johnparker007

Potentially, though I thought these machines could be set to discrete integer %ages between ~78% and 100%. This looks to be a much less granular 1-5 scale... it's something maybe interesting, but I don't know what! I'm not sure (from your above post) if Edward worked on Barcrest MPU4s so whatever code/logic/libraries etc could be significantly different between Barcrest MPU4s and other platforms/manufacturers. In terms of hacking runtime compensator values, I'd imagine it's very likely possible, though potentially a ball ache (to pinpoint values/routines)! So I guess you're saying, you'd want to take a Blue Moon (MPU4) or Indiana Jones (IMPACT) and then totally kill it with a big run of wins, but then hack some live values in RAM, and have it become 'ready' again, so you get more wins? It'd be doable, regrettably I'll have to decline the challenge, since when I get spare FME dev time, I need to work on Oasis really! But It would be doable I'm sure. There'll likely be a function with a calculation somewhere (unless it uses a 'blackboard' approach to perform the calc less frequently and refer to it, to avoid running the calculation too much, to avoid stutters/delays)... so that'd be what you'd want to hack. Edit: if you really wanted to go into this, one approach might be via 'pluggable' roms. I first learnt of these from @thealteredemu back in the day, I think it was early ROM revisions of a Monopoly machine. So the machines where they use the 'count up' alpha animation when you get a win, and the trick was to score a Jackpot, then plug it (or click it) while the win animation counted up. Machine would pay out on reboot due to battery backup, but it only processed the win from the overall running %age once the win anim had fully counted up. So, on one of those machine ROMs, you at least know, that the code/function call that ultimately adjusts the payout %age is called precisely at the end of that anim. So, you could use a debugger trace or something to try figure out what's going on during that phase of execution. It may be a standard function that adjusts the IN/OUT... or it could be that it calcs that revised %age to a blackboard. If I had to guess, I suppose I'd think it might be the IN/OUT adjust, then perhaps a blackboard refresh. And then for subsequent spins, I'd also expect the live value and/or blackboard to be adjusted. As presumably it doesn't go on money inserted, but money 'played'. So it might also take place at the start or end of each spin. Not sure if that helps, but that's some initial rum-fuelled thoughts lol Final edit : while this may sound pessimistic, if you found a way to do this on say a Barcrest MPU4, you'd probably then be able to search for that same code 'signature' on other Barcrest MPU4 ROMs. A lot of the code is simply copy/pasted between different games, for example the code that 'scrambles' the lights based on the Characteriser chip, it's just the exact same routine across a lot of the Barcrest MPU4 games (or variants of that code, again repeated). They weren't writing the machine's code for specific common functions (i.e: lamp scrambling, compensator or in/out tracking) from first principles for each new MPU4, and I'd imagine that extends to other manufacturers/platforms.

Well in this 1.0 ROM you have the almost 'standard' Barcrest message that I do like; NUDGE COCKUP Charmingly British! The other small block of strings that looks kinda interesting is; Which seems to hint at perhaps some engineer/test setting of 'generosity' that can go between: MEGA-GENEROUS (MEGA GEN) GENEROUS CENTRE MEAN MEGA-MEAN (MEGAMEAN) ...which appear to be 5 settings/live variables or states - perhaps related to the Nudges, perhaps related to a Playtest setting. There can sometimes be something simply in text that is 'secret' if you patiently go through the entire ROM

Sadly no, there generally isn't in these MPU4 ROMs (though I have seen it once or twice). I did a visual scan through the whole ROM, just the usual stuff; system messages/strings, alpha text, and the version you see on boot (SAG 1.0).

