Development Updates

[johnparker007]

So I've added a hard coded test of doing 'lateral fuzzy compares' and it does improve the groupings, but, for larger reel bands such as these ones, it's pretty slow - takes nearly a minute to figure this layout symbol set out (which somewhat defeats the object as it's meant to save me time transcribing them all ready to generate text based symbols). 

Before lateral fuzzy compares - Cherries in 4 groups:

After lateral fuzzy compares - Cherries in 2 groups:

So it is working better... but it's pretty slow on these , and it's still missing a cherry in this example.

It is faster on lower resolution images with the lateral checks (Alphabet is 12 seconds), and improves Alphabet too - now it groups 100% of the lemons, still gets stuck on some others though and has things like melons in two groups:


I think the next approach, as this doesn't quite seem to be getting the best results that feels like could be achieved, is going to be some kind of representative palette / histogram distribution analysis, as I will hopefully be able to get that much quicker if the maths etc can be worked out, and it may prove to be a bit more robust.

So in the case of say this cherry, I could sample the left half:


And then derive that the green is concentrated in the top area, a little brown just before we get down to the middle, and dark to light red in a curve over the lower 60% or so of height.

And also do the same for the top half:


(finding a lot more green and brown).  

I will keep all the code that made the improved but slower results above, I think it'll be about forming a few different options for dealing with these awkward layouts.  

So then if I can do a way of comparing these histograms in a 'loose' way, that might give me a faster (for high resolution reels) and more successful grouping (so all the symbols in Alphabet in single groups rather than the odd split groups I'm getting now).  Alphabet is one of the harder ones though  All the easy ones group correctly now pretty much.

Edited November 11, 2022 by johnparker007

[bionic_beast]

Man I am looking forward to the day that this project is complete, I mean it's got loads of potential just in the pre-alpha I've played, and then when it's done... Who knows where this could go? Ticket redemption games? Foreign Games? Custom Games?! While I don't expect... at all that you'd implement those, you're already doing a lot for AWPs and Video Games (I mean you've got that longest-running forum thread on Desert Island Fruits for *PANG* sake), the potential is still and will always be there.

[Zippy]

That is because he is transparent, open-minded and very informative plus it is open source.

What more could one want.

[johnparker007]

So I've managed to get some initial testing of 'histogram comparisons' in - it's not working very well though lol  

I loosened it up quite a bit to get some matches.  As I did anticipate, it mixes similar colored different symbols together, here we can see it's got lemons, bells, pears - all in the same group, as they're mainly that yellow color.

I didn't anticipate it would still fail to group what appear to me to be very similar symbols:



Why the plums aren't all together, and why there are multiple yellow groups, I do not understand yet.  Am tired though, I will keep going on this next week, as I really thought I'd have more luck with this approach.

It's loose enough that it's grouping melons with cherries, as the left side of the melon is red as is the cherry, and the top contains red/green... along with the £ symbol, as that also contains green.  But then it fails to actually match other cherries.  Somethings doesn't add up, I am confused   Hopefully when I review the maths and code when I'm not tired, I'll see I've made a mistake somewhere.

This is an example of one of those tasks that seems like it should be easy, but is actually pretty tricky... I'm sure there must be a way to group these symbols accurately! 

Edited November 13, 2022 by johnparker007

[johnparker007]

Well spent ages trying to use something to flood fill to generate masks, gave up in the end and rolled my own, needs a bit more work (there's a £ sign that's just a white rectangle due to needing to do a better average background picking), but generally working as proof of concept... so once I have that working, the plan is to hopefully be able to do 'masked' histogram comparisons, which should drive the accuracy up, hopefully by quite a bit... plus I can use the masks for some other comparison stuff:

[serene02]

F$cking skills bro!!!!

