321 replies to this topic

[Thalamus]

I don't use virtual dmd - but, if this happens for more than one - it would be great if you file a bug report about it directly to github.

https://github.com/f.../dmd-extensions

[robwaade]

thanks just did appreciate link

[SPARKY70]

Sorry man, dmdext needs .NET 4.5 which doesn't exist for Windows XP. Maybe time for an upgrade?

Sorry man, dmdext needs .NET 4.5 which doesn't exist for Windows XP. Maybe time for an upgrade?

Sorry man, dmdext needs .NET 4.5 which doesn't exist for Windows XP. Maybe time for an upgrade?

Ugh. So this is a no go on XP? It must be .net 4.5?
I built my cab purposely on XP because it seemed to be the preferred system at the time.
What is preferred now?
Also this below. Thanks

i believe i can now colorize my roms similar to pindmd but on my LCD computer screen. is this correct?
 
also, where can i get one of the rom sets you listed in the first post, like metallica, avengers,spiderman, so i can see if i can get it working before coloring anything...thanks/sparky

[Thalamus]

@Sparky70 If you plan to use the same computer as you have today. I would buy myself a new harddrive for it and install Win7. I expect that the computer is at least a couple of years old and well, there are some revisions between Win7 and Win10. Both will work though, but, less fiddling with Win7.

 

Color roms, you find patches that you need to run against the original roms over at the other site.

[SPARKY70]

hi thalmus, thanks for the info.

as for the color roms, is there a reason that they are not just directly downloadable already patched?  thanks/sparky

[Thalamus]

That is a question I can't really answer. I have done it myself, from the patches like everyone else.

[jukedock]

hi thalmus, thanks for the info.

as for the color roms, is there a reason that they are not just directly downloadable already patched?  thanks/sparky

I have asked this on another forum and was told that they could not share modified copyrighted material. 
Seems a bit daft to me - because a lot of visual pinball sites allow roms to be downloaded.

It is actually very easy to patch a rom. 

[SPARKY70]

thanks thalamas and juke for the replys

[JSpradlin]

So I installed all of the required files and went through the setup of VPinMAME to allow me to use the modified color palettes on a third screen monitor. When I run a table I can see that the additional DMD is running with the standard orange set as the default in VPinMAMe. I have also downloaded the set of default altcolor palettes mentioned previously and an additional palette file created to mimic a red DMD. My understanding is that I need a patched version of the rom to run the multicolor versions of the Stern tables.

 

My question is this, the altcolor palettes file that contained the 140+ table palettes includes many non-Stern tables so do I need a modified rom file for any table that I wish too use an altcolor palette for? Do I run the same patching process for those roms as I do for the Stern roms?

 

Maybe I'm making this more complicated than it needs to be.   

[jocooter]

Use newest dmddevice make sure folders under alt color are same name as ROM. Start game, hit f1 and check use external DMD and use color. Edit dmddevice.INI for the type of dmdyou are using.

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

[freezy]

My question is this, the altcolor palettes file that contained the 140+ table palettes includes many non-Stern tables so do I need a modified rom file for any table that I wish too use an altcolor palette for? Do I run the same patching process for those roms as I do for the Stern roms?

 

Maybe I'm making this more complicated than it needs to be.   

 

No, you don't need to patch anything in this case. Patching is only necessary if you want frame-by-frame coloring, in which case the ROM sends palette infos along with the data. But that works only for SAM ROMs. The palette files you've downloaded are just 4-color palettes that are applied to all frames of a given ROM. If they are at the right place and you have "Colorize DMD" enabled in VPM for that game, the palette will be applied.

 

If that doesn't work I'll need a log to give you more information. How to produce a log is described here.

[JSpradlin]

Okay. So much like poposchmatzer my goal was to have authentic DMD colors. I assumed that the palette files that I downloaded may have been more "authentic" than the colorized VPinMAME DMD. I was thinking that they may have used more shades. So in my situation there is basically no advantage to using the external DMD feature as opposed to setting the DMDs using something like setDMD, is that correct? 

[freezy]

Not sure what you mean by "authentic." For me, "authentic" is still orange.

 

The advantages of the palette files is that they are better maintainable than system registry entries. The advantage of dmdext's DLL over VPM rendering is that the virtual DMD looks better. If you want frame-by-frame coloring you need to either patch the ROM or use the editor to color a ROM yourself.

 

While it's technically possible, there aren't any palette files that offer 16 shade animations on non-SAM games. That's one of the reasons of this thread, to motivate people to have a go at it and color a non-SAM game.

