Mort

Looks amazing JP. Love the new post process effects. DOF was on my wish list so I am particularly pleased to see it included. Will it be possible at a later stage for you add sliders to control the level of each post process effect applied ? Keep up the great work. I follow each update with a keen interest and am amazed at what you are achieving.

don't forget the crouch key then and maybe even prone ! haha great to see the simulator getting better and better imagine we can crouch and see £s pumping out into the payout tray! and a virtual pint glass to put 'em in

Thanks Reg for the heartfelt post and Choppers for the equally caring YouTube video. I cannot believe a year has gone by already. Amazing that the FME community reached out to the family and gave them an appreciation for what Chris provided to us all. The world is full of ego, confidence and extroversion exhibited by so many who for all their vocal qualities actually do nothing. It’s the introverts who really provide, the quiet and considered ones who spend hours on the detail and pursue perfection. I’m so glad that Chris’s genius and individual pursuit of perfection did not go unnoticed, and that he was able to perfect what he started all those years ago.

Just Cause 3 was a brilliant game, still play it now. JC4 not nearly as good.

Just had another session on this and I still cannot believe what you have already achieved here. Simply amazing, and runs a treat on my PC with a 1440p display. The invert Y option is great, thanks for including it.

Wonderful to walk around the arcade with the attract modes running. It's a wonderful thing you are doing here John, I can't believe what I am seeing honestly. One very minor point for the future but please don't forget invert Y axis for camera/mouse

Yeah I remember SVP and getting lots of Bulkpaq DVD-R media but if I really wanted a good burn it would be onto a Verbatim. Can't remember the last time I burnt anything onto optical media now. I do remember sites related to the MP3 media players, Winamp (it really kicks the Llamas ass), and Sonique, and spending time on the sites related to the community created visualisations and skins for both players. (MP3 files on PC was a big thing back then, we didn't have Spotify or Apple Music) I remember animated GIFs everywhere as well, Spinning Globes and Bouncing Mail Envelopes. Also fancy Page Counters and Guest Books.

Pah! it was OK, suffered with a lack of attention to detail I thought

Rocket Money ?

The Black Hole ?

This is a shame this project has hit a rocky patch. I think it's amazing what you are doing here with your project @johnparker007 and I have a huge respect for your abilities and am very thankful that you are active in the FME scene to move things forward like this. FME is dependant upon special people like you and Wizard, Dialtone, Guitar etc. to drive things forward from a coding, feature and experience perspective. I also completely agree with what Reg is saying here, and fully understand the reasons behind it. I only ask that you take the time to move on from the frustration you feel at the moment with regard this separation of MFME and that whilst I understand it is in conflict with your strive for perfection that hopefully in time you can accept those reasons and find a way to compromise on this issue.

Happy belated birthday Chris - still amazed at what you did and hope you can see all the work that continues here.

Great news on the correct sound ROMs being sourced. I hope I don't offend people here but what a boring looking machine! but what a wonderful sound package, as was the norm from Maygay during this period of licensed (or shall I dare say unlicensed) sound samples. Amazing to see resources still being located after all these years.

I do love what you are doing here John with the 3d arcade, but I have to say that for many of us in this scene Haze caused a shitstorm which ultimately left, in my own opinion, us all in the dumps for some time. Haze came on the scene, all the ROMs collected by this scene over the years he grabbed and sorted and put into Mame, and then he disappeared. Along the way there was arguments about MFME using components of MAME for some CPU cores which ultimately resulted in MFME being pulled and no new versions of anything for years. I have to say I was impressed with Haze in the beginning and it looked like a new lease of life for FME at that time, but it promised so much and delivered nothing but a dead scene in my view. If it was not for MFME being released again after some time we would never have moved on forward again. I maybe the ignorant and uninformed here but FME in MAME has been looked at for years but without someone who actually cares and has passion about the machines and is willing to build upon the emulation provided by MAME with regard to graphics, design tools, interface elements then it will never progress. Sorry to sound negative, and I hope it works out for you as you do seem to be genuinely interested in FME and actually have produced something in the 3d arcade which is very special indeed.