This sounds promising

J

[johnparker007]

Well it's a bit better, so this is doing a masked histogram comparison using the new masks, on the dreaded Alphabet grainy scanned reels:


I can't be too disappointed, I mean it's working a fair bit - I just thought it'd work better lol  

The results aren't really any better than using my previous 'lateral fuzzy compare' technique, shown here for reference:


If anything the new masked histogram compare results are less useful to me (at least in their current state), since they get confused and mix all the yellow symbols together, so it's not going to save time during inputting/processing the reels, as I'll then be dicking around untangling all the yellow symbols into their respective groups.

Hmmm definitely still in the research phase, as I don't want to go off making myself loads of manual work that might be able to be (more) automated.  That said, this is only an issue on some 'problem' layouts - a lot of them group nearly perfectly under the lateral fuzzy compare technique... I guess it depends what else I can come up with for accurate grouping... 

Edited November 15, 2022 by johnparker007

[GREDDIE]

Very interesting... it reminded of me when we developed OCR and OMR solutions for banks to read scanned docs (usually invoices and cheques) and we would use APIs from three completely different OCR software suppliers (since their approaches and algorithms were completely different) and then use their accuracy scores to calculate which was more confident of it's match (to a letter or mark rather than a fruit symbol of course  ) - I just wondered whether you intended to combine approaches or would it take too long to process?

You're fuzzy compare looks pretty good, it's a bit weird how the histogram comparison is not matching things like the oranges but I guess what looks obvious to the human eye is so very different to that approach these algorithms are taking.

Thanks for sharing....I found it intriguing. 

Edited November 16, 2022 by GREDDIE

[johnparker007]

34 minutes ago, GREDDIE said:

Very interesting... it reminded of me when we developed OCR and OMR solutions for banks to read scanned docs (usually invoices and cheques) and we would use APIs from three completely different OCR software suppliers (since their approaches and algorithms were completely different) and then use their accuracy scores to calculate which was more confident of it's match (to a letter or mark rather than a fruit symbol of course  ) - I just wondered whether you intended to combine approaches or would it take too long to process?

You're fuzzy compare looks pretty good, it's a bit weird how the histogram comparison is not matching things like the oranges but I guess what looks obvious to the human eye is so very different to that approach these algorithms are taking.

Thanks for sharing....I found it intriguing. 

I am already planning to do some combining   Next idea when I get chance is to loosen up the histograms even more, so that then give results like this:


So it has the oranges altogether, but some melons mixed with cherries etc.

Then I also have realised there's a flaw in the overall processing of this, in that I take the first reel symbol, find all that loosely match, then they are 'unavailable' for other compares.  E.g. on these loose settings, working down the first reel, it got to a cheery first, then matched some of the melons... leaving a melon stranded... but I suspect the stranded melon is a better match for the other melons than the cherry.  SO I need to do some kind of initial pass, that compares every symbol with every other symbol, to better group the most like symbols together.

So anyway, yeah with the loose histogram type result above, I think then I could do some partial mask comparisons or something like that to try derive proportional shapes, to break out the lemons from the pears etc.

I'll keep going for a while longer on this stuff, as I do still see potential for a load of time saving if I can get this grouping working better for the more grainy reel scans, with there being ~3,000 text layouts to build  

That said, I'll cut it off at some point, don't want to spend crazy amounts of time on it!  Still making progress though I think...

In terms of it being too long to process, I'll probably do a mix of something that can just grind through and calculate for say all MPU4 layouts (over 700) while I'm at work.  SO then the results of the calcs are all saved and can be pulled up quickly... plus perhaps ability to flag problem layouts that'll then get more passes at different settings etc.  I'll worry about it later though, once I've kinda proved if it can work first   Feeling optimistic still though!

Edited November 16, 2022 by johnparker007

[GREDDIE]

Yes if the first symbols always become the ones to compare against and that pool of symbols diminishes that will cause some issues, I can see that.  I guess the more passes you do, starting at different places in the list would yield better results too if you could compare the results from each pass. By the way, I appreciate you don't need advice or ideas, I'm just thinking out load and sharing.

Also, does it need to be more accurate than your fuzzy compare (that looks really good) if it's just to speed up a manual process of re-selecting?  Is it really not good enough..? I know you're a perfectionist though

Good luck !

