johnparker007

You're doing amazing work man! I'll def check in with David about the new ROMs - they're spread across the platforms, but I noticed a large showing of MPU5 games...

I think for now just doing this based on the legacy section will be a good stage in the process, the only thing it won't protect against is: Hacked texts might be obvious ("JOHN PRESENTS ADDERS & LADDERS" etc) though would still need to be checked by a human... roms hacked to run in MFME, not so obvious. I need to do all this work anyway, I'll check in with David when I need to talk to him about all this stuff in general, see what he reckon is best

Does the fruit machine dat have muchother info per ROM, such as Manufacturer, Platform (MPU3/Scorpion 4/etc?) For ones that are not emulated by MFME (ie in the legacy section as part of a working layout) this could be super useful, as the emulation bugs can be ultimately worked out in MAME to get them running (with exception of maybe some MPU6/Scorp 6 protection stuff). For the ones with layouts, there's more that I can pull over (damn only realising now, I've got to doo all the scraper work for these per tech Config pages yet!): Which are then useful for the MAME driver, e.g: for MPU4, these settings lead to which sub-driver they end up in, or inform setting up of 'traits'.

Yeah I have talked about this with David many moons ago, there was a large collection they used. I'd not thought about this, but this will be a real preservation push! As while I'm currently just running this for the 'selected' layout per Dif Legacy Section game folder (the one autochosen as best candidate to make a MAME internal classic for debugging/playtesting)... I can run it again, but for all the layouts... So I should be able to generate some kind of spreadsheet/csv, that will list every missing ROM from the dif legacy section, along with various stuff like its tech platform, DIP settings, name, manufacturer etc - along with the zipped ROMset and sound ROMs. I'll have to talk to the MAME guys about how best to get all these in - there's always more work haha! Once they're officially in, I can do a second pass, to generate their internal classic layouts.

Found a couple of other minor issues, but think it's all working correctly now, I recorded kicking this big batch process off for those interested Worried when the first 3 'AC Games' roms printed up NO MATCH! But then things settled down, so these AC Games are just not added to MAME (yet, that will be another part of this work, to get all missing ROMs in dif legacy added to correct mame drivers with related metadata). I saw the odd NO MATCH flash up with the Ace ones that followed, so MAME is clearly a bit behind on the ROMs front... I suspect it will only be some manufacturers/techs... I'll code up some basic auditing probably Sunday, so I can generate a report of missing ROMs per tech, and work out how best to get them added to MAME

I think I'm there with the coding for the automatic Mame rom identification process now The mame rom name circled in purple was auto-populated into my big layout database via this new system: I'm going to set it running to process all the 'autochosen' layouts for making the MAME classics now, and keep an eye on it (in case of crashes) as I go about my Saturday chores. Looked to be around 5-6 seconds per layout so the ~3,000 layouts should get processed today, unless it runs into an issue I've not seen in the mini-test of the SRU layouts I'm expecting a small fraction of the very new rom dumps to not be in MAME, so they will then be able to be packaged up, and added to the relevant MAME drivers as separate work, ready for current/future emulation.

There is not, it is full screen mode only (this had to be the case, due to the various stuff I have to do to make MFME scraping work with it). I also use OBS when I record videos of Arcade Sim to demo stuff in development - these are my OBS settings, I think the key thing is having it set to capture display (see purple arrow): then it'll record even full screen games... (You might not see a very good framerate while you are recording, as recording adds additional load so needs a hefty PC).

Very long day at work today, still managed to squeeze in a bit of time on the automated MAME rom identification though Here I have my early code batch calling Mame to get its output for trying to identify the layouts on SRU platform only: Looks like around 5 seconds per id, so fine for this big one off batch task. Next step is getting very latest mame.exe, and generating a full gamelist... so then I can take the MAME output, and step through the 'words', until I find a match - if I do, then I've got a valid MAME ROM name I can apply to the data for that layout (so when I'm ultimately converting them all, I'll have the correct name MAME is expecting for the layout).

