Arcade Simulator - Layout Permissions

[johnparker007]

22 minutes ago, andrew96 said:

he is going to find out tomorrow what version of cloud 999 he had

These ones I've done the £2,000 payout percentage test on are "CLN 4.0".  I will test them in the real machine when I have it here in Sheffield, and have got a ROM burner etc.

15 minutes ago, andrew96 said:

Patching of the  128k rom is much the same on the later machines, you just have to do it twice for chr and checksum before its happy, and you have to add in 2 identical lamp tables and change the #802 / #803 references to the chr chip 4 times. I remember you saying some you did you found 8 occurrences to have to patch, so this is not that different to yours, It just took me most of a day to do it

Ta for the info - I'm a little bit Chr-free'd out to be honest, I need to get back to working on my main Arcade Simulator project really.  Maybe in the future I'll investigate patching 128k roms, and doing various gameplay tests, payout percentage tests etc, to see if they are fit for distribution.

The only work I'll be doing in the short term is performing the Cloud 999 4.0 Chr-free patched ROM £2k payout test on the real hardware - I can't really justify sinking more time into this at present.  Also, almost all the requests I get for patched ROMs are for the older ones (and the odd MPU3)... I don't recall that anyone has actually asked for a later one or 128k one yet, now that I think about it.  So I've done the high priority ones    There's more to do on Bwb protection, but I've only had a couple of requests for those, so again low priority.

Edited May 18, 2022 by johnparker007

[Flimp]

Mate !!! , this is totally awsome , really well done , you smashed it out the park bro ! , kudos

[Zippy]

John me old mucker you're the fucking man dude, brilliant thread and a good read, constructive argument and positive vibes.

Now back to what I do best

[johnparker007]

On 14/05/2022 at 00:52, johnparker007 said:

@Reg I've cracked it (literally   have removed the checksum protection and the Chr chip protection) - so it now boots and plays correctly.  Well I think it's correctly, I don't know how you control it, when I insert money lights flash, and I think I get to gamble... not sure what the skill element is.

Here's a layout (Pook's Crackpot) with it working:
Skill Shuffle - hacked rom boots and plays ok.zip

If someone can make a layout, or fix their broken Skill Shuffle machine (I think this is now a properly Chr-free ROM) - it will have been worth it... Aaah who am I kidding, that was a fun side-quest  ...

(Also, this ROM can be easily further hacked now the checksum has been removed, if someone wanted to do that, change the text etc.)

 

@Reg my reply to you about the Skill Shuffle got buried, think I got it fully working in a test layout   I've quoted it above ^^^, the working Skill Shuffle layout is linked

[Reg]

Ah brilliant - this is excellent - thank you.

I will try to get this done in classic form over the next week or so and then go on from there.

Many thanks @johnparker007 for making this happen sir !

I've actually been travelling for work a lot - regardless how busy the GPC looks, I have  ( well had - not anymore ) about ten scheduled videos that were just playing out and posting automatically.

Again thank you - I am sure we can get this DX'd very soon !

[johnparker007]

6 minutes ago, Reg said:

Ah brilliant - this is excellent - thank you.

I will try to get this done in classic form over the next week or so and then go on from there.

Many thanks @johnparker007 for making this happen sir !

I've actually been travelling for work a lot - regardless how busy the GPC looks, I have  ( well had - not anymore ) about ten scheduled videos that were just playing out and posting automatically.

Again thank you - I am sure we can get this DX'd very soon !

No rush for me! I just wanted to make sure you'd seen the post

One thing I noticed was it seems to play out the credits automatically, on the youtube video of the real machine I watched, there was pressing a large central button to do this - hopefully this behaviour can be changed from a DIP switch or a button that needs to have its input inverted.

If a playable DX does get done, as we have the JPM Vogue cabinet 3d model, I can make a one off that is like the Jabro one using that model with a couple of tweaks, so it's Arcade Sim fodder for a quirky one 

[andrew96]

If anyone  wants to do there own investigations in real character mpu4 chips then there is a fluke troubleshooter 9010 on ebay right now!, you will then just need the 6809 pod to plug into the mpu4 board to the troubleshooter

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/125328711461

[johnparker007]

31 minutes ago, andrew96 said:

If anyone  wants to do there own investigations in real character mpu4 chips then there is a fluke troubleshooter 9010 on ebay right now!, you will then just need the 6809 pod to plug into the mpu4 board to the troubleshooter

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/125328711461

They're not cheap - £1,250!   

[andrew96]

yeah and you still need the 6089 pod!, I think I paid £500 for the pod not working when I got one, they go for double that now

[johnparker007]

1 hour ago, andrew96 said:

yeah and you still need the 6089 pod!, I think I paid £500 for the pod not working when I got one, they go for double that now

So just a tidy £2,250 plus buying a fruit machine to test it on, blimey!

[andrew96]

well I did buy my tester some years ago when you could get them from the states

 

for character chip interrogating you just need a mpu4, power supply and connecting power lead and of course a character chip in a progtam cart, then the lamp tables can be read out using the fluke troubleshooter

 

you can see why no one else has gone deep into looking at the character lamp tables!!

[Ady]

Feel free to use any created by Ady or Adydb.

As has been said, in the early day's layouts had to be manually added by MODs and Admins but the creator is in the descriptions.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 29, 2022 by Ady

[johnparker007]

On 29/05/2022 at 16:12, Ady said:

Feel free to use any created by Ady or Adydb.

As has been said, in the early day's layouts had to be manually added by MODs and Admins but the creator is in the descriptions.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks man, much appreciated   I think we had a chat on MPU Mecca about this a while back, but thanks again for the permission, and  all the lovely layouts you have built!  They're a real asset to Arcade Sim to be sure  

[Altharic]

I asked Ady to nip by and give permission if he wanted to, known him a lot of years I'm sure it would have been fine anyway.

