Development Updates

[Bodie]

That is so impressive John, the potential for this is mind blowing. You have mad skills my friend!

 

[Tommy c]

Hi john, if the machine has been ram reset the volume will be very low or at 0 the refill option can fix that, if and when the dot alpha's are implemented, Just watched the 15 minute vid on youtube, very impressive.

[johnparker007]

15 minutes ago, Tommy c said:

...if the machine has been ram reset the volume will be very low or at 0 the refill option can fix that, if and when the dot alpha's are implemented...

Ah good to know thanks  it'll be cleaner to just have them all set to the same volume, from MFME.  The dot alphas will hopefully be along within a week or two, once I've done some more stuff to speed up the re-conversion process.

Edited January 9, 2021 by johnparker007

[vectra666]

Looks great the seven segs were missing from S & L,s and the coin slot lamps missing?

[johnparker007]

11 minutes ago, vectra666 said:

Looks great the seven segs were missing from S & L,s and the coin slot lamps missing?

Both those features are yet to be implemented, but definitely on the roadmap  

The Seven Segment displays are probably going to be done after I get the Dot Alpha displays in.

The 3d coin slot/not acceptor lamps will be a little later, maybe done around the time I get to doing the 3d button system (all buttons are just flat at the mo).

Edited January 9, 2021 by johnparker007

[slasher]

Would a video of the bezel colour cycle on a Vega help? Nv10/11 are easy as they're static red. Dunno about older mechs

[johnparker007]

1 hour ago, slasher said:

Would a video of the bezel colour cycle on a Vega help? Nv10/11 are easy as they're static red. Dunno about older mechs

Ha colour cycling eh - I didn't know they did that   Thanks for the info - I was only aware of the old NV10/11 ones that just do a lamp on/off (and then I guess the red plastic is what makes it look red).

Had a quick google, I see this youtube video shows different colours on a Vega:

and different brightness levels:

Bright

Dimmer:



It'll all be fine from the 3d side.  Does MFME emulate these color cycling note acceptors?  If so, is there a layout that shows one in action?

It's all pretty low priority for the moment, but I am planning to get everything looking as good/accurate as possible when the time is right

[vectra666]

1 hour ago, johnparker007 said:

Ha colour cycling eh - I didn't know they did that   Thanks for the info - I was only aware of the old NV10/11 ones that just do a lamp on/off (and then I guess the red plastic is what makes it look red).

Had a quick google, I see this youtube video shows different colours on a Vega:

and different brightness levels:

Bright

Dimmer:



It'll all be fine from the 3d side.  Does MFME emulate these color cycling note acceptors?  If so, is there a layout that shows one in action?

It's all pretty low priority for the moment, but I am planning to get everything looking as good/accurate as possible when the time is right

afaik mfme doesn't support the led notey colours but could be wrong a few of my latest dx's i've coloured the notey blue/green if it has this notey in the image

[johnparker007]

Good to know, ta Vecs   Without the MFME source it'll probably be a massive pain for me to implement - so it's going on the very low priority pile for now!  I will support the 'standard' ones that don't color cycle when I get to that bit  

[johnparker007]

Since I've spent most of the weekend working on FME dev - I've got my 'fast re-conversion' system done.  So now when I need to roll out a change/improvement to the existing machines, it doesn't need to recreate the entire machine from scratch in order to add a Dot Matrix display or whatever the change is.  It finds the existing work from the previous conversion, and reuses it (unless I override the settings to force a rebuild of a certain area, such as reels for example).

Needed to get it done, so I can start adding dot matrix displays, fixing reel bugs (the number reel is wrong in the below video for some reason, haven't investigated yet).  And then I can re-generate all the machines in around 1/10th the time it took before the system  

As a test, I've converted another new machine (and then re-converted it a couple of times), everything seems to be working (apart from the wrong number reel, but that's a separate issue I'm sure).  New machine is 'Pots of Luck'.
 