Not new coding dev, but man I swear the newer AI chat models are freakishly good! Just been brainstorming with ChatGPT-4o how to best tackle the future system for our Oasis online layout hosting/management - here's a snip from later in the convo where we're comparing Amazon S3 vs Backblaze: JP: Why did you recommend Backblaze over Amazon S3? ChatGPT: I recommended Backblaze B2 over Amazon S3 primarily because of cost-efficiency. Here's a detailed comparison to clarify why: 1. Pricing Backblaze B2 is one of the most affordable cloud storage services available: Storage: $0.005/GB per month, so 200GB would cost around $1/month. Download bandwidth: $0.01/GB, which would be about $1 per 100GB downloaded. Free uploads and free listing operations (like browsing your storage). Amazon S3, while widely used and feature-rich, has higher costs: Storage: $0.023/GB per month for standard storage, which makes 200GB cost about $4.60/month. Download bandwidth: $0.09/GB, which makes it roughly $9 per 100GB downloaded. Why Backblaze Wins: For 200GB of storage, Backblaze is significantly cheaper, costing $1/month compared to $4.60/month on Amazon S3, and its download bandwidth cost is far lower ($0.01 vs. $0.09 per GB). 2. Simplicity of Pricing Structure Backblaze B2 offers a more straightforward pricing model with fewer confusing tiers or added fees. You simply pay for storage and bandwidth. Amazon S3 has a more complex pricing model with different classes of storage (Standard, Infrequent Access, Glacier), which can make pricing less predictable and harder to manage for long-term projects, especially when download bandwidth is factored in. Why Backblaze Wins: If simplicity and predictability in cost management are important, Backblaze B2 makes things much easier to estimate. 3. Features & Usability Amazon S3 is known for its robust ecosystem and a broad array of features like versioning, replication, complex permission settings, and integrations with other AWS services. It’s incredibly powerful, but many of these features might be overkill for your use case. Backblaze B2, while more limited in some advanced features, offers the essentials for storing and serving large files. For hosting assets like PNGs, WAV files, and project data, it provides everything you need with an easy-to-use API, making it more lightweight and less overwhelming than AWS. Why Backblaze Wins: If you don’t need advanced cloud infrastructure features (e.g., machine learning integration, automated scaling, etc.), Backblaze provides a simpler experience, and for your project, it seems sufficient. 4. Performance and Reliability Amazon S3: It has a global network of data centers, meaning it offers better performance and redundancy for global users, with high uptime and excellent reliability. Backblaze B2: While Backblaze operates fewer data centers (mainly in the U.S.), its reliability and performance are generally strong, especially for non-critical, large-scale storage needs like your project. For an open-source project focused on collaboration, Backblaze should offer enough reliability unless your contributors are highly distributed globally and need faster, low-latency access. Why Backblaze Still Wins for You: Given the open-source nature of your project, where occasional latency may be acceptable, Backblaze provides reliable enough storage without the added cost of Amazon’s global performance features. Conclusion: Backblaze B2 is a far more cost-effective solution for your specific use case of hosting 200GB of data-heavy files (PNGs, WAVs, TTFs, etc.). It delivers simpler pricing and an adequate feature set without the complexities and higher cost of Amazon S3. Amazon S3 is more suited for projects that require advanced cloud services, distributed global access, or heavy integration with other cloud-based systems, which doesn’t seem necessary for your layout editor project. Given that you're focused on hosting large assets for a public project and keeping costs low, Backblaze B2 seems like the better fit. Let me know if you'd like more details on how to set it up!

Nice I just got my 4 year badge about a week ago!

I have just confirmed this on the 1.0 ROM, very satisfying! Along with nudges going into the permanent piggy bank rather than the 1 credit 'temporary hold' of the later ROMs, you can keep getting/retrying £3 opportunities with a high/full nudge bank until it gives you the 'GRAB'. I do really like this machine, it's a classic

Based on the filenames and dates, the ROMs in the layout appear to be the ones in the archive (time difference of exactly one hour)

Ah you're right on the MDM ones, I just tried one, they're for a more modern game that has a trail, random nudges and sampled music! The 3x labelled: SAG 3.4 SAG 1.0 (set 1) SAG 1.0 (set 2) Do play as the machine in the video, when booted and tested. Looks to be more sets in the archive, seems to be a 32kb game... (Edit: though it's just occurred to me that if these <32kb files sets were joined to make their full 32kb romset single file image, there may actually then be some duplicate 32kb full roms detectable in here).

