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Buddabing's LED controller
HoopstarsGarage:
--- Quote from: gl.tter on April 30, 2005, 05:39:28 am ---The MameDevs might go for it because it allows them to make use of all the interesting signals some games already generate - I don't see the point of them tracking them (which they do in the code), if there is no way to output them without customising Mame. In that sense, a light messaging system doesn't compromise their philosphy of 'accurate emulation only', it only helps it.
--- End quote ---
Further to that, without the actual hardware in place (as in Badda's Circuit) the whole addition is pretty well transparent to the accuracy of the emulator..
Even if the MameDev's do go with it, then end-users still have the choice to decide if they want to take advantage of the changes. It's not like they can really claim that what they are doing is accurate anyway otherwise MAME would be a dedicated hardware based system only ::)
gl.tter:
It's interesting how Mame works internally. Basically it obviously emulates all the chipsets that were used by a particular game. Then it 'virtually wires' your real PC inputs to the places were the game ROM expects to find this information.
Beyond that, Mame doesn't get involved - it merely allows the game 'brain' to do what it normally does. That means that Mame doesn't know if the game is in attract mode or not, or even if credits are inserted or a game is started. It doesn't need to know - the game ROM takes care of everything.
That's why at the moment, you have to supply these signals in the text files yourself. However, I'm trying hard to reduce the amount of events you need, and that those you do need are as easy to find as possible. Fewer (easier) events = more people successfully supporting games.
For example, originally I needed 2 custom signals to show that a 1player or 2player game was started (tricky to figure out).
I then realised that I can I find out if a player start button was pressed from Mame. But that doesn't tell me if the game was actually started (the button could be pressed at any time). Mame doesn't know.
But, together with the ATTRACT_MODE on/off message (which is useful for other things too, eg. idle animations), I can figure out that a game was started, and which button started it. I then use the CREDITS counter to handle the flash logic automatically.
gl.tter:
New version is out - download it here.
I've crammed about as many effects into MrDo! as I can with 3 LEDs at my disposal :).
I'm half-way through getting the virtual on-screen panel working... but now I'm going to kick back and play a little Do with lights.
btw, on my keyboard at least, the fast flashing fx and/or flashing scroll lock seem to occasionally cause keys to stick.
gl.tter:
Anybody tried this yet?
EndTwist:
Pretty cool!
Any chance I could get the code changes so I could see if it would be possible to apply them to an older version of MAME? (0.59, for my cab)
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