LCD Marquee Project: AKA "How to put even more money into an old Defender cab"

[javeryh]

Just get a Mappy (or build one)...



...and then you can just use a full sized LCD...

or...

[RandyT]

OK, a few posts back I mentioned that monitoring the current game being used in MAME and then throwing up the proper marquee wouldn't be too difficult for me to put in place.  So here's a working system.  BTW, I also manged to keep the marquee in the right spot, even after changing resolutions in the  games.

Anyone know where to get better marquee images? The ones in the video are the standard ones that have been upsampled and converted to JPG's.  IOW, mostly ok, but bleah...



The video is a longer one this time (14+ megs, ~4mins..click the picture to download it)  showing selections being made in an old version of Emu-Loader.  I used Emu-loader to show that there is no marquee work being done by the front end software.  You could load MAME from the command line and the marquee will still change to the correct game.  If no marquee exists for the game, the "default" marquee is displayed. 

RandyT

[csa3d]

Ok.. that's pretty badd ass.  Like the top screen or not, the face that you get a marquee per game rules.  Good stuff! 

[ChadTower]

Awesome.  And that's just the tip of the iceburg.

[arcadefever]

OMG 

this is so coooooooooooooolllll   

probably one of the most impressive project ever 

[Knievel]

Well Randy having the marquee static and the top part scrolling really sells that area as a separate display.

As for finding nice marquee images I would hit the AAL and grab all the ones they have there. You can get high quality versions of some classic games..

Arcade Art Library

[ratzz]

I think it's great, one thing I'd like to ask though ...

How many sleepless nights did you have while you were putting it all together!!

Congrats ... 

[mcfreak]

Anyone know where to get better marquee images? The ones in the video are the standard ones that have been upsampled and converted to JPG's.  IOW, mostly ok, but bleah...

RandyT

You could also try Mr. Do's set.http://www.mameworld.net/mrdo/mame_artwork.html
He has a list that shows if it is 300dpi or not, etc. 

Also, getting the Top score scrolling up there would be amazing.  I see many projects being updated with this look! Will MAME spit out the current score of the game you are playing while you are playing it?  Might be cool to see that score changing up there as you play.  This really does open up so many options.  Now where do I get the $220 deal at K-mart

[johnm160]

Now that is SWEET! 

[Zero_Hour]

Pure Greatness.

[Xiaou2]

Pretty Sweet. 

  Heres an idea...

  For the top panel, display a cabinet picture (or 3d cabinet model)
and next to it, the control panel picture. 

 In game select mode...  You could have a row of 3d cabinets on top
that scroll left to right as you are scrolling thru the lists. 

 (or just use the cabinet pics scrolling by)

[ChadTower]

I say play Skid Row videos on it 24/7. 

[Knievel]

Hell YA! 

[MikeQ]

In several years you'll be able get polymer OLED displays, cut them to size and slap them into your marquee.  You'll even be able to bend them into curves and such.

[theCoder]

It definitely looks much better with the scrolling text. 

How are you controlling/managing the two images?  Custom software I presume running as a background task?  Good stuff.

[RandyT]

In several years you'll be able get polymer OLED displays, cut them to size and slap them into your marquee.  You'll even be able to bend them into curves and such.

They've been promising those things for years now.  They were originally touted as being the thing to overcome many of the problems of LCD displays, but I think they may have lost a little steam now that LCD technology has improved and is getting cheaper.  Still, the promise sounds good if they can actually deliver.

How are you controlling/managing the two images?  Custom software I presume running as a background task?  Good stuff.

A fairly simple little app that monitors applications running on the system.  When it finds what it's looking for, it parses out the game information and then loads the proper marquee.  The same method, if expanded,  could be used to display instructions or light controls based on those used in the games, rotate monitors, what have you, regardless of the FE software currently being used.

There's also the cheesy scrolling text window.  It's ok, but VB just isn't fast enough to do this well.  Anybody want to make a good scrolling text control with adjustable speed and and scroll granularity?

RandyT

[MikeQ]

OLED is very much alive.  Sony is heavily invested in it. 

OLED is in many products.  The size of the displays are small right now.  Like semiconductors the price comes down and yield goes up.  Once the yield in manufacturing is achieved you will see both larger and cheaper displays.

