thealteredemu Posted February 24 Report Share Posted February 24 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted February 24 Author Report Share Posted February 24 Preferably a high quality art DX. J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pook Posted February 24 Report Share Posted February 24 I'd say Indy & Untouchables are my 2 biggest Impact releases artwork wise, both gave me slowdown issues on previous PCs at Jackpot and board entry, although on new set up I've had no issues. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnparker007 Posted February 24 Report Share Posted February 24 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... [ Arcade Simulator ] Pre-alpha installer: http://arcadesimulator.net | Known Issues: https://tinyurl.com/yz4uom2e | Donation info: https://tinyurl.com/yzvgl4xo [ Community Drive ] The drive: http://tinyurl.com/yckze665 [ Fruit Machine Database ] Initial google sheets (WIP): https://tinyurl.com/2c5znxzz [ Fruit Machine ROM Archive ] The archive: https://tinyurl.com/3jhzbueb [ MFME Launch ] Source code: https://github.com/johnparker007/MFMELaunch [ Oasis ] Source code: https://github.com/johnparker007/Oasis [ Sound ROM Editor ] Source code: https://github.com/johnparker007/SoundRomEditor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spidy21982 Posted February 24 Report Share Posted February 24 (edited) @thealteredemu in mfme is an option to unpack all blended lamps .then you have no slowdowns at all. had this on my sinbad release . greetings spidy Edited February 24 by Spidy21982 1 You like to support my work then buy an NFT painted by my 10 year old son Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodsy Posted February 24 Report Share Posted February 24 15 minutes ago, Spidy21982 said: im mfme is an option to unpack all blended lamps .then you have no slowdowns at all. had this on my sinbad release . greetings spidy there's likely to be a few of mine that will be stuttering due my refusal to initially accept it was better to accept the error in sizing was at fault, off the top of my head, monopoly 60 and likely caesers palace 200 in attract modes living the dream Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodsy Posted February 24 Report Share Posted February 24 (edited) 2 hours 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 just been given a few images of this as a crystal rebuild so will see if it's viable Edited February 24 by woodsy living the dream Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vectra666 Posted February 24 Report Share Posted February 24 1 hour ago, Spidy21982 said: @thealteredemu in mfme is an option to unpack all blended lamps .then you have no slowdowns at all. had this on my sinbad release . greetings spidy Yes this does work and speeds the layouts up I’ve done this on partytime multiplayers as they were stuttering on lappy after that they were fine also if the layout is of a over large size it slows down i remember wizard once said “although mfme is capable of almost life sized layouts there isn’t any need to make them that big as most people wouldn’t have a monitor big enough to appreciate the size made” also I made a layout which used a blended lamp which was too big and it didn’t need to have all the lamps used in the real machine most dual lamps in a real machine are only there incase one blows, in mfme’s case no lamps blow so the majority of lamps aren’t actually needed also I recall the blended mask on layouts are sometimes bigger than what they need to be as in too much fade/glow. deffo unpack the lamps in edit mode 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted February 24 Author Report Share Posted February 24 Ahh, so unpack blended lamps on load option cures this issue. I'll get my coat I just saw in preferences J 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vectra666 Posted February 25 Report Share Posted February 25 2 hours ago, thealteredemu said: Ahh, so unpack blended lamps on load option cures this issue. I'll get my coat I just saw in preferences J Not all the time but may speed the layout up via edit mode goto tidy then unpack blended lamps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thealteredemu Posted February 25 Author Report Share Posted February 25 You can set mfme to auto do it on startup in prefs J 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnparker007 Posted February 25 Report Share Posted February 25 (edited) 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. Edited February 25 by johnparker007 [ Arcade Simulator ] Pre-alpha installer: http://arcadesimulator.net | Known Issues: https://tinyurl.com/yz4uom2e | Donation info: https://tinyurl.com/yzvgl4xo [ Community Drive ] The drive: http://tinyurl.com/yckze665 [ Fruit Machine Database ] Initial google sheets (WIP): https://tinyurl.com/2c5znxzz [ Fruit Machine ROM Archive ] The archive: https://tinyurl.com/3jhzbueb [ MFME Launch ] Source code: https://github.com/johnparker007/MFMELaunch [ Oasis ] Source code: https://github.com/johnparker007/Oasis [ Sound ROM Editor ] Source code: https://github.com/johnparker007/SoundRomEditor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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