Development Updates

[serene02]

I only play in arcades when I dress up as an old person on a mobility scooter..  only way to win

J

[Zippy]

20 minutes ago, A:E said:

I only play in arcades when I dress up as an old person on a mobility scooter..  only way to win

J

Always knew there was something strange about you, get us a pound of 10ps for Rat Race

[serene02]

Only if I can get to the plug

J

[johnparker007]

Ok sounds like I need to convert Rat Race and get a 3d model of a mobility scooter!  
 

2 hours ago, A:E said:

Wow, seriously John.  You will be able to walk around and view machines in full on 3D!!!    Wow!!!

Also you didn’t just mention online arcade did you!!!!    Nice.

You will have to have a set bankroll as you will play the machines like with real cash that way .

J

 

Yep walking around is very much the plan, to get that first person perspective going on for the immersion  

And yes, I think the cat's out of the bag that my plan is to make this into a live arcade... so I'm thinking to make it so you can walk around and watch other people playing games on their machines (plus potential text/voice chat), as well as playing on machines yourself.  When you choose to play a free machine, MFME will be launched in the background to run that machine.  When you have finished playing on the machine, your server-based bankroll balance will update accordingly based on cash in/out.  Then that will allow for daily/weekly/monthly tournaments etc which should be a lot of fun  

So as a part of that new work, I've taken a break from the Converter today, and started very basic work on the 'codec'.  This will allow streaming of the machines lamps/reels/vfds across the net, as I should be able to write some efficient lossless compression.  Currently I've just implemented the base recorder/player system, along with the recording/playing of 'simple' (on/off - no fade levels yet) lamps.

This will be used for all the free machines to play their attract mode loops without needing to have an MFME instance running for each machine (as that would get impractical very quickly).  Here's a demo of 44 machines running their attract mode lamps (at random playback start points to provide variation) via this new system (so I am running zero MFME instances here).  These are not perfect loops, I just recorded a few minutes, later I should be able to write something to auto-identify the loops when recording the attract modes.

Anyway, enough blurb from me - onto the eye candy (may be best to watch this direct on youtube rather than embedded in the forum, then you'll be able to see in full 1080p HD, as some of the lamps are now tiny!):  

 

Edited November 7, 2020 by johnparker007

[Zippy]

@johnparker007 could you make it possible to slap each other too bitchfest style

If I hadn't mentioned it Altered would of eventually if not someone else, sorry to burst your bubble.

26 minutes ago, A:E said:

Only if I can get to the plug

J

or use a clicker

Edited November 7, 2020 by Big J

[slasher]

What an amazing piece of eye candy!

One bit of criticism - doesn't really matter as such unless you're trying to be perfect, but the cab you've used isn't a proper BFG Eclipse cab as it has black trim at the top and bottom (under the buttons).

It doesn't really matter but thought I'd point it out before it gets too far in case you wanted it to be a 100% or as near as

[serene02]

Wow, what is this witchcraft !!!   This is going to be quite something.  This really will be immersive, who needs a real retro arcade.  Wow gobsmacked!!!

I really was going to take a backseat to any fme stuff since the passing of Wizard, but I must admit that your project has got my attention big time.  You are such a prolific developer!!

J

[vectra666]

Looks great I’d like to see different machines running next to each other if possible 

when the arcade goes online account holders will need a avatar something like Nintendo wii did or like forte nite lol

also what if someone does a emptier on a machine (big j lol) their bank roll will be huge!!!

[serene02]

We have a lot of chipped machines, it’s best not to have emptiable a online I guess.  Though it could be a separate arcade in its own where all unchipped machines live

J

[johnparker007]

11 hours ago, slasher said:

What an amazing piece of eye candy!

One bit of criticism - doesn't really matter as such unless you're trying to be perfect, but the cab you've used isn't a proper BFG Eclipse cab as it has black trim at the top and bottom (under the buttons).

It doesn't really matter but thought I'd point it out before it gets too far in case you wanted it to be a 100% or as near as

Thanks for the info  Currently I only have this one model, which I bought to save time so I could get started on the 3d side.  My plan is to get some basic 3DS Max skills, then I reckon I'll be able to tweak/make new cab models as needed, as a lot of them are quite simple really; just chrome/painted metal tubing and black mdf panels - it should be something I can knock up then from photos, so the cabs are roughly authentic.

