johnparker007
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Posts posted by johnparker007
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8 hours ago, Altharic said:
The DS emulator for android is free at the moment worth a download if you don't own it already
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dsemu.drastic
Esp with Citra and Yuzu being zapped by the relentless Nintendo...they just really struggle to understand the emu scene!
So tiresome lol
I avoided any Nintendo machines in Arcade Sim, and am already considering a Nintendo block on the online library of 'official' Oasis machines that can be used, just so they don't turn up and trash the party because we have an official Donkey Kong machine in the Arcade Machine LIbrary. They've had sooo long to calm down and get with the scene, and it's still relentless BS 
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Another tech update
We now have a custom dll working, this is so that the MFME Tools copy of MFME.exe will not interact with the actual MFME registry (it doesn't do the 'turbo startup' stuff as we aren't using MFME for any actual emulation, just for the layouts). Also the early stage of the extraction process now working, to launch MFME using the custom Oasis Windows registry:
Here you can see various stages logging out their info to the Windows GUI version of MFME Tools (this window will be hidden when extracting layouts via Oasis Layout Editor):
Quick vid of the above:
I also have pulled over the system for sending 'fake' mouse/keyboard input (used to control MFME for extracting/injecting layouts).
The next big task now is to tackle rewriting a new improve system for capturing the content of the MFME main and child windows - the previous system was very Unity-specific, and this MFME Tools module is non-Unity by design... so that will probably take quite a while to develop, though we'll see... maybe it won't be too bad
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Add handy console to the standalone GUI for MFME Tools. This log is also available to Layout Editor (when MFME Tools is invoked from there for layout extraction) which will also have its own output console as a dockable tab.
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23 minutes ago, slotsmagic said:
They are ticket payout, and operated under the same law as pull-tab lottery tickets in private member's clubs. You get a barcoded ticket, change it up at the bar (although from experience they normally needed you to visit the club treasurer / secretary for wins over £500).
Hopefully the ticket payout is emulated in MFME, I'd not expect it to be unless there is some kind of hack that just bypasses it?
I tried the Fortune 2000 ROMs in @vectra666's Fortune 500 layout out of interest, it fails to boot with the Wrong Sound ROM error. Removing the sound rom entirely instead gives the Missing Sound ROM error. I'm not au fait with setting these up, perhaps this can be bypassed...
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10 minutes ago, infection said:
There is a 3 player all grand rio grande Which us a £1000
Big prizes indeed!
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39 minutes ago, vectra666 said:
We have roms if runnable I could make it by Sunday the £2000 one it’ll be the highest jackpot emulated so far
£2000?! Holy jackpots batman, that's crazy!
Maybe not to online slots folk, but jeez, £2k - that is a chunk to win (or most likely lose of course charging it up!)
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Minor tech update for those interested
Have ported over the system from Arcade Sim alpha, that hunts out the MFME.exe from the user's machine, for those users wishing to extract layouts (this will be done via a 'native' dialog within the Layout Editor itself, the standard Windows UI is provided for future use/testing):You will see the MFME.exe appear in the folder local to the MFME Tools module on launch, also the text box populates. Next steps are:
- porting a paired down project to encapsulate the necessary .dll 'detouring' to control a custom copy of the Windows Registry (as used for Arcade Sim alpha)
- copying the .gm to the MFME Tools copy and cleaning out the ROM refs etc, we don't want the layout trying to boot/doing popups related to missing ROMs
- launching MFME with the detour hacks in place with a controlled 2x popup max
After this there is much more, to build the robust version of how I was extracting layouts, to be covered in future tech updates
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Just now, infection said:
That's bellfruit
Ah apologies
Just reread the thread title, I see it's a Millionaire's Row machine from Reflex - sorry about that!
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2 hours ago, infection said:
Millionaires row no dx?
