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So, as I used to play the earlier versions in the wild till they got chipped, sadly we only have Open the Box 02 with the lines trick in tact. Past few weeks I’ve been figuring out by looking at the Open the Box 02 and comparing it with the fixed 04 programme. I started with Line 1 - Unlimited Nudges and have managed to make this line free. So will be going through all the lines and doing the same, I hope to take this over to the other clones we don’t have free lines working roms…. So Pay Rise, Pound for Pound, Camelot, Grand Prix and maybe Hi-De-Hi. J

Been feeling a bit better, so got some more progress on porting/converting the MFME Layout Extractor from the old ArcadeSim project to the new MfmeTools application (this is a 'standalone' Windows-only component of the Layout Editor, which is a cross-platform component of the Oasis suite). Work ported so far, allows for a little more progress in this test extraction, is now puts Mfme in Edit mode, and copies off lamps to the background: Next, is to get the Window Handle of the Properties window, and then from there, it's working on the new window capture system itself, as I need to get: - window position/size from the handles - getting window content as a bitmap - redo the old scraping of the component name (used a fuzzy OCR in old system, this needs converting to my Delphi font scraper, as everything else uses)

Hi, I've got a Twilight Zone manual and have attached the DIP settings below. The percentages can be changed, and also the % token payout can be changed from high to low as well. Sorry about the state of the page, looks like the engineer poured coffee all over it at some point! Reading this thread with interest, would be great to see some of your work come to fruition guys, hope this helps anyway.

Thank you for the insight into CLASSIC v`s DX I did not realise the amount of work that goes into one, I am personally grateful to ALL the designers of any layout, you all do some fantastic work and I really appreciate the work and time that goes into recreating these masterpieces, and I'm really pleased I have been accepted here and that I am allowed to play these on my homemade machine. Here is a BIG 🆃🅷🅰🅽🅺-🆈🅾🆄 to you all

Also going to look i to the Sys1 Play it Again Deluxe as early £6 token versions were also emptiable via lines. We have version 03, which is the fixed version, so hoping to do this one too as it was a personal favourite as it was a lot more trickier as there were no features like Nudge Quick to make it quicker. Also only 3 max nudges to play with so you had to know roughly were the reels were landing and manipulate those. It was fairly easy once you got the hang of it as the machine would offer max nudges on almost every credit once it was behind percentage. The good thing about these ones is that it didn’t have the percentage watchdog so these don’t do those mini streaks to level out. J

Wizard knew all the pleasure he gave to members. The members got together to show him how much we appreciated him a year or so before he past. Sadly he did leave the world far too early, but MFME would have always been a WIP for his lifetime as he was a perfectionist. MFME will live on and keep his memory alive, until every last machine that it can emulate, is emulated.

Here you go Play It Again Deluxe.zip

I think they are called classic layouts because in the original emulators there was no ability to have graphics, other than reels. So when the ability came to implement graphics, the term 'DX' (I assume shorthand for Deluxe?) came about, and the older looking, non graphical layouts became 'Classic'. But simply, a classic layouts is any layout which doesn't have graphical lamps, normally doesn't have the actual machine artwork. But it has all the bits working - and that's part of the challenge. I've made classic layouts, I've made DX layouts from scratch, and I've made DX layouts using an existing classic. The hardest in terms of logic is a classic layout, or a 'from scratch' DX. You are starting with a complete blank canvas, and need to work out the machine inputs (switches, opto sensors, coin validation) and outputs (reel positions, lamps, and probably hoppers, tubes, and meters too). On some machines it's almost like 'layout by numbers', especially if the machine has a test mode - once you've found your way into it - that gives you reel symbol positions and lamp positions. On some it's genuinely a massive game of trial and error until you find the right numbers. DX layouts based on classics, while they have a graphical challenge, have the machine's inner workings mapped out. So basically you start with an already working layout, and you then work with graphics to put on top of it. I'd hope people who create classics would be recognised as equally but I'd expect that to most people who come across as a site like this, the classics look 'basic', so probably don't get appreciated as much.