Edited November 16, 2022 by GREDDIE

[woodsy]

the mind boggles.. but it's epically awesome

[johnparker007]

On 16/11/2022 at 08:42, GREDDIE said:

Also, does it need to be more accurate than your fuzzy compare (that looks really good) if it's just to speed up a manual process of re-selecting?  Is it really not good enough..? I know you're a perfectionist though

I'm just seeing the 3,000 layouts that need all their reels 'symbolicating', and want to set up this second option for when the fuzzy compare fall short, like on the Alphabet one, so it will be a easier manual process... won't be spending too much longer on it, but it's slow work, as it's just experimental  

Once this is done, then there's still more - as then I want to have it make a best estimate of which image is most likely one of/the only 'base symbol' in the group without overlay numbers etc... and ideally to suggest subgroupings of the ones with symbols... then there will be best estimates for common base symbols to apply across the group (all overridable with dropdowns etc, but if it can get a lot of this right for me it will all go a lot easier  

Now have an improved system for estimating reel background color which fixes the broken mask on one of the '£' sign symbols.

And also, have done a better version of grouping like symbols together (not perfect, I think I'm missing some recursion, but better):



Now it's no longer mixing Melons with Cherries, but mixing Oranges instead! (though they are kinda closer) Along with the mixed yellows and alphabet symbols.

Need to do something with more options for other areas (this is all hardcoded left 50% of image comparisons for now)...

[woodsy]

@johnparker007 please forgive my clueless but genuine offer of this idea, it may very well be nonsense aas i don't know how you do it!!

but have you thought/is it possible to use the maths to equate the number of blank pixels attibuted to a symbol and maybe having a > or < ratio to calculate and collate the symbols by size?

again this is maybe nonsensical and already been thought and gone, i just had a moment of hmm what if etc..

 

[johnparker007]

14 hours ago, woodsy said:

@johnparker007 please forgive my clueless but genuine offer of this idea, it may very well be nonsense aas i don't know how you do it!!

but have you thought/is it possible to use the maths to equate the number of blank pixels attibuted to a symbol and maybe having a > or < ratio to calculate and collate the symbols by size?

again this is maybe nonsensical and already been thought and gone, i just had a moment of hmm what if etc..

 

That was actually one of the things I was to try next - which I did, unfortunately it didn't work out as planned, due to the 'mask' not really having enough information, but it may still do some of that 'blank pixel comparison' stuff yet, this is all experimental as always!  

However, with some tweaking, and following the histogram comparison with a qualifying difference comparison (simple RGB distance, no lateral shifting for this test), I did manage to get this automatic result of grouping the dreaded grainy Alphabet reel symbols 



I've a load more work yet - but to automatically derive the above groups, well let's just say I'm considering a trip to the offy for a couple of beers!  I didn't think it could be this well on such uneven source symbols... I'm happy with the stray melon, this thing is just to reduce the work involved, a bit of human tweaking/inputting will be ok  

Maybe Sun pm when I next get some time... I think I need to clean up all this grotty test grouping code, into something a bit more scalable.

Next steps, whether grouping a layout by the old way or this new way... is to automatically determine with a very high (doesn't have to be perfect) degree of accuracy which symbol(s) from each group is/are the 'unadorned' symbols (without 1, 2, 3 overlays etc).

(Just notice the far left fruit reel is one that I edited, swapping the top Cherry with a Melon further down, when I was verifying a bug somewhere else... it would work the same without the edit)

Edited November 18, 2022 by johnparker007

[woodsy]

"look mum i'm a coder" haha i'll leave the work to the gods though. 

[johnparker007]

Been chipping away at more R&D work - so for some layouts (Alphabet included), a simple count of the number of pixels is enough to auto-identify the base symbols... as Alphabet, the symbols 'leak out' of the symbol onto the reel background.  So here we can see the base symbols on the left, symbols with overlays on the right:


Won't work for others though, but I've at least one more technique to develop that should work on most of those (total image histogram 'diversity').  More trying stuff out required there...  

