Mamehooker WIP update 2014

[Howard_Casto]

I've been playing with the latest wip build of Mamehooker over the last week or so.  I think it might be ready.  The problem is I haven't touched the code in nearly a year, so I've really got to go over everything and make sure I didn't leave some features out or half finished. 

The reason for the super long delay has been two fold: 

1.  I wanted to add in this new fangled web-server system that pushes the display files (and other stuff) to a webpage in real time.
2.  I wanted to wait until I got a bit further with mame's force-feedback drivers because I'm thinking I'll need to add things to support limit switches. 

For now at least, I've decided to leave those two features on the back-burner.  I don't see getting them done in a timely manner and in the mean-time you guys could enjoy steering wheel support and fixed dde support that'll enable the outputs I defined in troubleshooter 2. 

So in the upcoming week or so I'll be preparing for the release, which adds a ton of stuff.  It would be helpful to me if I could get some beta testers... people who are currently using mamehooker, so they are familiar with it's quirks.  I'm not at that stage yet, but I will be soon, so just post down here if you can help.

[Howard_Casto]

Ok so I got the tweak files more or less hooked up.  These are going to be the key to getting wheel support in there.  You can build any effect file you want via the Microsoft FFE tool and use the tweak files to control the different variables. 

I've only got the state of the calling output hooked up atm, but I'll add in support for reading all of the output states in the game, so one tweak file can control all effects.  It seems to work well with my wheel atm, but more testing is needed.

I've already done similar functions for the scripting engine, so it shouldn't take long to hook up.

[Sky25es]

Ok. I'd be glad to help you.

[baritonomarchetto]

I have my racing MAMEcab up and running Mamehooker for a couple of tasks (Xbox 360 controller rumble for wheel rumble support and LPT output for some "patrol light" effect on his way) so if i can help to test those couple of functions i use i would be glad.

[OT] Howard, arent all the new stuffs going to made mamehooker heavy for older systems? It plays in the background checking for outputs so do you take into consideration RAM/CPU usage during development? Sometimes i have the feel that i am the only one left using low budget P4 machines for this projects... [/OT]

[Howard_Casto]

Thanks guys, after I get this console menu obsession over with we'll get to work. 

I don't take anything into consideration really, but it shouldn't matter.  Aside from the display system all mamehooker consists of are a collection of dlls/api calls and the mame broadcast system that triggers them when needed.  It probably takes a decent chunk of ram at this point... around 8 and a half megs, but just to put things into context internet explorer displaying google takes 30 megs. 

One of the new broadcast methods might not work well on older systems... it constantly retrieves the name of the window in the foreground, but the interval between checks is adjustable and you can turn it off completely. 

[baritonomarchetto]

I am not aware about RAM usage really, being MAME 100% draining CPU. As long as CPU is left intact, there are no problems also with older hardware 

[kapotik]

Exellente work! I also scored as beta tester and help where I can.

[Howard_Casto]

Ok guys  I've got the UCDP stuff out of my system (for now) so it's time to get to work. 

I spent the better part of an hour this evening testing orunners with the new Force feedback code for use with steering wheels.  It's working, but there is an odd quirk I have to take care of first. 

Unfortunately this is the reason why I've delayed this release so long and why I can't fork over a beta yet.  Mamehooker isn't turn-key as you guys know, so before I can have you test it, I've got to be able to guide you through setting up an example script.  That means I've got to do it at least once myself, which takes time. 

Just for the record, the current issue I'm having isn't related to the ff stuff directly, but rather the scripting syntax. 

Putting bars between commands is supposed to separate them into different code to use on different states, but for some reason mamehooker is having trouble firing the "zero" slot in a set of commands setup that way.  So I need to track this bug down and then we should be good to go.  No promises, but a beta or some kind of release should be ready by this weekend.

[Howard_Casto]

Ok I found that one... wasn't too bad, it was just a typo in the sanity check to make sure the state being sent was a valid number.

That means when I get time tomorrow I can do more testing on the other new functions.  We are getting close guys 

[Paul Olson]

Great timing! I am going to try to wire up my Cart Fury control panel this weekend. Should be lots of fun stuff to play with on that.

[Sky25es]

Wow! Great work, many thanks! 
In the mean time, let us know if we can help you in any way.

[Howard_Casto]

Ok I worked on this way too long tonight, but my insomnia is getting to me again.  It's good for the project though I guess.

I've been working on manipulating layered effects which really makes your head spin if you are learning about ff customization as you go.  I discovered that my implementation was wrong for changing effects on the fly.  I *think*  I got that fixed.  I'll never really know though.  No one controller supports 100% of the effects in directinput so I can only test the ones I have access to. 

The important ones work though..... thing like effect duration, direction, magnitude, ect....