Had a little tinker with my shelved Speccy shmup prototype - looking at impact of adding AY music. General conclusion being that I'll barely have any cycles left over to do collision detection! So I suspect next will be looking if I can get more efficiency by running very basic 1 channel music, and then sound effects on the other two channels... The music here is a little basic remix I did of a couple of tracks by Chris Huelsbeck, from the game Apidya on the Amiga. The plan is to do: - an alternative method for drawing the player ship 'laser' - get some config of AY sound working that is performant enough to allow for full collision detection - write that performant collision detection So then I could have a single playable complete level+boss as a vertical slice proof-of-concept. Here's an older video showing sprites moving and some test collision detection code (no audio implemented in this one):

Good eye, this is indeed using Denis's Engine he originally developed for Ringo, which he open-sourced here: https://github.com/DenisGrachev/Ringo-8 I've added the 'scroller', as the original engine is limited to a small level map, so this can do the much wider map required for a shmup. Also been experimenting with additional pseudo-sprites that will be drawn in spare cycles for the player's bullets/laser. Struggling a bit with spare cycles though, as I'm aiming to do a lot more than RIngo did, but still limited to the same damn Z80 CPU haha If I can figure out it, should be pretty crazy for a Speccy shmup, I may have to compromise on the audio though. It is showing an illusion of parallax scrolling, it's fairly limited parallax (same repeating tile on faraway 'layer'), but I have an idea to work around to some extent that with tilestrips. Haha yep, no color clash with this rendering technique. It involves both beam-racing and using a form of double-buffer. So there are two screens, that do obey the Speccy limitations of only two colors in every 8x8 attribute square. But then we toggle betweeen which one is being displayed in sync with the raster beam, every 8 pixels horizontally starting from x=4, and also every 4 pixels vertically starting from y=4, and so that gives us an effective resolution of 4x4 pseudo-pixels, that can display any of the 8 color values with no color clash. What you see: An example of one of the real buffer screens, that is rendering the above display:

On Red Hot Poker - £6.00 JP - the cards are pre scripted - even if you change your holds at certain points.... You can exit with no RAM save and reload - the next ten or so cards will be the same at certain times when it wants to give a win. The fun thing here though, is that cos its a poker game - if you hold different things - you can get different wins! So 2 pair instead of a straight for example, AWP's were just Donald Ducked back in the day. This trend even continued to the £35 era - I have the video screen lo-tech Bullseye dart game saved at a point where it will give a streak of between £95 and £140 within the next 10 credits. It can pay it in very slightly different ways - but its always there. I also like getting a game close to streak - and seeing the different ways it will play out.

I have noticed before on a Double Cash layout that on a particularly RAM I had (and I would keep reverting to), that on the 4th spin it would always nudge for Bars with the Double Cash. I thought it might be a one off and never thought about it again. However, I now have a RAM for the new Twin Pot layout by DAD (thanks for that, love this era of Astra machines) that will always offer 4 nudges (next spin) and a hold on the first go. Hold reels 1 and 3 and it will nudge for the Twin Pot feature which will then go for £5 with a repeat of £3 and a further repeat of £6. Every time! It's as though it has preplanned the next 4 spins. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Maybe it is just the nature of compensated machines that something is triggered in the code and will therefore always be triggered? I've attached the GAM and RAM files if you'd like to try it for yourself. Twin Pot DX.gam Twin Pot DX.ram

There's always a video, and a story Very much what's being described by BarXQueen, a near 'scripted' series of events from the same RAM reset position, that happened to me, (profitably!), on a real machine (Spoiler alert, the battery for the battery backed RAM had gone flat, so if you were the first person to play it every day, you got it from a RAM reset, when it had a few quid profit in it on a repeatable cycle.)

It was quite common a long time back that AWPs would do the exact same thing from a particular RAM position, reset position being an example @Chopaholic did a video for (or mentioned in another video).

The DX is deluxe and the phrase was coined by Gary when he did the first DX which was Viva Espana way back in 2001. Before the DX, we just called classic layouts, layouts. I guess after the DX, we had to call non DX's something, so classic became a term for them. I only do classics and they can take tens of hours to do, particularly if you put some real effort into them. But even I don't keep any of my classics in my main collection, I keep them separate from it. I'd also be happy to see a machine I've done a classic for, get a DX ASAP. Back in the day though, I guarantee you if you wanted to play FME, you would have had more classics than DX's. But nowadays we are so spoilt, we can be very choosy.

Ah right that makes sense, thanks for the info, i thought maybe i was missing something

Hello all , been having a great time playing the layouts, but I've burned through my downloads XD Is there anyway to check how many I've done and when they'll refresh? I'm aware of the limits shown in the image in the FAQ but I cant recall where I'm at. (I'm probably out for the month) Alternatively, are there different donation tiers? I've browsed thru some of the threads but not spotted any thing specific Thanks for any help, wish you all a great weekend, been having great fun donding XD

I believe it's just £5 minimum for a year's subscription. There is a DONATE button on the main page.

