585 replies to this topic

[toxie]

These two new packages work perfectly now (before i had crashes, might have been the not-matching combination)..

[UltraPeepi]

FYI, I am working on a new font system for UltraDMD.  This will support variable width font, lowercase characters, outline-fill, and drop shadows.  Text will be able to be aligned vertically and horizontally within a specified space.  Most importantly, there will be a program for creating fonts.

 

 Screen Shot 2015-10-17 at 4.01.53 PM.png   70.23KB   14 downloads

 

 Screen Shot 2015-10-17 at 4.12.51 PM.png   474.2KB   13 downloads

 

One problem with using lowercase characters, and fancier fonts, is that you have to take into account ascenders/descenders.  So if you want your text to appear at a Y offset of "2", you might have to set a Y position to "1" (if the ascender height is 1 pixel).

 

 

 

My question - is anybody interested in this capability and level of flexibility?

 

 

[Outhere]

Is the size of the DMD always have to be 1 x 4 or can be other sizes
 

[UltraPeepi]

The DMD is 4:1 aspect ratio.  There is currently no plan to allow anything different.  The hardware DMD is 128x32; and the virtual DMD is a multiple of that.

[gigalula]

The DMD is 4:1 aspect ratio.  There is currently no plan to allow anything different.  The hardware DMD is 128x32; and the virtual DMD is a multiple of that.

Hi! Just curious to know if you manage to get a way to give some kind of circle aspect to square dot.

 

Regards

[UltraPeepi]

Just curious to know if you manage to get a way to give some kind of circle aspect to square dot.

Yes I did.  It is not a trivial change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

if(sqrtf((x2-2)*(x2-2)+(y2-2)*(y2-2)) <= 2.f) // the 2.f is up for experiments what makes it look most 'round' at this tiny resolution

Round LEDs are not trivial.  The resolution is low fidelity, then scaled up.  So it doesn't look right.  In a large window size, it just looks blocky - and there is another oddity that I haven't figured out which makes it even look worse.  So I'm putting this one into the backlog.

 

 

[gigalula]

haaa ok Sorry I miss this page...

[UltraPeepi]

Well if nobody cares about variable width fonts, I'll give the people what they want.  I'm not done, but I have an approach which should allow me to have rounded virtual LEDs.

 Screen Shot 2015-10-20 at 8.05.38 PM.png   14.85KB   24 downloads

 Screen Shot 2015-10-20 at 8.03.14 PM.png   142.4KB   21 downloads

 

If you open these and zoom in, you will see the "problem" that I have not yet addressed.  In order to make rounded LEDs, I need to use shading.  But the code was designed using an 8 bit palette.  This means the gradient colors don't appear as you would expect.  So I still have some work to do.

 

 

[toxie]

same problem like in pinmame.. there i'm facing the same trouble.. :/

(so you're not alone with this)

[Shoopity]

 

My question - is anybody interested in this capability and level of flexibility?

 

 

Fonts as a whole, not being that much of an original author, I don't necessarily have a great desire with.  However, you know I'd love to see a comma separator for scores, and if that means variable width fonts in general, then I'm sure someone will find some uses for all the work you're putting in.

[UltraPeepi]

I like the commas too.  So even if I don't let table authors set their own variable width font, I will likely include it for the scoreboard.  Then, in the future, the infrastructure will be there for more.

 

I will likely do a separate layout for one and two player scoreboards too.

[arngrim]

just tried to install the new version of ultradmd and it still crashes at exit of vp with pindmd

 

did this : 

–UltraDMD ActiveX (minimal install) – version 1.3.15100401 download

installed

—-XDMD Beta 0.2 (the important folder is ‘XDMD Demo\bin\Release’) download XDMD

this redirects to the same files than the line after, about the 2 xdmd dll, so did you put wrong files somewhere?
—-XDMD Beta 1.1 Preview (replace XDMD.dll with Beta 1.1 Preview) download Beta 1.1 XDMD.dll

—-XDMDNative Beta 1.1 Preview (replace XDMDNative.dll with Beta 1.1 Preview) download Beta 1.1 XDMDNative.dll

Edited by arngrim, 25 October 2015 - 08:05 AM.

[UltraPeepi]

They point to the same page, but you need to grab each of them.

 

• XDMD download include source code, and a bunch of other stuff REQUIRED by XDMD
• The other two downloads contain the individual files I modified.  These should replace the ones already existing (because of the main XDMD download)

 

http://xdmd.info/download/

 

 

 

 

Current version Beta 0.2

Download here.

Download contains both source and binaries. The binaries are located with the demo.

 

History:

4 October 2015 – Beta 1.1 Preview (Latest Test Build binary only download of XDMD.DLL and XDMDNative.dll)

• Fix for interaction with pinDMD.
• Option to display virtual DMD as flipped Y
• Formal XDMD.DLL versioning (1.1.0.0)

 

 

I WAS able to reproduce the crash (with the previous release).  So the update isn't my best guess at a fix.  It IS a fix - but that doesn't mean there couldn't be another issue.