[JSpradlin]

I guess by authentic I meant more shades of orange. When discussing 4 colors what we really mean are 4 shades. I thought maybe the palette files offered more shades than the default 4 in line more with a real DMD. 

 

One other question that perhaps you could answer for me. When testing this out I am getting two DMD windows. They are each displaying the same DMD (though one is considerably smaller). I'm testing on a single screen system and the smaller one's window is titled Dr. Who (L-2) while the larger one is Virtual DMD. I am assuming that one is being created by the dmdext DLL and one by VPM. When I change the colorize setting in VMP it colors the smaller Dr. Who DMD but not the Virtual DMD. Am I correct that the Dr. Who window is the VPM DMD and the Virtual DMD is the dmdext DMD?

[JSpradlin]

Disregard my last post. I figured it out. Thanks for the help.

[JAA3rd]

Not sure what you mean by "authentic." For me, "authentic" is still orange.

 

The advantages of the palette files is that they are better maintainable than system registry entries. The advantage of dmdext's DLL over VPM rendering is that the virtual DMD looks better. If you want frame-by-frame coloring you need to either patch the ROM or use the editor to color a ROM yourself.

 

While it's technically possible, there aren't any palette files that offer 16 shade animations on non-SAM games. That's one of the reasons of this thread, to motivate people to have a go at it and color a non-SAM game.

I've just recently started using this, and seem to have it working correctly other than my DMD resetting position when I quit/restart the table.

 

So just to clarify, Is it possible to add 16 colors to non-SAM games?  So, with the proper manual editing, it would be possible to make STTNG look similar to ColorDMD?  If so, what editor and process would you use to do this?  I'm sure this is probably a tedious process, but I might be curious to give this a go.

Edited by JAA3rd, 28 March 2017 - 02:01 PM.

[JSpradlin]

I think I'm getting close to 100% on this thing. I just have two little problems and one question.

 

The first problem is that I use the always on option of Future DMD in order to display a DMD during table selection in PinballX When using the VPM DMD the VPM DMD covers the Future DMD when a VP table is played. However when I use the external DMD the Future DMD stays on top. This happens even when I have "stayontop = true" in the DmdDevice.ini file. I suspect that Future DMD is by default always on top and since it is open first it takes precedence, but that's just a guess. Any thoughts on this?

 

The second problem is that I changed the size and position of the external DMD in the DmdDevices.ini file and it's still displaying in the default size and location. I got it to change yesterday, but for some reason no joy today. Again any thoughts?

 

Finally, a quick question about DMD coloring. I understand there is a whole process involved in adding more than the standard number of colors and/or shades, but how were the default color files (mostly orange I believe) created? The reason I asked is if I want to change the DMD from a "4 color" orange shade to a "4 color" red shade (or blue or green) is there an easy way to accomplish this or do I have to dump and edit every DMD frame as described previously?

 

Thanks.

Edited by JSpradlin, 02 April 2017 - 07:21 PM.

[Thalamus]

Finally, a quick question about DMD coloring. I understand there is a whole process involved in adding more than the standard number of colors and/or shades, but how were the default color files (mostly orange I believe) created? The reason I asked is if I want to change the DMD from a "4 color" orange shade to a "4 color" red shade (or blue or green) is there an easy way to accomplish this or do I have to dump and edit every DMD frame as described previously?

 

 

Not sure if I understand you correctly, but, here it goes. Default is just that - the orange regular. So, if you don't have a altcolor file for the rom it will read from the registry what you have used before ( if played once already ) - So, on the setup screen of pinmame / rom you tick the 'use color' but there you have 4 colors shown ... right ? Try changing that orange to a blue color and experiment from there. Since you still dont have a alt color file, the change will be written back to registry and read back next time around.

 

Hope this helps.

[JSpradlin]

@Thalamus I downloaded a zip file that had altcolor palette files for a large number of tables (I believe 140+). I thought most of these were standard 4 color orange DMDs. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But I believe that the external DMD must be reading from these and not just defaulting to VPM colors. If I turn "colorize" on in my VPM setup, and I set both the VPM DMD and the external DMD to display, the VPM DMD uses the orange, blue, pink colorize combo from VPM. However, the external DMD seems to still only be shades of the defaualt orange. That leads me to believe that the external DMD is getting its colors from the palette files. Maybe I'm just not seeing this correctly.

[Thalamus]

No, you are on the right track. None of those 140+ files are standard orange colored. Thats the reason for them in the first place. What Real DMD do you have ? And where did you get the dmddevice.dll from ?

Edited by Thalamus, 02 April 2017 - 08:41 PM.