[Dmod]

Congrats, Randy.   

That's just about one of the coolest things I've seen on a custom arcade cabinet.

[RenegadeX]

OLED is very much alive.  Sony is heavily invested in it. 

OLED is in many products.  The size of the displays are small right now.  Like semiconductors the price comes down and yield goes up.  Once the yield in manufacturing is achieved you will see both larger and cheaper displays.

The trouble with OLEDs is the MTBF of the screens. Certain colors start to fade faster than others. We're talking years, but still much less than current tech (LCD/CRT/Plasma).

What about using a normal-sized flat panel and using a mirror to compress/bounce the image to a marquee-sized screen? A crappy (oops, I meant "inexpensive") LCD projector could do the same thing. You'd have to account for the parallax effect (the screen would end up squished, so your source images/display would have to be stretched horizontally to compensate.

Either way, it seems like overkill for a part of the cab that is probably a lower design priority than the control panel and main screen.

Personally, I'd like a second screen to handle pinball sim stuff, like LCD/display matrix on top of a table simulation...

[ARTIFACT]

woah!!!!

[nipsmg]

ok seriously...

 

[headkaze]

Can't believe I missed this thread, great work Randy very impressive.

Just Winamp with the "FunkyFX" Visualization.  That one doesn't do a lot, but this particular effect works well and it creates a border-less, re-sizable window to run in.  Other windowed vizualizations work well too, but the border needs to be hid outside the screen area.

Simple way to remove the border of an external application:

Code: [Select]

SetWindowLong hGForceWnd, GWL_STYLE, 0&
As for a nice scrolly, I think you've done a great job there. A long time ago I wrote a DirectDraw scroller in VB6 which had some cool effects like distorted text and all that. But even with DirectDraw the scrolling is pretty slow and if you skip too many pixels to speed it up it gets too hard to read. If your interested I can find the code for you. I also wrote an app in VB6 to control G-Force externally, you can have a copy of that too if you want.

One day they will have LCD screens that will slot right into place, and I've been waiting around for OLEDs too. It's really nice to see someone play around with the idea. I would like to see you write a plugin for your FE so when you actually scroll through the list the marquee shows. Perhaps you could have it rotate through other artwork too.

Everyone talked about it, now finally someone did it!

[RandyT]

Simple way to remove the border of an external application:

Code: [Select]

SetWindowLong hGForceWnd, GWL_STYLE, 0&

The app isn't being launched from code, but I'll keep that one in mind.

A long time ago I wrote a DirectDraw scroller in VB6 which had some cool effects like distorted text and all that. But even with DirectDraw the scrolling is pretty slow and if you skip too many pixels to speed it up it gets too hard to read. If your interested I can find the code for you.

The flicker the most annoying part.  Anything that gets rid of that would be an improvement. 

I would like to see you write a plugin for your FE so when you actually scroll through the list the marquee shows. Perhaps you could have it rotate through other artwork too.

I don't have an FE   The one shown is EmuLoader by Ciro.  The app I wrote runs in the background.  I don't mind the way it works, actually.  It gives the machine a feeling of "transformation" by changing the marquee only when the FE boots that particular game, and otherwise shows the name of my cab (which I can change at will )

RandyT

[RetroACTIVE]

I may have missed this point... but how are you driving 2 displays independently...Are you using 2 video cards?

[leapinlew]

I may have missed this point... but how are you driving 2 displays independently...Are you using 2 video cards?

 

You should probably read the whole thread, or at least part of the thread. 

[RetroACTIVE]

I may have missed this point... but how are you driving 2 displays independently...Are you using 2 video cards?

 

You should probably read the whole thread, or at least part of the thread. 

thought I did... but I was just so darn excited!

[shardian]

I may have missed this point... but how are you driving 2 displays independently...Are you using 2 video cards?

And Randy went thru the effort of delaying the final results to dispel these exact questions.

[ChadTower]

I just reviewed the whole thread... I don't see that info in it, to be fair to this guy.

[RandyT]

Just a dual output display card.  Uses standard Windows "virtual desktop across multiple monitors" stuff.

RandyT

[Dire Radiant]

Ok I admit it, when I first read what you were going to do with the monitor sticking out of the top of the cabinet I was convinced it would look like 100% pure ass.

