Development Updates

[johnparker007]

3 minutes ago, Ginge said:

Definitely my crappy laptop works sometimes . Just got to convince the wife I need to buy a new one wish me luck .Have put it on my bar top cabinet which has a Lenovo m93p/tiny with the specs below and it works fine but does sound as if it’s struggling a bit. 

I've just looked up the specs for your Lenovo m93p/tiny, it only has integrated graphics, so it will struggle.  There are some things that you can change that might  make it run a little better - set your settings to these:




That may help... though fundamentally, Arcade Sim does some heavy duty graphics stuff... so you may still be struggling - those settings are your best bet though  

[johnparker007]

1 minute ago, phillai said:

Indiana Jones isn't working for me on the new update of Arcade Simulator. 

Previously, it was working for me fine.

I just get this (with the alarm going off - Sorry, I couldn't record this sound for some reason)... 

Any ideas guys?

Hiya - unfortunately that machine is temporarily broken.  It's due to some improvements I made that have caused the RAM on this game to corrupt.

In the next update I'll be either be fixing (which involves writing a bunch more of the Ram management system, I was planning to do this later though really)... or more likely, replacing with JPM Rollercoaster, provided it can be converted with no issues.

So sorry, nothing can be done right now!

[woodsy]

8 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

JPM Rollercoaster, provided it can be converted with no issues.

HEY jp thanks for the patch.. haunted house is my fave!! legend

[Ginge]

8 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

I've just looked up the specs for your Lenovo m93p/tiny, it only has integrated graphics, so it will struggle.  There are some things that you can change that might  make it run a little better - set your settings to these:




That may help... though fundamentally, Arcade Sim does some heavy duty graphics stuff... so you may still be struggling - those settings are your best bet though  

Thanks for tips will give it a go tomorrow. The mpu4 cabinets look amazing @Spidy21982 for helping with the cabinets.

[phillai]

21 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

Hiya - unfortunately that machine is temporarily broken.  It's due to some improvements I made that have caused the RAM on this game to corrupt.

In the next update I'll be either be fixing (which involves writing a bunch more of the Ram management system, I was planning to do this later though really)... or more likely, replacing with JPM Rollercoaster, provided it can be converted with no issues.

So sorry, nothing can be done right now!

Thanks for letting me know and keep up the great work on Arcade Simulator!

P.S. Any chance you could add Caesars Palace Fruit Machine (ACE) to Arcade Simulator pretty please?

 

[johnparker007]

26 minutes ago, phillai said:

Thanks for letting me know and keep up the great work on Arcade Simulator!

P.S. Any chance you could add Caesars Palace Fruit Machine (ACE) to Arcade Simulator pretty please?

 

I have added it to the requests list.  This in no way accelerates the time it'll take before I can build the machine, all of this is highly time-consuming, and it also has about 4x blocks - so there's a lot of problems to be solved before this one can be built.  Patience is key with this project  

[johnparker007]

57 minutes ago, phillai said:

Thanks for letting me know and keep up the great work on Arcade Simulator!

P.S. Any chance you could add Caesars Palace Fruit Machine (ACE) to Arcade Simulator pretty please?

 

There's a version of this by Crystal - would that still scratch the nostalgic itch?  The ACE layout seems like it may be an orphaned work - I can't figure out who made it.  But we have permission to use the Crystal version... and I also have a placeholder JPM Vogue cabinet already... so if the Crystal version is good, that will certainly be buildable a lot sooner!
 

 

Edited December 13, 2021 by johnparker007

[phillai]

1 hour ago, johnparker007 said:

There's a version of this by Crystal - would that still scratch the nostalgic itch?  The ACE layout seems like it may be an orphaned work - I can't figure out who made it.  But we have permission to use the Crystal version... and I also have a placeholder JPM Vogue cabinet already... so if the Crystal version is good, that will certainly be buildable a lot sooner!
 

 

Yeah, that would be fine, thanks!!

[bionic_beast]

Hey there, bug report:

So when I was trying to boot up arcade simulator it goes through the usual installer checks of installing anything from the website that needs to be, but then it does it again much quicker this time and then black screen:

by this point (I think) this software has completely soft locked. Any ideas on what's going on here?

Also this was after the usual uninstall/reinstall process so I don't think it's that.

