Development Updates

[johnparker007]

2 hours ago, SomeRandomGuy said:

Honestly no idea right now, Black Box is not quite done yet as I need to take care of that remaining machine, then clean the code up to get it to a state ready for submitting, then clean it some more once I get feedback on it. As far as MPU3 goes though, now that the MPU4 cleanup is finally in I can see Haze looking at it since the two are similar, there was already a bit of MPU3 characteriser stuff done.

Yeah David did say he was holding out for that merge before continuing.  I should probably let him know that the work still continues on the layouts but at a larger and so slower scale... I'll get there with it  

I got the SevenSegmentBlock scraping sorted (it has a tabbed interface to navigate for scraping the digits)... and now looking at font scraping solutions for a couple  of issues (got a workaround for the i/L on the end of text issue, just need to sort out '£' scraping as I optimised the scraper too early and it's a bugger to work the special character back in).  Don't need to do all the new component image extraction for the MAME internal classic stuff, mainly just for the non-standard reels, since I'll be using those in a future stage.

2 hours ago, SomeRandomGuy said:

Well the dumped chip and the one in the real machine are both MP0027A's, and I doubt they would have silently changed the code without giving it a new part number, that's what the A is probably already there for. The note data in the TMS1000 code does seem to correspond to what the emulator plays, I don't think it can pull any alternate data out of somewhere either. With help from Hap's doorbell code I did find a bug now that caused the tempo to be slightly wrong, but that still doesn't explain where the extra notes come from. I'm gonna say this is good enough for now

Definitely good enough for long term I'd say!

2 hours ago, SomeRandomGuy said:

A DX of a doorbell, truly the new era of fruit machine emulation has arrived!

Indeed, we are living in the future  

Edited September 27, 2022 by johnparker007

[serene02]

A ram clear error is normal on first boot Alth.  The contact Maygay is usually due to the lower stake revisions that had a dongle check.  We do have roms and that check can be hacked out

J

[MikeyPosh]

Right, new device, back on W10, and more so, better graphics card, and finally just lost my V Plates playing this bad boy. This is just amazing work John, it really is. Was so chuffed actually got it working, took me a while, but then realised the Arcade Machines are not there for show, and that they were all games, insane, it really is, love it. Is there/Will there, be any Barcrest mid 90s era, or is this a no no? love the whole concept of this, had an stupid idea years ago, one day, we'd have an online server of some kind, where people would play a machine as if in a real arcade, you've basically made a 42 year old a very happy man

[johnparker007]

7 hours ago, MikeyPosh said:

Right, new device, back on W10, and more so, better graphics card, and finally just lost my V Plates playing this bad boy. This is just amazing work John, it really is. Was so chuffed actually got it working, took me a while, but then realised the Arcade Machines are not there for show, and that they were all games, insane, it really is, love it. Is there/Will there, be any Barcrest mid 90s era, or is this a no no? love the whole concept of this, had an stupid idea years ago, one day, we'd have an online server of some kind, where people would play a machine as if in a real arcade, you've basically made a 42 year old a very happy man

Always nice to hear of someone enjoying the project!  

The current focus of the work is FME within MAME, so that we can do more with better FME/video games/online multiplayer going forward with more features etc (by using latest MAME to drive the emulation).

So this means it'll be a long time (3-6 months) before any kind of update to Arcade Simulator... but there will lots of Barcrest mid-90s era games in Genesis cabinets on the way    The only 'no-no' (for now) is Nintendo video games, as they have a habit of being highly litigious around hobby projects like this.

Edited September 28, 2022 by johnparker007

[MikeyPosh]

Those Barcrest 90s are the ones for me, Im tempting pulling a sicki today. Maybe im sad and abit of a geek, but I like to literally, move about like Im in an arcade  all you need now, is a cafe which makes me a cuppa  

[johnparker007]

14 minutes ago, MikeyPosh said:

Those Barcrest 90s are the ones for me, Im tempting pulling a sicki today. Maybe im sad and abit of a geek, but I like to literally, move about like Im in an arcade  all you need now, is a cafe which makes me a cuppa  

I have a 48" TV at the end of my bed that I do the development/playtesting on... I have tried sitting very close to the TV with the bedroom lights off, so the arcade is all I could see filling my vision, to get a sneak preview of VR (future feature) - it does feel very immersive!

Not sure about pulling the sickie though lol   It'll still be installed on your PC when you get home later!

[MikeyPosh]

It reminds me of the game 'Casino Tycoon' as that had that carpet effect, and you'd place games/machines all over the square feet of space, brilliant game, but machines were basic

Sorry for the Noob questions John, but

I might of dreamed this, can you modify the selection or add/remove machines out of interest, not that I'd dare touch this

Does the Ram on a machine reset after I come off it, or does it remember what % it is currently running on/at

Might be my camara on my Phone, but tried videoing the screen yesterday, playing Rollercoaster, but on the video, lights were real bright, as in too bright, but doesnt effect game

And finally, I spotted, on the machines Iv play so far, it seems as if the reels are running too fast, only slightly, as in their spinning, but they do align up correctly, wasnt sure if this was a me issue/device issue, and same with the JPM machines, when inserting coinn, sometimes, Alarm goes, Monopoly and Big Bucks it went off, not a biggy as it sorts itself

I'd love to see Pot Black/Top Tenner - for the next 3-6 months, and this VR Future Feature - wow - just bloody wow

[Altharic]

12 hours ago, serene02 said:

A ram clear error is normal on first boot Alth.  The contact Maygay is usually due to the lower stake revisions that had a dongle check.  We do have roms and that check can be hacked out

J

Sadly they do not coin up they do however go into attract mode.

