1790 replies to this topic

[Mitchell]

Older tables. I forgotten which ones.

[toxie]

Maybe you could note that down? Otherwise i do not know what to search for at all.

[Mitchell]

I will next time.

[ClarkKent]

I wonder if there is any progress with the Capcom variable coil strength emulation?

[Mitchell]

Is the Baby Pac-man DMD game screen is broken? https://www.vpforums...0#commentsStart

 

White shown on loading but after that just plain black screen.

Edited by Mitchell, 25 November 2020 - 03:34 PM.

[toxie]

There is a bug with Baby Pac that when starting it a second time it can glitch (at least on my setup), but in principle it works fine since many years.

(and i guess you are aware that it doesn't use a DMD, but a CRT, so if you try to use it with an external DMD nothing will happen)

Edited by toxie, 26 November 2020 - 12:27 AM.

[wiesshund]

There is a bug with Baby Pac that when starting it a second time it can glitch (at least on my setup), but in principle it works fine since many years.

(and i guess you are aware that it doesn't use a DMD, but a CRT, so if you try to use it with an external DMD nothing will happen)

 Don't ask why, but you have to totally exit VPX to relaunch the table.
Not sure what bearing that has on VPM as VPM should do a full shut down on table exit, but...

 

 

 

White shown on loading but after that just plain black screen.

 

White shown on what?
You can not use a pinDMD and you can not use freezy's DMD for this game, it does not have a DMD
It has a full blown MAME video game type ROM for the backglass, so only VPM's display will be able to reproduce it.

 

 

What i want to know is
How do you disable NUDGE, when the table is in Pac-Man mode?
I can make the table play via joystick in pac-man mode, but it tilts the table, since it's the same stick as nudge.

Maybe i will just try and set it to the hat switch since it only needs 4 way anyways

Edited by wiesshund, 26 November 2020 - 01:27 AM.

[toxie]

Not sure what bearing that has on VPM as VPM should do a full shut down on table exit, but...

 

This is the old question on which multiple ppl already went insane, as in theory VPM should be unloaded, but in practice its not, so it must be some bug/sideeffect from COM or VBS.

[wiesshund]

 

Not sure what bearing that has on VPM as VPM should do a full shut down on table exit, but...

 

This is the old question on which multiple ppl already went insane, as in theory VPM should be unloaded, but in practice its not, so it must be some bug/sideeffect from COM or VBS.

 

 

Well, as the table script can technically do anything, even non VPX things
is there something one could add to table exit to force dump vpinmame out of existence?

Can not task kill it as it is loading as DLL not EXE, at least not in an easy way, since i cant see it existing to point at it LOL

[toxie]

Yes, i know, multiple "generations" of VP(X) coders tried to find out and/or find ways to kill it, but to no success (=also without other unwanted sideeffects).

 

So we have to live with the VPM-won't-start-from-scratch. But this is also good in some way, cause as soon as VPE may use the lib version of PinMAME, exactly the same will happen, but by design this time. Which means, rather fixing these bugs, then relying on having a clean start each time.

[Mitchell]

I deleted all the cfg and nvram. I ran Baby Pacman on the PinMAME32. Fully working on here. Now the table loaded fully. I guess I had to just run the game on PinMAME32 first so it create the new files and then run the table. The table must've been corrupting the fresh files somehow. Shouldn't be a problem since PinMAME32 creative the files.

 

Edited: OK now it not working after ran the table again. Black screen. But it running fine on the PinMAME32. All I have to do is delete the delete all the cfg and nvram. Run PinMAME32 again for the new files. This is weird. I think it the table loading it issue. lol

 

Edited 2: Oh ok all I have to do is close the VP and then run it again. VP won't load it after exit the game.

Attached Files

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Edited by Mitchell, 26 November 2020 - 12:36 PM.

[toxie]

Yes, this is what i meant above, there is some glitch sometimes where the video display won't work correctly if it's not the first game played after starting VP.

[wiesshund]

Yes, i know, multiple "generations" of VP(X) coders tried to find out and/or find ways to kill it, but to no success (=also without other unwanted sideeffects).