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by johnparker007

[slasher]

Interesting game that how it changes colour on the shots while playing the reels unless that's a glitch or something I am missing because I can't see the alpha yet lol!

As for the vega, I am not sure what made me think of that, but good to see there's a video out there already. To be fair it's not really needed as all machines that can take a vega can also take an nv11, and it's not like notes are going to start popping out of screens, it's probably best to keep it all coins otherwise it could get really complicated.

[johnparker007]

Had a quick check, and balancing the pseudo-lighting of the machine glasses should be fine   This is a thing I noticed before, each machine has different lighting levels of the unlit glass (and indeed the lamps).  One of the new machines (Pots of Luck) was particularly bright, so I've put it next to the darkest machine to show the issue (and how I will ultimately auto-fix this inconsistency).

So in code, I will get all the unlit glasses (and potentially the lamps) to a baseline unlit and lit brightness.  Then when they are matched, there will also be an overall control... so each user can have their arcade darkly lit (how they look best in my opinion!), or if they prefer they could have it very brightly lit - it'll be like a 'dimmer switch'  

[johnparker007]

@slasher In doing some research into dot alphas (looking at Dad's Oliver's Twist layout compared to youtube video), I've seen one of those Vega color-cycling note acceptors in action:

Am I right in thinking that basically this gets fed with a 'lamp on' signal, just like the standard ones, and instead of showing solid lamp (thru red plastic bezel) - it color cycles? 

So the color-cycling isn't ROM controlled from the game ROM, the game ROM just tells the acceptor to 'light up'?

If so, then this can be easily supported in the 3d arcade - if there's the signal for it to be lit, instead of a steady color, I'll just run the pulsing color-cycle  

I have another another query please, as you know your fruit machine hardware  ...so on this layout for instance, there is zero space between the 'dots' of the 'MFME Dot Alpha' dot matrix display:


... and on this machine (Pieces of Eight), there are gaps between the individual dots:


Now, I think this is perhaps just due to MFME not scaling displays, so layout artists are doing this as a workaround to best fit the display to their background image?  So is that the case - are all these displays actually identical?  Or do some have large gaps between the individual dots, and others have absolutely no gap between the individual dots?

Thanks for any insight

[slasher]

Couldn't tell you if the vega is just an on lamp, however, I've a few vegas here if there's any way I can find out. I figured it was just part of the note acceptor.

As for the alphas, I am pretty sure they're all the same these days, but I do know on older games they're a completely different alpha all together (check some Barcrest ones, they use the [*] style, can't think else to describe it, but it's not dots that's for sure).

[johnparker007]

13 minutes ago, slasher said:

Couldn't tell you if the vega is just an on lamp, however, I've a few vegas here if there's any way I can find out. I figured it was just part of the note acceptor.

No worries on the Vega thing for now - just from unexpectedly seeing it in action on that Oliver's Twist machine in the video above - I find it hard to imagine that the program ROM for Oliver Twist has some code that tells it to cycle through those colors with pulsing.  I think it's more likely that if it's fed with lamp on voltage/signal - it just goes through that pre-programmed color pulsing.  It's for lots later anyway, was just surprised by seeing it since we were just talking about it!

Anyway, so I found another example, so on this very shaky youtube video of Pots of Luck, it seems to have a Dot Alpha that is different from the one in the layout:




In the layout, there are large horizontal gaps between the characters, yet in the video grab, we can see from the 'NN' in 'WINNER' that there aren't any large horizontal gaps.

I think I'm probably best using just the overall size (total width/total height) of the Dot Alpha from the layout, then just making a 'standard one' and fitting it into that space.
 

13 minutes ago, slasher said:

As for the alphas, I am pretty sure they're all the same these days, but I do know on older games they're a completely different alpha all together (check some Barcrest ones, they use the [*] style, can't think else to describe it, but it's not dots that's for sure).

