FruitBar 2 - MFME Frontend.

[appstrader]

FruitBar 2 still quite basic but this video will help to give some idea of the new cabinet builder within the new FruitBar 2

I picked up the wrong image to start with and then changed it a second time to highlight how simple it is to arrange things, obviously there will be a screen designer too where you can orientate things to where you want them and at what scale not looked at this yet but I will.

So this is the cabinet designer where you basically create your cabinet view how you want it, if you want to show more of the pay tray simple just move everything up, want to change the front door style just load up a new door image.  

This should allow for any cabinet design to be created sure it might require some tweak's here and there but I wont know until people start to use it to design cabinets but I think when you view the row of machines with them all being different with door logo's in different places, different heights etc it actually look quite good.

Still thinking over how to share cabinet designs but it should be quite simple, I'm thinking that sharing the cabinet builds will be a few buttons and the program will upload the cabinet build to a site where all the cabinet builds will be located.

Simple enough to implement and I have a server ready to do this so you might see this start to take shape soon, 

Still not sure if anyone thinks this is slightly over kill, a cabinet designer is it too complex ? too many buttons and things ?

Just noticed the still image with the reels where the game panel is located, I guess it proves it works eh !

 

[appstrader]

FruitBar 2 - How will it work ?

Finally managed to start bringing all the configuration from settings page into the game play section of the program, this is a milestone really because moving the cabinets as you select one is quite easy in comparison to creating all this background work but without all the settings and cabinet designer it would be quite basic and it certainly wouldn't be 3D as working in 3D certainly comes with its challenges.

I don't think I have finished on all the settings there are more to come yet but its certainly off to a great start.

Now I have two cabinets on the main display it's simple enough to duplicate more cabinets and it should look amazing when all these different cabinet types are shown with the stunning graphics, it's not perfect and it never will be as they will never be real machines but this will certainly look good running on my cabinet.

Long way to go but I can already see the results already.

Thinking a head to viewing the game play of cabinets I was thinking of a video in the background or something but not entirely sure currently, maybe a slide in panel or something so you might start to see that come into play next feel free to post any suggestions you may have.

One bit of good news is you can reuse your graphics from FruitBar 1 if it the images have transparent edges, the images shown are actually from my FruitBar arcade with a 500px width and optimised so file size remain small.

Andrew

 

[appstrader]

Time to start with some animations so you know what the details are for the cab you are looking at, its an old machine so the percentage is static but you can still see the actual game playing percentage.

At this point you decide to play or to move to the next cabinet, 

Everything is animated along with the video playing of the BAR X on the right side.

Andrew

[johnparker007]

On 30/04/2023 at 16:01, appstrader said:

FruitBar 2 - How will it work ?

Finally managed to start bringing all the configuration from settings page into the game play section of the program, this is a milestone really because moving the cabinets as you select one is quite easy in comparison to creating all this background work but without all the settings and cabinet designer it would be quite basic and it certainly wouldn't be 3D as working in 3D certainly comes with its challenges.

I don't think I have finished on all the settings there are more to come yet but its certainly off to a great start.

Now I have two cabinets on the main display it's simple enough to duplicate more cabinets and it should look amazing when all these different cabinet types are shown with the stunning graphics, it's not perfect and it never will be as they will never be real machines but this will certainly look good running on my cabinet.

Long way to go but I can already see the results already.

Thinking a head to viewing the game play of cabinets I was thinking of a video in the background or something but not entirely sure currently, maybe a slide in panel or something so you might start to see that come into play next feel free to post any suggestions you may have.

One bit of good news is you can reuse your graphics from FruitBar 1 if it the images have transparent edges, the images shown are actually from my FruitBar arcade with a 500px width and optimised so file size remain small.

Andrew

 

Looks good man  

Out of interest were you thinking about a way so that once a 3d machine has been 'skinned', that skin could upload to server... and then other users could download that skin?  So if they have a Toastbusters layout set up in your launcher, they could right click it, and choose 'get skin', and choose it, rather than having to build it themselves.  Ultimately you could even have it recognise the ROMs (from within the .gam file), by having the ROM file CRCs uploaded... so then any layout using the same Toastbusters ROM could auto-download the correct 3d skin without any user intervention.

Dif is hosting Arcade Sim for no cost, via a file server setup, I'd imagine they would extend you a similar setup if you went down that road.  Apologies if this is already the plan haha!  Looking cool anyway  

Edited May 1, 2023 by johnparker007

[appstrader]

Great minds think alike !!

I have included a crc for the filename not the actual file its self currently just so the data is generated ready to build the web side,

I have a dedicated server that I have space on currently so yes the idea is to allow the uploading and downloading for the skins which will include all the files, sounds, etc should be simple enough to implement but it will require some web work to build a a custom site and implement all the different things that need to be setup to allow this feature.

Not actually thought about tying it into a forum but I would still have to do some custom web work as this will be bespoke.  I like to move back onto web development from time to time specially with a project to work on rather than a quick site.

Might be working on this side of the system sooner rather than later as it will all tie in nicely rather than trying to go back into the skin development.

[johnparker007]

Sounds good man!  