It is a bit of a pain, especially for non-donors, but also I feel it encourages people to actually play each game and appreciate the work that goes into them. I used to download complete sets when I was into console and arcade emulation. Then actually play 0.01% or less of the sets I'd downloaded. I'd feel overwhelmed by the amount of content, have too much choice, and either stuck to what few games I knew, or just leave the lot. These days I'm way more disciplined, and find I actually play what I download rather than just grabbing everything because I can and then not using it.

It's extremely upsetting It's not fair he doesn't get to see all the people he's made happy. My eyes are tearing up because I'm thinking about if he passed feeling like he wasn't done yet. He put all this effort into making MFME and he doesn't get to see all the happiness he's caused, it just isn't fair I hope in his final moments he felt complete, that he said to himself "There, I finished it. I'm ready to go", and then went to sleep with a smile on his face knowing he's made, and will continue to make, people happy. I hope he didn't feel like he wasn't ready. It's such a sad world. If anyone reads this who feels they're near the same fate, know you are loved. If you feel alone, know there's people out there who would gladly give you a big hug if they could.

So many of us first got into MFME in the very early 2000s - I was definitely still at school at the time, and my friend couldn't believe it when I show him how to get his favourite machine (JPM Rollercoaster) running at home. I think that was probably one of the early releases of JPeMu (by DialTone, not Wizard), or possibly an early MFMe with JPM support. I'd been using his pre-MFME emulator (MPU34) for at least a year or so before that released. That would make it 2001 at the absolutely latest when I discovered it, but I feel it might have been 2000? I'd like to think that many of us would have expressed our gratitude during that time, although obviously I (and I'm sure many others) wish I'd shown him just how much it mattered. Hopefully the fact so many communities like this sprang up (and yes, a few did fall by the wayside) where people discussed his emulator means he was aware of how much people appreciated his work

Hi All, New to this site, anyone know why i can't download anything? any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your help vectra

That would be “what’s up doc!” There’s a dx by me somewhere

I think you mean All in a days work which amongst others like it can be found via the download section under global

@Matt Try mine...

The first thing that comes to mind (and I think we are all over it now) is the old Fairplay video by Stuart Campbell. He shows the interviewer a machine, I think it was Maygay Monopoly Club, and how from loading the RAM the same sequence happens - same small win is awarded, same gamble ladder, e.t.c. up to the point it becomes unwinnable. I'd never really thought about it with lo-techs - I've got 'streak happy' RAMs but I don't recall any giving the exact same result (same exact win) after the same amount of spins. They probably do it all the time though

You will need to remask all the lamps that use transparency then mask the off image too !!

Thanks!

99% of the time they are of no use once a layout is released. The settings (apart from possible stake, prize and percentage) combinations are of little use. Things like less flashy attract mode for venues that don't want the machine to be too distracting, odd percentage (so adding 1% to percentage payout), and stuff like that. On some machines it'll switch between different profiles (softer for pub, harder for arcade), again the options are pretty much limitless. By all means tinker, you can't really break a machine (worst comes to worse you can re-extract the layout). Best to make changes with the machine's virtual doors open, then closing the doors should reboot with new settings.

The app on Google Play is not an emulator, it's a simulator. Only MFME has the ability to emulate the machine using the original program ROMs. The app will actually teach you the secret / magic nudge setups - it plays a small guitar sample from 'Its a Kind Of Magic' by Queen when there is a magic nudge setup on screen (even if you don't have nudges that spin). There's a few of them! When you get nudges with that sound, see what the best win would be from say 4 to 6 nudges, use the first two nudges and then leave the machine and let the nudges time out. Don't be surprised if you get a few wrong and the machine just seems to nudge for ages towards nothing That way you get to learn them, rather than someone sharing a list (even if there is such a thing!) I'll also note that despite being a lo-tech player, I didn't even know the proper setups until pretty recently, and still managed some amazing results. I don't think the magic nudges are massively important - they are a 'quick win', but if the machine wants to go bonkers it'll still go bonkers, magic nudges or not. Conversely a dead machine will still be dead even If you know all the setups. It's not some magic way to make money

On a real Speccy it runs at a locked 25 FPS. It usually looks a bit stuttery on PC monitors that a frame locked at 60 FPS (but correct on a PAL TV running at 50 FPS, since 50 / 2 = 25 ) Bit of both man Writing code on a modern computer/monitor is better than the olden days. Those who could afford a second computer and an interface to inject the compiled code into Speccy memory did that, for some poor souls, they had to write on the same machine they were using to test, which must have been hellish! I'm currently using VS Code, and an emulator called ZEsarUX - which means I can actually debug the running code with breakpoints etc, which is crazy useful: And yeah, there's so much code and guides online, it's relatively straightforward to do the cool stuff like beam-racing multicolor without having to start from scratch. That said, all this leads to trying to do historically impossible things like this shmup Definitely think I'll end up having to compromise on the sound, though I think I might have figured out a way to make the collision detection feasible. Most of the CPU cycles are being burnt just to do the rendering, but I want to make it like a 'bullet hell' shmup with up to 16 enemy bullets onscreen, plus up to 8 enemies onscreen, then 2-6 player bullets. Thinking with some limitations on the background tilemap palette I can pull it off, by doing direct to screen color comparisons, which kinda gives us a free-ish version of hardware collision detection. The trick is to disguise the compromises/constraints into the style of the game, I think it might be doable