[johnparker007]

4 minutes ago, Altharic said:

I asked Ady to nip by and give permission if he wanted to, known him a lot of years I'm sure it would have been fine anyway.

Thanks man, much appreciated!  We're definitely getting there with the permissions now   

[paulwooldridge]

hello can you do unionbox  and puregold  for arcadesimulator please

[johnparker007]

On 24/08/2022 at 21:09, paulwooldridge said:

hello can you do unionbox  and puregold  for arcadesimulator please

Have added Astra reel-based Pure Gold to requests sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VtMkjI0R3fnQE3ueasZNUrVk2DltPRjZFSPTPgYVQoA/edit?usp=sharing

A lot of different work going on right now with MAME (one of the emulators Arcade Sim uses)... I'll probably not be back on adding new machines for a few months, but it is logged now and just will need some model work for the cab.

Not sure what 'Unionbox' is, can't see it in the database: https://tinyurl.com/2c5znxzz

[serene02]

2 hours ago, johnparker007 said:

Have added Astra reel-based Pure Gold to requests sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VtMkjI0R3fnQE3ueasZNUrVk2DltPRjZFSPTPgYVQoA/edit?usp=sharing

A lot of different work going on right now with MAME (one of the emulators Arcade Sim uses)... I'll probably not be back on adding new machines for a few months, but it is logged now and just will need some model work for the cab.

Not sure what 'Unionbox' is, can't see it in the database: https://tinyurl.com/2c5znxzz

Astra Pure Gold runs on Pluto6, which is currently unemulated as far as I’m aware

J

[johnparker007]

2 minutes ago, serene02 said:

Astra Pure Gold runs on Pluto6, which is currently unemulated as far as I’m aware

J

Ah nice one matey   Thx for the heads up - I've kept it on the request sheet, with this note added.  @paulwooldridgeit'll definitely be a while before this makes it in, as Pluto 6 isn't emulated in MAME yet.

[Altharic]

By the looks of the MAME drivers for the pluto techs its way off 

[johnparker007]

21 minutes ago, Altharic said:

By the looks of the MAME drivers for the pluto techs its way off 

Absolutely, that is indeed the situation right now - to rebuild and expand on Chris's incredible legacy of emulation work will take a lot of coding and reverse-engineering... but that said, steady progress is being made in MAME-based FME 

As fruit machines are very niche compared to even pinball, we are short on coders with the requisite skillset+motivation - so patience is the name of the game right now.  Hopefully in a couple of years or so, Arcade Sim (plus the new MAME internal layout/config work), will make developing/rev-engineering these drivers more appealing, so more coders may get involved - but we already are seeing great progress over the past year; James and David have pretty much done Impulse hardware, and David is massively pushing forward on MPU4 (most notably the new Chr chip work which has revealed previously unknown patterns wrt. lamp scrambling).  And of course @SomeRandomGuy is absolutely killing it on the early techs right now  

I plan to always keep MFME support in AS (when running under Windows OS) alongside MAME so the Pluto 5 games will be playable for MFME users before Pluto platforms are done in MAME.  On a somewhat related note, the user @Sneddrs has had Arcade Sim working fine on a newer Apple Mac M1 under Parallels: 

 ... so great news there , and it sounds like MFME-based fruities should also work fine under that setup .  So while not a true native Mac version, it does sounds like it's already fully working 'for free' on the new Apple silicon macs.

[agemame]

Popping in briefly to +1 what John says really. Pretty sure David isn't on here but I really should check in more often, since the Degsy reposts reminded me this forum existed. Catch up time, I think...

As one of the MAMEr people, I'd be the first to admit we need to elevate a few more things to do with art etc to get to the same standard as MFME was, but if there are any obvious art type things that are just unimplementable for a working tech, let me know - there are tricks with SVG images and other scripting that can be used as workarounds if need be.

My dev time is nowhere near as big as it was in the AGEMAME days, but if I can do a bit, I'll try to.

[Altharic]

I think MAME does need to evolve to be able to cope with this wonder what tri lamp machines do in mame?

 

[johnparker007]

1 hour ago, agemame said:

...we need to elevate a few more things to do with art etc to get to the same standard as MFME was, but if there are any obvious art type things that are just unimplementable...

I don't know if you saw, but I did put a post on the MAME dev thread on github, regarding the maximum allowable number of texture instances - with the current SVG lamp rendering, I do keep hitting this on most layouts:

Fatal error: render_texture::get_scaled: Too many live texture instances!

I've not got MAME synced, but I suspect there's some arbitrary limit constant somewhere, that really needs to be double what is currently is - though I'm not sure if Cuavas will be of the same opinion, as he did complain I was trying to do too much with the artwork system!

It's due to the lamps now being drawn completely differently with groups, variables, layered svg  - seems to be needing more textures, I think because the base buttons are not all a consistent size, as often happens, so then it must premake more textures, rather than reusing the same size button texture over and over - I just got lucky with the first couple of test layouts I made (had more consistently sized lamps, so I didn't see the error), but as I scaled up, I'm getting the error on most layouts...

Old lamps:

New Lamps:

Edited October 10, 2022 by johnparker007

[agemame]

I think that limit is there to stop too much performance sapping because of the way textures are stored, but I'm sure Haze will take a look at it and see whether it's doable

Tri lamping is probably doable in MAME, there are advanced tricks that can make one component change what it does relative to another, and there are alpha, additive and multiplicative blendings of colour values. Might be worth playing with those on a few tests, but we probably need to give John more textures first.