[johnparker007]

8 hours ago, phillai said:

Yeah, that would be fine, thanks!!

Ok great, that's removed hopefully all the blocks, still no guarantee when this will come out, but it will certainly be sooner as I have the cab, good layout with permissions, no noticeable layout issues to trip the converter up - ta  

[johnparker007]

8 hours ago, bionic_beast said:

Hey there, bug report:

So when I was trying to boot up arcade simulator it goes through the usual installer checks of installing anything from the website that needs to be, but then it does it again much quicker this time and then black screen:

by this point (I think) this software has completely soft locked. Any ideas on what's going on here?

Also this was after the usual uninstall/reinstall process so I don't think it's that.

Hiya   Ok, well I just rolled out a fix for at least on of these black screen issues last night, so that's a little surprising.  Could I ask you to please:

- launch Arcade Sim

- when you get to the black screen and it is stuck, move the mouse up into the top left (even though the mouse pointer is hidden, it is still there)

- left-click rapidly three times (you should see a small white square flash if you have the hidden mouse pointer all the way up in the topleft of the screen)

- after clicking rapidly three times, a screen should appear, with some text on it

- please take a screenshot of that screen that has appeared and post in here - it may give me some clues to help troubleshoot

Cheers  

[GREDDIE]

New release is amazing @johnparker007, thanks as always.  I've not had a proper play with all the new machines but it's given me something to look forward to when we break for Christmas - many thanks,

[bionic_beast]

51 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

Hiya   Ok, well I just rolled out a fix for at least on of these black screen issues last night, so that's a little surprising.  Could I ask you to please:

- launch Arcade Sim

- when you get to the black screen and it is stuck, move the mouse up into the top left (even though the mouse pointer is hidden, it is still there)

- left-click rapidly three times (you should see a small white square flash if you have the hidden mouse pointer all the way up in the topleft of the screen)

- after clicking rapidly three times, a screen should appear, with some text on it

- please take a screenshot of that screen that has appeared and post in here - it may give me some clues to help troubleshoot

Cheers  

Here's the debug report

This also confirms that it was a soft lock

Edited December 14, 2021 by bionic_beast
Confirming what was speculation in the first comment

[johnparker007]

57 minutes ago, bionic_beast said:

Here's the debug report

This also confirms that it was a soft lock

Thanks very much, I will have a look at what it's doing there and see what is happening.  One thing you might try is running Arcade Simulator 'as Administrator'...

This might also be a conflict with anti-virus...

Tonight, I'll have a look at that code, see if I can improve reliability - I might be able to roll a patch out for this.

[woodsy]

17 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

Thanks very much, I will have a look at what it's doing there and see what is happening.  One thing you might try is running Arcade Simulator 'as Administrator'...

This might also be a conflict with anti-virus...

Tonight, I'll have a look at that code, see if I can improve reliability - I might be able to roll a patch out for this.

You’re like the geezer from the milk tray adverts in the 90’s except you always know what us guys want! Jp 007 is right!!

[johnparker007]

11 hours ago, bionic_beast said:

Here's the debug report

This also confirms that it was a soft lock

I've had a look at the code that's doing this stage.  It looks fairly reliable, so if you could please try:

- run Arcade Simulator as Administrator... this may fix the issue.

if it doesn't fix, please could you let me know if you are using any specific anti-virus software?  As that's the other probable cause... so it is picking up the file I'm trying to create, deciding it is suspicious and quarantining or whatever - which is the causing the problem.

If that's the case, I can contact the anti-virus company, and get them to add the file signature to their whitelist, which means it will work when that patch goes out to your antivirus software.

Additionally you can add the Arcade Simulator install folder to your anti-virus exceptions to potentially fix the problem sooner. 

[bionic_beast]

42 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

I've had a look at the code that's doing this stage.  It looks fairly reliable, so if you could please try:

- run Arcade Simulator as Administrator... this may fix the issue.

if it doesn't fix, please could you let me know if you are using any specific anti-virus software?  As that's the other probable cause... so it is picking up the file I'm trying to create, deciding it is suspicious and quarantining or whatever - which is the causing the problem.

If that's the case, I can contact the anti-virus company, and get them to add the file signature to their whitelist, which means it will work when that patch goes out to your antivirus software.

