able to do this, I need to distribute either 18 megs of PC MAME build as well as the DC MAME build, or the decoded roms (which of course, I cannot do).

So… when I’ve worked this quandry out, expect a release… and before you get your hopes up too high – it’s pretty slow (although, playable).