Years later, I've finally gotten around to working with the alphanumeric feature.
Cab specs - Intel i5 3570k CPU @ 3.40GHz, 16Gb RAM, NVidia 1070 Ti, 3 screen P2k style
Software - VPX 6.1 and whatever B2S Server comes with the 6.0 AiO Installer, SAMBuild_r5046.
DMDExt - 1.8.1-SNAPSHOT-r35 (I don't think that there was much work done on the alphanum code from the 1.8 release. I know that there have been commits made to the alphanum code since r35)
Pros -
Custom configuration across four layers - provides a glow effect that is a substantial improvement over B2S's default Dream7 LEDs. Dream7 has four levels of glow effect (None, Low, Medium, High). Dream7 is pretty good, but even High glow effect does not have the intensity, brightness, luminescence reminiscent of a real plasma display.
Background layer - can be configured to display unlit tubes/filaments - for VPM tables the correct underlying display is used. I haven't tested everything but so far the display options seem accurate (early SS Bally and Williams use displays whose digits have seven segments, early SS Gottlieb use displays whose digits have ten segments, etc.)
I don't have the issues that others have reported about ini getting overwritten or corrupted. It may just be my workflow. I first use Notepad to edit the ini manually. Add a section for a new table (referenced by rom name). Underlying properties are
alphanumeric enabled = true
virtualdmd enabled = false
alphanumeric style = default
Then go into
VPM Setup.ext Test - find the rom and set Game Options to enable External
DMD Run the table from VPX editor and position the DMDext alphanumeric frames
Exit and close VPX
Edit the ini in Notepad - there should now be additional entries under the table section with positioning of frames.
Fine tune so that size and positioning of frames are consistent. There should be no other edits of clearing of other sections of the ini.
Cons
Alphanum frames have a fixed aspect ratio that doesn't fit with
B2S stretched to fit 16:9 backglass monitors. This is how most users work with
B2S. I know that there are some users that have 4:3 or 5:4 displays or who strive for total fidelity and use separate res files to preserve the aspect ratio of backglasses/translites from the real tables. There is some evidence that the fixed aspect ratio does not work for this scenario either.
https://github.com/f...ions/issues/211
The recommended protocol calls for going into
B2S Designer and deleting out the original LED frames, But if you are going through the trouble of editing backglasses you could simply replace the original LED frames with whatever images one prefers and not have to deal with the scaling issues. This would apply to all early solid states up to the point where the industry moved to what I'll call the true alphanumeric tables (basically, the ones where players could enter their initials for high scores). Prior to the true alphanumerics, the displays used numerals only in-game. They might have used basic alpha characters in diagnostics but at least the numeral digits can be replaced with custom LED images in the Designer. Once the task is supporting a true alphanumeric display with animations and different visual effects beyond numbers, the only choice in Designer are the Dream7 LEDs. So, DMDExt alphanum renders do the most good for true alphanumeric displays up to the point the industry switched over to dot matrix plasma displays. We're talking about a five year stretch from about the mid 80s to the early 90s.
The implementation does not support vertical flipping for P2k style cabs. For me personally that is a further restriction as I would be limited to using DMDExt alphanum on 2-screen
B2S where the score display is on the backglass and not the third screen. The user base of P2K cabs can probably be counted on one hand, so this is not something that affects most users.
Focus is not entirely consistent for me. I see in the log that DMDExt is attempting to move frames on top of the
B2S form. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, Also, I do get the configuration icon but I was only able to get the dialog window once. I don't know underwhat circumstances I was able to bring up the dialog or why I wasn't able to get it any other time. When I got it, I jumped on it and did most of my tweaking. Otherwise, I had to finish my manually editing the ini. I do not currently have a front-end installed. I launch tables from the VPX editor. I do not currently use exclusive full screen.
Ok. I did some cursory research and determined what the major manufacturers were using for true alphanumerics:
Bally 6803 MPU starting with Black Belt up to Bally's acquisition by Williams used plasma scoring displays.
Williams System 11 starting with High Speed and into the early WPC tables (FH, BOP, Harley-Davidson) used plasma scoring displays.
Data East starting with Laser War. Checkpoint was Data East's first
DMD. Prior to that, plasma scoring displays.
Gottlieb System 80b starting with Chicago Cubs "Triple Play" and into the early System 3 tables (Super Mario Bros. was Gottlieb/Premier's first
DMD). The displays were Futaba style vacuum fluorescent displays.
All the plasma displays were high voltage, very bright in the familiar orange-red neon color.
Gottlieb's VFD displays were in blue (cyan) and to my subjective eyes were bright but did not have nearly as much glow as plasma. Further Gottlieb would outfit some tables with a green filter to produce a green display. The Sys80b filter can still be found as a licensed part at The Pinball Resource
The listing mentions all Sys80b tables but if we are going by images at IPDB and/or Pinside as authorities on which tables were fitted with green filters in the factory then the following had green displays:
Sys 80b
Chicago Cubs "Triple Play"
Spring Break
Robo-War
Big House - early production run - photo has green display
Amazon Hunt 3
Sys 3
Silver Slugger
Vegas
Cactus Jack's
Class of 1812
So, I have three styles set up for the three original factory colors that were manufactured back in the 80s. Credit to topper2k for publishing his style settings. I tweaked from those starting points. My style settings don't include any fantasy settings or other colors although there would be nothing wrong with it. Today there are after-market replacement options such as PinScore's low voltage, high brightness LEDs in a variety of color options. Default stye is the same as freezy's release except that I think bold weight is more accurate. I basically tweaked to reveal the unlit tubes. Of course, all this is subjective and going by photos and faulty memory. I don't have any real tables to compare side-by-side.
