Main > Software Forum
Triggering a real knocker for Q*bert SOFTWARE SOLUTION
Howard_Casto:
--- Quote from: horseboy on August 09, 2006, 04:01:12 pm ---I also have very strong opinions on this....
:dizzy: :dizzy:
--- End quote ---
ROTFLMAO!
Man I must be tired cause that came off as hilarious to me.
Aaron I think this is one of the few times were are in complete agreement. Everything you are talking about sounds good to me.
I often wondered about the keyboard led support myself. It seems like an awful lot of work (what with the three possible methods to do it depending upon the os/ect) to light 3 lights, especially considering the only way to do anything "mameish" with the lights is to use a keyboard encoder and output em. Which basically means if you aren't using an ipac, you aren't going to have access to those outputs anyway unless an external app is sniping for em. It's real easy to do externally anyway, if people complain I can have a windows app for em in a day that'll do it.
I forgot about pcb lights... are those documented in mame? I know I've seen em on the actual boards but I don't recall running across them in the drivers.
horseboy:
--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on August 09, 2006, 04:10:59 pm ---
--- Quote from: horseboy on August 09, 2006, 04:01:12 pm ---I also have very strong opinions on this....
:dizzy: :dizzy:
--- End quote ---
ROTFLMAO!
Man I must be tired cause that came off as hilarious to me.
--- End quote ---
No, it wasn't cause you were tired, it is because it was hilarious.
Dav:
--- Quote from: Howard_Casto on August 09, 2006, 04:10:59 pm ---I forgot about pcb lights... are those documented in mame? I know I've seen em on the actual boards but I don't recall running across them in the drivers.
--- End quote ---
Like most things in mame, some are and some aren't. Ideally they all will be.
AaronGiles:
--- Quote from: AaronGiles on August 08, 2006, 02:22:41 pm ---On Windows, I would probably do the simplest thing and register for a new event and then just broadcast that event each time the output changes (perhaps throttled to same maximum rate). An external program could just listen for that event and do what it needs to do in response.
The goal would be to remove the keyboard LED crap from MAME proper and just post outputs this way. Someone else could write a standalone program that replicated the keyboard LED behavior (would be simple to do) if that's what was desired, or those LEDs could be routed to proper LEDs. There would be generic names for these ("led1", "led2", etc.) so they are easily tracked.
For Q*Bert, you'd just need to pick some name (like "knocker") and listen for the event that sets the "knocker" value to 1, and trigger your external item there.
--- End quote ---
So I went ahead with this plan and implemented it the other day. It got a little more complicated than I initially thought because you are pretty limited in what you can pass between applications using Windows messages, but I got it working pretty well. The LED code is no longer in MAME. Instead I created a sample code application called ledutil.exe that you can run in the background. It listens for the "led0", "led1", and "led2" outputs, and controls the keyboard LEDs that way. You can also use that code as a starting point for more complex output management.
Any lamp or other item that is currently controlled by artwork will be output this way, for free. So the Gorf lamps, the Turbo score LEDs, the Atari Football lights, etc. all will be available immediately. I wouldn't mind getting input on what the names of the outputs should be. Howard had some good suggestions for standardization that would be a good starting point, but we should visit each game that uses them currently and make sure they are being output consistently. Anything that controls the LEDs using the old mechanism also works for free with the new system.
Oh, and I went ahead and added an output for the Q*Bert knocker, since that's what triggered this discussion. When it fires, you should be able to get a notification from an external app and do whatever wizzy thing you wish.
Howard_Casto:
Sweet man! Keep us posted and let me know if there is any way I can help.
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