Ridge Racer Multiplayer Link - Coming......

[MartinJames]

Hi all,

I own a home arcade -

I recently spoke to one of the Devs of the System22 Driver and although currently he is a little pre occupied, he said if I give him a nudge in a couple of months he should be able to implement the link system form system21 as it is the same code, just needs hooking up. great news for me as I spend loads on system22 boards and I now officially give up! Mame it is for my Ridge racer 2 machine.

So leave it with me, and if by any chance he reads this! - THANK YOU!

Martin

[isamu]

Very interesting Martin...but does this mean we'll have support for online netplay as well? Or just local LAN?

Also, can you please ask the the gentlemen behind the system 21 and system 22 driver if he can please see about extracting the FFB output driver code for those RR games, so that Howard can take a look at it and see if it's is easily compatible with the upcoming Mame Hooker?

[MartinJames]

Very interesting Martin...but does this mean we'll have support for online netplay as well? Or just local LAN?

Also, can you please ask the the gentlemen behind the system 21 and system 22 driver if he can please see about extracting the FFB output driver code for those RR games, so that Howard can take a look at it and see if it's is easily compatible with the upcoming Mame Hooker?

AS far as I know there is no FFB in System 21 or 22. Certainly not for any of the ridge racer series, twin or DLX. And From memory not for the 100" full size MX5 either. They work on the standard Namco Spring steering. I own RR1 upright, DLX, RR2 twin and all work the same. Never seen one but happy to be proved wrong.

I am however making a sitdown MAME cockpit which will be simply awesome, which I am trying to emulate FFB in non FFB games. Think Outrun DLX kind of  thing.....

[BadMouth]

That's an awesome home arcade! 

Very interesting Martin...but does this mean we'll have support for online netplay as well? Or just local LAN?

Also, can you please ask the the gentlemen behind the system 21 and system 22 driver if he can please see about extracting the FFB output driver code for those RR games, so that Howard can take a look at it and see if it's is easily compatible with the upcoming Mame Hooker?

AS far as I know there is no FFB in System 21 or 22. Certainly not for any of the ridge racer series, twin or DLX. And From memory not for the 100" full size MX5 either. They work on the standard Namco Spring steering. I own RR1 upright, DLX, RR2 twin and all work the same. Never seen one but happy to be proved wrong.

I am however making a sitdown MAME cockpit which will be simply awesome, which I am trying to emulate FFB in non FFB games. Think Outrun DLX kind of  thing.....

Rave Racer had FFB, but I think it was limited to a small number of cabinets. (maybe only in Japan?)
It's listed as a feature in the flyer and there is an option in the service menu to turn it on or off.

Most here in the U.S. were conversion kits put into Ridge Racer cabinets, so they didn't have FFB.
No idea if it had a separate FFB board or if it was on the main board.
They must have been extremely rare.  I've only been able to find a few mentions on KLOV of someone picking one up and have never been able to find a picture of the steering setup.
Never been able to find the manual, except for the conversion kit which doesn't say much about ffb, just that it's not relevant to installation in a RR cab.
Every once in a while I search for the ffb motor on ebay because I'm curious as to what type of setup they used.
So far, I haven't seen one.


oh....and Hap rocks! 

[BadMouth]

Info on Ace Driver seems easier to find and it turns out that it had FFB also.

None of the manuals I've found so far list the boards, but I'll keep looking.

Found this board on ebay that looks like it might be a FFB board..... in my dumb end-user opinion (because of the four transistors on the end).
Awful lot of other chips on there for it to just take in a signal and amplify it for the motor.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Unknown-transformer-and-board-from-Namco-ACE-DRIVER-/110553383163?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19bd7ec0fb+

Happ also lists a 270 degree FFB steering wheel assembly:
Item Number: 50-0160-00
STEERING ASSY 270 ACTIVE SPECIAL FOR ACE DRIVER

The description kinda makes it sound like it's a standard happ setup modified for Ace Driver.
Could just be that the game used 1k pots instead of 5k. 
I have a feeling that I'll find a picture of a used steering setup and we'll have our answer.

EDIT: The Ace Driver Deluxe manual has everything listed.  Looks like it might be a happ motor and small pulley (24v), but the rest is different.
The drawing of the FFB board isn't detailed enough to tell if the one on ebay is it, but it looks like it most likely is.

[Howard_Casto]

This has been years so my memory may be a little fuzzy, but I remember looking at the feedback bytes for the sys 22 games and going "well I'm not doing that" 

I mean it's possible to hook up, don't get me wrong, but while your typical sega will have a single byte for ff, maybe two more for tilt if it's a really fancy cab, sys 22 had like a 4 or 8 byte bank that had all the data mushed together, strobing at different time intervals... it was really complex. 

[BadMouth]

This has been years so my memory may be a little fuzzy, but I remember looking at the feedback bytes for the sys 22 games and going "well I'm not doing that" 

I mean it's possible to hook up, don't get me wrong, but while your typical sega will have a single byte for ff, maybe two more for tilt if it's a really fancy cab, sys 22 had like a 4 or 8 byte bank that had all the data mushed together, strobing at different time intervals... it was really complex.

