slotsmagic

I didn't have experience of anything prior to Cobra 3, but I planned on copying my TOTP disc which had one decent scratch on it. I was pretty well versed in *ahem* backing up media, but never did have any joy making a working dump of it. I'm glad working dumps are out there, means even though I failed people can still enjoy these and possibly repair what few remain! I'm not sure of what you mean by ROMdisk - most machines pre-2000 as you'll be aware used normal EPROMs. Are ROMdisks more like what modern machines use, whereby instead of socketed ICs, there is something embedded onto the board, like USB updatable flash memory?

I've already shared them I think, most of them were already available. When I say Storm, I mean Storm Games (mainly club £400/£500 jackpot simple games), not the Storm Fobt cabinets running Astra and Blueprint content. Also got older Thunderbolt stuff from the £250 jackpot era. In any case I've kept hard drive images from every machine I've owned so if needs be I can sort bits out and share them. As long as I don't get banned or sued

A lot of them are the same. My Astra / Novomatics cabinets used a Firefox PC and backplane combo, where the backplane handled I/O. My Storm Games cabinets used a very basic Dell office PC, but combined with a Paylink board for lamps, switches, and coin handling. The PC on the T7 was only connected directly to the displays (video output and USB touchscreen input) and amp / speakers - everything else was done via the MPU5 or MPU6, which the PC communicated with over USB. With the Storm cabinet, one nice thing is you can run the PC without peripherals and the games can run, albeit in demo mode.

I did wonder if the author might have unintentionally pissed off MAME. I seem to recall that whilst you can use MAME components in standalone emulators, you have to follow their rules to the letter. I'm sure Chris fell foul of that at some point in the past too. Purely speculation on my part though and entirely possible there is something simpler going on

It looks like the emulator has been removed from archive.org for some reason. Hopefully just temporary and the author is just working on tweaks and will upload another version soon. Don't know for sure though. The emulator was a separate file to the 'cobra3roms' which is the big download with the game data. So if it does get released don't worry, it's a much smaller download of a few megabytes

The content being shown online will be video captured from an original T7 PC, I can say that with 100% confidence. But that isn't to say nobody has worked on, or is working on an emulator. I'd love to see them emulated

A T7 PC is just an industrial PC chassis from the late 2000s (dual core Celeron), old AMD graphics cards in the early ones, from memory based on the X300 series. Later ones used an S3 graphics card which is rare / daft. The game licensing is handled entirely by a Sentinel HASP USB stick, no need for separate game cards like you had with the eRio PCs in earlier single game cabinets, although there is also an MPU5 or MPU6 for handling IO with the coins, notes, buttons, e.t.c. and if there isn't one present the machine won't work. So you could basically have a PC, and MPU, and you might also need coin mech, notey and hopper, and you could basically run a T7 on a desktop - definitely for real money mode. Got demo / door open mode you might be able to skip some components but then you'll be stuck in demo mode with cheats enabled. Then you've got the murky world of converting T7 PCs to run T8 content. Which is a doddle now but I imagine figuring it out took some skills

Pretty sure that as said it'll be video capture from a T7 cabinet. But if you want confirmation get in touch with the person behind the channel. If there is a software T7/T8 emulator currently available I'll eat my hat

I believe he is just capturing the video outputs from a T7/T8 PC, much like streamers will capture the output from games consoles e.t.c. to show gameplay.

