Development Updates

[johnparker007]

Just now, Reg said:

Well why not...

...I mean the surreal things was - I was not going to mention it, but one of the layouts I did you included ( and thank you was Hot Shots ), I thought it used to be on the end of a row.  I was literally walking around looking for it and finally found it here...

...there was something frightening realisitic about this experience thinking "Nooooo" it's gone and then relief when found !

Yeah I did remake the test arcade from scratch in the Arcade Editor so I could kinda group up the machines a bit, and remove all the duplicates now there's enough machines to fill out the arcade with just uniques (over 100 now!).

I too remember the dread of thinking they'd removed a favourite video game, when sometimes an arcade would rearrange their machines overnight!  

(That Arcade Editor will be definitely available for everyone to use at some future point, but a lot of things need doing first, to make it viable).

[flying giraffe]

typical!, as soon as i send you a message, it makes me look silly by working! the latest update has now fixed it, thanks

[johnparker007]

1 hour ago, flying giraffe said:

typical!, as soon as i send you a message, it makes me look silly by working! the latest update has now fixed it, thanks

Hey that's great news.

If I could ask a favour please   In this new version, I've introduced a change, that is hopefully the thing that improved stability on your system:



In the new Settings menu, please could you try playing some machines with the Update Window Title setting disabled (it is enabled by default, so should be currently enabled) and see if the problem returns?

And if it does, then set it back to enabled and check that it fixes the problem again?  Thanks very much  

Hopefully this setting is the thing that fixed it on your system (as well as on @Ultra JP's system - he had a very similar issue, and this new setting fixed it where everything else I tried failed).

Edited January 8, 2022 by johnparker007

[flying giraffe]

No problem, I'll give  that a try for you and let  know

[flying giraffe]

YES!, thats the solution, i tried several machines , and they all worked on update window tile, and not when unticked, thanks again

[johnparker007]

1 hour ago, flying giraffe said:

YES!, thats the solution, i tried several machines , and they all worked on update window tile, and not when unticked, thanks again

Brilliant, thanks for letting me know - that's very helpful!

[woodsy]

speaking of hot shots, had my mouth watering for the ACE HOT SHOT GAME. to the list if that's ok please john, might be one without issues too!

[johnparker007]

18 minutes ago, woodsy said:

speaking of hot shots, had my mouth watering for the ACE HOT SHOT GAME. to the list if that's ok please john, might be one without issues too!

I've added to the sheet and done a quick once over - currently can't proceed due to no source 3d cabinet model and I haven't yet built band reels.

[appstrader]

On 08/12/2021 at 22:09, Spidy21982 said:

@johnparker007 here comes the goliath . Hope you like it

Greetings spidy

arcade.zip 15.31 MB · 1 download

Nice @Spidy21982 I might have a use for this myself am I ok to also use some of your work ?

[Spidy21982]

6 hours ago, appstrader said:

Nice @Spidy21982 I might have a use for this myself am I ok to also use some of your work ?

No problem. Use it

[johnparker007]

16 hours ago, appstrader said:

Nice @Spidy21982 I might have a use for this myself am I ok to also use some of your work ?

10 hours ago, Spidy21982 said:

No problem. Use it

Awesome!  These are really great what @Spidy21982has been making, I look forward to seeing what you come up with to use them @appstrader!  

[appstrader]

23 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

Awesome!  These are really great what @Spidy21982has been making, I look forward to seeing what you come up with to use them @appstrader!  

Not quite decided on the direction to head in just yet, I have a web enabled panel so I could just use internet based scripts to show video snaps where everything is online or I could keep it local i guess online scripts would be a premium service simply due to the server bandwidth etc...

The cabinet images I would probably use then on the web enabled panels just to give them the wow factor, of course if you have any ideals feel free to pop them over.

[headcook]

I am loving this arcade, thank you for making it.

Is there a setting to show just the machine being played in full screen?

I would like to play on a largeish touchscreen?

 

Many thx

James

[johnparker007]

1 hour ago, appstrader said:

The cabinet images I would probably use then on the web enabled panels just to give them the wow factor, of course if you have any ideals feel free to pop them over.

That sounds like a good use, keep up the good work on FruitBar!   

[johnparker007]

34 minutes ago, headcook said:

Is there a setting to show just the machine being played in full screen?

Thanks man, glad you're enjoying it  

So, do you mean like this, where the area with purple lines would just all be black, and not show the other machines/arcade?

[headcook]

13 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

Thanks man, glad you're enjoying it  

So, do you mean like this, where the area with purple lines would just all be black, and not show the other machines/arcade?

Hi,

Yes if that will let me play in portrait mode so I can rotate the monitor and fill the screen with it.

thanks

James

 

[johnparker007]

1 hour ago, headcook said:

Hi,

Yes if that will let me play in portrait mode so I can rotate the monitor and fill the screen with it.

thanks

James

 

I've had an initial quick look into it - there's a 'quick' version and a 'slow' version of getting this working.

I will probably do the 'quick' version first.  That would require that you rotate your Windows desktop before launching Arcade Simulator - then it would work correctly (currently has UI and camera issues from a brief test).

'Slow' version would be setting up some internal switching, so it could be changed between Portrait/Landscape inside Arcade Simulator, and saved as a setting.

