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johnparker007

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6 hours ago, johnparker007 said:

I do also plan at some point to build in a zoom function for when playing with keyboard&mouse / joypad (so something like the mouse scrollwheel would be used to zoom into the machine a bit).

Maybe eventually add camera X/Y/Z/angle controls somewhere like Visual Pinball has? Kinda nice for fine tuning the camera position to just where I like it.

 

Been looking at some other stuff while the MPU1 code goes through. After receiving a tip from @wolf676 I discovered a mislabeled SRU ROM set that turned out to be a Dutch game, which is something I didn't expect to see :D. I'd stumbled across it beforehand, but when I ran it at the time it was doing funny things and not working right, so I just figured it was a bad dump. Fixed a bug and added some extra hardware, and now it works fine. The name of this particular game remains a mystery right now though, I found a Dutch site with pictures of some SRU games, but it's not any of those.

So I don't know what this game is called, but what I can do is figure out how it plays, so I decided to do just that.
Found the locations of the reel symbols in the game code, then played it a bunch, stared at the code, then played it again and so forth. Now I know how the game works, so I threw together this very quick and dirty "layout":

Screenshot_1.thumb.png.ad67fea093e7082924903f24879da793.png

There's many things missing, like the paytable which I couldn't be arsed to add (making MAME artwork files by hand involves manually typing in XY coordinates of everything on the screen, it gets old real fast :D). The symbol names definitely aren't correct as they're guessed based on what the other games have, still better than calling them Symbol1/Symbol2 though.

Also found some very interesting stuff while looking through the code. 3 of the symbols give you bonus points when you get four of them lined up and these bonus points can make you quite a bit of money. However on every spin there's a 50% chance for the machine to just straight up block these symbols from appearing at the same time. Quite sneaky that, I'd imagine anyone even slightly involved with playing modern fruits knew how "random" they were, can't imagine anyone expected this in the late 70s/early 80s though.

(BTW @johnparker007 I made a few changes to SRU in regards to layouts - the display digit outputs are in reverse order now and extender lamps now get inverted as they should be. I see you're doing MPU4 stuff right now, but thought I'd give a heads up once this code eventually appears in MAME)

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2 hours ago, SomeRandomGuy said:

Maybe eventually add camera X/Y/Z/angle controls somewhere like Visual Pinball has? Kinda nice for fine tuning the camera position to just where I like it.

I've popped a note into Trello about this feature - the entire camera/character controller stuff will be being completely rewritten, current implementation is just hacked together to tide us over (like many things in AS ;) )

Excellent work on getting this mystery Dutch SRU rom running, and Sodoku-ing through to build up the layout!  I'm guessing this ROM cannot be made to run in MFME?  Once I'm up and running with this new conversion stuff, people can make MFME v20.1 classic layouts to be converted for MAME internal reference layouts, though it's always loads easier to create if it can be playtested in MFME first.

2 hours ago, SomeRandomGuy said:

The symbol names definitely aren't correct as they're guessed based on what the other games have, still better than calling them Symbol1/Symbol2 though.

Also found some very interesting stuff while looking through the code. 3 of the symbols give you bonus points when you get four of them lined up and these bonus points can make you quite a bit of money. However on every spin there's a 50% chance for the machine to just straight up block these symbols from appearing at the same time. Quite sneaky that, I'd imagine anyone even slightly involved with playing modern fruits knew how "random" they were, can't imagine anyone expected this in the late 70s/early 80s though.

(BTW @johnparker007 I made a few changes to SRU in regards to layouts - the display digit outputs are in reverse order now and extender lamps now get inverted as they should be. I see you're doing MPU4 stuff right now, but thought I'd give a heads up once this code eventually appears in MAME)

Those symbols look perfectly playable, and you've probably got them pretty close anyway :)  Since the consensus was not in favour of the SVG fruit symbols - for most fruit symbols like the ones in the layout, I'll just do filled ellipses, but they will be colored appropriately (green for melon, red for cherry etc), with potential a second 'primitive' to differentiate same colored shapes.  So on your layout above for instance, I might do something to differentiate between lemon and bell as they'd both be yellow.  So with the word and the color and the shape(s), it should still end up somewhat 'playable' I think.  Reels on the test Adders & Ladders look like this, pretty easy as it has very few symbols:
image.png.e3f8bc3ca34e8e4de15bdfcb82f0eac5.png

Ta for the heads up on the SRU changes :)  - I'll be doing some platform level configs (so 'all SRU digits reversed' etc), along with per machine config overrides - so things like reversed/forward digits etc will work ok, with minimal extra effort when building all my machine conversion configs.