It is, I used to really enjoy it hence why I bought it. Not a 'cheap' way to pass the time, not the best value for money, but was a reliable thing to play and not too taxing. I probably had rose-tinted specs on when I gave my stats above about being an easy JP on 5 discs and 12+ seconds but it is doable at that point - but yes it does get happier and happier to the point where it gifts it via the bonus discs, something other SWPs won't necessarily do - assuming you get enough questions right in the first 5 rounds to get enough seconds anyway Glad you enjoy it, and am having a similar experience to me. I think Telly Addicts, or Radio Times - I forget which one it was - in the college lounge was the same basic thing. Had plenty of £5 jackpots off it but can't remember much about it so I'll have to give that a battering next. Only unfortunate thing is I can't get Cheat Engine to speed it up, unlike some other SWPs, so there's no high-speed way to bang credits through

That was my issue with MAME, and also Retroarch to a similar extent. Too much choice - to the point where I never really bothered with them. But when I have standalone emulators - be it MFME, or a console (like my 3DS I use for Gameboy / GBC / GBA / DS / 3DS games) I load them up and play a small range of games I enjoy (or occasionally add a new game). Maybe I'm just old fashioned like that. Standalone emulators are like a comfy pair of slippers. I made a similar mistake with emulation as I did with music and stuff back in the day. I used to grab anything and everything. Now I just go for bands I like, either grab a decent Greatest Hits (official or fan made), maybe an original album if it's a band I really like and every track is a hit. To some extent that is why I like the system here of not having the complete library as a single download, as useful as some people may find it. I wouldn't be against it, but I prefer to search for games I like, based on look, style, jackpot value. If I had everything I'd play 1% of it or get overwhelmed

Ours were set at 10% back in the day (toy cost £2, vend price £20 (so £20 of credits before the machine would lock on to the prize and attempt to drop it down the chute)). That was in 2008 and I'm sure that was pretty standard practice.

Yes, especially on the CRT tubes these used. Playing them on a modern LCD monitor or TV will show up imperfections that you would never have noticed on a CRT set, so it would have looked very close to the quality you'd have seen on your TV at home watching a live broadcast. The only thing it is missing really would be dip switch settings which I believe are needed to change the prize level. I much prefer the £5 jackpot version, even if only because it's quicker to force out You never told us, or if you did it got buried I'm a sucker for a standalone emulator where possible anyway, especially on a PC. Less so on a dedicated retro games unit (Raspberry Pi, e.t.c.).

I don't think there are that many emptier posts. It's pretty quiet here. Emptiers are pretty much dead and buried in the digital random era anyway, most of the ones discussed here are more like historical curiosities. I like seeing how the people were leaving machines dead for me back in the day. I didn't have to play them -yes I had an addiction, and I should have sought help - but my failure to do so rests on my shoulders, nobody else's. Besides, the size of the CHD files make make hosting them here a bit awkward. Not sure how much bandwidth the site has but if everyone who is active these days grabbed the 2GB set from this site it would take quite a battering. I'm actually pleasantly surprised with archive.org - downloaded the full set in under a minute. I expected there to be some kind of download speed limit! Also, we can't be sure that the person you have quoted is the emulator author. If they are and want to distance themselves from it, great. They may also just be someone who found it (I don't follow FME other than on here) - so maybe it's been discussed elsewhere and the member you quoted wanted to keep us up to date? I certainly wouldn't want to scare off / annoy someone who is clearly capable and bringing something new and exciting to the table.

It's the same for all SWPs, including those aimed at kids (ticket payout). Min 30% and max 50%. I'm surprised you are shocked, I've mentioned it loads on other threads But - in their defence - I used to love playing the TOTP with dad. OK the payout percentage isn't great. But you were guaranteed a couple of minutes of fun for your quid, unlike an AWP on 70% where £1 might give 4 dead spins lasting 8 seconds. You can work with whoever you are playing with, it's a bit more social than slotting. Ours was always on the original £5 jackpot, on £1 play. It was a pretty easy force. Don't think it ever cost more than a tenner to do. Can't remember the other games as much but with TOTP it is pretty progressive. As it gets happier it'll start giving more and more bonus discs, and start giving 4 questions per round instead of 3. If you walk up and it only offers say one bonus discs, it'll be a costly force. If it offers plenty it should be about ready. I reckon 12+ seconds and 5 bonus discs and you'd have to be absolutely inebriated to not get the jackpot. 10 seconds and 3 bonus discs and it's doable but you'll have to be bloody quick and get some good luck with the answers. Not sure if they realised the 'power' of the bonus discs fully. The fact they move you up on a losing guess, and you have a 1/3 chance of guessing the correct answer with your eyes closed, normally means a case of trying to get the first couple of questions right, then spamming any button and hoping you get enough right - plus the bonus discs - to get you into the Top 3. Then if you have time left and aren't at the jackpot, you can try and use skill to move up to the jackpot.