I've added to the project backlog, though I can't say when it'll get worked on unfortunately!  After a few small tasks, I need to get back to working on the new cabinet models from Spidy, and building more games to use them... but it is safely in the backlog now as a new feature  



Thanks for your input  

Edited January 9, 2022 by johnparker007

[johnparker007]

@appstrader I did have a thought about something you could do on the MAME side of your frontend, using the Goliath cabinet model; you can render a short gameplay video on where the screen is, and also the top marquee image into the Goliath marquee area:



If you cannot render to a morphable quad, you could just the the left image, and render as flat image/video... if you can then having it render on the right side perspective view might look a little more stylised  

[appstrader]

28 minutes ago, johnparker007 said:

@appstrader I did have a thought about something you could do on the MAME side of your frontend, using the Goliath cabinet model; you can render a short gameplay video on where the screen is, and also the top marquee image into the Goliath marquee area:



If you cannot render to a morphable quad, you could just the the left image, and render as flat image/video... if you can then having it render on the right side perspective view might look a little more stylised  

I guess we are on the same wave length if you had both the marquee video and the video snap you could display them both on the cabinet that would actually look really good but maybe half a cabinet view due to the panel width and screen height, not played around with it yet.  Stuck in Android currently but really tempted to look at this later.

[johnparker007]

@headcook you're in luck, since I'm too hungover to work on 3d models today!   So I've fixed the UI issues, and made the playing camera adjust itself when portrait detected.

So it will require that the desktop resolution is set to portrait - then it will just work with no config required.

Here's a demo of testing it in the editor, showing the UI and with a quick go on each of the cabinet types:

This feature will be available in the next patch update, not sure when that'll be at this stage.

[johnparker007]

Just some experimentation, running a retroarch SNES core directly in Unity (no grotty screen scraping!), on a texture.  As well as stability, it removes a frame of input lag if the emulator directly renders onto the engine texture... will probably keep poking around with this, with the intention of getting MAME core working with ROM loading - so the Arcade can have video games, just as playable as directly in MAME...  

 

[fits]

Just had another visit getting better all the time. Thank you for all your hard work

[Spidy21982]

@johnparker007 next one is the jpm cab.

 

 

and here is my newest project a big casino where you could place all of our favorites   lobby is at 50 percent maybe...

my plan is to add minimum 3 more rooms means you have 3 directions where you can go .

what you think ?

greetings spidy

jpmnewercab.zip

Edited January 11, 2022 by Spidy21982

[woodsy]

The jpm cab has arrived at home for us!! @Spidy21982 thanks so much

[johnparker007]

3 hours ago, Spidy21982 said:

@johnparker007 next one is the jpm cab.

 

 

and here is my newest project a big casino where you could place all of our favorites   lobby is at 50 percent maybe...

my plan is to add minimum 3 more rooms means you have 3 directions where you can go .

what you think ?

greetings spidy

jpmnewercab.zip 8.2 MB · 0 downloads

Hey @Spidy21982 - yet another awesome cabinet, looks brilliant!  And I've seen layouts that use this too, will be super handy Don't worry I will be starting back on fruit machine model conversions again soonish... though I'm currently looking into getting MAME to run directly inside the engine (which will then use your Goliath video game model).  I did SNES, but MAME is proving to be much harder to do the ROM loading...

Ok - the bad news  ...

The arcade environment system I have planned - I'm sorry it's all more complex than a simple prebuilt environment.  It will be at least a year before I get to this part, so for now it's just an autogenerated wall with floor/ceiling.  Later, I have to design how best to enable the building of custom arcade environments... the idea is that the end user can also make them in the Arcade Editor... so there are packs like these:

And these are constructed via modular components... that would then allow for auto-generation of rooms etc that look like the above.  So the user could just drop in a bunch of machines... or even just say 'Generate an arcade containing a mix of video games/fruit machines/physics games, from 1970s-1990s, split into rooms' and it would generate them via random seed (like how a minecraft world generates, but it's a procedurally generated arcade instead).

I haven't even begun to do the proper planning yet though, and this can't happen until the normalisation tasks, to allow the fruit machines to be dynamically lit (the Goliath with it's MAME video games will come sooner as it doesn't have the backglass issue to solve), but there's a lot of complexity in the normalisation of the existing layouts).

So I can't actually use an environment at this stage, and when we do get to that stage, there will be modular components, but the design for how these will scale to enable snapping (like Skaletrix but for walls etc) will then be looked at.

I'm really sorry man   as you've already done work...  But that's the technical situation with how this is planned out - I think I covered some of it briefly many months ago way back in the thread. 

It may seem like I could drop a prebuilt environment in, but that's not the way as it'll cause extreme limitations, and lack of scalability/flexibility etc further down the line... this is more intended to be like a 'lego set' of components that snap together so the users can create and share arcades (including environment, props, and machines), all within a simple to use editor.

I'd also worry about giving you any specifications for how to make modular environment components at this stage, as it's just so early in the project, and those specs may change!

So I guess the TL;DR of all that is that it's just too early to create any 3d assets for the enclosing environment, as they may very well be unusable when I actually get to the stage of setting all that up, due to the fact it's not a simple environment.  Machines and props are all amazing! Just floor/wall/ceiling/general architectural structure - that is all coming later, and is not a simple prebuilt scene.