[alphanumeric]
enabled = false
style = default
style.default.skewangle = 12
style.default.weight = Bold
style.default.backgroundcolor = #ff000000
style.default.foreground.enabled = true
style.default.foreground.color = #fffbe6cb
style.default.foreground.blur.enabled = true
style.default.foreground.blur.x = 2
style.default.foreground.blur.y = 2
style.default.foreground.dilate.enabled = false
style.default.innerglow.enabled = true
style.default.innerglow.color = #a0dd6a03
style.default.innerglow.blur.enabled = true
style.default.innerglow.blur.x = 15
style.default.innerglow.blur.y = 13
style.default.innerglow.dilate.enabled = true
style.default.innerglow.dilate.x = 15
style.default.innerglow.dilate.y = 10
style.default.outerglow.enabled = true
style.default.outerglow.color = #40b65829
style.default.outerglow.blur.enabled = true
style.default.outerglow.blur.x = 50
style.default.outerglow.blur.y = 50
style.default.outerglow.dilate.enabled = true
style.default.outerglow.dilate.x = 90
style.default.outerglow.dilate.y = 40
style.default.background.enabled = true
style.default.background.color = #2dfffafa
style.default.background.blur.enabled = true
style.default.background.blur.x = 7
style.default.background.blur.y = 7
style.default.background.dilate.enabled = false
style.blue.skewangle = 12
style.blue.weight = Bold
style.blue.backgroundcolor = #ff000000
style.blue.foreground.enabled = true
style.blue.foreground.color = #ff00ffff
style.blue.foreground.blur.enabled = true
style.blue.foreground.blur.x = 2
style.blue.foreground.blur.y = 2
style.blue.foreground.dilate.enabled = false
style.blue.innerglow.enabled = true
style.blue.innerglow.color = #ff0000ff
style.blue.innerglow.blur.enabled = true
style.blue.innerglow.blur.x = 15
style.blue.innerglow.blur.y = 13
style.blue.innerglow.dilate.enabled = true
style.blue.innerglow.dilate.x = 15
style.blue.innerglow.dilate.y = 10
style.blue.outerglow.enabled = true
style.blue.outerglow.color = #ff000080
style.blue.outerglow.blur.enabled = true
style.blue.outerglow.blur.x = 50
style.blue.outerglow.blur.y = 50
style.blue.outerglow.dilate.enabled = true
style.blue.outerglow.dilate.x = 6
style.blue.outerglow.dilate.y = 40
style.blue.background.enabled = true
style.blue.background.color = #2dfffafa
style.blue.background.blur.enabled = true
style.blue.background.blur.x = 7
style.blue.background.blur.y = 7
style.blue.background.dilate.enabled = false
style.green.skewangle = 12
style.green.weight = Bold
style.green.backgroundcolor = #ff000000
style.green.foreground.enabled = true
style.green.foreground.color = #ff00ff00
style.green.foreground.blur.enabled = true
style.green.foreground.blur.x = 2
style.green.foreground.blur.y = 2
style.green.foreground.dilate.enabled = false
style.green.innerglow.enabled = true
style.green.innerglow.color = #eb00ff7f
style.green.innerglow.blur.enabled = true
style.green.innerglow.blur.x = 15
style.green.innerglow.blur.y = 13
style.green.innerglow.dilate.enabled = true
style.green.innerglow.dilate.x = 10
style.green.innerglow.dilate.y = 5
style.green.outerglow.enabled = true
style.green.outerglow.color = #b900fa9a
style.green.outerglow.blur.enabled = true
style.green.outerglow.blur.x = 50
style.green.outerglow.blur.y = 50
style.green.outerglow.dilate.enabled = true
style.green.outerglow.dilate.x = 1
style.green.outerglow.dilate.y = 2
style.green.background.enabled = true
style.green.background.color = #2dfffafa
style.green.background.blur.enabled = true
style.green.background.blur.x = 7
style.green.background.blur.y = 7
style.green.background.dilate.enabled = false
Other display technologies were used over the years. Game Plan used relative low voltage red LEDs. This was prior to true alphanumeric displays. Edittoy did a good representation using custom LED images in his backglass:
https://www.vpforums...showtopic=40650
There were some oddball commercial one-offs and/or home builds that used numitron tubes or nixie tubes but these are definitely outliers:
https://www.ipdb.org...432&picno=46397
https://pinside.com/...all#post-748883
In short, I do like the implementation although for now I'll likely only use it under specific circumstances, for true alphanumeric tables where I don't have a corresponding db2s with three screen support. I'll live with the scaling issue. I position a larger DMDExt frame over the original db2 LED frame and position it so that it does not cover important parts of the backglass artwork at least to the extent that I can.. I'm probably not going to fiddle with the Designer at this point. And if VPE is coming around the corner sooner or later, DMDExt at least in its current form will become obsolete.
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