585 replies to this topic

[mpad]

Which are????

[UltraPeepi]

For those fans of vaporware, I/we have been teasing you with some changes.  Well, vapor no more.  Thanks to chadderack, UltraDMD now has a Scene Builder.

 

http://ultradmd.wordpress.com

 

 

He's done a great job of providing a friendly way of visualizing those scenes without having to fire up VP and writing some script. This is particularly handy for off centered text being placed over a background animation.

 

One really cool feature is the Script page.  You can build you scene(s), script will be generated for you, and you can copy/paste that script into you table script.

 

It doesn't do everything for you; but it is a really good tool for building your DMD for your VP original table.

 

Everybody, please join me in thanking chadderack for doing this.

 

Thank you.

Edited by UltraPeepi, 25 June 2014 - 12:29 AM.

[unclewilly]

Thank you guys. Will be checking this out shortly

[randr]

Thanks to both of you for this!

[chadderack]

It doesn't do everything for you; but it is a really good tool for building your DMD for your VP original table.

Thanks, Stephen.

This is a front-end tool for assembling your own DMD content for XDMD/UltraDMD.
 

.NET 4.5 Client Profile is required to run this tool

 

It may work with .NET 4.0 Client Profile, just in case you need this to work with Windows XP. (Haven't tested it)

 

 

What the tool does:

 

• Lays out text
• Configures text animation (marquee)
• Configures animated scene transitions
• Previews the scoreboard function
• Previews the credits function
• Assembles all your scenes to play back in the order you choose
• Assembles picture files into a background animation
• Creates a script for you to copy/paste into your own table script
• Eliminates having to run your table to see DMD results

 

All of these features play back in real-time so that you can see what you're changing immediately on the DMD.

 

What it won't do:
 

• Create animated assets
• Directly modify the script code inside your .vpt/.vpx
• Create game logic/code
• Take a script as input 
• "Save" your work as a project (maybe in future releases)
• Configure the DMD aspect ratio or size(*)
• Configure the DMD color(*)

 

* - These two can still be configured by right-clicking the DMD while it's showing. The same dialog box Stephen provided before is there.

 

If you want to create animated scenes, you'll still have to use an editor like Photoshop for creating the picture assets. 

 

Those should either be saved as a series of images like:

 

image001.jpg

image002.jpg

 

etc

 

...or they can be turned into an animated .gif, which the Scene Builder also supports.

 

If you use a series of images instead of a .gif, however, the frame rate becomes adjustable in Scene Builder.

 

 

 

Creating pic assets outside (in Photoshop or something else) is a bummer.

 

However , Scene Builder will hopefully save you time in assembling DMD scenes. Running your VP table for each small DMD change takes a lot of time, and it's a pain.

 

Notes:

 

A few DMD functions don't work right now: Stephen and I will work through those.

 

• Many scenes require an "animate in" transition or they won't display. If you're having trouble getting an animation to play, set "animate in" to something other than "none" and set the Duration (in ms) to something > 0.

Other features and known issues as documented on Stephen's site: https://ultradmd.wor...s.com/download/

 

Setup notes:

 

To get rid of the "debug" window, locate this file and open in a text/xml editor.

 

 

Open it and you see this:

 

 

Set that parameter to "False" to stop the dialog from popping up. 

 

Another setting:

 

 

You can set this to an initial folder for one of your tables if you like; it is entirely optional. It just provides a starting directory the first time you run the tool.

 

Feedback greatly appreciated on this beta release. Stephen's still writing up the docs for it.

 

Thanks,

Chad.

Edited by chadderack, 25 June 2014 - 08:40 AM.

[Dozer316]

Thanks for the time and effort you guys have put into this, it's working a treat here and the results are great.

 

Dozer.

[unclewilly]

If you use a regular image will this turn it to dots

[chadderack]

If you use a regular image will this turn it to dots

 

Yep

 

Check out UltraPeepi's test table. There are several images in the test table folder you can play with.

[UltraPeepi]

 

If you use a regular image will this turn it to dots

 

Yep

 

Check out UltraPeepi's test table. There are several images in the test table folder you can play with.

 

 

 

It also works with video as well.  You don't even have to worry about the aspect ratio of the original video.

 

http://ultradmd.word...483301074c74030

 

There are examples of this in the test table.