What I did was build a two layer effect for outrunners.  Layer one was a simple sawtooth motion that repeats infinitely.  Layer 2 was a centering spring effect, again on infiante repeat.  I then made a tweak file that manipulates the duration of the first layer.

In the game whenever the wheel output changes, I call the tweak file and set the duration to 0 when the output is off and -1 when it's on (-1 infinite playback). 

The result is you have a center spring the whole time you play the game and if you hit anything or go off road, the duration is turned on and the sawtooth shakes the wheel. 

It's easy now that I know how to do it and have the bugs fixed..... that only took 2 hours.  (Ugh)

[baritonomarchetto]

The important ones work though..... thing like effect duration, direction, magnitude, ect....

I hope this is a good new also for "poor" users in the need for some easy rumble strenght effect control in direct input (rumble) 

It's easy now that I know how to do it and have the bugs fixed..... that only took 2 hours.  (Ugh)

Time well spent 

[Sky25es]

Wow ! You're making really great progress.
But several days of insomnia can't be too good for your health. 
So, after all the hard work you deserve a GNS (Good Night's Sleep). 

[Howard_Casto]

Unfortunately my insomnia was a sign of something else.  I'm one of these people that refuses to think they are getting sick, but apparently I had been fighting my Asthma all week.  I got up real early this morning feeling kind of crappy and I thought I was just having a bad day, but it was an Asthma attack coming on.  I just now got out of bed and it's more of a I can't lay anymore thing than an I'm feeling better thing. 

I don't like to talk about this sort of thing in public too often, but I did leave a couple of projects up I the air and some of you guys just start going through the email addresses when I don't respond back. 

I'm not really in the mood to go to the emergency room just so they can prescribe the same asthma medication I'm already taking and I don't think anything will be open tomorrow, so I guess I'll go see if they can do anything later this week.  Hopefully I'll feel better by Monday though. 

Anyway it looks like I'm not going to be able to sit up much longer. 

I know they apparently had a sale at the Jerk store lately, so I didn't want any misunderstanding while I'm away.  Catch you guys later. 

[Sky25es]

Howard, I'm really sorry to hear about your health problems and I hope you feel better soon.
Look, all those projects can wait cause there's nothing more important than your health...
So please take good care of yourself and get well soon.

[baritonomarchetto]

We are NOT in a hurry Howard, take care of yourself or it will not be fun anymore...

[Howard_Casto]

I appreciate it guys, but I didn't mean to make you worry or anything.  I'll live.  I was hoping it might slow down the influx of email.  One still got through though. 

I'm doing better.  Still not great, thus why I'm chiming in at 4am, but at least I can sit up and log in every now and again.

[BadMouth]

Blame it on the water there = profit. 

[Howard_Casto]

Heh, I'd have to get in line I'm afraid.  I hate to tell people this but our water source has been polluted for years, deregulation has let the sludge runoff of the coal mines go into tributaries, and the chemical leaked is for the "cleaning" of coal..... this is just the first time they caught it so blatantly. 


Note:  Political stuff intentionally hidden below... probably shouldn't post that stuff here


I don't want to get overtly political in a post like this, but the people of our state really have issues.  You've got coal miners fighting the epa saying they are the enemy..... and guess who is in charge of keeping the water clean and would be able to prevent stuff like this if the state and federal government would only give them the power to do so... yup, the epa.  Nobody in any of the local news has once mentioned that connection though.  It just makes a rational guy like me shake their head in disgust. 

And we are snowed in yet again... good thing my medication is all stocked up.  But yeah that whole climate change thing is probably a myth right?  I mean what do "scientists" know with their fancy "degrees" and "facts" and "procedurally collected data". 

[twistedsymphony]

Take as much time as you need. I'm all too familiar with how projects like this go.

If you need any help with anything I have a access to the following FFB/Driving cab hardware:
-2 dedicated, fully function San Fran Rush the rock arcade machines (currently in "storage" until the snow is gone, but I can get to them and power them on if need be)
-1 spare san fran rush for parts (would be fully functional but it needs a monitor)
-2 Global VR Immersion FF (2-board type) PCBs
-1 complete Maximum Speed Atomiswave hardware set including I/O board and FFB PCB and all harnesses (sadly no steering wheel but it's all happ equipment)

I know you mentioned early in the thread wanting videos of stuff in action. Id be happy to hook any of this stuff up as well as I can and take some video, or if it would be of any help I'd gladly let you borrow any of it so you could have access to these parts first hand.


I have a bunch of other hardware too though I don't know how helpful any of it would be:
-System 246 with Digital I/O (Bemani/DDR)
-NAOMI Console with a hacked NETDIM cartridge
-A Virtual On Twin Cab (Model 2 hardware)

-----------

I've been busy getting light output working in StepMania, I've got lights working but I'm still working on some other bugs in my setup. Once that's done I'll be looking into getting outputs working for San Fran Rush and whatever other Driving games in MAME that I might be able to help with.