If the ffb board is missing from the emulation, is it possible that the complicated info is sent to the ffb board which translates it into simpler motor pulses?
In other words, if ffb board emulation were added (assuming it's missing), would the final outputs be simpler?

I'll dig into the rom history and rom labels when I get a chance, or maybe just be lazy and ask hap. 

[isamu]

*EXCELLENT* detective work Sargeant Mouth!!! 

Y'know it's funny....after I typed my original reply, I realized you had already told me that Ridge Racer 1 and 2 had no ffb. I completely forgotten, so my bad  I guess vtivti now confirms this is indeed the case, and RR1 and 2 do not in fact have ffb. Now that I know this *for SURE*, I can play them in MAME without feeling too sad, or feel that I'm missing something.

***BUT***......that does not let you guys off the hook just yet!  We still have Rave Racer to deal with, and we can now say with 100% certainty, as evident in its own service menu, that it most definitely has ffb, otherwise referred to as "Active Steering".

Badmouth it's crazy how it's so difficult to find info on the net about the details surrounding this "Active Steering" that Namco inserted into Rave Racer. And the fact that they really didn't release too many cabinets that utilize it here in the States is even more uncanny. Oh well, the fact that it's there at all means we should pursue getting the necessary info Howard needs to construct a proper blueprint for MameHooker implementation 

[BadMouth]

I couldn't tell from the rom WIP history whether anything had been done with ffb or a ffb board.
PMed hap over on MAMEworld to ask about it and offered to buy the ffb board if it needs dumped.

[isamu]

I couldn't tell from the rom WIP history whether anything had been done with ffb or a ffb board.
PMed hap over on MAMEworld to ask about it and offered to buy the ffb board if it needs dumped.

awesome. please let us know if he responds. hap is the ---smurfing--- man! 

[BadMouth]

That unknown board in the ebay auction is the ffb board.  If you search "Namco motor", there are more.
This is a better top down shot if anyone wants to look up the chips to figure out how much this thing is doing onboard.

[MartinJames]

Great news on Rave racer, but as Howard has said, it really doesn't seem worth hooking it up for one game.

Thanks for the comments re Arcade. Its gogin to get loads bigger soon. Im going to MAME Ridge racer next week in wait for the link up code.

Martin

[Howard_Casto]

This has been years so my memory may be a little fuzzy, but I remember looking at the feedback bytes for the sys 22 games and going "well I'm not doing that" 

I mean it's possible to hook up, don't get me wrong, but while your typical sega will have a single byte for ff, maybe two more for tilt if it's a really fancy cab, sys 22 had like a 4 or 8 byte bank that had all the data mushed together, strobing at different time intervals... it was really complex.

If the ffb board is missing from the emulation, is it possible that the complicated info is sent to the ffb board which translates it into simpler motor pulses?
In other words, if ffb board emulation were added (assuming it's missing), would the final outputs be simpler?

I'll dig into the rom history and rom labels when I get a chance, or maybe just be lazy and ask hap. 

It's entirely possible, but I don't know if there would be much to dump.  You (and by "you" I mean somebody else, I'm not one of those hardware guys) might be able to look at the board and tell how it's parting out the data, but that doesn't mean that there's a pic/avr on the thing with code in it.  For the output I've done thus far in mame, I've written software functions to parse and part out the raw code.  There hasn't been any hardware level emulation to speak of.  There really isn't any point either... why make a driver for a 555 timer or a multiplexer?  If you want to see a mess, take a look at the recoil code for some of the midway games.  Operation Wolf 3 is also especially horrid. 

[BadMouth]

hap responded that there aren't any roms or CPUs on that board and the I/O section of the current driver is too much of a mess to even think about the function of an external board. 

I'm still curious about what purpose all those logic chips serve. 
It's over my head, but if I come across one cheap enough I may get it to experiment with.

[Howard_Casto]

Just a guess but it's probably got multiple (de)multiplexers some timers, maybe some DAC converters ect....

Whatever that board is doing, it takes seemingly random garbage and does something with it. 

Something that arcade game developers don't seem to get is that your output test menu needs to be REALLY extensive to troubleshoot the hardware, which I would think would be beneficial to real cabinet owners as well.  If the few outputs I've hooked up in mame (and now model 2) the ones that I managed to hook up properly had really good test modes that told you what is going on.  Rave Racer's test screen just has a "force feedback test on/off" setting with no visual indicators as to what is supposed to be going on while the test is running. 

I'm having the same problem with some of the more interesting sega ride-ons.  I'll probably never figure out a game like rail chase and it's motion cab because there isn't a test menu where you can move each piston up and down individually.  It SEEMS like there is, but there actually isn't.

[BadMouth]

Whatever that board is doing, it takes seemingly random garbage and does something with it. 

 

(that's not far off from what I do at work)

[Jitterdoomer]

I have someting to say off-topic, when will it fix Tokyo Wars' collision issues that shoots another tank in order to win? It's also helpful for multiplayer.