If the new SRU machine can be run in MFME (or even if not), perhaps someone will build a classic layout for it, that'll work for a MAME internal layout with minimal changes :) 

Edited by johnparker007
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[ 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
[ 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

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13 hours ago, SomeRandomGuy said:

The name of this particular game remains a mystery right now though, I found a Dutch site with pictures of some SRU games, but it's not any of those.

ROMs were labeled "LAL", so it could be Lite a Line (not light!).

edit: the gamble feature is identical to your layout ;)

Found a flyer of that dutch SRU machine in this PDFs: https://www.fruitemu.co.uk/ib/files/1582-dutch-foreign-fruit-machine-flyers-documents/

image.png.3e82956294e41bb6172073b99605692a.png

Lite_a_Line_(JPM_dutch).jpg

Edited by wolf676
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42 minutes ago, wolf676 said:

ROMs were labeled "LAL", so it could be Lite a Line (not light!).

edit: the gamble feature is identical to your layout ;)

Found a flyer of that dutch SRU machine in this PDFs: https://www.fruitemu.co.uk/ib/files/1582-dutch-foreign-fruit-machine-flyers-documents/

image.png.3e82956294e41bb6172073b99605692a.png

Lite_a_Line_(JPM_dutch).jpg

Nice hunting, well found! :) 

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[ Fruit Machine Database ] Initial google sheets (WIP): https://tinyurl.com/2c5znxzz
[ 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

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14 hours ago, johnparker007 said:

Excellent work on getting this mystery Dutch SRU rom running, and Sodoku-ing through to build up the layout!  I'm guessing this ROM cannot be made to run in MFME?  Once I'm up and running with this new conversion stuff, people can make MFME v20.1 classic layouts to be converted for MAME internal reference layouts, though it's always loads easier to create if it can be playtested in MFME first.

Those symbols look perfectly playable, and you've probably got them pretty close anyway :)  Since the consensus was not in favour of the SVG fruit symbols - for most fruit symbols like the ones in the layout, I'll just do filled ellipses, but they will be colored appropriately (green for melon, red for cherry etc), with potential a second 'primitive' to differentiate same colored shapes.  So on your layout above for instance, I might do something to differentiate between lemon and bell as they'd both be yellow.  So with the word and the color and the shape(s), it should still end up somewhat 'playable' I think.  Reels on the test Adders & Ladders look like this, pretty easy as it has very few symbols:

Sounds good :) I gave it a try in MFME, the ROMs run but I couldn't get the lamp extender to work, so for many of the lamps you can add them, but they won't actually light up. Seems to be working alright otherwise.

1 hour ago, wolf676 said:

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." (Sherlock Holmes)

@SomeRandomGuy has to verify my theorie... 

That's the machine alright, great find! Seems they moved the reel symbols around because there aren't any bars with the same symbol around it, but otherwise it's spot on. Thank you :)

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11 minutes ago, SomeRandomGuy said:

I gave it a try in MFME, the ROMs run but I couldn't get the lamp extender to work, so for many of the lamps you can add them, but they won't actually light up. Seems to be working alright otherwise.

Ah cool :)  So I guess the (slightly convoluted) path to a polished classic MAME layout would be building in MFME v20.1 and get non-extended lamps/reels/buttons/coinslots/labels/frames correct, leave a copy of the extended lamp matrix on there for debug.  I can then build a MAME .lay from that, that anyone can run (placing in their MAME Artwork folder), they could then figure out which lamp numbers map to what by testing in MAME, and copy those correct numbers back to the MFME layout (and remove the temporary debug matrix).  Then I could reconvert through AS, and that final .lay would then be good.  All doable, if a bit of a faff!

At least you've already put together a working basic layout for it to be going on with :) 

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[ Community Drive ] The drive: http://tinyurl.com/yckze665
[ Fruit Machine Database ] Initial google sheets (WIP): https://tinyurl.com/2c5znxzz
[ 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

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43 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

Ah cool :)  So I guess the (slightly convoluted) path to a polished classic MAME layout would be building in MFME v20.1 and get non-extended lamps/reels/buttons/coinslots/labels/frames correct, leave a copy of the extended lamp matrix on there for debug.  I can then build a MAME .lay from that, that anyone can run (placing in their MAME Artwork folder), they could then figure out which lamp numbers map to what by testing in MAME, and copy those correct numbers back to the MFME layout (and remove the temporary debug matrix).  Then I could reconvert through AS, and that final .lay would then be good.  All doable, if a bit of a faff!

