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johnparker007

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1 hour ago, serene02 said:

Cheers bud, really appreciate that link ;)

J

Internet Archive has got all kinds of good ROMs/ISOs going on - they've got some kind of weird semi-DMCA immunity thing.  I think it's all still a extremely grey area for vintage game preservation, but they do have a lot of stuff ;) 

The plan is that AS will download some of its resources (MAME ROMs etc) from there at some point in the future, hopefully keep the internet police off my back a bit as the project gains more visibility :) 

[ 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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Very mini-update - getting close to the end of the first part of the first stage of this multistage process.  It's a big old job!  :)

Another few hours of running my dev PC, and it should have done all the initial pre-extractions first passes, then I'll go through and investigate the failed ones (I reckon it's done like 99% of the layouts without a problem on this first stage)... So many layouts...


image.thumb.png.9e85523686d487e176a917400e4fdec9.png
 

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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1 hour ago, Altharic said:

Your pc will melt when it gets to the Line Up layouts. 😀

Haha I see there's a good selection :)  Of the original Barcrest:
3x Classics,
13x Dxs,
2x PDxs
image.png.4e50a76e469a1368d85014f3ed3884d4.png

I've just spotted tonight that these ones below (that currently don't load into MFME v20.1, from the legacy section), can be fixed by changed the platform string in the .gam file from "ACE1" to "SYS1" :
image.thumb.png.60f0ede2155e67f12f6e2cc609bf315d.png

May be of use to some folks wanting to play those in MFME...

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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5 hours ago, johnparker007 said:

Very mini-update - getting close to the end of the first part of the first stage of this multistage process.  It's a big old job!  :)

Another few hours of running my dev PC, and it should have done all the initial pre-extractions first passes, then I'll go through and investigate the failed ones (I reckon it's done like 99% of the layouts without a problem on this first stage)... So many layouts...

First part of the first stage, sounds like your PC has a lot of work ahead :D. Also, more Black Box developments - Fire Cracker and Double It are now working, I'd say it's mostly just adding games from here on. If things continue going this smoothly then it might just make it in this month :)

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10 minutes ago, SomeRandomGuy said:

First part of the first stage, sounds like your PC has a lot of work ahead :D. Also, more Black Box developments - Fire Cracker and Double It are now working, I'd say it's mostly just adding games from here on. If things continue going this smoothly then it might just make it in this month :)

Great work on getting more Black Box machines working, sounds like another platform on the road to being sorted :D  

And yeah, I've got a ton of work ahead with the MAME stuff, though I'll be filtering by platform in another stage or two - just this initial stage (and maybe the next layout manual selection stage) where I'm doing the whole layout collection.  Looks like I'll hopefully be adding Black Box to that set of platform-filtered layouts to be built when I get to that stage ;) 

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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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First pass of the legacy set done, and now cleaning up issues, like the tedious 'blacklisted' issue... next will be making an screenshot based quick layout picker where there is a choice, to get the best candidate per game directory...
image.thumb.png.17b58f3485ed87cd0c470a55b1ae20f8.png

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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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9 hours ago, Altharic said:

Someone has been working on the Scorpion 2 volume being too low.

 

Scorpion 2

Interesting :)  This Paul Arnold guy has previously been working on 'Magic Card' hardware (tangentially related to fruities since it's poker machines)... seems to be some dialog with David, I'm out of the loop at the mo, since I'm just working on the layouts/configs stuff outside of the MAME codebase for now.

No idea whether he'll be doing more work on FME-related platforms, fingers crossed though - many hands makes light work :) 

[ 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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9 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

Interesting :)  This Paul Arnold guy has previously been working on 'Magic Card' hardware (tangentially related to fruities since it's poker machines)... seems to be some dialog with David, I'm out of the loop at the mo, since I'm just working on the layouts/configs stuff outside of the MAME codebase for now.

No idea whether he'll be doing more work on FME-related platforms, fingers crossed though - many hands makes light work :) 

Well they are gambling games not unlike the mpu4 video games we have Magic Card 2

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It's all encouraging - there's a lot of work to do on those reel/vid based AWP FME drivers, but it all works towards improving Arcade Sim, so I love it to see other coders maybe getting involved!  I did some Scorp 2 layouts in my first pass back in 2016, so they have some internal layouts to be going on with on that platform:

A lot of sc2 that used to work now don't so there's some regressions to fix... of course after than massive task I'm on, there will be a lot more sc2 layouts in MAME, and should have the correct configs for dips/hoppers/reels etc

[ 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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On 09/09/2022 at 23:26, johnparker007 said:

First pass of the legacy set done, and now cleaning up issues, like the tedious 'blacklisted' issue... next will be making an screenshot based quick layout picker where there is a choice, to get the best candidate per game directory...

If it's still a problem then the blacklisting can probably be patched out too ;)

You never know what you come across sometimes when emulating things... in this case I was trying to figure out why the sound on Oranges And Lemons was different from everything else, and turns out it has a special music board only used in that machine. That board actually has a TMS1000 microcontroller on it, the particular model of it was also previously used on one other product that I know of which claims to be... the world's first electronic musical doorbell!

