johnparker007

At a later point, I will be sorting out more cabinet models - then I can build other, older machine etc - currently I'm just sticking with ones that fit into my Eclipse model, as it's the only decent cabinet model I have to hand...

A little off topic, but pleased to see more progress on MAME FM dev, using my mfme2mame classic layout conversions

I've finished the first pass of the seven segment displays Needs at least another full day's work to sort out the various rendering issues and make look generally better: - slant, perhaps build in / several set slant levels - add converter stage to detect horizontal adjacent groups and align/fix up their positions/scales - capture new higher resolution segments to use - make segments pure white, and use shader to change colour as required (Wok and Roll should have yellow segment display for example) - (later) support for lamp-driven segment displays - general fettling Happy to have them in and working at least, another commonly used component knocked off the list Here's a vid of me running the machines that now have segment displays:

Keep up the ROM hacking Looking forward to future geekends man

Thanks mate - good to know Ah wow, I remember that! I remember you had a chip writer, and then we somehow ended up getting into how a ROM might know it's been tampered with... good times - I also remember you doing some pretty impressive ROM hacking, to change stakes, jackpots and maybe even program flow - all the awesome stuff

Ah so MFME doesn't do these video techs then? Well - just like back in the DOND days when we made the layout in MFME, to play in MAME... it would be possible to do the same approach here Though would have to be further down the line, as I'll need to do time consuming work to sort out getting a 'data layout' into MAME and some other things. So you'd make a MFME DX layout of the front of the machine with a screen component - I'd have a data layout in MAME that is running the ROM, to give me the display graphics and the button lamps/sound/input handling etc. Then it could be in the 3d arcade working, via the standard 2d 'panel warping' stuff I do for the fruits Very low priority from my side though as it'd take me away from the core 3d arcade work - but there's no reason why that wouldn't work - something for the future I do remember you had one (two?) of these in your front lounge at one point! I was very impressed

Rendering fine-tuning for stuff like that is not set up until quite a bit later, when I've got everything working on a logical level - so the reels are just the unlit raw textures for now. Sorting all that out will be a bit of a learning curve, there are various 'render pipelines' to consider, I'll be implemented LOD'd shaders - 3d rendering these days is all bloomin' crazy So I'm just getting a functional first/second pass in here for now - which will cover reel lamps, general control of the arcade illumination and balancing out lighting of the unlit glasses. Then later can come the proper scalable stuff - so the better graphics cards will get the extra shiny graphics, the weaker graphics cards/onboard graphics will get less fancy graphics, but still at a good enough framerate to enjoy (hopefully!)

I've been having a think, and come to the conclusion I will actually focus on the standalone version first, rather than having the online mode as the 'base project'. Currently it is already hooked up to a multiplayer server, even in all the test videos - I'd planned to build for online as standard, and the standalone mode as an extra. I've realised it's going to be much better to get the system optimised, bug-fixed, and running well on a range of PCs... without all the extra added headaches/complications of the online server(s), streaming and all that entails (there will be at least 2 servers for it to work). Good news for guys like @Reg who I know is more interested in the offline version at this stage! While there'll be an initial hump to refactor stuff to work the other way round (offline is default, online is an extra mode) - it will actually simplify development over the long term, which is a good thing (for my sanity!) As there's a lot of new (perhaps never been done before) tech to develop for the online stuff... So, the new plan is to do the standalone PC version first. Once that's stable and we're relatively happy it does the main core features we want, that will be a solid foundation to build the online mode on top of. This also means it'll be sooner that I'll get to the stage of providing vaguely stable alpha builds for people to play with

Thanks man I think for standalone mode, randomised machine floor plans can be a thing (along with duplicate machines each with own RAM) - for online multiplayer mode, they must be fixed, as everyone needs to be seeing the exact same arcade, or things will go very wrong! But online mode can also have duplicate copies of machines (for a row of Bar X machines or whatever), and bots will probably silently play machines server-side when they are not in use via my/MFME autoplay system, to get those RAMs happy.

Aye - it was in much better shape after being re-converted without a power cut in the middle! Thanks man

Just wanna say thanks folks for these donations to the project - it's really very kind, and is super appreciated. I'm honestly quite touched Done a few little bits tonight, thought I'd record a video when I had a quick test at the end First pass of alpha displays done (fixed scaling bugs, slightly smaller but more 'correct' now), started tinkering with some lighting (colored trim around cabs and couple of other elements), and fixed a couple of bugs that were causing the character/camera to slightly oscillate and slowly drift over time - it was making the entire screen slightly fuzzy when stood still. Saw a couple of machine having issues loading/capturing MFME when started up, will have to get to the bottom of that bug. Next big job - seven segment displays, and maybe a bit more on the lighting...

Yeah it would be - I lived in Brum for 5 years during my hectic youth! Set up the account at a branch in Birmingham Pallasades shopping center - I think it's all been knocked down and totally rebuilt now

There's been talk of donations - so I've set up a quick system here - so everyone can see/make donations, and also see the purchases made: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pVJB5VBvI1eTtB1-7DKGJ67j6RSHk-dBaM9irmZShBI/edit#gid=0 Thanks to anyone who wants to chip in! I'll post updates if/when new project purchases need to be made (new sports car etc )... not sure what they'll be yet, but there's usually something now and then with these projects.

Fair enough man I try to stay out of any scene politics (whatever the scene; ZX Spectrum, Amiga... they all have the hero coders and the villains!). I will keep working on the 3d arcade, and provide support where I can to James and David with their current work on improving MAME's compatibility.