Sometimes I just LOVE it when I'm wrong! 

[headkaze]

The flicker the most annoying part.  Anything that gets rid of that would be an improvement. 

Okay, I'm feeling generous today Attached is some code I worked tirelessly on back in the days. These were part of a project that never got finished.

The first project "Scroller1" was my attempt at writing a smooth scroller using pure VB6. I think it's just a label or something from memory, but it's probably somthing similar to what you've written. I did a fair amount of research to reduce the flickering, so this might be enough for your needs.

"Scroller2" was alot of work back then and I was pretty new to VB6 and Windows programming. It's a painstaken port of C++ code (you may notice that when you look at mDXScroller.bas). It's pretty cool, it has some wild effects applied to the scrolling text using all sorts of funky DD blitting. That runs really smooth on my machine now, it was pretty slow on my old PC. You will probably need to modify it to suit your needs. The fact VB6 didn't allow threads means anything you do in the GUI can stop the scroller from moving.

"G-Force" is part of this same program that was used to control this program externally. It sends the key commands to make G-Force do things from your application. It also shows how to move the G-Force window places on any monitor and remove the border etc. You have to place the actual G-Force application in the appropriate folder.

Have fun, and let me know if it's of any use to your project

[Santoro]

Somehow just saw this now. 

This is sweet.  I am looking forward to see how other folks implement it.  Lots of good ideas in here.

[Akuma]

So, reading all this, I guess using a secondary monitor to display marquees is out of reach for someone, who has no idea of how to code with VB or any other code? Or are there other tools available that display pics on a secondary monitor while playing mame?

[Cakemeister]

Hey Headkaze,

Do you have some code to vertically smooth-scroll a set of lines of text?

[Fozzy The Bear]

So, reading all this, I guess using a secondary monitor to display marquees is out of reach for someone, who has no idea of how to code with VB or any other code? Or are there other tools available that display pics on a secondary monitor while playing mame?

Sorry for replying to thread from way back in December, but it's grabbed my interest as I'm just completing the top half of my new cab.

It's not as difficult as it sounds..... It's jsut a dual head monitor setup. You can display whatever you like on the second monitor. As long as you don't want the functionality of displaying the marquee related to the game being played you could just run a slideshow app on the second monitor at the same time as running Mame on the first one. The downside to all of this is speed. The whole thing bogs down the emulator speed by tying the processor and graphics card up to do the top display at the same time.

Maybe a better solution would be to have a separate PC running Mame and network that to a very basic PC running the Marquee. A very small app on the main PC could then communicate which marquee to display, to the second PC. This would eliminate any load on the emulation running.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[torcer]

Amazing, please adopt me.

[Jetson]

All I've got to say is....."WOW!!! That is some Bad AZZ shiat!" 

[Fozzy The Bear]

Anyone know where to get better marquee images? The ones in the video are the standard ones that have been upsampled and converted to JPG's.

Ermmm yeah!.... you should have a 500Gig hard drive full of marquees somewhere Randy LOL    Doh!!:

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[D-Lew]

Ok.  I'm sorry.  That is incredible.

[RandyT]

It's not as difficult as it sounds..... It's jsut a dual head monitor setup. You can display whatever you like on the second monitor. As long as you don't want the functionality of displaying the marquee related to the game being played you could just run a slideshow app on the second monitor at the same time as running Mame on the first one. The downside to all of this is speed. The whole thing bogs down the emulator speed by tying the processor and graphics card up to do the top display at the same time.

I have an Athlon XP 1900 in that machine and the performance impact, if any, is not noticeable.  If you were just looking to put up the marquee and perhaps an instruction card or high score, the real processing is done before the game is launched.  Anything else is just a tiny, relatively infrequent check to see what is running.

Ermmm yeah!.... you should have a 500Gig hard drive full of marquees somewhere Randy LOL    Doh!!:

Hehe.  I was waiting for someone to say that.  I did scout out a few and convert them, but I was hoping that someone else had already done this and added the higher quality versions as part of a MAME collection somewhere (like our friend Mr. Do)

Based on all of the other projects I'm working on currently, I know it's one of those things I'll never get around to do myself.

RandyT