Events the last few hours

[HongKong Phooey]

evening everyone

just want to give a quick explanation over our reaction to the events today and stick everything in one spot so it’s nice and clear. 
 

We knew when we released MVFME that it would create a buzz that had not been seen for years and given that we had a few false starts we rushed the release out. There should have been safeguards in place to make sure only the 10 (we even missed listing one of their launch games in our hurry lol) could install and run. This is not us dictating what you could all play. We knew it could play a lot more (infact we didn’t know to what extent we had got running until serious mass testing took place) but we also knew that we could have spent the next 3 months of the testers testing games, finding loads that worked but finding issues on others which we would then try and fix and then the cycle starts again and again. We also didn’t know how the launcher would behave outside of the closed environment so we went for basically the first 10 games we had running what we deemed perfectly with a variety of different features and game styles. 
 

what shocked us was the lack of issues. The crash logs some have posted and were seen on @Chopaholicvideo was because of the exit game button being used which force quits the game rather than using the on screen menu button which is the only option on the cabinet to quit a game. Exit game button was a tester option that never got turned off. Apart from that it seems most other issues were from a touchscreen being used that was a different type to the original cabinet which caused the game to miss the button touches. The t7 monitor touchscreen is basically a mouse click. The newer touch screens use a different system and they fail. We built a stable platform that could be built on and more features added to and that was the aim of the beta release. 
 

which brings me on nicely to the next issue. The onscreen buttons. As was pointed out, other games can run but have issues with the onscreen buttons not working. This was the reason for the force exit game button on the hw panel. It was so testers can force quit a game if they loaded it and on screen buttons didn’t work. ALL those games were listed as part working and got parked to try and find a pattern. If we had shipped with some games not working fully it would have made the touch screen issue a lot harder to find the cause of because there would have been hundreds of reports of buttons not working when it’s a know issue. Infact about 8 builds before the release build we actually had a pop up come up on some of the games each time you launched it to inform you of the known issues incase we had to launch with those problems. We hated it, the testers hated it and we went back to the code and and tried to find the issues. We found some of the blockers on the touch buttons not working. But we still have a large amount that are still not responding. If we can solve that issue then it opens up a LOT of games. 
 

we code, we test, we code again, we test, we sort out an issue with one block of games, we go back to known working games and find it breaks one of them so then we have to find why a system on the real machine that runs any game doesn’t do the same on the emulator. We are sick of Ida pro logs and scans. We are sick of debugging messaging calls between tcp stacks and exes but every analysis creates a bit more of the picture and we didn’t realise until just after launch how much of the picture we had. For a laugh we started to try t8 bpaks and some worked and worked well. At that point we knew the back end was good because if it can just install a bpak we had never examined before and run it then it must be accurate. We tried equinox bpaks and they failed with vgap errors. 
 

all we want is for everyone to have the most complete and accurate experiences with the emulator. We don’t want to have to spend days implementing systems to totally lock people out and implementing DRM and shit like that because it will only impact those who want to use it properly (as all DRM does). Anything can be circumvented if you are determined enough to, hell MVFME itself is proof of that, so layers will be added to try and stop this happening again. 
 

and just to give another example of why a trickle release is good. If we had pulled off a total miracle and had everything running day one you all would have stuck with the games you know. You would have missed some obscure but quite good games that were just there. This way we feel you will have time to play the games, check them all out and go “never seen that before, but I quite like it”. Or go “what a heap of shit, why did they waste time with that” but at least you will have had a go. 
 

and finally with some control over the release titles we can try and avoid drawing attention to us from manufacturers. If we suddenly started putting community black knight or burn em up (don’t even bother trying them. They don’t even work on our current build lol) on the list of titles we would have a cease and desist on our lap quicker than you can play £100 off on a B3 lol. We are covering our backsides and trying to make sure we stay out of trouble

anyway so much for a short explanation. I’ve gone on a bit but just wanted to put our side over. All we ask in the future is if you do find anything like that out please keep it to yourself and even better let us know. We all make mistakes

HKP and Marvin

[niallquinn]

Many thanks for the update, it really wasn't necessary.

As the saying goes "don't let the bastards grind you down"

Thank you!

 

[HongKong Phooey]

10 minutes ago, niallquinn said:

Many thanks for the update, it really wasn't necessary.

As the saying goes "don't let the bastards grind you down"

Thank you!

 

We know in the past that silence has been the norm and it doesn’t work. We just wanted to try and explain why we did things we did 

[andy-1]

Many thanks for the explanation.

Look forward to 1.1 whenever it is ready.

The only thing I had with it was some games didn't display correctly but I know these will hopefully be resolved.

Good luck HKP and team.

[infection]

Thanks for explanation 

 

look forward to v1.1  im still really enjoying what I tested so far  of the games not had a long playthrough yet of them  maybe Ohh ahh drac a little(still not got feature) 

 

 

All the best for future HKP  and Team  

 

Don't let the rushes put you down and frustrate you 🫡

[vectra666]

It’s your emulator to do as You please l, the trouble with Fme everyone wants it all now just like mfme if all games ran via 1.0 we’d have nothing to get excited about and every layout- fruit machine would’ve been released 20yrs back and the scene would’ve died in 2006 but no wizard kept the fires burning with updates and new releases for different tech etc which is why even though I can’t run certain games am I bothered, ok I too would like this n that but everything takes time. Countless hours of coding and testing something us mere mortals should be impressed by 

@HongKong Phooeyjust one problem I have, all games load fine abiet a lot of the touch buttons as shortcuts don’t work correctly (maybe it’s just me) but as mentioned previously two games didn’t work due to the screens were to big for the borders now it appears most don’t run due to this issue expection of cashino will there be a update to maybe resize to fit the screen depending on screen size (followed your advice and the files are in the c:drive)

even though I can’t run certain only play a couple I’m still excited and grateful for what’s given

Edited April 17 by vectra666

[flying giraffe]

Thanks for the update, if there is a flaw in 1.0 is it perhaps  better to take 1.0 down, upload 1.1 and limit it to the 10 official games if that's possible,  and maybe put the tournament back up, that's the best feature for me

[slotsmagic]

Many thanks for the update!

I think people lost sight of the fact this isn't like when you hack a machine from a manufacturer to gain access to games you shouldn't - there are two people doing this for free, unpaid, so we can have something nice. 

Either that or they just don't have any respect  

The whole point of v1 seemed to be (from what I can gather) to openly test  across a wide range of hardware - while also giving us all early access to something exciting.

I'm all for that approach, we have people with tablets, laptops, all kinds of different monitors and graphics setups, and people with cabinets.

P.S. I still can't play Hammer Horror B4 due to the touchscreen input registering way off to the side. Apologies if there is already a fix for that. I'd like to get back to playing it as I'm about £300 in with no win collected, so about half way to getting the £250 jackpot  

(I did make one mistake in the video, I said I was running 4K but was actually running 2560x1440, I often do this to make text larger without relying on display scaling).

 

Edited April 18 by slotsmagic

[nails]

thank you for the update, and looking forward to the next one!