Turning my attention back to some batch processing now the majority of the required MFME 2nd stage scraping setup (pending testing) is done So the next job is back to working on the 3k layout definitions that were auto-picked to be used, and getting the relevant MAME rom name populated. Not a job to be done manually as there are so many layouts ... but there is a handy function of MAME; 'romident' - so I can run a rom from each layout through MAME and get back the specific MAME romset name (if present in the latest MAME) - here's some manual testing, not got all the batching stuff set up yet: May ultimately want these mapped to 'parent' romset name, but I'll figure that out later... it takes around 5-7 seconds to identify a Rom, so say 8 seconds total * 3,000 roms == 24,000 seconds, which is only around 7 hours to actually do this step once all the batch coding stuff is properly set up

No virtual wallet system implemented at present, it's a feature for the future. Yes, the arcade can be larger, and will be able to contain multiple copies of the same machine That twinned with the issue you had with reels suggests that your PC is only just about able to run Arcade Sim, the new 'attract mode' videos feature requires a hefty CPU, and probably also struggles on slow spinning hard drives. There will be a 'lite' mode of this in future, that will just cycle through 3 images per game (and still have the game sounds), for laptop users etc, but it's not built yet. I'd recommend disabling the settings ringed in purple, exit to the main menu and reload the arcade, and you should find it all runs a bit smoother on your laptop It auto-updates itself on startup - so when new patches become available, they install when you next load up Arcade Sim So everyone is on the latest version. There won't be any updates for another 3-6 months, as there's a ton of other work needs doing to continue improving FME with AS - but when there is, you will receive it automatically.

Also have come up with a quick fix for another longstanding issue; extracting layouts where they are not very wide, and so the menu bar spills onto another row, e.g: It is a quick fix (a one line special ), and only works for the extraction stage - but that's all we care about for now For making future new AS machines whose actual emulation is driven by MFME I would need to deal with these manually - but I think it's ok to kick that can down the road... considering all the work for a long time is going to be around MAME dev / integrating latest raw MAME.EXE into AS as the default emulation backend (hoping to keep support for MFME emulation backend as a legacy Windows-only option, but it's not the focus) - i.e: for MAME-driven machines, once the layout has been extracted, MFME is no longer involved in the process, so this menu bar overspill won't be an issue.

Well it's all a bit hacky, as is tradition, but finally got the '£' character scraping working! (this layout extraction issue has been lurking around for like 6+ months)

Not dreamed, but for now that's an internal feature, it's nowhere near ready for actual release - it's all being built so that users will be able to build and share their own arcades - the internal editor being used to create the current test arcade layout: So this feature will be available at a future point. The MFME RAMs are saved, so if you hammer a machine, it'll play tight when you next play it etc. Not your imagination - it's an somewhat complex issue with various solutions - all options will require a ton of dev work... Bonanza is another example of a very bright layout. So for now you're stuck with them! One option is to disable Bloom from the ingame settings menu while playing the bright ones, it will help a bit - it's a crappy workaround though I know! If the reels are bouncing too much, this is due to a crude reel physics implementation so if the CPU is struggling, they will bounce a lot - you can remedy this by disabling 'Reel Physics' from the ingame settings menu. The insert coin alarms, known issue, especially on the JPMs - I have plans to address this after the MAME work is done. They will need the Genesis cab doing first, there will be a lot more fruti machines in future - I've just done a release freeze here, as I have lots of low level work for redoing improved emulation.

I have a 48" TV at the end of my bed that I do the development/playtesting on... I have tried sitting very close to the TV with the bedroom lights off, so the arcade is all I could see filling my vision, to get a sneak preview of VR (future feature) - it does feel very immersive! Not sure about pulling the sickie though lol It'll still be installed on your PC when you get home later!

Always nice to hear of someone enjoying the project! The current focus of the work is FME within MAME, so that we can do more with better FME/video games/online multiplayer going forward with more features etc (by using latest MAME to drive the emulation). So this means it'll be a long time (3-6 months) before any kind of update to Arcade Simulator... but there will lots of Barcrest mid-90s era games in Genesis cabinets on the way The only 'no-no' (for now) is Nintendo video games, as they have a habit of being highly litigious around hobby projects like this.