[Howard_Casto]

Eh I'm starting to feel slightly better.  Still pretty crappy, but you can only slack off so long. 

I did a little more testing on the new FF code, squashed a couple of bugs, nothing major.  I need to test some more new functions tonight and if they work ok I'll release the test version sometime this week. 

[Sky25es]

Hey Howard, welcome back!  I'm glad you're feeling better 

[Howard_Casto]

I'm STILL having random health issues if you can believe it.  So my visits have been pretty sporadic lately.  Went to the doctor again last week... they've got me on new meds which are helping, but they make me sleepy, so I'm up maybe an hour at a time. 

I'm going to try and release mamehooker 5.0 as-is tomorrow, so just a heads up.

[Howard_Casto]

Alright gentlemen.  I've finished my z-pack, I've got half a bottle of amoxcilian, a full tank of gas... it's dark, and I'm wearing sunglasses.  Let's do this:

Mamehooker 5.0

Note that the documentation is rather light and we still need to test it. 


First off download the thing.  I would suggest that you NOT install it to the same location as your current build for the time being as some things have changed.  The most noticeable change is full multi-emu support.  The ini folder will now sort ini files into ini/mame ini/supermodel and similar folders.  Also if you use troubleshooter, the outputs now register with mamehooker so you can try that.  In addition, there is now an optional "title bar hooker" that you can use.  It doesn't do much more than tell mamehooker when a stand-alone game or rom is running and when it quits on a non-supported app, but you'd be surprised how helpful that can be. 

All of this stuff will be documented when I get to it.  But for now just be aware of it's existence. 

But anyway, the star of the show is steering wheel and custom effect support. 

Again, this needs documented in detail.... I'll have to make a tutorial, but assuming that you've got a FF wheel and it's assigned to joystick id 1, you can test it with the included effects/tweaks and by adding the following to your orunners.ini

---------------------------------------------------------------
[General]
MameStart=ffe 1 customwheel,fft 1 1 0
[Output]
ma_steering_wheel_lamp=fft 1 1 0|fft 1 1 -1
---------------------------------------------------------------

What is this doing?  Well again, I need to make some documentation, but essentially it's loading a effect called "customwheel" into the wheel upon startup.  Custom wheel is a two-layered effect with a simple spring force and a saw-tooth motion to "rumble" the wheel back and forth.  Also upon startup I "tweak" the effect.  Mamehooker automatically looks for a twk file named after the effect file in the effects folder.  The tweak file for customwheel sets the duration of the sawtooth effect to "%s%" (aka the state) every time it's loaded.  So initially I set it to 0 milliseconds (off) and then bind the state to either 0 milliseconds (off) or -1 (always on).... allowing it to control the rumble of the effect while leaving the spring on. 

Again, I'll do a tutorial for this, but for now test it out. 

[charlieram]

Cool  so now I can use Mamehooker with Supermodel and Model2 emu for my gun recoil outputs?

[Howard_Casto]

You could always use mh with the latest svn of supermodel... it's just organized better now. 

Yes, model 2 outputs now work. 

[baritonomarchetto]

Made a fast test today: on my racing cab with rumble effect (no FF) copying and paste the ini's from the old mamehooker4 ini folder to the mamehooker5 MAME subfolder, Turboutrun, powerdrift, outrunner and a couple of other games run like they should (RacerMAME151).

Great work then!   

Not tested the old bug that made ffa 1 0 -1 0 0 10000|ffa 1 1 -1 0 0 10000 not equivalent to ffa 1 %s% -1 0 0 10000 but for sure you fixed that.

A couple of questions Howard: you told me that there's some "check" i can disable to let mamehooker5 run smoother on old hardwares. I couldn't find it and, even if i didn't experienced drammatic emulation speed reductions during the test, i would be glad to know how to "slim" mamehooker 5 CPU usage (if possible).

Another question: could mamehooker 5 be used to send model2 outputs? I mean for racing games, not shooters via troubleshooter ... i am really missing lamps in daytona...

Waiting to see how the new functions can handle strenght control in direct input FF: in my setup, model 2 rumbles very weak (this can be controlled only by reducing/increasing the strenght from the drivers) and MAME too strong with the same drivers setting, so i can only hope in some mamehooker help ...

[Howard_Casto]

The new title bar hooking will eat up some cpu usage because it basically checks the window captions constantly, but it's turned off by default.  That is what I was referring to.  Also if you monitor keystrokes, a smaller, but similar amount of processing power will be used.  That being said, I've never seen the thing spike beyond 1.1% cpu usage, so I think you are good.