 

So we have to live with the VPM-won't-start-from-scratch. But this is also good in some way, cause as soon as VPE may use the lib version of PinMAME, exactly the same will happen, but by design this time. Which means, rather fixing these bugs, then relying on having a clean start each time.

 in playing, it is ok, as i find it is better to clean start VPX between tables anyways, otherwise after a while it gets bogged down

Only a slight pain in the butt if you happen to be editing baby pacman, or a similar table

though doing alt F S and alt F X and then poking the VPX icon again is not the end of the world

[wiesshund]

@Toxie

Well i successfully booted the pinmame dll, after which pacman relaunches fine
The bad news is, it took VPX out with it, so of course pacman relaunched fine LOL

 

Not sure why vpinmame.dll is listed twice
maybe that is normal though.

 

How do you have VPX use pinmame64? or should you even?

 

 

[toxie]

Only with a 64bit build of VPX which we didn't distribute so far (as not really necessary).

[wiesshund]

Only with a 64bit build of VPX which we didn't distribute so far (as not really necessary).

Yea, i found some old threads discussing it.

For VPX it seems basically a case of sure but you wont get any advantage out of it. cause neither VPX or VPM put a dent in RAM use really
so unless it multi threaded, which kinda ranks up there with upgrading to DX11/12 in pain in the buttedness, no advantage to using it i guess.
And i kinda doubt VPM would really get any benefit from SMP or HT, it isnt doing some late era Taito or Sega machine manipulating a bunch of polys
and stuff.

 

was curious though since there is a 64bit VPM and 64 bit dmdext etc, i was like, Hmm i wonder if i am supposed to be running those instead

 

PS.
I have not run into any VPM beta issues with any of the taito based controllers so far regardless of end manufacturer, nor any complaints on the votrax emulation
except for black hole, and being that it seems to be a 1 off thing, i am wondering if it is the ROM more than the emulation?

I tried a number of different versions of that ROM, all are slightly different in how they glitch the votrax, but they are all kind of funky.
blkhole7 works the best, wish i knew what it did to the poor votrax at game over, it is perfect all the way up to the time you lose 

Edited by wiesshund, 27 November 2020 - 09:36 AM.

[Mitchell]

VPX be the only thing not being a 64bit. lol

[Thalamus]

You can always compile the binary yourself. Source code is available, and Visual Studio is free in Community version. Only issue I've heard that makes it a no go zone fore me is that at91jit isn't working very well in 64bit, so, that would mean issues with many of my favorite Stern tables.

[toxie]

..exactly this. So unless someone finds a way to convince mjr to do a 64bit port of his at91jit code, there is no reason for ppl to play the 64bit versions instead of the 32bit ones.

Apart from that it all compiles and works flawlessly, and with all modern compilers.

And thanks wiesshund for testing all the Votrax stuff!

[wiesshund]

..exactly this. So unless someone finds a way to convince mjr to do a 64bit port of his at91jit code, there is no reason for ppl to play the 64bit versions instead of the 32bit ones.

Apart from that it all compiles and works flawlessly, and with all modern compilers.

 

Well, it does not seem like there is any actual benefit in our case?

I do not think i have seen any table even touch the 4GB memory barrier, not even close.
Memory wise, VPX is pretty laughable in comparison to other modern programs where the attitude appears to be lets just be sloppy and eat up memory everyplace, even if this could be done a hell of a lot more efficiently.

If we were talking about like parallelism, yea ok maybe that might be a worthy argument, but it does not seem that VPX nor VPM would presently benefit from being 64bit, and VPM would most likely not even benefit from parallelism as it does not have the overhead MAME has.
Maybe some time in the distant future if it starts doing Spike, i suppose it might benefit from being able to run the video decoder in it's own thread maybe?

 

 

Regarding Votrax and Blackhole
Is there anyway i can try to log or debug what the hell black hole is doing to the poor votrax?
It is almost like the audio sequence at game over sets some bit and then never resets it
Like it purposely trips some register to result in distorted noise, to simulate an explosion sound, and then never restores it to default
or the emulation does not understand being asked to go back, not sure.

I have run it in logging and manually kicked around the switches to simulate a game
but kind of as expected, that only shows me in a general sense what it is being asked to do, but nothing on an internal detail level.

I am guessing that is just one of those things you would have to do in a debug environment