When I found out about Chris passing away it affected me (and continues to) more deeply than I ever would have reasonably expected to feel, after all I had great admiration for Chris's work but I never knew him as a person. I reached out to family and friends of Chris when he passed away. I don't know why I felt the need to do this other than I felt that I wanted to understand more about Chris as a person and also especially that I just wanted for people to understand how much his genius and dedication provided to a scene of hobbyists, and how much his work continues to both help, provide memories and entertain people. I did reach out to one of his work colleagues, Mark, and had a brief conversation, after some time passed I had a PM from another of his colleagues called Ainsley, and this is his response (which he is happy to share with you all) Ainsley: Hello Simon, I am a former Avaya workmate of Chris Wren. So it was a with great shock and sorrow I read the post you sent to Mark on the 20th Oct this year about Chris’s passing. Personally, I worked side-by-side with Chris for over of 20 years and spent many hours with him in the course of this time. Me: Hello Ainsley, nice to hear from a colleague who worked with Chris and knew him on a personal level. I knew Chris as ‘Wizard’ which was the name he went by on various internet emulation scene forums relating to Fruit Machine and SWP emulation. He spent years coding a windows application to emulate various fruit machine technologies. It’s a very niche emulation community of which he is the founder. His own interest and hobby in this area provided a challenge to him which he started around 2001/2 with the first release of his windows based emulation called fruit.exe. In the beginning this only emulated a single technology MPU3. By 2020 his program, later called MFME emulated over 15 technologies which span almost all fruit machines released over the past 40 years. Its considered by all of us involved in this emulation scene to be a gift given to us by a dedicated genius and without his work we would have never seen this area of emulation borne into existence. Many of us spoke with Wizard in forum PMs etc over the years and he was always very helpful but many of us never knew him as a person and it would be great to hear from you on what he was like, we assumed he would have been somewhat introverted and considered geeky/ nerdy by some but in my opinion people like Wizard should not live in the shadows and instead be given all of the credit and acknowledgement of their individual accomplishments. Many of us reached out to his family to explain how well thought of he was. We understand it came as a shock to the family how much his work helped people especially with helping some cure their gambling addictions. He was a special person for what he provided to many people. He will be greatly missed by all of us. Ainsley: Thanks for your response and sharing your thoughts. We are all shocked to hear the news. For more than 20 years I worked with Chris on Avaya IP Office PBX solutions. Chris was one of the main developers that worked to establish this product as the bestselling small/medium PBX system and sold by British Telecom. Chris left Avaya sometime in 2017/18 and it saddens me to consider I hadn’t spoken to him since and to hear this awful news is overwhelming. As programmer the complexity and depth of this knowledge knew no bounds and was simply mind-blowingly brilliant. I recall working with him as a test engineer in the development of the VoIP interface for the system. He at the time would endeavour to explain how the traffic prioritisation of the voice packets verses signalising and data no-critical data traffic was managed on a ring buffer, but often at times it was lost on me; quite frankly he was a brilliant programmer. I recall my time with him as enjoyable, rewarding and educational. As you have correctly surmised, he was an intensely private person and outside working hours we never saw him. I remember his warm friendly, quiet and gentle personality that just radiated intelligence in conversation and most enjoyable company in the bar. He was always first with new tech, and back in around 2005 he was the first to acquire TomTom navigation system which he patched together and got working in his Impreza 2000 at the time. It is typical of the man to dedicate his free time to a community you have described, yet he did not seek to impress those around him at work as he spoke little of it. We knew Chris interest in pin ball machines and emulators, but I guess none us understood the full scale of this hobby and the community of followers. The world is gloomier place knowing CJW has departed from us.

Hi John, I have been watching the progress of this forum thread over time and I have to say how impressed I am with what you are doing. It was a really sad and continues to be difficult time with the news we all had in this scene with the passing of Wizard. I cannot begin to imagine how pleased he would have been to find that gifted individuals such as yourself would continue to innovate and add to the already brilliant work he did with MFME. Good luck with all of this, and looking forward to seeing it continue to progress over time.

Geddy, what you have done for this scene over the years has been brilliant and whilst I have dipped in and out of FME I have always known that I can contact you at anytime to get back up to speed. Without your hard work over the past 20 years we would not have had the back catalogue of every layout available to us. Thank you for everything you have done mate.

@Yippee Nice to hear from you and I hope things are OK with you, it's been a while.

Thanks so much for this video, which is heart felt and respectful. I'm not the best with words but I am at the same point with you on how it feels running MFME now without it's creator being present. I hope that feeling changes with time. Great to hear Bungle's guitar track as well. I really hope you continue with your FME videos because I really enjoy them and it provides another angle to FME which is just not text based. I have to be honest in all of this lately I have really missed the days or IRC when we could have chatted in real time about things. What this community has done here over the last few days has been amazing and I am proud to be part of it even though we fall on hard times now.

The message which came in from Amy and the contact from his cousin (on the shoutbox) is what makes this bearable and gives hope. It's so amazing to know that the family are now aware of how much Chris provided for this community and as an introvert he would not be one to shout that from the roof tops so I am sure they would not have been aware. I can't load MFME at the moment and I'm sure it will be some time before I can, but I hope that I can again in the future when the grief turns into more positive thoughts.

To Chris, Thanks for your creation which you shared with us all to enjoy over the years. MFME provides me with the opportunity to remember the memories, times and places in my life especially throughout the 1990s. The most important thing MFME provides me with is memories of playing particular machines with my best friend who passed away a few years ago. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to remember those times. Rest well my friend. Si.

I feel exactly the same as you, and I couldn't have summed it up better. I also did not know Chris personally but as I have used his software almost daily for the past 19 years then it binds to those same emotions of knowing a person for the same amount of time and the grief is processed the same. I am really happy that Chris's family may read these posts in time and see the power of what he has achieved. Achievements and progression in our world are generally made by gifted genius individuals who possess intellect, creativity and dedication which all fuse together in a strive for perfection which unlock those things for us all to then benefit from and enjoy. MFME is an example of this and I am so glad to have had the opportunity to speak with Chris throughout the years about his passion.

Very sad news. Wizard, we are blessed to have been given the opportunity to come along with you on the development of MFME. MFME is your legacy and it's a piece of software that has both born a brilliant community and genuinely helped people, such as myself, to control the real world addiction. RIP Wizard, thank you for sharing your genius with us.