Yeah - those ones are different, I'll be doing those later on - they should be fine


Thanks for the info man 
 

Edited January 11, 2021 by johnparker007

[slasher]

2 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

Yeah - those ones are different, I'll be doing those later on - they should be fine


Thanks for the info man 

Yep, that's the one I was on about.

Couldn't comment on Pots o' Luck, that one's way before my time, sorry about that

I know the new S6's from BFG use multi coloured alphas, but they're not emulated so wouldn't worry too much.

[Retrofruit]

Seeing this for the first time today, WOW, what an incredible piece of development work.

[johnparker007]

lol but on further checking of youtube videos, there are displays that do have a horizontal gap between the characters:


I'll do a 'standard' one for now, then perhaps make a couple more.  I've tried scaling them in MFME and it has limitations, so I can see why layout artists may scale them differently, in order to best fill the alpha display window - or perhaps the manufacturer just uses what they have lying around in the parts bin... there may be no 'correct' version for a machine!  Interesting stuff anyway  

[vectra666]

19 hours ago, johnparker007 said:

Had a quick check, and balancing the pseudo-lighting of the machine glasses should be fine   This is a thing I noticed before, each machine has different lighting levels of the unlit glass (and indeed the lamps).  One of the new machines (Pots of Luck) was particularly bright, so I've put it next to the darkest machine to show the issue (and how I will ultimately auto-fix this inconsistency).

So in code, I will get all the unlit glasses (and potentially the lamps) to a baseline unlit and lit brightness.  Then when they are matched, there will also be an overall control... so each user can have their arcade darkly lit (how they look best in my opinion!), or if they prefer they could have it very brightly lit - it'll be like a 'dimmer switch'  

The lightness of layouts is only how we the creators set them with contrast brightness each layout can be different to others as you see with 

Monopoly it’s DAF! Compared to snakes and ladders or pots of luck sometimes I make them to dark lol. You can change the brightness levels via the mfme dx editor in edit mode then remask the arts but be aware doing this sometimes shags up hidden text like extra life or lose

as for pots of luck the features and cash do change red on 50p when pressing start etc

the alpha displays all start off the same size but to suit the layout size the alpha like the seven segs needs changing to fit the windows they’re placed into them coloured accordingly to the brightness of the machine glass/environment 

the alpha in pots of luck should be  like the one shown in the YouTube vid but due to limitations within mfme the correct one couldn’t be used, I once asked wizard if he could find a way of changing that alpha display but he couldn’t as you can’t go lower than 1pixel or something on those lines so in theory you can make that alpha bigger but no smaller than what it’s designed for

Edited January 11, 2021 by vectra666

[Spidy21982]

58 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

@slasher In doing some research into dot alphas (looking at Dad's Oliver's Twist layout compared to youtube video), I've seen one of those Vega color-cycling note acceptors in action:

Am I right in thinking that basically this gets fed with a 'lamp on' signal, just like the standard ones, and instead of showing solid lamp (thru red plastic bezel) - it color cycles? 

So the color-cycling isn't ROM controlled from the game ROM, the game ROM just tells the acceptor to 'light up'?

If so, then this can be easily supported in the 3d arcade - if there's the signal for it to be lit, instead of a steady color, I'll just run the pulsing color-cycle  

I have another another query please, as you know your fruit machine hardware  ...so on this layout for instance, there is zero space between the 'dots' of the 'MFME Dot Alpha' dot matrix display:


... and on this machine (Pieces of Eight), there are gaps between the individual dots:


Now, I think this is perhaps just due to MFME not scaling displays, so layout artists are doing this as a workaround to best fit the display to their background image?  So is that the case - are all these displays actually identical?  Or do some have large gaps between the individual dots, and others have absolutely no gap between the individual dots?

Thanks for any insight

On scorpion 4 the size goes stepwise ,without dots is smaller with one or 2 dots is bigger. No freestyle stretching at all.

