XRoar "Enjoy Defender on the CoCo 3" Pico project
Posted: Mon May 01, 2023 4:10 pm
Well I have been running Glen Hewlett's emulation of the original Williams Defender game using the original ROMs in XRoar CoCo3. It's fantastic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLdAvNj8HNI
https://github.com/nowhereman999/Defender_CoCo3
As a hard core Defender fanatic for over 40 years my skills have only become worse with age. Part of the problem is playing it on a keyboard rather than the full arcade panel but I solved that. I found an unfinished Defender panel on ebay and I finished it. Here's how.
http://www.gadgetmax.co.uk/dragon/defender/s-l1600.jpg
I bought a kit containing a Joystick and some buttons from Amazon. There are plenty on there, I bought a fairly expensive set.
It came out looking pretty good;
http://www.gadgetmax.co.uk/dragon/defender/P1080032.JPG
I wired up the ground on all the switches.
http://www.gadgetmax.co.uk/dragon/defender/P1080033.JPG
I wired up all the switches to pins on the Raspberry Pico using Dupont cables soldered to the switches;
http://www.gadgetmax.co.uk/dragon/defender/P1080034.JPG
and
http://www.gadgetmax.co.uk/dragon/defender/P1080035.JPG
Finally I dropped the appropriate GP2040 joystick firmware on the Pico;
https://github.com/FeralAI/GP2040/tree/ ... nfigs/Pico
Now when the USB is plugged in the computer (Linux or Windows) sees an XBox style Joystick.
I used AntiMicroX on Linux (or Windows) to assign first the matching XBox controlls then matching Dragon/CoCo key presses to the ones I will also assign in Defender Config. See Glen Hewlett's video and Readme file. There was a bit of messing about to find the best pins on the Pico to plug the switches but the Dupont cables made that easy.
I am delighted with the result which really is Defender how I remember it;
http://www.gadgetmax.co.uk/dragon/defender/P1080038.JPG
The next stage will be to use a Raspberry PI running XRoar installed in my broken Dragon 32 case using the Dragon keyboard to USB I did earlier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLdAvNj8HNI
https://github.com/nowhereman999/Defender_CoCo3
As a hard core Defender fanatic for over 40 years my skills have only become worse with age. Part of the problem is playing it on a keyboard rather than the full arcade panel but I solved that. I found an unfinished Defender panel on ebay and I finished it. Here's how.
http://www.gadgetmax.co.uk/dragon/defender/s-l1600.jpg
I bought a kit containing a Joystick and some buttons from Amazon. There are plenty on there, I bought a fairly expensive set.
It came out looking pretty good;
http://www.gadgetmax.co.uk/dragon/defender/P1080032.JPG
I wired up the ground on all the switches.
http://www.gadgetmax.co.uk/dragon/defender/P1080033.JPG
I wired up all the switches to pins on the Raspberry Pico using Dupont cables soldered to the switches;
http://www.gadgetmax.co.uk/dragon/defender/P1080034.JPG
and
http://www.gadgetmax.co.uk/dragon/defender/P1080035.JPG
Finally I dropped the appropriate GP2040 joystick firmware on the Pico;
https://github.com/FeralAI/GP2040/tree/ ... nfigs/Pico
Now when the USB is plugged in the computer (Linux or Windows) sees an XBox style Joystick.
I used AntiMicroX on Linux (or Windows) to assign first the matching XBox controlls then matching Dragon/CoCo key presses to the ones I will also assign in Defender Config. See Glen Hewlett's video and Readme file. There was a bit of messing about to find the best pins on the Pico to plug the switches but the Dupont cables made that easy.
I am delighted with the result which really is Defender how I remember it;
http://www.gadgetmax.co.uk/dragon/defender/P1080038.JPG
The next stage will be to use a Raspberry PI running XRoar installed in my broken Dragon 32 case using the Dragon keyboard to USB I did earlier.