 

BTW, one of the new features is that I put "version info" in the XDMD dll.  So you should be able to right click on XDMD.dll and see the version as "1.1.0.0".

[dyopp21]

They point to the same page, but you need to grab each of them.

 

• XDMD download include source code, and a bunch of other stuff REQUIRED by XDMD
• The other two downloads contain the individual files I modified.  These should replace the ones already existing (because of the main XDMD download)

 

http://xdmd.info/download/

 

 

 

 

Current version Beta 0.2

Download here.

Download contains both source and binaries. The binaries are located with the demo.

 

History:

4 October 2015 – Beta 1.1 Preview (Latest Test Build binary only download of XDMD.DLL and XDMDNative.dll)

• Fix for interaction with pinDMD.
• Option to display virtual DMD as flipped Y
• Formal XDMD.DLL versioning (1.1.0.0)

 

 

I WAS able to reproduce the crash (with the previous release).  So the update isn't my best guess at a fix.  It IS a fix - but that doesn't mean there couldn't be another issue.

 

BTW, one of the new features is that I put "version info" in the XDMD dll.  So you should be able to right click on XDMD.dll and see the version as "1.1.0.0".

I realize I'm a little late to this party, but I just spent a good while reading this thread because I was having crash issues on exit with an earlier version of the XDMD.dll, so I just grabbed your latest one to see if it fixed the issue and it does still crash on exit when exiting directly in VPX..

 

While I wasn't too worried about the crash on exit, the larger issue is that it also keeps the real DMD from functioning afterwards when you exit the table back to PinballX and even on a new table load.  The first time I exited a table in PinballX with the new dll, it gave the DMD back to PinballX so I thought it was good to go.  However after going back to AMH and playing a few games, it exhibited the same behavior of completely killing the DMD on exit that time.  I figured you'd want to know about this.

 

Regardless of this minor issue, what a great app!  Love having AMH work through the real DMD!  Great work!

[allknowing2012]

UltraPeepi,

  Are there any plans to add a function or the ability to do something like the opening logo (and your signature image).. Ie A graphic and multiple lines of text?

 

Looking for a few more options to display text on the dmd and perhaps multiple lines within the scoreboard function.

 

00                             00

         Big Text

      Norm Text

      Norm Text

Credits 10                Ball1

[UltraPeepi]

Sorry guys.  I have been slammed with more thing than I can manage.  I haven't even been able to check in with the forum for a couple of weeks.

 

As for the crash with PinballX when exiting - I thought I had it fixed.  I was getting a crash on my machine with PinballX, I found an uninitialized variable in XDMD, this addressed the issue for me.  Apparently, there is another issue.  If I can figure out how to reproduce it, I should be able to locate the source of the problem.

 

@allknowing2012, I have plans to provide a plug in mechanism so we can register and extend the kinds of scenes available.  The scoreboard is the first kind of customizable scene I hope to extend.  I still do not have a true single player scoreboard.

 

I hope to get back to UltraDMD soon.

[mfuegemann]

Hi UltraPeepi,

 

I started with some animations for my new table and must say, that I am impressed by the results that are already possible.

I would love to have comma separators on the scoreboard but I can live without that for the current project.

I noticed that the text length of the Scene00 is limited to 16 chars for Upper Text and 14 chars for Lower Text. It would be great, if that limit could be increased, sizing the font size down a bit more.

 

If the pixel intensity of my greyscaled images is below 12, the dark areas are rendered as invisible, so not overwriting the previous image in the animation - is this intentionally?

 

Regards

Michael

[UltraPeepi]

started with some animations for my new table

 

 

 

I would love to have comma separators on the scoreboard but I can live without that for the current project.

 

 

I have a working version of this.  Next release will have it.

 

It would be great, if that limit could be increased, sizing the font size down a bit more.

 

 

I could do that.  Did you consider scrolling text?

 

greyscaled images is below 12, the dark areas are rendered as invisible, so not overwriting the previous image in the animation - is this intentionally?

 

 

I doubt that is intentional.  I will investigate.

Edited by UltraPeepi, 30 November 2015 - 03:33 PM.

[mfuegemann]

Hi,

 

I am using not moving text to announce several achievements. It is displayed above an animated scene. I will send You a link to the current WIP.

 

Michael

[michaelcmp]

I have tried everything that everyone said to do in this roll. I have had no luck getting UltraDMD to register. I just keep getting a a fast cmd window when it trys to reg. 

 

Got net frame 2.0 install

doing it under admin cmd.

replaced and unblocked all files needed.

 

Been at it for hours.

 

Anyone else having this problem??