10 hours ago, vectra666 said:

Looks great I’d like to see different machines running next to each other if possible 

when the arcade goes online account holders will need a avatar something like Nintendo wii did or like forte nite lol

also what if someone does a emptier on a machine (big j lol) their bank roll will be huge!!!

Simple customisable humanoid avatars was what I had in mind  - I'll probably just buy a prebuilt avatar creating/rendering system to save dev time, not researched that area yet, but should hopefully be something out there I can 'drop in' without a ton of work.

9 hours ago, A:E said:

We have a lot of chipped machines, it’s best not to have emptiable a online I guess.  Though it could be a separate arcade in its own where all unchipped machines live

J

This is a good point  if/when this all gets to that stage, you guys will have get a list together of say 100 machines (and the relevant roms) that we want in the first test arcade, that are not vulnerable to emptiers for the tournaments.  And yeah I see no problem with having a side room full of unchipped machines -  I'll just have a flag on these broken machines that marks them as non-eligible for tournament play (so it wouldn't apply profit/loss to your bankroll).

[slasher]

This may be something @Wildmanslots can help with?

He's done flyers with cabinet pics on before and they've turned out brilliantly.

[johnparker007]

2 hours ago, slasher said:

This may be something @Wildmanslots can help with?

He's done flyers with cabinet pics on before and they've turned out brilliantly.

Appreciated   My general (somewhat uniformed) strategy for the cab models is to have say a straight on and side profile photo of the machine to be modelled, e.g:

...and then with a few rough known dimensions (i.e: cabinet width is 82cm, cabinet height at rear is 196cm)... I should be able to model the cab to accurate scale in 3DS Max. 

I'm just going to keep using the single cab model I have for now to keep things rolling, but I also have a talented 3D artist friend in mind who might up for doing some work on this project. 

He'll still need a few reference pics per cab, though from what I can tell there are far fewer cab variants than actual machine variants, for instance this JPM grey cabinet seems to have been used for a lot of different machines - great news for us, as then I only need a single JPM cabinet model and use it for all the JPM machines, and I'm pretty sure the same is true for other manufacturers due to it being more cost-effective to have 'standard' cabinets that they then put their various different game into  





 

Edited November 8, 2020 by johnparker007

[Zippy]

15 hours ago, vectra666 said:

Looks great I’d like to see different machines running next to each other if possible 

when the arcade goes online account holders will need a avatar something like Nintendo wii did or like forte nite lol

also what if someone does a emptier on a machine (big j lol) their bank roll will be huge!!!

That is exactly what I thought and an owner of the said arcade that ends up in a boxing match with you in the arcade trying to throw you out WWE style, 3D MFME meets Tyson in a Heavyweight match

Now that's what I'm talking about

[serene02]

Hey John, not sure if Guitar has seen this thread but might be worth contacting him, I believe he had a 3D model of the JPM Vogue cabinet...  Indiana Jones as pictured above

Also, am I correct in thinking this could just be an online 3D realm so you already have machines fully converted so a normal user can just log in and play in 3D arcades?

So essentially not even have mfme at all?

This could be massive.

Anyway as you were mate, this is far ahead into future times. Exciting prospects  

 

J

[Zippy]

I concur, the thought of 3D is exhilarating but do love having a good solo session.

[johnparker007]

1 hour ago, A:E said:

Hey John, not sure if Guitar has seen this thread but might be worth contacting him, I believe he had a 3D model of the JPM Vogue cabinet...  Indiana Jones as pictured above

Also, am I correct in thinking this could just be an online 3D realm so you already have machines fully converted so a normal user can just log in and play in 3D arcades?

So essentially not even have mfme at all?

This could be massive.

Anyway as you were mate, this is far ahead into future times. Exciting prospects  

 

J

Thanks for the heads up, I may hit him up depending on how well my foray into 3DS Max goes  

I've currently discounted running the emulators on the server itself, as it wont scale - so if 100 people were to be online playing a machine each, I'd need the computing power to run 100 emulator instances... also they would experience a delay when interacting with the machine (as their button press has to get to the server, take place on server's emulator, then the client is also on a delay when rendering the machine via remote streamed data.