[johnparker007]

21 minutes ago, MikeyPosh said:

I might of dreamed this, can you modify the selection or add/remove machines out of interest, not that I'd dare touch this

Not dreamed, but for now that's an internal feature, it's nowhere near ready for actual release - it's all being built so that users will be able to build and share their own arcades - the internal editor being used to create the current test arcade layout:

So this feature will be available at a future point.
 

23 minutes ago, MikeyPosh said:

Does the Ram on a machine reset after I come off it, or does it remember what % it is currently running on/at

The MFME RAMs are saved, so if you hammer a machine, it'll play tight when you next play it etc.

24 minutes ago, MikeyPosh said:

Might be my camara on my Phone, but tried videoing the screen yesterday, playing Rollercoaster, but on the video, lights were real bright, as in too bright, but doesnt effect game

Not your imagination - it's an somewhat complex issue with various solutions - all options will require a ton of dev work... Bonanza is another example of a very bright layout.  So for now you're stuck with them!  One option is to disable Bloom from the ingame settings menu while playing the bright ones, it will help a bit - it's a crappy workaround though I know! 
 

27 minutes ago, MikeyPosh said:

And finally, I spotted, on the machines Iv play so far, it seems as if the reels are running too fast, only slightly, as in their spinning, but they do align up correctly, wasnt sure if this was a me issue/device issue, and same with the JPM machines, when inserting coinn, sometimes, Alarm goes, Monopoly and Big Bucks it went off, not a biggy as it sorts itself

If the reels are bouncing too much, this is due to a crude reel physics implementation so if the CPU is struggling, they will bounce a lot - you can remedy this by disabling 'Reel Physics' from the ingame settings menu.

The insert coin alarms, known issue, especially on the JPMs - I have plans to address this after the MAME work is done.

29 minutes ago, MikeyPosh said:

I'd love to see Pot Black/Top Tenner - for the next 3-6 months, and this VR Future Feature - wow - just bloody wow

They will need the Genesis cab doing first, there will be a lot more fruti machines in future - I've just done a release freeze here, as I have lots of low level work for redoing improved emulation.

[Altharic]

New MAME is out and just a few small fixes for FME

- 10319: bfm/bfm_sc2.cpp Fixed µPD7759 sample triggering and made volume ramp less aggressive. [Paul-Arnold, David Haywood]
- 10322: bfm/bfm_sc2.cpp: Fixed µPD7759 sample triggering and reset control correctly. [Paul-Arnold]
 

Dr Who no longer plays random sounds however the reels seem to be off now.

[Altharic]

1 hour ago, Altharic said:

Sadly they do not coin up they do however go into attract mode.

Gladiator does work however the reels are blank you can coin it up using the £1 icon and it works to an extent, there is even a layout for it.

[johnparker007]

Well it's all a bit hacky, as is tradition, but finally got the '£' character scraping working!  (this layout extraction issue has been lurking around for like 6+ months)

 

[johnparker007]

Also have come up with a quick fix for another longstanding issue; extracting layouts where they are not very wide, and so the menu bar spills onto another row, e.g: 


It is a quick fix (a one line special ), and only works for the extraction stage - but that's all we care about for now  

For making future new AS machines whose actual emulation is driven by MFME I would need to deal with these manually - but I think it's ok to kick that can down the road... considering all the work for a long time is going to be around MAME dev / integrating latest raw MAME.EXE into AS as the default emulation backend (hoping to keep support for MFME emulation backend as a legacy Windows-only option, but it's not the focus) - i.e: for MAME-driven machines, once the layout has been extracted, MFME is no longer involved in the process, so this menu bar overspill won't be an issue.

Edited September 28, 2022 by johnparker007

[MikeyPosh]

Cheers John for all the replies, I didnt even realise the Arcade Machines were playable, until I fired up Track n Field, some real classic games out there, how much are they ago, in theory, as in per credit

[MikeyPosh]

Just watched your 26 min YT, wow, looks amazing, got a bit complex a few times for me to follow. So I assume you could create more space, and double up on machines, so have 2 of them, so to speak, like real arcades, where they have about 10 Party Times  When I fired up mine, and saw the Arcade Gaming Machines, reason I assumed they were for show was because there was no demo screen playing on them as I walked around, they were blank, but saw on your video, they too have the demo screen playing, which makes all the difference, as there will be games I recall playing as a kid, but not the name of them, and seeing it il say "I remember that"  

Im assuming the most recent download is that at the bottom of your post, thats the one I got. 