Spoiler

Screenshot_4.thumb.png.545830329352573dc9c6a7a22937c84b.png

All that chip can do is play 24 preset songs, so the sound effects on that machine are created by just playing the songs really really fast. The game runs now and plays fine but unfortunately if anyone wants to play Oranges And Lemons with sound, then that microcontroller needs to be dumped. I'm hoping that Bellfruit didn't come up with any more "interesting" hardware after this :D

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4 hours ago, SomeRandomGuy said:

If it's still a problem then the blacklisting can probably be patched out too ;)

You never know what you come across sometimes when emulating things... in this case I was trying to figure out why the sound on Oranges And Lemons was different from everything else, and turns out it has a special music board only used in that machine. That board actually has a TMS1000 microcontroller on it, the particular model of it was also previously used on one other product that I know of which claims to be... the world's first electronic musical doorbell!

  Hide contents

Screenshot_4.thumb.png.545830329352573dc9c6a7a22937c84b.png

All that chip can do is play 24 preset songs, so the sound effects on that machine are created by just playing the songs really really fast. The game runs now and plays fine but unfortunately if anyone wants to play Oranges And Lemons with sound, then that microcontroller needs to be dumped. I'm hoping that Bellfruit didn't come up with any more "interesting" hardware after this :D

For those blacklisted layouts - it's only affecting DX layouts not Classics, so a not a problem for the moment, though I may want to load those Blacklisted layouts later, if they are the best source for a DX for Arcade Sim... so a patched .exe to do that could be handy :) ... unsure if that's actually the case for any of them though.

That sound hardware sounds bonkers!  Guess it was just a way of getting the job done cheap back then... at least things settle down to more standardised board designs once it gets to the later platforms :) 

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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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Not sure if this is of any use to anyone but when reading this thread earlier, seeing the TMS1000 processor mentioned reminded me of a book i have from way back when i was trying to learn to code (then realised my brain just isn't made for coding, sadly!) - found the same book on internet archive so link is here, TMS1000 mentioned on page 20.

Hope it's of help to someone anyway...

https://archive.org/details/osborne-4-and-8-bit-microprocessor-handbook/page/n20/mode/1up

Cheers,

Gary.

 

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TMS1000 is already implemented in MAME:

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/devices/cpu/tms1000/tms1000.cpp
 

...but perhaps there's a ROM still needing to be dumped that contains the specific music code to run on it...

[ 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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4 hours ago, johnparker007 said:

For those blacklisted layouts - it's only affecting DX layouts not Classics, so a not a problem for the moment, though I may want to load those Blacklisted layouts later, if they are the best source for a DX for Arcade Sim... so a patched .exe to do that could be handy :) ... unsure if that's actually the case for any of them though.

Well it's done now, PM'd it to ya. Theoretically it should work, but I didn't have any actual blacklisted layouts
handy so fingers crossed :D

3 hours ago, Altharic said:

Rather a versatile chip from what I can see TMS1000

Do we know how much one of these would be to purchase that has the required code?

These used to be quite widespread, there's loads of crappy 70s-early 80s handheld games using one or a variant of it in MAME :). The particular chip used here has the MP0027A program on it, there was a MP0027 as well which I'd imagine is compatible but not 100% sure. I don't think there's anyone just selling the chips by themselves though, so one of those doorbell kits or anything else that happens to have it is needed, no idea about the price. Getting one from a real machine is probably a hard sell, because the decapping process destroys the chip and you can't program new chips either, TI didn't make any blank versions of these.

2 hours ago, MPU_FIVE said:

Not sure if this is of any use to anyone but when reading this thread earlier, seeing the TMS1000 processor mentioned reminded me of a book i have from way back when i was trying to learn to code (then realised my brain just isn't made for coding, sadly!) - found the same book on internet archive so link is here, TMS1000 mentioned on page 20.

Hope it's of help to someone anyway...

1 hour ago, johnparker007 said:

TMS1000 is already implemented in MAME:

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/devices/cpu/tms1000/tms1000.cpp
 

...but perhaps there's a ROM still needing to be dumped that contains the specific music code to run on it...

Yeah emulating the TMS1000 is no problem, MAME has many things that use it already, the obstacle here is finding a chip with that specific music program in it and sending it to someone with the necessary skills & equipment to get it dumped.

Edited by SomeRandomGuy
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10 hours ago, SomeRandomGuy said:

Well it's done now, PM'd it to ya. Theoretically it should work, but I didn't have any actual blacklisted layouts
handy so fingers crossed :D

These used to be quite widespread, there's loads of crappy 70s-early 80s handheld games using one or a variant of it in MAME :). The particular chip used here has the MP0027A program on it, there was a MP0027 as well which I'd imagine is compatible but not 100% sure. I don't think there's anyone just selling the chips by themselves though, so one of those doorbell kits or anything else that happens to have it is needed, no idea about the price. Getting one from a real machine is probably a hard sell, because the decapping process destroys the chip and you can't program new chips either, TI didn't make any blank versions of these.

Yeah emulating the TMS1000 is no problem, MAME has many things that use it already, the obstacle here is finding a chip with that specific music program in it and sending it to someone with the necessary skills & equipment to get it dumped.

Thanks very much for doing that, have PM'd you back - it fixes the issue, so I'll be able to extract those DX layouts at the later stage for AS, where they are in fact the best quality DX available (I know there's a newer redraw version of Psycho Cash Beast around, but for most it will be super useful) -thanks man :) 
image.thumb.png.337f95b47a6c0649fd9d5ba0d6565607.png
 

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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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6 hours ago, johnparker007 said:

Thanks very much for doing that, have PM'd you back - it fixes the issue, so I'll be able to extract those DX layouts at the later stage for AS, where they are in fact the best quality DX available (I know there's a newer redraw version of Psycho Cash Beast around, but for most it will be super useful) -thanks man :)

No problemo :)

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