[vectra666]

On 10/01/2021 at 15:46, johnparker007 said:

Since I've spent most of the weekend working on FME dev - I've got my 'fast re-conversion' system done.  So now when I need to roll out a change/improvement to the existing machines, it doesn't need to recreate the entire machine from scratch in order to add a Dot Matrix display or whatever the change is.  It finds the existing work from the previous conversion, and reuses it (unless I override the settings to force a rebuild of a certain area, such as reels for example).

Needed to get it done, so I can start adding dot matrix displays, fixing reel bugs (the number reel is wrong in the below video for some reason, haven't investigated yet).  And then I can re-generate all the machines in around 1/10th the time it took before the system  

As a test, I've converted another new machine (and then re-converted it a couple of times), everything seems to be working (apart from the wrong number reel, but that's a separate issue I'm sure).  New machine is 'Pots of Luck'.
 

 

I think the numbers reel if you tick or untick reverse in the editor the numbers will read right as your 11 is 1 and so on

here's what i mean about the alpha display and yes untick reverse on the hi lo reel band it should then spin the correct way and numer correctly on your set-up

Edited January 11, 2021 by vectra666

[johnparker007]

44 minutes ago, vectra666 said:

The lightness of layouts is only how we the creators set them with contrast brightness each layout can be different to others as you see with 

Monopoly it’s DAF! Compared to snakes and ladders or pots of luck sometimes I make them to dark lol. You can change the brightness levels via the mfme dx editor in edit mode then remask the arts but be aware doing this sometimes shags up hidden text like extra life or lose

Thanks man   I shouldn't have those issues with my rendering system, as I built it to be very dynamic for later changes (at some point I'll be able to add optional lamp light bleed etc via shaders).  Was just having a quick play the other night to make sure it worked properly   I just take the raw layout resources and do all the brightness adjustment like you see in the video in realtime via the GPU using shaders.
 

44 minutes ago, vectra666 said:

the alpha displays all start off the same size but to suit the layout size the alpha like the seven segs needs changing to fit the windows they’re placed into them coloured accordingly to the brightness of the machine glass/environment 

the alpha in pots of luck should be  like the one shown in the YouTube vid but due to limitations within mfme the correct one couldn’t be used, I once asked wizard if he could find a way of changing that alpha display but he couldn’t as you can’t go lower than 1pixel or something on those lines so in theory you can make that alpha bigger but no smaller than what it’s designed for

 

29 minutes ago, Spidy21982 said:

On scorpion 4 the size goes stepwise ,without dots is smaller with one or 2 dots is bigger. No freestyle stretching at all.

Thanks guys  yeah that's what I figured, MFME hits a wall so you can't properly scale the displays to the display windows.  My rendering system doesn't have those limitations, so I'll just make 2 or 3 'correct' Dot Alpha displays, then use whichever is the correct type per machine (determined from youtube video / one of infections images).

 

24 minutes ago, vectra666 said:

I think the numbers reel if you tick or untick reverse in the editor the numbers will read right as your 11 is 1 and so on

Ta - yeah I had a look later yesterday and spotted that, I've now properly implemented support for converting and running reversed reels.  I then did a fast re-convert on Pots of Luck (and Trail Blazer which also had a reversed number reel) - both now working correctly  
 

Edited January 11, 2021 by johnparker007

[johnparker007]

Made some good progress on getting the dot alpha displays properly implemented  

Demo vid of a couple working, two didn't work for some reason - just a silly bug I'm sure, too tired to fix tonight! 

So, still a few more hours work, fixing the bug and adding support for 'Matrix Alpha' from MFME alongside the now working 'Dot Alpha' components. 

I guess next up will be starting the task of implementing the Seven Segment displays, as there's usually a bunch of those...

[slasher]

Looks proper sexy that does! Are you able to zoom in further than you have in the videos with the mouse scroll wheel or similar?

[serene02]

Nice work mate, great to see it progressing so quickly

J