[mpad]

Cool stuff! Thank you guys!

[BlackPredator72]

if I try to use this command : RegASM UltraDMD.exe I'll get the following error message : 'RegASM is not recognised as

an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

 

don't know if I put UltraDMD.exe in the right folder...I put it in : xdmd\XDMD\bin\Release

(that's the folder where I found XDMD.dll)

 

When I try to open the Scenebuilder I get an automatic error and : Value cannot be null

 

The XDMD Demo works....but I can't quit it...pffff not so easy as I thought it was

 

I would like to make something when my cab starts...an intro for HyperPin

[UltraPeepi]

RegASM is not recognized as an internal or external command

 

 

My bad, I thought that the .Net framework utilities were on the path by default.  Apparently not.  These utilities are in the folder

 

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727

 

I've updated the instructions to say

 

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\RegASM UltraDMD.exe

 

 

I would like to make something when my cab starts...an intro for HyperPin

 

In order to do this, I need to support command line arguments.  I haven't implemented that yet.  I was hoping for table developers to be the first consumers of the product.  Are you wanting to play a video, an animated series of images, a still image?  PM me and I'll help you.

[UltraPeepi]

UltraDMD updated to v1.0.140627

 

 

Installation can now be done from a administrator command prompt using the following

 

UltraDMD.exe /i

 

You can also uninstall using the /u switch.

 

 

As always, administrator privilege is only required for the install / uninstall.

[chadderack]

UltraDMD updated to v1.0.140627

 

 

Installation can now be done from a administrator command prompt using the following

 

UltraDMD.exe /i

 

You can also uninstall using the /u switch.

 

 

As always, administrator privilege is only required for the install / uninstall.

 

Thanks Stephen.

 

Also updated is the Scene Builder so it shows a more informative error message if UltraDMD or XDMD don't show up.

Edited by chadderack, 27 June 2014 - 05:46 PM.

[UltraPeepi]

Run your scene(s) from the command line (or from your favorite pinball frontend: PinballX, Hyperpin).

 

OK.  I was looking into how to run the scene(s) through the command line, and I can add an option to do that.  However, I also found a fairly easy solution.

 

In UltraDMD Scene Builder:

• Author the scene(s) you wish to appear.
• Go to the "Generate Script" page/tab.
• Press "Copy to Clipboard"

In Windows Notepad

• Paste in the script
• Add the following line to the end of the script
•     Table1_Init
• Optionally, if it exists, you may want to remove the line (it's about 10 lines from the bottom):
•     UltraDMD.ScrollingCredits "", "Credits go here|", 15, 10, 1000, 14
• Save the file to the same working folder as your project
•     Ensure it is saved as ANSI
•     Ensure it is named with a VBS extension (myscenes.vbs)

 

Now, from a command prompt you can run

    cscript myscenes.vbs

or

    cscript c:\workingfolder\myscenes.vbs

 

It turns out, you need just a little more in the VBS to make this work just right.  The script doesn't wait for the animation to complete.  We're working on getting this into the product so you only have to press a button to Save as VBS.

Edited by UltraPeepi, 27 June 2014 - 10:34 PM.

[UltraPeepi]

chadderack has updated the Scene Builder.  It now supports saving the script as a VBS file.  So within your table front end, you should be able display your scene.  

 

[chadderack]

Thank you everyone for the feedback. Let us know how UltraDMD is working for you and what you would like to see updated/changed.

 

 

-Chad

[Dozer316]

It's working great here with video / animated images and straight single scenes.

 

One question I had was about looping a number of scenes for say an attract mode.

 

At the moment I have a timer sub that simply repeats 4 scenes until the credit or start key is pressed at which time

the attract timer is killed and then cancelrendering  / updatescoreboard is called.

 

This works well most of the time but I have noticed randomly when the next trigger which has a scene assigned to it is hit, the

display sometimes shows the last frame that was in the queue before it was cleared (as though it was not flushed properly).

 

Aside from this though it's working great.

 

Dozer.

[UltraPeepi]

Dozer, I'll see if I can repro.  The ability to cancel rendering is new to XDMD.  And of course it could be a problem with UltraDMD's scene queue.  Either way, I'll look into it.

 

Thx

[Dozer316]

Thanks for checking it out and great job on this so far.