Good list
...of that list, one jumped out - there is a @Pook BFM Monopoly Millionaire's Row at a decent resolution (if that's the one you meant):
Otherwise, didn't spot any more, but Window Search is chuffing sloooow! But this one deffo has a high quality DX (checked on Community Drive and this is one Pook has uploaded the high-ish res base resources for too):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aVwpw1gSo-N4JEdJS3Se-8PsFFjtTYDf?usp=drive_link
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4 hours ago, thealteredemu said:
If I recall a lot of the samples loop I made for this are aphex twin inspired
. I’m a huge fan
J
Some well crafted tunez from that guy
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11 hours ago, OmniUK said:
is there anything none boffin people can be helping you with
Not much at this very early stage unfortunately. Once we get to the stage where 'classic' layouts (that are mainly text based with just a few graphics and graphical reel bands), can be extracted and imported, edited, and then exported as MAME 'internal' pure text layouts - there will be a ton of labelling work, so that we can get the internal layouts for fruit machines (that get built into MAME.exe) to a complete state. This in turn will provide a lot more incentive for coders to work on MAME to iron out the many bugs, config issues, missing devices etc, that will result in MAME getting the various fruit machine techs to full compatibility (it's currently quite behind MFME).
Meanwhile, I will be working on the graphical/3d side so then the community can get the 1000s of 2d layouts converted/expanded into 3d machines.
So, in the future, there will be plenty more stuff the community can do, without programming skills - just not there yet
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53 minutes ago, OmniUK said:
the Shark steam mop box
Exactly mate! My whitewood virtual pinball setup was 2x TVs (42" and 32") and a monitor on an extending dining table - I had some kind of very sturdy post office cardboard box underneath it (the playfield 42" TV) with some leaf switches and a plunger, all screwed into the thick box - once you were playing and in the zone, you didn't even notice the cardboard framing - it is always the way to prototype first
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10 minutes ago, OmniUK said:
I have yet to try, but I've been reading the threads and looking at your plans for this and it's so exciting. I can see how ambitious this is, and how long it's going to take solo - it's really good this is on github.
The original 'old' Arcade Sim code is intentionally not on github btw, as it was somewhat a proof-of-concept, so I don't feel it's a good/constructive idea to put it on there. It's reasonably well-coded to be fair, but we don't want a bunch of Arcade Sim clones floating around at this early stage
The new Oasis version [of Arcade Sim and associated projects] is all about the whole community being able to build the 3d machines and the layouts (for at least fruit+video games initially); in Arcade Sim I had to build everything myself in the internal format to make stuff work, and the community could only play those machines I built, so it was both a lot of work for me, but of course unsustainable as a scene project everyone can share effort in (and also boringly passive for those creative scene members). It wasn't an oversight as such, more that I needed to figure out if it was even possible to run full arcades with 100s of machines, with many onscreen at once. Fortunately, as we can see from Arcade Sim v1, it totally is doable!
The current offerings (mainly New Retro Arcade Neon, and also a new project Arcade Time Capsule which looks very nice) have severe limitations (in my opinion) in terms of fully custom arcades (no vision for truly custom arcade layouts, no true multiplayer, no fruit machines, no pinball, no coin pushers, no indoor minigolf, no pool etc etc), and also they intentionally don't pack the machines close as a workaround to deal with performance issues (unlike Arcade Sim v1 which can run closely packed machines as per a real arcade without issue, as it was built from the ground up to handle that). These performance architectural implementations translate to potentially running native on mobile phones, (non-tethered) VR headsets etc.
I have reached out already and had great dialog with the author of the new Time Capsule project, it sounds like we can work out some 3d model sharing in the future, as the creator is also a good 3d artist and has created a bunch of great authentic video game cabinets for his project (which would look great in Oasis).
Apologies, got side-tracked with waffling lol, but that is the vision anyway And while I'm working slow right now, things should pick up, and once we get to a certain level, we should get to the 'MAME model' where other coders come and also work on it, rather than just me (and it is already being built from the ground up to facilitate 2d layout artist contributions, much like MFME).
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5 minutes ago, OmniUK said:
it's incredible that there is still such activity
If you've not seen it, and you like the fruit machines, you might be interested in Arcade Simulator:
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1 hour ago, OmniUK said:
I've just set up a cardboard box stuffed with real machine buttons, hooked up to a Pico2040 for control and a pacdrive with relays for 12v LEDs.