So the plan is to have the end user running a single emulator instance locally (that would be installed as part of the arcade software) whenever they are playing a machine.  Then, if people walk up to watch the gameplay, the player initially streams the codec to say the first 3 watchers, who in turn stream to up to 3 watchers each, etc.  There'll be some small increasing delay for the observers as you move down the chain, but it's a scalable approach, so 1,000 people could all crowd around watching one machine being played, and the server wouldn't be overloaded

Edited November 8, 2020 by johnparker007

[pilsburydoughman]

This is great progress. Exciting for future work?

 

[serene02]

@johnparker007

Yeah,  lol, can you lend me 10p or I know the reels mate let me have a look

J

[Zippy]

Bet you were the type to borrow the 10p and run off with it to the other arcade Mr Shifty

[johnparker007]

I've been doing some research into customisable avatars, and settled on a system that I think I will use.  It's more complex to implement, but I believe it gives the best results.  It would've really bugged me that the machines and environment would look realistic, but then the characters would look cartoonish, I think it would've been a real immersion-breaker!

Anyway, here's me playing with the sample scene of the system (shows how the end user can customise their avatar at runtime), I popped some attract mode Happy Hours in the background along with our beloved arcade carpet to give it a bit of the arcade feel

 

[serene02]

Wow!!

Not sure how viable this is but to feel even more immersed is it possible to mix in other slots being played.  Maybe computer controlled punters randomly playing the machines, like have your random lamp sequences but some samples from other machines in the mix.  I think there are generic arcade sound themes available but to have actual real familiar slot sounds would be so neat.  I could record some machine session audio.

PS Certain machines do have demo attract sounds that will randomly play when the machine is not getting in use.

Thanks for your continued work on this, this is exactly how I would like to interact with mfme!!  

J

 

[Zippy]

That one with the chin narf look like @slasher

[johnparker007]

1 hour ago, A:E said:

Wow!!

Not sure how viable this is but to feel even more immersed is it possible to mix in other slots being played.  Maybe computer controlled punters randomly playing the machines, like have your random lamp sequences but some samples from other machines in the mix.  I think there are generic arcade sound themes available but to have actual real familiar slot sounds would be so neat.  I could record some machine session audio.

PS Certain machines do have demo attract sounds that will randomly play when the machine is not getting in use.

Thanks for your continued work on this, this is exactly how I would like to interact with mfme!!  

J

 

I was thinking that for each machine, there would be pre-recorded gameplay clip (audio and lamps/reels etc).  Then if that machine is in use, its audio sample would play on the client.  By taking into account where the client avatar is stood, that would set how loud each sample would be playing.  So hopefully it would sound authentic, once there are say 10-15 machines being played around the arcade - so you would only hear the sounds of Bar X being played off to your left if there actually is a Bar X being played off to your left.  This approach could also support attract mode audio.

As you walk closer to the Bar X being played, that sample would get louder (and machines being played that you are walking away from would get quieter).  If you got close enough to trigger 'observer mode', then it would start streaming the live lamps/reels, and potentially audio (I am not sure how doable streaming the live audio will be just yet) etc from the PC of the player actually playing the game locally in MFME.

There could be bots walking around playing too, though whether they'd really be playing in a streamable way (autoplay style where they just press random buttons to run through credits) will require more thought, as that's going to cost significant CPU time 'somewhere' in the network... just walking around simulating playing without actually running MFME instances will be fine though   When a bot is playing a machine, it would then run a prerecorded gameplay loop just like how the idle loops work.

In the short term, I have to sort out a better system for backing up this project - it's basically outgrown what github is for (mainly code), and is getting up to commercial game scale now!  So I'd best get that sorted, as my project work folder is currently >6gb, and it's only going to keep growing, especially when I add all the other converted machines!  I expect the end user install when all this is done will be something like 1gb.

Edited November 9, 2020 by johnparker007

[serene02]

Cool as.   What kind of backup are you thinking?  I have a 1tb one drive, but not sure how handy that is for this type of work?

J

[serene02]

I think this project you are creating is what Guitar hinted at.  I might contact him to see if he has seen this thread.

J