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LED-Wiz USB LED and Output Control Device now available. *Blinky lights*

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MikeQ:


--- Quote from: Buddabing on January 24, 2006, 04:14:29 pm ---
--- Quote from: MikeQ on January 24, 2006, 11:48:35 am ---
<Mike's rant>


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I would not mention "why don't MAMEdev add 3d acceleration to MAME?" on the MAME forums. They will flame you.


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I don't care, and you might go back and read my post.  I didn't say "why don't MAMEdev add 3d acceleration to MAME?".  I said, I'm doing it.  I've already done part of it. 



--- Quote ---Also, why go about reinventing the wheel? SirPoonga and Howard put a lot of work into the controls.dat project, why not use it? Gl.tter put a lot of work into his LSE, why not use that?

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Because I didn't know they existed when I started working.  Another reason to have a core development effort.

RandyT:


--- Quote from: Buddabing on January 24, 2006, 04:14:29 pm ---Also, why go about reinventing the wheel? SirPoonga and Howard put a lot of work into the controls.dat project, why not use it? Gl.tter put a lot of work into his LSE, why not use that?

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Pehaps an equally valid question would be "Why use it if you don't need it to get the job done?"

I'm not saying that this is the case.  The controls.dat project is a great piece of work, but it may not be necessary to call on it if the software can be made to analyze each game to see which controls are actually used.  But if not, it's darn nice that it is available.

Just because someone did something, doesn't necessarily mean that it is the best approach to a problem, or that any future similar endeavors need to make use of it....

RandyT

SirPoonga:


--- Quote from: RandyT on January 24, 2006, 03:53:15 pm ---But I'm not sure I follow you.  If you mean a "soft" device number, this could only be done if there were EEPROM on the board (which there isn't and would also use outputs if there were.)

Or are you inferring something else?

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Right, answer a question with a question... 

You sorta have it right.  I was wondering about about programming an id.  I know it would take up pins (hence my question) and eeprom.  You know I know this much from past discussions (and I have been making some of my own custom hardware).

I was looking to see if you would answer with 1 or 2.

Though I can only see up to 4 ledwizes ever being needed for arcade use.  Outside of the arcade world....
RGB leds take up 2 outputs?  So 10 per board leaving 2 extra (hence why I say 2 above?  On a 4 player or rotating control panel that will easily take up 4 ledwiz worth of rgbs or more.

I think people want rbg leds to color code the buttons.  I get at least 1-3 requests a month to add button color information to controls.dat.  As I have replied many times probably only 15% of the games in controls.dat used specific color buttons, so it would be better as a side project.  Anyway, I know people are interested in it and I could see someone using only rgb lights for everything.

So if there are two extra pins when using all rgb could they be used for programming in an id instead?  And if it only costs the end user $5 for that feature...

But if you can order, say, up to 8 different ids then the arcade community would be covered.  Though I can see a product like this being used outside of the arcade community.  In fact I have a friend that bought a keywiz eco for a project that was not arcade related.

I guess I am just looking at the big picture.  Compared to other output devices this is very cheap.  We all know it can (and will) be used for more than LEDs.  (I think I found my power source for the qbert knocker, or possibly a dragon's lair scoreboard instead of the parallel interface).


--- Quote ---I think you mean DRS
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MikeQ:

The 3rd button on Yie-Ar Kung Fu does do something.  It is a jumping maneuver.

Do you another example?

SirPoonga:


--- Quote from: MikeQ on January 24, 2006, 07:00:02 pm ---The 3rd button on Yie-Ar Kung Fu does do something.  It is a jumping maneuver.

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Ahh yes, I remember I was told that now.  But it isn't documented anywhere.  Well, it had to be documented somewhere if it was defined in mame originally or the dev tried all pins...  because up is jump as documented.  I remember that chat on that, wondering if the yiear in mame was original or a really good bootleg with a jump button.

One would have compare listxml to controls.dat to see where button numbers aren't the same to get other examples.  Right now I am not going to write up the app to compare the two xml files.  If I can find some time I will try and find one.

The point is there are drivers which use the same macro to define buttons for all the games in the driver.  Basically the manufacturer used the same hardware, just changed the software.  For those games we have the correct number of buttons the game used.

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