Also, I've set up a structure to start breaking the stages of the process per layout into 'save points'.  Very early testing with this, so now this identifies the group index for each reel, and also guesses the reel symbols type on that reel (Standard / Numbers / Custom)... which will then be used to inform other auto-processes from the previous research plus some more to do.

On Alphabet it's initially incorrectly guessed the 'Custom' reel as a 'Number' reel, this is fine and expected though, no biggie:


Adders & Ladders, it has them correctly identified as Numbers / Standard:


For ordered 1-12/1-16 'numbers' type reels, there is another technique planned, so that for reels that are in ascending/descending order, it should be able to guess and pre-label e.g 8,9,10,11,12,1,2,3 etc... This will be initially relying on the width pattern of the numbers, so 10/11/12 are generally pretty wide, and then 1 is much less wide, usually the least wide... so from that it should be possible to derive a lot of number reels I'm hoping   (regardless of ascending/descending order, and where the loop point is)


The idea is that I'll build up the stages of data, where I can override the initial guesses / change estimation algorithms, then save those settings and results including overrides, per layout.  It will then feed into an exact match database, so symbols reused in other layouts can be 100% confidence identified as they are encountered.

Edited November 23, 2022 by johnparker007

[Wildstyle]

Hi @johnparker007is there a way i can use my joystick (usb fightstick) on the games yet?,as it would be awesome on games like moon cresta kung fu master pheonix ect, im left handed and cant use the O.P keys on the keyboard as left and right ideally id'e use z.x for left and right and arrows for up/down. im ok with the bandits there lovely. maybe i 

can re map them with joy prog. thank you kindly for your amaising arcade simulater ive just started to use it properly/regular. Cheers.

 

 

[johnparker007]

4 hours ago, Wildstyle said:

Hi @johnparker007is there a way i can use my joystick (usb fightstick) on the games yet?,as it would be awesome on games like moon cresta kung fu master pheonix ect, im left handed and cant use the O.P keys on the keyboard as left and right ideally id'e use z.x for left and right and arrows for up/down. im ok with the bandits there lovely. maybe i 

can re map them with joy prog. thank you kindly for your amaising arcade simulater ive just started to use it properly/regular. Cheers.

 

 

Hiya   

There is a full overhaul of the controls/inputs systems, but this will likely not be for a 12-18 months. 

I know that's not great!  But I am currently working on fruit machine emulation side of things for prob 3+ more months yet.  This will ultimately allow for more advanced fruit machine experience features such as:

- instant startups on things like Scorpion 5 DES machines (which currently take like 90-180 seconds to start depending on how fast the PC is)
- in/out money tracking via meters (if the user exits the machine while the meters are still counting up, the emulation will continue accelerated in background until the meters have stopped firing, so you can exit straight after all bank display is zero, without having to wait for meters)
- more advanced approach to save states, which will be for driving multiplayer arcades
- other stuff

In the short term, I think yes, something like this (I haven't tried this but should hopefully work):

https://joytokey.net/en/

I think there's a free version, so you could give it a shot - and then you'd set up your USB fightstick so (I believe the keys are):

Up -> Q
Down -> A
Left -> O
Right -> P
Fire1 -> Space
Fire2 -> M
Fire3 -> N
Fire4 -> B
1 Player Start -> 1
Insert Coin -> 0 (zero)

Hope that helps, and apologies in advance if this doesn't work!  But it kinda looks like it should - perhaps download it and just try setting up a single input like UP first, to see if it works, then if so, fill out all the other buttons - good luck  

Edited November 26, 2022 by johnparker007

[johnparker007]

Shout out to @Zippy who has provided a bunch of overall cabinet dimensions for cabinet models planned for the future - thanks very much man!

Added to the CabinetsV2 sheet in the Fruit Machine Database (link in sig), and will be used to tune overall proportions of 3d models so everything looks 'right' relative to each other.