*edit* 
Just to clarify on the previous sentence, without either of those features active, mamehooker is completely reactionary by nature, meaning that when it's at idle it uses ZERO processes.... it hooks incoming messages, thus the name, so code is only active when a message is sent via mame or something else.  The only slowdown you should ever notice is perhaps a slowdown of the game starting, because mamehooker calls another instance of mame to read the driver and clone info. 
*end edit*

Yes, if you'll notice I have most things hooked up in model 2 with troubleshooter.  Daytona and a few others don't have the FF board emulated, it's faked via the emulator, so I couldn't access those, but most of the other racers just use the same output mask as outrun in the same address or adjacent to a address where the lamps are stored.... sega doesn't like to change things. 

You'll be able to play effect files you've created yourself, so when you make them you can tweak the strength that way.  The generic FF function is mostly for legacy support at this point.  If you want to do anything fancy, you should probably do it via an effect file.

[Howard_Casto]

Ok as I get time I'm going to slowly but surely start rolling out the tutorials before finally making the new version the official version. 

If you look in the interop section of my site, you'll find a new "advanced tutorial."  This one is a couple of years old but I couldn't release it because mh 4.0 had a minor bug that would make it behave strangely. 

I did this one because I don't think people get how potentially powerful the scripting system I've implemented is if used cleverly.  This tutorial shows you how to display "cards" on a secondary monitor that you can navigate though while in mame.  The script also automatically does a "split screen" when both player 1 and player 2 are navigating, allowing each player to see their own card selection.  In the example I have the move lists for the individual characters in Mortal Kombat II.

All of this is accomplished using the buffer system, keycode detection, and just the littlest amount of logic.   

The next tutorial will most likely show how to create and use force-feedback effect files. 

[baritonomarchetto]

[...] Also if you monitor keystrokes, a smaller, but similar amount of processing power will be used. 

So, if i have no keystrokes to monitor, can i set a high refresh time for keystrokes check?

i.e.

[KeyStates]
RefreshTime=10000

or

[KeyStates]
RefreshTime=-1

with "-1" equivalent to infinite?

This should reduce the CPU usage (even if minimal, as you said)...

[Howard_Casto]

Nope.  If you don't have any keystroke outputs defined then it doesn't use them.  You seem to want to use the complicated route for everything. 

[baritonomarchetto]

[...] You seem to want to use the complicated route for everything. 

Well, where's the fun going the easy way 

I am waiting for your tutorial on mamehooker5 functions just to keep things even more easier 

[Howard_Casto]

I wrote up the tutorial on title bar hooking.  I'll have to convert it to html either tonight or tomorrow and then post it to the site. 

I'm doing the force-feedback one last because it's the most involved and these stupid things take time to do.  I have to do screen grabs and what-not. 

[baritonomarchetto]

if you are referring to the tutorials writing, i would not call that "stupid" but "fundamental"

To say the truth, i would never been able to hook MAME outputs without your tutorials, even with mamehooker ready to download and play with, so ...

Do you want a suggestion for a good example in FF functions?  How to create  a function  to tune  the DI input FF strenght  (just kidding)

Keep the flow up! 

[Howard_Casto]

Ok the title bar hooking tutorial is up.  This sort of thing is useful when you want to display a marquee on a second monitor or something, but it's just a standard pc game or an unsupported emulator.  Mamehooker can use title bar hooking to determine what application is running and when it stops. 

I'll try to get a force feedback effect file tutorial up this weekend. 

[Howard_Casto]

Found my first "bug" in 5.0.  It's actually more of an oversight on my part.  You can't halt playing effect files without a tweak file.  So I added to the load function to stop an effect if you give an invalid effect name, which will work for this. 

I would add a stop variable to the load effect function, but tweaking effects is already confusing without having two methods to stop effects, one of which you really shouldn't use when tweaking. 

I'll go ahead a write a tutorial, but until the official release, it won't be valid.  Thus why the DK website doesn't have any news of our test release or the new tutorials yet.  I'm building the stuff as we go. 

[Howard_Casto]

Hmm... somewhat unrelated, but it looks like some of my outputs have been depreciated.  All of my sega x board submissions are gone.  I need to get those re-submitted.

[Howard_Casto]

I added the tutorial for simple effect file use.  Note that until I upload 5.1 (not until I'm done with the tutorials) it will NOT work exactly as advertised.  That doesn't mean you can't read up in the meantime. 

I've already written the next tutorial, which will cover how to make effect files from scratch.  I simply have to convert it to html. 

Then the final (for now) tutorial will explain how tweaking effects works, and we will be good to go. 

[Howard_Casto]

The tutorial to make effects from scratch using FEdit is up.  One more to go, then a release, then I'm done with mamehooker for the foreseeable future (yay!).