[johnparker007]

5 hours ago, MikeyPosh said:

how much are they ago, in theory, as in per credit

No virtual wallet system implemented at present, it's a feature for the future.

5 hours ago, MikeyPosh said:

So I assume you could create more space, and double up on machines, so have 2 of them, so to speak, like real arcades, where they have about 10 Party Times

Yes, the arcade can be larger, and will be able to contain multiple copies of the same machine  
 

5 hours ago, MikeyPosh said:

there was no demo screen playing on them as I walked around, they were blank

That twinned with the issue you had with reels suggests that your PC is only just about able to run Arcade Sim, the new 'attract mode' videos feature requires a hefty CPU, and probably also struggles on slow spinning hard drives.  There will be a 'lite' mode of this in future, that will just cycle through 3 images per game (and still have the game sounds), for laptop users etc, but it's not built yet.

I'd recommend disabling the settings ringed in purple, exit to the main menu and reload the arcade, and you should find it all runs a bit smoother on your laptop  

 

5 hours ago, MikeyPosh said:

Im assuming the most recent download is that at the bottom of your post, thats the one I got. 

It auto-updates itself on startup - so when new patches become available, they install when you next load up Arcade Sim   So everyone is on the latest version.  There won't be any updates for another 3-6 months, as there's a ton of other work needs doing to continue improving FME with AS - but when there is, you will receive it automatically.

Edited September 29, 2022 by johnparker007

[MikeyPosh]

You Bloody Legend  

[johnparker007]

Turning my attention back to some batch processing now the majority of the required MFME 2nd stage scraping setup (pending testing) is done   

So the next job is back to working on the 3k layout definitions that were auto-picked to be used, and getting the relevant MAME rom name populated.  Not a job to be done manually as there are so many layouts   ... but there is a handy function of MAME; 'romident' - so I can run a rom from each layout through MAME and get back the specific MAME romset name (if present in the latest MAME) - here's some manual testing, not got all the batching stuff set up yet:


May ultimately want these mapped to 'parent' romset name, but I'll figure that out later... it takes around 5-7 seconds to identify a Rom, so say 8 seconds total * 3,000 roms == 24,000 seconds, which is only around 7 hours to actually do this step once all the batch coding stuff is properly set up  

Edited September 29, 2022 by johnparker007

[johnparker007]

Very long day at work today, still managed to squeeze in a bit of time on the automated MAME rom identification though  

Here I have my early code batch calling Mame to get its output for trying to identify the layouts on SRU platform only:


Looks like around 5 seconds per id, so fine for this big one off batch task.

Next step is getting very latest mame.exe, and generating a full gamelist... so then I can take the MAME output, and step through the 'words', until I find a match - if I do, then I've got a valid MAME ROM name I can apply to the data for that layout (so when I'm ultimately converting them all, I'll have the correct name MAME is expecting for the layout).

Edited September 30, 2022 by johnparker007

[MikeyPosh]

You've earned a well deserved resting weekend 

 

[MikeyPosh]

John, is there, or would there be an option to run the AS in window mode, just wanted to record what I was doing via OBS

[johnparker007]

19 minutes ago, MikeyPosh said:

John, is there, or would there be an option to run the AS in window mode, just wanted to record what I was doing via OBS

There is not, it is full screen mode only (this had to be the case, due to the various stuff I have to do to make MFME scraping work with it).

I also use OBS when I record videos of Arcade Sim to demo stuff in development - these are my OBS settings, I think the key thing is having it set to capture display (see purple arrow):

then it'll record even full screen games...  (You might not see a very good framerate while you are recording, as recording adds additional load so needs a hefty PC).

[MikeyPosh]

Thats exactly what I ended up using, just meant I had to press record, then fire up the sim, but not an issue, been playing the field on the Arcade Games tonight, although Pac Man did hack me off, and that bloody Track n Field kills my space bar  

[johnparker007]

I think I'm there with the coding for the automatic Mame rom identification process now   The mame rom name circled in purple was auto-populated into my big layout database via this new system:


I'm going to set it running to process all the 'autochosen' layouts for making the MAME classics now, and keep an eye on it (in case of crashes) as I go about my Saturday chores. Looked to be around 5-6 seconds per layout so the ~3,000 layouts should get processed today, unless it runs into an issue I've not seen in the mini-test of the SRU layouts  

I'm expecting a small fraction of the very new rom dumps to not be in MAME, so they will then be able to be packaged up, and added to the relevant MAME drivers as separate work, ready for current/future emulation.

[johnparker007]

Found a couple of other minor issues, but think it's all working correctly now, I recorded kicking this big batch process off for those interested  

Worried when the first 3 'AC Games' roms printed up NO MATCH!  But then things settled down, so these AC Games are just not added to MAME (yet, that will be another part of this work, to get all missing ROMs in dif legacy added to correct mame drivers with related metadata).

I saw the odd NO MATCH flash up with the Ace ones that followed, so MAME is clearly a bit behind on the ROMs front... I suspect it will only be some manufacturers/techs... I'll code up some basic auditing probably Sunday, so I can generate a report of missing ROMs per tech, and work out how best to get them added to MAME  

Edited October 1, 2022 by johnparker007