Oh it's not that bad. Probably only recorded over once, but done so in super long play mode Having owned the original TOTP (the very same unit I used to play in the wild - bought it from a local operator when the pub it was in was bulldozed), it always made me laugh that they used video but the audio is some generic stuff on top. Probably done for intellectual property reasons, but in that case I'm not sure they should have used the videos either I genuinely don't think good quality video compression was a thing back then, would have definitely been pre-DivX and similar codecs.

Yes I tried tinkering in test mode but winding the volume up to maximum didn't make much difference. Absolutely playable mind and my PC audio setup is beefy (hi fi amp and floor standing speakers) so I can overcome the limitation... although any other sounds from other apps would probably blow my bedroom windows out

Can you give more details? Do you remember what jackpot level it was, did it have sound effects, did it have a feature board, that sort of thing.

Works for me!! Lovely bit of nostalgia. Volume was very low, didn't get a chance to play properly but assume it can be sorted via test mode, which you should be able to access using the info in the keyboard shortcuts. Hard to believe these games are so big (they were CD based) - the days before efficient video compression I guess

Replied to wrong thread, sorry

Seems like a good idea! My plan (before using actual coin validators instead) was going to be similar- but using a leaf switch, and relying on the mass of the £1 coin being sufficient to trigger it, but yours is more elegant and (I assume) less likely to fail / jam.

Hi, So basically what you need for the artwork for a fruit machine layout layout are lit and unlit images of the machine, with enough resolution to make small text visible. 1440/2160px tall are more common than the older 1080px tall layouts these days. I think you can go to a maximum of 8000px or thereabouts but that's absolute overkill really. Not that there is any harm in keeping base artwork at that spec, but for a layout it's a bit excessive. Then again, we are all individuals and there's no set rules Quite often what I (and presumably others) do is make make an 'unlit' image - might be a scan of a flyer, might be photos of the machine, or might be actual scans of the machine glass. We'll then try and get a decent looking unlit image, using whatever tools we have, might be a case of adjusting brightness, contrast, maybe copying and pasting bits, all with the aim to get an image that looks like the machine in a totally 'off' state, and save that image. We then set to work about 'lamping' a clone of that image - going over all the areas that would be lit on the real machine, lightening them using our tool of choice. I'm a mix of self-taught and oldskool, I use new layers in Photoshop, colour dodge and brush tool, to 'brighten' the areas of the machine that are lit, and apply different colourisation as needed (to replicate red, green, blue or yellow lamps). Once you have lit and unlit artwork, you can actually (but I still don't, I'm oldskool) just load them into MFME and it'll generate a set of lamps based on differences between the lit and unlit. I make lamps from scratch and then apply transparency. Extra work and probably not as good an effect, but you can't teach an old dog new tricks

Thanks to everyone keeping this thread up to date. I have yet to try MAME for any FME stuff but great to see progress, so thanks again for keeping us up to date with any developments

Absolutely. I'm sure I experienced it more than once and like you, I went out armed with a large float of £1 coins. So perhaps it only hit the players who were more likely to get annoyed and frustrated (like me) who believed that ultimately - 'the machine must pay what it owes, surely'?! Doesn't help that on £25 and £35 jackpots a £100 top is entirely possible. So there's nothing at all suspicious about someone putting in £100 of £1 coins. That seems a despicably low volume of £1 coins 'in a row'. If anything it's more like a 'rinse the addict' mode rather than anything to stop competition.