Leaderboard

hey to everyone here nice to meet you all, cant wait to play some of those old classics that i used to play in the pub when i was younger

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

A little bit hacky, but more progress on the MfmeTools Extractor. Usually when right-clicking the left side of the layout to pull up the Properties window, we land straight on the first component (the background). This isn't always the case though, sometimes there might be a component like a checkbox there. So we must get back to the first component... I've added a large 'dummy test' lamp on the left of this Andy Capp layout I'm testing with, so we can test getting back to the first component. Here is the new window scraping code getting its first use, watching the component number change while clicking left, until it sees it has successfully reached the first component:

A small tech update on this project I have the general custom window scraping written (so it can grab the RGB value of specific pixels from the various MFME windows). Currently working on integrating that functional scraping code into MFME Tools - the first use of which will be to simply scrape the component number from the properties window (so we can 'rewind' back to component #1 after getting into Properties - this is how I found it best to do under the Arcade Sim Layout Scraper). The plan is that this custom scraping code, whilst also being complete independent of Unity (MFME Tools is written in C# as a Windows executable), will also provide missing stability, as the scraping system I used under Unity to drive Arcade Sim and also the layout extraction, had a tendency to crash! So hopefully when this is fully developed, I can leave it with a massive batch of DX layouts, and it will not crash even after many hours of extracting... Commits are all here for those interested in the code, this is all open source: https://github.com/johnparker007/Oasis/commits/main/

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:

This could be potentially interesting for slot machine layouts MAME now has support for touch screens on Linux and Windows 8 or later, opening up new possibilities for interactive artwork. If you have a suitable multi-touch screen, you can now play chords on systems with on-screen piano keyboards. Check the documentation for specifics on how touch differs from mouse control in menus. You’ll need to turn on the enable_touch option to use touch screen support on Linux.

I’ve had the streak on a 02 £4.80 Grand National. It does seem anything v04 £6 don’t have the same profile, likely due to the enriched period being outlawed. I’m still going to keep at these and make the line wins free, shame about those forced streaks as it was one of the pitfalls of doing the lines, giving it an element of jeopardy Still it’s kind of fun to experience the trick on the games we don’t have early software for. J

So, have been dabbling with this little project when have spare time. I started working on Pound for Pound. I started by making the jackpot wins off lines free, so I was testing and I'm thinking it's buzzing but where are the mini streak roll ins to compensate for being over %? I was thinking I'd done something to affect that but I loaded the original P4P 04 roms and indeed these don't have the corrective % watchdog profile. How odd as I've played a P4P 02 in the wild and it definitely had the roll ins!! So, I figured that I'd try other versions. So 05, and 07, none of these have the corrective %? How utterly odd that they would change this from earlier versions, all other versions of the clones seem to have the mini forced roll ins apart from P4P. I remember someone saying to me that there was something else on this machine, they could be right, maybe there is a way to manipulate it after all as it certainy won't try to level out when way under. Interesting. But, those lines are free, though I need to address the nudges being offered on Nudge Quick as I'm fairly quick but 03 seconds on start is might tighty J

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.

Working again, thanks for the fix John

Ah right, have just checked and the same issue is present over here. It appears that ArcadeSim is unable to start the'hack dll' I wrote to inject functionality into MFME. I wonder if it's to do with Windows antivirus having changed and it now sees the dll injection as a potential threat: Thanks for the info, I suspect it's something Windows antivirus has started doing. I'm a bit under the weather for coding at the mo, hopefully I can figure a workaround fix, so we can keep ArcadeSim working to tide us over until Oasis... I'll look into it hopefully soonish, fingers crossed I can find a simple fix, without needing to try build an ArcadeSim update, since the codebase it pretty much 'retired'... would like it to keep working though for the next 1-2 years if poss!

Its ok for me

Nice to see you are feeling up to carrying on with this, I only wish I knew what you’re going on about way above my head . We do all appreciate the hard work and commitment you put into this .

Thanks for the update, great to see you on this again

A good starting place would be to grab Joy2key: https://joytokey.net/en/ You can then bind the keyboard shortcuts used in MFME to a button/direction of your choice.

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

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...

I certainly appreciate all the hard work all designers do - without the "classics" we would never have got to the DX's So thank you one and all.

Does the dx editor brighten the various arts up it darkens em down with more contrast etc goto edit mode (red bar up top) dx editor then add brightness to each art off/on1/on2 make each one the same brightness ie +50 on all three click apply to each then remask

Thanks!

You really need the machines manual to see what they do and sometime several machines on the same tech, by the same manufacturer may do the same thing. Very very very rarely, a machines layout producer has used the emulators ability to have tags added to the dip switches, which when you hovver over them, shows a pop up message with what the particular dipswitch does. I'll see if I have a manual for an emulated machine and you can switch them and see what happens.

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

Compared to old ZX Spectrum game production newer games released seem so much better, technically at least, is this partly down to people sharing code and more powerful development tools? J

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

That looks so pretty ! I like if the term is right, the parallex scrolling - and assuming the sprite is the top layer, the animated sprites on the middle layer of the fan going around. This looks very much like Ringo type graphics in terms of style - I would buy this when released if you released on Itch.io for a few quid.

Thank You @superbank very handy to see those other options. j

Click PORTAL up top and donate is over on the right hand side (see pic)

Apologies if this is not the appropriate area to post however I am struggling to find a relevant area to post this. Currently receiving the attached message. I have been a member for 6 years and until a few days ago I am getting this message for new layouts that interest me. Am I doing something wrong and if so what is needed from me to resolve this? Thank you in advance

Thank you Chris, thank you for bringing so much joy into my life through your amazing creation. Over the last 19 years I've been through some bad times, and it's no exaggeration to say that your emulator is something that has always managed to bring me comfort when things have been dark. I think I can say that here at DIF without sounding insane, as I'm among fellow FME nutcases. Like many people here, a fruit machine emulator was literally a dream for me, and as such, you truly made my dream, and the dreams of so many others, come true. Even though you are gone, what you made will continue to bring happiness into the lives of many, and every time I load in MFME from this day forward, I will pause for a moment to say a quiet 'Thank you' to you. Gone far too soon, but you leave a legacy behind you the likes of which most of us can only ever dream of. Your light has gone out, but we will keep the lights of the scene and the communities you made possible, very much turned on, and as such, you will live on with us in spirit.

Chris - there are a million words I could write - they will save for another day, but just know this. You took me on a magical journey and delivered dreams for people like me and saved me from god knows what with my gambling addiction. I am proud to have known you and hope you are looking down on us with the angels. Thank you and rest in peace - you were fantastic and brilliant - truely one of a kind. Sleep well my friend. Harvey.