Additionally you can add the Arcade Simulator install folder to your anti-virus exceptions to potentially fix the problem sooner. 

Alright, I just tried it and... black screen, the Antivirus software I'm using is AVG AntiVirus Free.

[johnparker007]

1 hour ago, bionic_beast said:

Alright, I just tried it and... black screen, the Antivirus software I'm using is AVG AntiVirus Free.

Ok - well I've tried to submit both dlls to them, but as always these whitelisting portals are flakey!  I got one of them through, but now it won't accept any more - sigh.




This means that in theory, your antivirus will eventually stop detecting that first file as a false positive (if AVG add it to their whitelist, then your antivirus downloads that update).  You will probably then still have a second error, as I can't submit the second file to AVG Free.  Then we can check the error message (to confirm it's now failing on a slightly differently named dll file), and I will contact AVG and try to find a human to accept the file and whitelist it.

If you want to solve this without waiting for AVG to fix on their end - you can exclude the Arcade Simulator folder from AVG, to stop the AVG program errors:

https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?l=en&urlName=AVG-Antivirus-scan-exclusions&supportType=home

That's all I can do for now (as I believe the bug is not with me, but with the AVG Free false positive... we had this already, I had to whitelist with quite a few AV vendors) - hopefully I'll hear back from AVG with a human contact, so I can get the other file whitelisted.


EDIT:  No, I can't get AVG to whitelist until I set up email redirection as I'm currently using a gmail address:



This stuff is reeeally f**king annoying 

For now, if you could please add an exception for Arcade Simulator in AVG Free, it should work.  I'll put this on the todo list, but setting up email forwarding from the arcadesimulator domain I own is such a load of extra random work, as they have a stupid policy that restricts development of software - grrrrr.

Add this folder to AVG Free exclusions:
C:\Users\__YOUR_WINDOWS_ACCOUNT_NAME__\AppData\Local\Arcade Simulator

Instructions:
https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?l=en&urlName=AVG-Antivirus-scan-exclusions&supportType=home

Edited December 14, 2021 by johnparker007

[Spidy21982]

@johnparker007 genesis cabs are ready

2 different payouts ,2 different payins, 2 different heights.

greetings spidy

genesis.zip

[bionic_beast]

7 hours ago, johnparker007 said:

Ok - well I've tried to submit both dlls to them, but as always these whitelisting portals are flakey!  I got one of them through, but now it won't accept any more - sigh.




This means that in theory, your antivirus will eventually stop detecting that first file as a false positive (if AVG add it to their whitelist, then your antivirus downloads that update).  You will probably then still have a second error, as I can't submit the second file to AVG Free.  Then we can check the error message (to confirm it's now failing on a slightly differently named dll file), and I will contact AVG and try to find a human to accept the file and whitelist it.

If you want to solve this without waiting for AVG to fix on their end - you can exclude the Arcade Simulator folder from AVG, to stop the AVG program errors:

https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?l=en&urlName=AVG-Antivirus-scan-exclusions&supportType=home

That's all I can do for now (as I believe the bug is not with me, but with the AVG Free false positive... we had this already, I had to whitelist with quite a few AV vendors) - hopefully I'll hear back from AVG with a human contact, so I can get the other file whitelisted.


EDIT:  No, I can't get AVG to whitelist until I set up email redirection as I'm currently using a gmail address:



This stuff is reeeally f**king annoying 

For now, if you could please add an exception for Arcade Simulator in AVG Free, it should work.  I'll put this on the todo list, but setting up email forwarding from the arcadesimulator domain I own is such a load of extra random work, as they have a stupid policy that restricts development of software - grrrrr.

Add this folder to AVG Free exclusions:
C:\Users\__YOUR_WINDOWS_ACCOUNT_NAME__\AppData\Local\Arcade Simulator

Instructions:
https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?l=en&urlName=AVG-Antivirus-scan-exclusions&supportType=home

Okay, after whitelisting Arcade Simulator, guess what?...

Black Screen!

Here's another debug screenshot:

[johnparker007]

59 minutes ago, bionic_beast said:

Okay, after whitelisting Arcade Simulator, guess what?...

Black Screen!