At least you've already put together a working basic layout for it to be going on with :) 

Yep, in this case I already know most of the lamps from doing the layout, wouldn't be that much work to figure out the rest since I can see all the accesses in the disassembly anyway, and I could then put together a list once anyone's interested :)

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On 23/07/2022 at 01:02, johnparker007 said:

I've popped a note into Trello about this feature - the entire camera/character controller stuff will be being completely rewritten, current implementation is just hacked together to tide us over (like many things in AS ;) )

Excellent work on getting this mystery Dutch SRU rom running, and Sodoku-ing through to build up the layout!  I'm guessing this ROM cannot be made to run in MFME?  Once I'm up and running with this new conversion stuff, people can make MFME v20.1 classic layouts to be converted for MAME internal reference layouts, though it's always loads easier to create if it can be playtested in MFME first.

Those symbols look perfectly playable, and you've probably got them pretty close anyway :)  Since the consensus was not in favour of the SVG fruit symbols - for most fruit symbols like the ones in the layout, I'll just do filled ellipses, but they will be colored appropriately (green for melon, red for cherry etc), with potential a second 'primitive' to differentiate same colored shapes.  So on your layout above for instance, I might do something to differentiate between lemon and bell as they'd both be yellow.  So with the word and the color and the shape(s), it should still end up somewhat 'playable' I think.  Reels on the test Adders & Ladders look like this, pretty easy as it has very few symbols:
image.png.e3f8bc3ca34e8e4de15bdfcb82f0eac5.png

Ta for the heads up on the SRU changes :)  - I'll be doing some platform level configs (so 'all SRU digits reversed' etc), along with per machine config overrides - so things like reversed/forward digits etc will work ok, with minimal extra effort when building all my machine conversion configs.

If the new SRU machine can be run in MFME (or even if not), perhaps someone will build a classic layout for it, that'll work for a MAME internal layout with minimal changes :) 

EHHHH just thowing in my 5 pence... maybe a triangle fo the bell>

 

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living the dream

 

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5 hours ago, wolf676 said:

Wow, they do look pretty similar!  If the ROM turns up and we make a layout, it should be able to be integrated into @SomeRandomGuy's MPU1 driver :)  (and if a DX were made that could then ultimately run in Arcade SIm as a 3d machine with MAME running the emulation).

4 hours ago, spa said:

Cant wait for some arcade simulator updates lol!

Sorry, it's going to be a while yet :)   All the MAME work will benefit Arcade Sim though in terms of instant start ups/ solving the On/Off alarm issue, multiplayer, potentially also 'rewind machine', user save states (not ram saves but instantly starting save states), potentially cross platform, so Mac/Linux/Android etc... plus occasionally small parts of it (wrt. missing parts of MFME extraction like 7seg blocks, band reels, £ signs etc) directly benefits Arcade Sim as I need to write them anyway... there will be a future point when this MAME work is done, but it's just a lot of work to be honest!  Gotta keep on trucking, it'll be done at some point :) 

3 hours ago, woodsy said:

EHHHH just thowing in my 5 pence... maybe a triangle fo the bell>

 

Haha it's not a bad idea :)  ...but due to how the MAME layout renderer works, I can draw triangles at a later point on the layouts themselves (via SVG), but due to grouping/bloat, I can only really build up stuff from rectangles/ellipses for the reels (the MAME layout system is very different to how MFME layout works).  These are just very abstract representations of something, so it's not just pure text... all the cool kids will be playing them thru Arcade Sim 3DX's anyway ;) 

Edited by johnparker007
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[ Community Drive ] The drive: http://tinyurl.com/yckze665
[ Fruit Machine Database ] Initial google sheets (WIP): https://tinyurl.com/2c5znxzz
[ 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

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Work continues on the MAME internal layout stuff, here's a different one (as it shares the same reels with Adders & Ladders and they're just hardcoded for the mo):

Police lamps aren't working properly here, this is just a snapshot of what I'm currently looking at :) 

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[ 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
[ 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

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14 minutes ago, serene02 said:

Wait are you working on an automated layout creator in mame bud?   This look well impressive.  So these will be standard base layouts in mame at some point?   All very impressive mate and great to see these running in mame.

J

I'm working on leveraging my Arcade Sim MFME tools to build MAME 'internal' layouts from MFME Classic layouts.  Also, the configs (for instance, the police lights aren't working in the video above due to the Small MPU4 extender board not being set up in the Road Hog drive in MAME, lots of these minor config issue to sort out in some semi-automated way).

And yes, these will be the standard base layouts in MAME (in some cases replacing the old mfme2mame ones I did back in 2016, and in some cases being new layouts)... I do have ulterior motive of course to try get the latest MAME working in a tightly integrated way, so I can continue to improve/expand FME experience in AS :) 

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[ Community Drive ] The drive: http://tinyurl.com/yckze665
[ Fruit Machine Database ] Initial google sheets (WIP): https://tinyurl.com/2c5znxzz
[ 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

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7 hours ago, wolf676 said:

cool, Lite a Line has an undumped (?) brother:

Interesting stuff, I thought Lucky Casino/Club Casino was the only club SRU machine, guess I was wrong :D Haven't seen any dumps for this one.