I'm not sure offhand, if it's electronic hardware it will be possible - though I think these guys are just focussing on getting existing techs booting for the mo (not taking into account config stuff). Just checked, the old mfme2mame converted classic layout of the above machine in action in MAME:

He's a busy man in the emulation scene - I know he's been working on a lot of cheap handhelds recently, he just loves emulating random hardware platforms!

May be taking a couple of days away from this, as two very talented MAME devs (Haze and Agemame) are now looking at FME - so I will be helping out with MFME2MAME/other tech stuff on that project where I can. Here's one of their WIP videos getting a 'new' (to MAME) tech working:

Lol yeah it wasn't me running out of electric tokens, though I have used those many years ago, and it was a right pain if they ran out at night when the shop was closed! They're doing some works and managed to knock out about 200 houses for a few hours - put a sudden stop to my FME work Cool - I'll update my Todo list and get a dedicated Paypal account set up, like you say, no point in wasting money on fees

I'd not want any funds for myself personally, but some funds to help with the mainly FME-specific costs could be useful I could set up a separate Paypal account or something, as I already use that... I bought the Eclipse cabinet 3d model, and some other bits. If I can't get a good voluntary 3d artist on board to help with making the 3d cabinet model templates, I may pay one to make the required cabinet starter templates that I can then tweak in 3ds Max to make all the cabinet variants we need (as it'll cost me a lot of time to learn Max to the level to build good template models myself). Plus potentially other costs to do with running Amazon / Photon servers to make all the online magic work... I'll stick it on the Todo list and sort something out - is GoFundMe the preferred platform for this sort of thing? Cheers for the offer of financial help with the costs folks, it's appreciated

Quick update Dot matrix alpha displays very nearly done now (just a minor scaling touch up left to do). Had a bloomin' power cut part way through fast re-converting the batch - which made Monopoly Road To Riches come out looking a bit weird so I left it in for fun. Here's 5 working anyway, sourced from MFME DotAlphas and MFME MatrixAlphas... starting the Seven Segment displays next

I have considered a feature like that - at the moment it's essentially always in 'walking around' control mode. The plan is to add an 'playing machine' control mode. So when you are walking around, you look at a machine, press enter/zero, and it will engage the machine. It'll automatically move you into a preset ideal viewing spot in front of the machine. Now walking controls won't function (you are locked in place). In this 'playing machine' mode, the mouse pointer will appear, allowing for clicking on buttons on the machine (with left mouse click). Hovering over a button will change mouse pointer to a finger (similar to MFME). Holding right mouse button down will change mouse pointer to an 'eye' icon with arrows - while right mouse is held down, moving the mouse will control the freelook camera, same as the 'walking around' mode. Another option might be to have camera move if user moves mouse pointer to edge of screen... not sure yet, will see what feels most intuitive. Plan was to do some form of zoom in/out with the mouse scroll wheel. Of course it'll be more worth zooming if/when I can work out how to do streaming AI upscaled textures (8-16k per glass panel), there were some demos of this tech investigation I did on another thread on this forum Long way off before I can work on that AI upscale streaming stuff though, still tons of basic functionality to do...

Made some good progress on getting the dot alpha displays properly implemented Demo vid of a couple working, two didn't work for some reason - just a silly bug I'm sure, too tired to fix tonight! So, still a few more hours work, fixing the bug and adding support for 'Matrix Alpha' from MFME alongside the now working 'Dot Alpha' components. I guess next up will be starting the task of implementing the Seven Segment displays, as there's usually a bunch of those...

Thanks man I shouldn't have those issues with my rendering system, as I built it to be very dynamic for later changes (at some point I'll be able to add optional lamp light bleed etc via shaders). Was just having a quick play the other night to make sure it worked properly I just take the raw layout resources and do all the brightness adjustment like you see in the video in realtime via the GPU using shaders. Thanks guys yeah that's what I figured, MFME hits a wall so you can't properly scale the displays to the display windows. My rendering system doesn't have those limitations, so I'll just make 2 or 3 'correct' Dot Alpha displays, then use whichever is the correct type per machine (determined from youtube video / one of infections images). Ta - yeah I had a look later yesterday and spotted that, I've now properly implemented support for converting and running reversed reels. I then did a fast re-convert on Pots of Luck (and Trail Blazer which also had a reversed number reel) - both now working correctly

lol but on further checking of youtube videos, there are displays that do have a horizontal gap between the characters: I'll do a 'standard' one for now, then perhaps make a couple more. I've tried scaling them in MFME and it has limitations, so I can see why layout artists may scale them differently, in order to best fill the alpha display window - or perhaps the manufacturer just uses what they have lying around in the parts bin... there may be no 'correct' version for a machine! Interesting stuff anyway

No worries on the Vega thing for now - just from unexpectedly seeing it in action on that Oliver's Twist machine in the video above - I find it hard to imagine that the program ROM for Oliver Twist has some code that tells it to cycle through those colors with pulsing. I think it's more likely that if it's fed with lamp on voltage/signal - it just goes through that pre-programmed color pulsing. It's for lots later anyway, was just surprised by seeing it since we were just talking about it! Anyway, so I found another example, so on this very shaky youtube video of Pots of Luck, it seems to have a Dot Alpha that is different from the one in the layout: In the layout, there are large horizontal gaps between the characters, yet in the video grab, we can see from the 'NN' in 'WINNER' that there aren't any large horizontal gaps. I think I'm probably best using just the overall size (total width/total height) of the Dot Alpha from the layout, then just making a 'standard one' and fitting it into that space. Yeah - those ones are different, I'll be doing those later on - they should be fine Thanks for the info man