I did a very similar thing when I was getting into virtual pinball cabinets, a sturdy cardboard box with buttons installed is a great way to start these virtual cabinet projects
It's the emulation hardware equivalent of measure twice, cut once - good luck with your project
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31 minutes ago, OmniUK said:
This thread has turned out to be great, thanks all. I'll certainly look at the tool. I'm dedicated, but not code literate so we'll see how that pans out.
Appreciate the heads up on various ROMs/hacks!
The tool isn't compiled into an .exe, just the source code project... I only developed it far enough to make some custom sound ROMs (ya know to prove it was doable, as is often the way with my projects lol
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What platform are you looking to make a custom sound ROM for? I think I only coded ADPCM format so far, that covers MPU4 and some other less common techs, but I don't quite remember. I was going to sort out some interleaved stuff (maybe sc4/5?) but I didn't get round to that yet. I've just tested a build and it's very not finished - I can load and patch sounds, but not save them back to a compiled ROM.
Here's the build, but someone needs to do more on the code probably, unfortunately we are severely short of programmers in the FME scene, and I'm struggling for both health and time at the mo... when I'm up to it, I really need to keep chipping away at Oasis project.
Sorry that's probably not much use for the moment! I'm sure I'll get to it one day, but not right now
Edit: full source code for this tool as it stands is in my forum sig below.
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3 minutes ago, MPU_FIVE said:
Hey, @thealteredemu... Is this the layout you are talking about? It rang a bell when i read this thread and so i looked in my FME collection, and here this is. (It is still on Fruit-Emu too as i just did a quick google search for it.)
All the best,
Gary.
I see 'Fuzion Design' in the background, I think it's @thealteredemu's work, good find!
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2 hours ago, infection said:
Do we have roms for camelot
I only see roms for a JPM version and an ACE version in a recent ROM collection from @Geddy, also none in MAME. Looks like a Reflex sc 4/5/6...
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On 24/02/2024 at 07:26, OmniUK said:
Sound would seem to be the problem, as I can't directly find a tool that can pack/unpack samples from the sound ROMs. Did a tool for this ever emerge? I can't code, so there's no chance I could produce my own, but it seems entirely possible as the old source code is there.
I did half-start a tool (a modern Windows tool with a GUI) for doing this, worked on a few techs, more were to follow, but I've been under the weather, plus a bunch of other FME projects require my attention these days!
Here's a demo of someone using a rom created by the tool (so the feature board music normally isn't the official Ghostbusters, but a short loop of similar synth Ghostbusters music):
The source code is here (all my projects going forward are open source so all code is always available). If someone has the time and a basic knownledge of coding etc, they could expand this to cover most/all techs, and also improve the UI etc:[ Sound ROM Editor ] Source code: https://github.com/johnparker007/SoundRomEditor
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I have just tried the 'Unpack Blended Lamps' operation on the high resolution Indiana Jones layout; it reported unpacking I believe 10x blended lamps. Then running the 10x sped up attract mode, it seems to have made some improvement to the stutter when viewing in non-Edit (DirectX shim scaled) mode. In Edit mode (no DirectX scaling), it runs at full speed as in the previous test.
So Unpack Blended Lamps can help, but for severe slowdown, I'd also recommend doing stategies like the one outlined above, to reduce the net volume of blended pixels to be rendered. Another technique that I believe may be workable and help is; where you have your overlapping blended lamps, such as the 'Jones' in my tutorial above, you can also make one of the blended overlay lamps non-blended - so this would entail as one suggested workflow, capture the lamp in its On state rendering on the layout (all other lamps in Off state, acquire transparent pixels by layer subtraction against the background image). Then by placing that single no-longer-blended lamp at the lowest z order (Send to back), the other overlaid Blended lamps can blend with it, and I think the appearance should be identical, whilst drawing one less blended lamp. -
1 hour ago, thealteredemu said:
Could someone upload a decent DX that has the blended lamping slowdown issue please. I might have a solution, though it's extra work, if it even works
Is it the blended lamping that slows things down or is it emulator issues?