I've done the ROM CRC trick before for an FME project, so then it'll usually work on a few different revisions of the layout, since the ROMs are still the same (I'm sure you'll already know this, but just in case - the ROM filenames used by the layout are stored in the .gam files in text, so you can just grab those ROM text rows to get the filenames).
 

[appstrader]

Yes already using the rom file for some of the info in there and the CRC from the contained filename is a good shout as someone may change the filename but not necessarily the filename contained.

Bit of a way off but I think its the next section I will be working on as I'm sure there will be multiple themes for all or any roms.

 

[johnparker007]

23 hours ago, appstrader said:

...the CRC from the contained filename is a good shout as someone may change the filename but not necessarily the filename contained.

The CRC stuff was pretty old, for more recent projects I've done I've generated a SHA1 hash (for interoperability with MAME, and 'effectively' zero risk of a collision which would mean a misidentification could occur), but of the actual ROM file contents itself, rather than just the filename character string...  so then it doesn't matter what the rom file is named as (that is referenced in the .gam file); you are only comparing the actual raw file byte data for a match (not the filename).

If you choose to go SHA1 route, you'll also be able to do more stuff, like figure out from a MAME rom zip (named any random thing) which internal MAME rom name it is, and then have the video game themes/cabs etc indexed off that, so they'll be able to be automatically downloaded/installed.

Good luck with it all!  


Edit:
I think you said before you're coding FruitBar in c++, so you could use something like this:
https://github.com/clibs/sha1

...so once you have the example working of say:

SHA1_CTX sha; uint8_t output[41]; char *buf = "abc";

...instead read the entire ROM file byte data into a byte array pointed at by char *buf

All fun and games lol  

Edited May 4, 2023 by johnparker007

[appstrader]

I started on some of the web bits of the online skins basically being able to pull the details of the skin off the net so you can see the details of the skin to decide if you want to download the skin package.

The next section will be the importation of the skin along with building the skin packages and uploading them into the system.

I also have to figure out how I will package the skin and the easiest way to actually build the importation of the packages, not exactly difficult but it just needs to be built.

So this is a quick example of what's in place currently.

Andrew 

 

[bungle]

This is looking great Andrew,Hope to see more

[appstrader]

@johnparker007 thinking out load here, 

If I CRC32 the FML file that will mean its unique and built with a particular layout so if there are multiple layouts for one rom that will produce a different CRC32 for each Dx layout, etc.

So if the fml hashes are stored against a rom name the different skins can then be associated with the FML hash

Just a case of manually adding a rom name so its clear what it is.

Hope that makes some sense,

[johnparker007]

2 hours ago, appstrader said:

@johnparker007 thinking out load here, 

If I CRC32 the FML file that will mean its unique and built with a particular layout so if there are multiple layouts for one rom that will produce a different CRC32 for each Dx layout, etc.

So if the fml hashes are stored against a rom name the different skins can then be associated with the FML hash

Just a case of manually adding a rom name so its clear what it is.

Hope that makes some sense,

Yep that works too, though if a new updated DX layout comes out, it wouldn't then work for the user immediately, you would have ongoing maintenance of that FML hash -> rom name lookup table.  Both workable approaches anyway, should be a great feature  

[appstrader]

3 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

Yep that works too, though if a new updated DX layout comes out, it wouldn't then work for the user immediately, you would have ongoing maintenance of that FML hash -> rom name lookup table.  Both workable approaches anyway, should be a great feature  

Im thinking once the title is there the association will be or should be fairly automated, maybe with an approval before one goes live type of thing but apart from that it should be fairly straight forward,

Pain to implement but should work well once its all done.

[appstrader]

Been busy sorting a few things as well as a holiday so I have been a bit quiet lately,

So how about an update as I am doing a few things today.

Quickly got the 5 cabinet views setup and resolved a couple of bugs in the cabinet designer so everything works well before moving back onto the syncing which is mostly done.

I really need to concentrate on the carousel and get the cabinets moving not sure if it will be similar to the last release or if I will actually slide the cabinets but this is something I will be working on soon enough.  Sliding might not look good due to the animations so we will see maybe stop the animations prior to a slide but who knows till I do it.

Feel free to comment, 

Andrew

[johnparker007]

Nice to see the bottom door art!  

[Fruity Nut]

The link for downloading FruitBar doesnt seem to work. Can someone point me in the right direction?

TIA 

[appstrader]

Hey @Fruity Nut this is fruitbar 2 its not been released yet... the videos show the ongoing development,  just in the process of sorting out a download for the original fruitbar 

[appstrader]

Wondering what the interest is in this version of FruitBar with skinned 3D cabinets, if its of interest to you give me a like or awesome or something !!

I did have a server crash at some point, so looks like I have to recreate some of the web side of the FruitBar 2, 

The idea of FruitBar 2 is to use skins so every 3D cabinet can be themed and the skin saved locally or shared online built with the integrated skin designer.  This means there would be a community of users sharing their skins and hopefully build interest in this type of system.

The cabinet designer currently works with two types of cabinet designs like casino and the view you see before you and the skins really bring it to life with the cabinets rotating on the main page screen as you would scroll through to select the rom you wish to play.

The example image is a cabinet view built using the designer of the Super Deluxe BAR-X

[bungle]

Brilliant Andrew,nothing more I can say really,Love it Thanks very much squire.