[Ze Frog]

On 07/10/2020 at 21:44, johnparker007 said:

I've had another bash at the reel lamp effect.  I went a bit overboard on the 'warmness' of the lights (these Tuppenny Nudger type machine's reel lamps seem to be a lot brighter/whiter on the youtube videos)... but I do like a nice cosy bulb glow!  

In the long term it'll want a custom shader, that will give a much better effect than this quick job, but I'm just getting things 'good enough' for now, so I can keep progressing the prototype.  

 

Christ on a bike, this is incredible.

[spa]

Looking forward to a new cab going in

[Zippy]

11 hours ago, johnparker007 said:

Shout out to @Zippy who has provided a bunch of overall cabinet dimensions for cabinet models planned for the future - thanks very much man!

Added to the CabinetsV2 sheet in the Fruit Machine Database (link in sig), and will be used to tune overall proportions of 3d models so everything looks 'right' relative to each other.

I'll pass the thanks on to you know who

Will be a good Xmas this year eh John

[Altharic]

On 26/11/2022 at 07:50, Wildstyle said:

Hi @johnparker007is there a way i can use my joystick (usb fightstick) on the games yet?,as it would be awesome on games like moon cresta kung fu master pheonix ect, im left handed and cant use the O.P keys on the keyboard as left and right ideally id'e use z.x for left and right and arrows for up/down. im ok with the bandits there lovely. maybe i 

can re map them with joy prog. thank you kindly for your amaising arcade simulater ive just started to use it properly/regular. Cheers.

 

 

Might this also work?

 

https://docs.ds4windows.app

[johnparker007]

2 hours ago, Altharic said:

Might this also work?

 

https://docs.ds4windows.app

This is focused on Dual Shock controllers I believe, so other controllers probably wouldn't work:

For cases where the gamepad presents itself differently than the official one to the system (most DS4 replicas) then DS4Windows will not recognize them. DS4W detects controller by their Vendor and Product Identification (VID/PID), so if a controller's VID/PID is not already on DS4W code then it will just be ignored 

So I would still recommend trying Joy2Key first, as I remember using it before for something and it worked as expected (configuring any USB controller inputs to simulated keypresses).

[johnparker007]

Well I've spent all day on and off trying to get the Perforce server PC working again (that I used to store the Arcade Sim code revisions, and other Arcade Sim support projects etc).

It was all working fine until around a month ago, when the BT engineer came and installed fibre.  Now I am on a 'Smart Hub 2'... and I can no longer log into the server from the dev PC  

After many hours, I've tried every option in that crappy Smart Hub 2!  and I cannot get it working again.. I've winged it without it for a month, but the next code is a lot of changes, and I just need to get this server stuff working again, before I can really continue with any more work.

So I've decided the best course of action is to get a replacement router that can jack directly into the fibre optic cable from the wall - so the the BT Smart Hub 2 will be completely out of the picture... if that doesn't work I am really stumped!  But I've run out of things to try lol, and just replacing it seems to make sense if it just instantly fixes this seemingly unfixable issue   

After some research, as I really don't want a fancy one, but I absolutely do need the Perforce server to work so that I can continue development - I think this one looks like a reasonable choice, not too expensive at £75.  If I plug it in, and then Perforce is simple working again, then it was the right choice, and if not, I will be a little naughty and return it to Amazon for a refund.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-Next-Gen-Gigabit-Wireless-1201Mbps/dp/B089YXY2YH

Reeeally hope this sorts it out 

I could run the Perforce server truly 'locally' (and used to), but this leads to critical problems - if the dev PC crashes for some reason (and I do abuse it writing Arcade Sim on it, I've filled up the 32GB RAM and crashed Windows plenty of times) - then after the crash, the Perforce repository can be corrupted.  This has happened to me multiple times, for a serious project it's best to have a dedicated PC just for the Perforce server.

Not very exciting, but all part of the process I guess!  

Edited November 27, 2022 by johnparker007