J
Hiya mate
I did have a brief look into this MFME render issue before, I've just done a quick vid demo of @Pook's Indiana Jones layout, showing the issue. Basically, if you have a lot of blended lamp overall 'area', I think that's where you see more problems. Internally, MFME still runs a CPU based Delphi graphics buffer to put its graphics together. There is then some kind of shim on the end, that makes that into a DirectX texture (when in normal mode). This DirectX shim is not in place during Edit mode (as the layout is not scaled in the same way).
I've sped up MFME here with cheat engine (rather than try get jackpots), and you can see, it has slowdown to 1-2FPS when in normal mode (layout scaled to window via the DirectX shim code), but when in Edit mode, the DirectX shim is not in action, and you can see it then has no slowdown at all.
Also, at the end of the video I click and delete what I think are probably the main 'blended' lamps on the layout, and then you can see that it no longer has the slowdown when running scaled down by the DirectX shim.
You could perhaps arrange your layout in somewhat elaborate ways to work around it 'a bit', depending if you have large blank areas on your alpha lamp, so for example, this particular 'Jones' lamp, could be broken into 2x lamps (both mapped to the same original lamp number):
That way it might save some CPU/GPU time, since the overall pixel area is smaller. As another example from that layout, this would prob save some render time from the DirectX shim approach, by splitting this lamp into 3x lamps, again with the aim of not processing all those completely empty pixels:
There's some other tricks that would probably help too, but I've got to head off to the shop That or simply avoid blended lamps of course! Hope that helps to understand what's going on...
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41 minutes ago, dataslater said:
...due to it's age it likely needs new ROMS burning (it's an £8 all cash - no idea where to even start looking for those, or how to get hold of a set.)
Here's some Dr Who Timelord roms, maybe one of these will be the ones you need
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11 hours ago, dataslater said:
Thanks for the insight. for a bit more perspective I've worked with Photoshop for over 20 years, so I like to think I'd be able to negate any jumping lamps (by merging/blurring/antialiasing etc.) - I like a challenge to be honest (I have more ideas in the bank for other FME stuff too from a hardware aspect). I only have this one machine I'd like to preserve so willing to put the time in, and think it's a worthy cause. I just think that a lot of layouts look a bit 'off' because of the unrealistic lighting of the lamps.
If you are handy with photoshop then it's 100% doable
If you can get your phone (assuming phone camera), 100% steady by rigging up some makeshift tripod, could just be wedged on the step of a stepladder or whatever you have to hand, that could make things easier, since the on and off photos would perfectly match up, then no 'jumping lamps'. Then if you have it in photoshop so you can turn on/off the top layer, then that will simulate what it'll look like when all the lamps flash on/off in the emulator (without needing to go through all the work of actually cutting things out etc). If it looks good there, then it'll look good when built into a layout. Might want to also set up manual focus/exposure etc for when you take the pics, otherwise the lamps on may confuse the light sensor on the camera.
Glass scans and high resolution photos are always very welcome, if you'd be up for sharing them before they get processed into a layout There's some on the Community Drive (http://tinyurl.com/yckze665) that need fish eye correction fixing, so improved images would be amazing
Fisheye images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1038UcG9kCB6ziec0WPMmwaI-3YkuNBbf?usp=sharing
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Still well under trhe weather, but hopefully on the mend soon, so in the meantime had a little mini-tinker
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Updated MX app cion to MT; set up initial fields and options for this new combined MFME Tools module (for both Extraction and Injection of layouts). Once I'm back in the zone, I will comment the convertinmg/porting/improving of the extraction code from the system side of AS over to this new Oasis module...
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Drastic the DS emulator is free
in Consoles
Posted
The princely sum of $2.4 million is the settlement (£1.89 million squid) - let's not forget they even took down a one man seven year passion project of building Super Mario Bros on the Commodore 64:
They're simultaneously one of the best and worst video companies to ever exist.
https://www.denofgeek.com/games/nintendo-super-mario-bros-commodore-64-port/
Honestly they are absolute cockmuffins when it comes to emulation. So sadly we can't have Nintendo video games in Oasis (which will end up with a lot more internet exposure than the original fruit machine focused Arcade Sim), it's not just worth it to get their crappy lawsuits