I wonder if it's one of these 7...

Not sure if this is the right forum area for this so apologies, but apparently the infamous 'chris217' youtuber/machine collector has (on rewatching the video, his friend has) a very early ROM revision of Smash & Grab. I wonder if we could tempt him, perhaps by clubbing in and sending over a ROM ripper/burner device, to rip those ROMs? Or, do we already have those ROMs? It seems to be doing something I've not seen the MFME build doing before. Here's the video: ...and here's the pertinent comment, which makes me think these could be great ROMs to get: @grahamnutt8958 What you have played there is the uber rare 1st version of Smash & Grab. It got banned very quickly and very few of those (and ROM's) survived. Gen 2 onwards only let you exchange the £3 win once. I saw this just once and the lucky player rinsed it £10.50 banked in short order. Your pal and #sulzerned will be able to confirm what I'm saying about 1st gen. What a rare find!!!

Cheers mate, you're making me blush now though!

Thanks man And yeah, multiplayer will be cool for those mystery machine states! I've just done a quick update video on the dev thread showing the bits I'm working on at the mo

Work has been continuing on the Layout Editor, but not had chance to do an update for a bit, so here's the latest, give @Mort something to check out Video shows editing text on a lamp, and also the new color picker I'm working on - quite a lot of progress really!

100% - the basics of this are already in place There is a program in the suite; MFME Tools. This is what can perform the 'extraction' of a layout from MFME (such as this classic I'm currently using for testing): Then the Layout Editor program (shown above) can import these 'extracted layouts'. So you end up with an Oasis layout, from an MFME layout. This will all be part of the suite that users install, so anyone will be able to do this process (and the Layout Editor will be able to call MfmeTools to do a one-click 'Extract & Import'. So I think that should solve the issue of having to make layouts from scratch. Additionally, even just for 2d, there will be various quality of life improvements that should make working on layouts less painful So a big one is a proper Undo history system, that will look something like this: So you can review the operations you've done and select different points in the timeline, or use the standard keyboard shortcuts, Ctrl+Z to Undo further and further back, Ctrl+Y to Redo. Also, with the new Inspector, I am planning to implement 'multi component editing'. This means that say you want to change all of the buttons to have say a blue background instead of red; you would select them all, then in the Inspector, change the background color to blue, and it will apply that to all of the selected buttons. And of course, this will ultimately allow for the full conversion of 2d layouts into 3d machines, like in Arcade Sim... also with 3d buttons, proper lighting/reflections etc. Those machines can then be placed in a custom arcade, and played in the new Arcade Sim. Plus shared, and played in multiplayer etc. So plenty of cool stuff to look forward to, but it will all take time to develop Oh also, no more waiting for booting up machines, even a Scorpion 5 will load in around 1 second, as we will be using save states, to restore the machine to the exact state it was last in when it was exited. And then of course multiplayer and VR... the list goes on... There's lots to do (literally years of work), but lots of new cool features planned. And of course this is all 100% open source this time from the get go https://github.com/johnparker007/Oasis/commits/main/

Inspector work continues, have set up system for different inspectors for component type, currently done very minimal version of Lamp and Seven Segment, next up will be minimal Segment Alpha and Reel. Lamp component selected: 7 Segment component selected: No component selected:

In general it's always going to look better on the 'night mode' style layouts, which @Tommy cdoes well So you get haloing around the 'on lamps' but the off lamps and general background won't blow out with haziness since they're dark and bloom has more effect on the brighter source pixels.

Some kind of per-machine visual effects override could certainly be a feature for the 'Machine Player' and the 'Arcade Simulator' components of Oasis... though hopefully we will be getting a lot more 'normalised' lighting across the layouts with the new lighting model I have planned, so it may not be as necessary as it is currently. If I seem to have forgot when the far off time comes, and it still seems necessary after the new lighting model, give me a nudge!