It astounds me what people can eek out of the ZX Spectrum’s fairly limited specs. This looks pretty damn cool!! Looks silky smooth J

Doesn't look like the dips change the price of play, i just had a quick bash on it, only the % and jackpot can be changed(bank1) dip 5 is £3 jackpot but the good news is you could possibly alter the rom to make it 10p i will report back later9when i get back home>f i can get it to 10p play, as i have altered the 5p rom to test, and got it to 20p play here is a quick video bandicam 2024-03-26 10-57-13-151.rar

It did indeed. I can still hear it. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da dah!

Similar to me Mike. Loved the Aces and Donkey Kong was great too. DOND WIYB was probably the last full emptier I had. After that you're looking at manipulations rather than a full empty because I was working rather than a player and the machines were starting to be connected to the internet so you had to be on it immediately.

I'm not sure what the dips do, I imagine there is a manual for a similar ACE Coin machine kicking about somewhere and it would shed some light on the various settings. Though I'm fairly confident one might be higher token wins, can't be certain, but we must have a user manual for one of these slots, someone will have one. J

Great thread this. As I'm sure many here are fed up of hearing I financed my uni degree by emptying ace machines, but I was nowhere near as expert at it as some others. I simply only took line wins which kept being available on the exchanges even after it forced jackpot wins on me. I'm not technical at all, but to me it would seem to be a simple one extra line of code to make sure the machine counted any band aid wins as well as reel wins, and tightened up once it started getting over the RTP. But given the guy who wrote these programs went to jail for leaving this exploit, maybe he buried it a bit to make it harder to fix once discovered.

board costs would be too much

Thank you

Been sitting on it for 2 years, but I can confirm that it is a Scorpion 6 machine so it can not be emulated called DOND- High Roller.

Sure, early 02 Play it Agains could be done in the normal cabinet. I had a Deluxe Play it Again in the fancy gold cabinet, they are the only £6 versions that could be done. I have a set of Plat it Again £4.80 02, lines seem free but I’ve never done a play it again in a normal cab personally. Trouble is they introduced the watchdog that will force a mini streak. The deluxe version doesn’t have this. I’ll work on the deluxe one as I have done these in the wild. The two I had were both 10p play £6.00 token jackpot. I believe it was the BWB/Ace version that were emptiable. I should definitely be able to complete the hack, I did some more earlier and was able to find some magic. I’m aiming to get a ton of me time over the weekend for some hacking If you are interested it would be great to get someone who can test a rom for a longer period of time, but I’ve got further with this 04 Open the Box and am satisfied the hack only affects the lines and taking other wins will kill the machine J

Most forum ranks are garbage anyway, you can be a prolific poster of absolute garbage / human spambot and climb to the top rank, giving a false impression to newbies that you are actually a competent / knowledgeable member. I do wonder if that's part of the reason the original admin went with Greek like that, because people's value isn't just in the number of posts they make?

DOND Eliminator also had this quirk, but it will always give out nudges forever until I eventually board in. With this, I managed to put about £300 in and play it through without getting a SINGLE feature. After this point it will lead to a persistent GATW. EDIT: I forgot I already mentioned this on my list lol

Hi all! I just wanted to say a huge great 1 big thanks to all! I have made so many online friends here. So first to the late, great, Chris J Wren Wizard RIP for the emulator, Reg for starting the sight, all donaters and friends, layout creaters, Chopaholic, cheerful pecimist, whatwhat what and on a bucket for youtube emulation vids, infection for ROM and looking for awktions for roms/machines on ebay, anyone else? OH yeah, steve lansett and chris217's youtube channels, well, the whole lot of you! Just one big thanks! The amount of machines that have now been emulated, from the old MPU2's to the whole way upwards to the £500 randomers. again, ONE! BIG! THANK YOU!

Thanks. I did check the limits I've probs hit the monthly limits. I would like to donate though to get more. As a member for so long here I would love to contribure in the form of donating to the website. I've sent a donation over as it is something I should have done a long time ago.