Here's another debug screenshot:

Well that is very confusing!  I don't think any other user is having this error (at least that I've heard about).  Thnkas for giving it a try though.

In Windows Explorer - if you navigate to the folder:

C:\Users\John\AppData\Local\Arcade Simulator\Game\ArcadeSim_Data\_Emulators\MFME\_dll

You should see some files like these (you may only see the 'REVERSED' versions):



If you delete all of those files so the folder is empty, then relaunch Arcade Simulator, does it make any difference?

I will make a note and temporarily install AVG Anti Virus Free on my test machines, to see if I can replicate the issue... as I suspect it is still somehow that anti virus that is causing the problem, even with the local whitelisting in place.
 

[johnparker007]

7 hours ago, Spidy21982 said:

@johnparker007 genesis cabs are ready

2 different payouts ,2 different payins, 2 different heights.

greetings spidy

genesis.zip 11.21 MB · 0 downloads

Wow they look really good man, lovely detailing!     Thank you for all the additional options, they will come in handy. 

For now I have to hide the 'pay ins' (as I did on the Barcrest cabinets), so I can use the existing '2d' system from the layout (to allow for lit/clickable coin slots).  But later I plan to use the 3d coin slots, it will just need a additional work to set the system up (so they are clickable, lit, and the 3d lamp/input is correctly hooked up to the emulator).

There were so many games in these, it'll open up a lot of layouts!  Amazing work man  

Sorry it takes so long from my end, to get to using these cabinets btw, it's a real slow process - I have currently started on some more MPU4 at the moment in your cabinets, including some in a taller version of the non-rolltop.  There will hopefully be a couple of new Spidy layouts in there, providing no conversion problems...  But the new 3d models will definitely all get used, in time!  

Edited December 15, 2021 by johnparker007

[bionic_beast]

41 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

Well that is very confusing!  I don't think any other user is having this error (at least that I've heard about).  Thnkas for giving it a try though.

In Windows Explorer - if you navigate to the folder:

C:\Users\John\AppData\Local\Arcade Simulator\Game\ArcadeSim_Data\_Emulators\MFME\_dll

You should see some files like these (you may only see the 'REVERSED' versions):



If you delete all of those files so the folder is empty, then relaunch Arcade Simulator, does it make any difference?

I will make a note and temporarily install AVG Anti Virus Free on my test machines, to see if I can replicate the issue... as I suspect it is still somehow that anti virus that is causing the problem, even with the local whitelisting in place.
 

I tried that even deleting as many MFME folders I could and guess what?... Black Screen!

[johnparker007]

8 minutes ago, bionic_beast said:

I tried that even deleting as many MFME folders I could and guess what?... Black Screen!

Right, thanks for that info, that's good to know - well I'll try installing AVG Anti Virus free on test PC when I get time (hopefully in next day or so), and see if I can get the same bug to happen. 

The dll is required - as the source code for the MFME emulator I am currently using for fruit machine emulation is lost, and the author (Chris Wren aka Wizard) is sadly no longer with us.  So the dll is what allows for control over various MFME internal functionality so that Arcade Sim can use it.

As this involves intercepting system calls to do things like custom registry settings, turbo startup etc - some antivirus sees it as suspicious... so the fact it's failing on those exact files makes me think it is very likely an antivirus issue.  Hopefully I can replicate here later, and perhaps find a solution  

Edited December 15, 2021 by johnparker007

[bionic_beast]

11 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

Right, thanks for that info, that's good to know - well I'll try installing AVG Anti Virus free on test PC when I get time (hopefully in next day or so), and see if I can get the same bug to happen. 

The dll is required - as the source code for the MFME emulator I am currently using for fruit machine emulation is lost, and the author (Chris Wren aka Wizard) is sadly no longer with us.  So the dll is what allows for control over various MFME internal functionality so that Arcade Sim can use it.

As this involves intercepting system calls to do things like custom registry settings, turbo startup etc - some antivirus sees it as suspicious... so the fact it's failing on those exact files makes me think it is very likely an antivirus issue.  Hopefully I can replicate here later, and perhaps find a solution  

Finders Crossed alright

I made a comment back when this project was still just 3 reels and a light (the very beginning and while I had my Brendo account) and that statement is still true to this very day with eye candy additions such as bloom.