Started on the basic Lamp Inspector first, with a few fields - added also basic 'click to select component'. Next will be adding more fields, getting the color clickable/adjustable, then adding other component inspectors...

In Oasis, I will implement this using additive/multiply/some other option in a custom pixel shader. I use basic custom shaders in Arcade Sim, but plan to develop what should be better custom lamp/led shaders for Oasis... something like the Sharks logo RGB LED effect would look something like this: RGB LEDs on behind Logo Mask: RGB LEDs off behind Logo Mask:

I did have a vague look into these ages back, I think it was something like an 'NV10' I read a manual on. The RGB LEDs in those, I think they are not ROM controlled at all in terms of what colors/cycles they do. The ROM can just request simpler stuff like setting it to ready/not ready (to accept notes) I think, and then however the Note Acceptor is configured, that's the color/pattern it'll light up. So if you had one in Baking Bad, and you'd set it to a gently pulsing green pattern to match the machine, if you then stuck it in a DOND say, it would still do the pulsing green pattern. At least that's what I recall from before, if/when I implement them in MAME/Oasis, I'll read up properly to get the bahaviour right

OK I've done enough on the basic font stuff for now, it's never going to be a perfect match, as they are utterly different font rendering systems between how MFME does it and how Oasis does it, but it's close enough I think, plus I'm getting a bit fonted out lol Final side by side since I'm moving onto something new: I think the next area to look at is doing the proper per-component 'Inspector'. This is essentially the same as the 'Properties' window in MFME. The current system was just a place holder where it lists public variables, rather than a UI I have crafted per-component type. I'll also start on some rudimentary 'click to select' functionality, so I can click on a lamp to select it, and have its editable stuff shown in the Inspector:

Ah right, sorry I've just read @vectra666's release notes the red reels led doesn't light up but the lamp to the left does when activated so there's the clue as for the top logo feature this sometimes lights up but won't go red or flash If anyone Can suss out the Led;s then please do so i can amend the release, apart from gnomes this is the last release using them bleeding led's from me a right pain in the butt they've been. Will be sure to get these working properly when I end up getting to sc5 emulation, good to know a machine to test

Is this MUX LED workaround in MFME this? So using Lamp Numbers with an LED number? or is it something else?

Now running in Unity 2024, more work continues on the font system, here's the latest side by side

I've been continuing with font investigations, as while I want to use the new system (Text Mesh Pro), it is not correctly importing kerning (the space between certain pairs of characters) information from some fonts, an example of this is here: It almost looks as if there is a space character between 'Uni' and 'space'. This is due to how the kerning data is stored in some fonts. After some battling trying to fix this, and concluding there was no good fix to be had (there was one, but it wouldn't be good for users wanting to use their own custom fonts when building classic layouts), I decided to try the actual very latest version of Unity (2024), as there seemed to be some suggestions this had been fixed since Unity 2021 which is the version Oasis is currently running on... and, it is Here we can see both the legacy text rendering and the new TMP rendering on Unity 2024, using that same 'Unispace' Windows system font, and it is now correctly supporting the kerning (so there is no longer an apparent space between Uni and space So, the plan now is to migrate the entire Oasis Layout Editor Unity project from 2021 -> 2024. This will fix this issue with TMP font importing/rendering, and also, it will remove the 'Unity splash screen' that pops up when starting an app (the same one you see when launching Arcade Sim). Wasn't planning to update Unity versions, as it usually throws up a bunch of other errors to solve, but I do really want that kerning working properly, so updating it is! At some later stage, I will also implement a font browser, and include most of the standard (Latin) fonts from google's open source fonts collection... so the layouts will no longer be limited to the fonts installed on a user's PC/phone, as Oasis will have its own collection: https://fonts.google.com/