2 hours ago, johnparker007 said:

Work continues on the MAME internal layout stuff, here's a different one (as it shares the same reels with Adders & Ladders and they're just hardcoded for the mo):

Police lamps aren't working properly here, this is just a snapshot of what I'm currently looking at :) 

Well looks like the whole thing is coming together now, that is great! Very nice facelift overall :) Also I think most of the MPU4 lamp extenders have been sorted now in the current code. Road Hog at least has the correct one.

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5 minutes ago, SomeRandomGuy said:

Well looks like the whole thing is coming together now, that is great! Very nice facelift overall :) Also I think most of the MPU4 lamp extenders have been sorted now in the current code. Road Hog at least has the correct one.

Thanks, it is looking a bit nicer than my old ones :)  Good to know the lamp extenders have already been looked at, I'll get git set up a some point... plan is to scrape the platform-specific config page per game layout, so later we can batch update stuff in the drivers where needed, like the meters.

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[ Community Drive ] The drive: http://tinyurl.com/yckze665
[ Fruit Machine Database ] Initial google sheets (WIP): https://tinyurl.com/2c5znxzz
[ 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

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Yes, several posts got deleted. Its not really anyones place to question how and why Chris gave mfme to the masses for free.

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14 minutes ago, spa said:

Yes, several posts got deleted. Its not really anyones place to question how and why Chris gave mfme to the masses for free.

I agree, forget questioning of reality, just get on with, digging up old posts seems to be a common issue with some!!

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I just read that meta/facebook are upping the cost of their budget Quest2 VR headsets by $100 (which will likely be £100 for us in Europe) at some point in August.

So I've ordered a used lowest storage one for £229 from Amazon to get in before the price hike - I haven't taken this out of the Arcade Sim donations fund, as it'll only benefit people with VR headsets, but this will allow for development/testing of tethered Arcade Sim PC VR at some future point :) 

Current AS plan sequence is roughly (subject to change): 

large amount of MAME work to get done -> JPM Electra cab and layouts into test arcade 1 -> R&D figure out how to use latest MAME for video/fruits -> developing 2nd test Arcade, that will be MAME driven with instant startup via save states -> more Spidy cabs+games into test arcades -> misc stuff -> more cabinets/games -> look at wallet/multiplayer basics -> controls/camera new system -> maybe a dabble with some basic VR

So basic Arcade Sim PC VR is a long way off (probably a year or so), though I'm not going to rule out a few experiments along the way - now I have the shiny new toy to test it on :)

Edited by johnparker007
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[ Community Drive ] The drive: http://tinyurl.com/yckze665
[ Fruit Machine Database ] Initial google sheets (WIP): https://tinyurl.com/2c5znxzz
[ 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

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A little more progress on the layout builder stuff.  As I'm looking at specifically MPU4 - sometimes, these layouts were made with no available info (manual for correct lamp numbers etc).  So the lamps and Chr lamp table values would be tweaked by trial and error until all the lamps are working (meaning the Chr table and lamps could be wrong, if the matrix patterns weren't obvious).

In MAME, MPU4 is now using mainly correct lamp table numbers in the vast majority (if not all) cases (have verified a few of these on real machines now through Chr-free chips)... so the MFME layouts would then have scrambled lamps again playing back via MAME (as they use different Chr values), like this test Graffiti layout I was looking at:


With some help from David regarding the process, I've knocked up a 'remapper' stage, so these layouts can still be used :)  Here is the same layout using this new remapping, so the lamp numbers are now the true ones (to work with the true Chr lamp table values used in MAME):


At some point I could provide text docs with these corrections (so it could show the 8x chr lamp values, then a table to show what to change each of the current lamp numbers to... though from a playability perspective there's not much benefit... some 'clear effect' bugs would be fixed on afflicted layouts though.  It would need doing manually in MFME per layout - if anyone is so inclined, I can add that in.

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[ Community Drive ] The drive: http://tinyurl.com/yckze665
[ Fruit Machine Database ] Initial google sheets (WIP): https://tinyurl.com/2c5znxzz
[ 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

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Ok so the VR headset came... and ruined my glasses.  I've been playing with it, and it's already scratched my glasses left lens to buggery (I was using the 'glasses spacer' accessory as per instructions).  Also very minor scratch on the Quest left lens.

It's all a bit of a distraction anyway from the MAME work I need to get done lol so maybe for the best.

Amazing that they're selling these things without having a warning 'This product can significantly scratch your glasses!".

[ 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
[ 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

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