LEDBlinky Animation Editor (Beta v1.0.0.1)

[arzoo]

LEDBlinky Animation Editor - ready for beta testing!

Here's what it can do:

• Quickly create and edit LED animations for the GGG LED-Wiz.
• Generates optimized LWAX files supported by the MaLa LEDBlinky plugin.
• Other LED applications (such as the MaLa LEDWiz plugin and GameEx LEDWiz plugin) will also support the LWAX format.
• Loads both LWAX and RandyT's original LWA animation formats.
• Virtual control panel designer.
• Supports both single type and RGB type LEDs.
• WYSIWYG interface. Both the virtual control panel and actual control panel will show the LED intensity/color.
• Real-time animation testing.

Here's some quick usage tips:

• Before creating your virtual control panel, you must define the Device/Port Input Map. If you're using the LEDBlinky plugin, then you already have this file (DevicePort-Input.ini). If not, use the LEDBlinky Input Map application to generate the file - you only need to specify the Port Number, Label, and LED Type for each Port.
• The animation editor has two edit modes; Layout and Animation. Use Layout Mode to define your control panel. Layouts are saved as .LAY files.
• When defining your virtual cp, use the mouse or arrow keys to move the LEDs.
• LEDs can be selected with the mouse left click. To selected multiple LEDs, use CTRL left click or drag the bounding box. Use CTRL drag to retain any currently selected LEDs.
• Right click on each LED to define the LED Off color (from the color sample) and LED Size. The LED Off color should match the actual LED colors - for example, Electric Ice Buttons are white.
• From the Layout menu, you can specify other global layout options such as the control panel color, LED border color, LED label color, and LED Label size.
• After the virtual control panel is complete, switch to Animation Edit Mode.
• LED Animations consist of individual frames. Each frame defines the intensity or color and on/off state for each LED.
• Double-click on a LED to toggle it's on/off state. LEDs in the off state are represented with a diagonal fill pattern.
• Use the color sliders to define the color sample. Note: for single type LEDs, only the Intensity slider applies.
• All selected LEDs will change color/intensity as the color sliders are moved. Clicking the color sample will also assign the color/intensity to any selected LEDs.
• Right-click on a LED and select 'Get LED Color/Intensity' to set the color sample to the current LED color/intensity. The Get and Set LED Color/Intensity menu options can be used as a copy/paste feature.
• A note on visualizing color intensities: reducing a LED intensity (dimming) will cause the color to turn black. Low intensity values are not easily distinguished on the virtual cp - use your actual cp.
• Changing intensity/color values is much slower than changing the on/off state on the LED-Wiz hardware. Animations may run smoother with fewer intensity/color changes.
• Click the Run menu to test the animation in real-time. For performance reasons, the virtual cp will not show real-time animations.
• There are other helpful features and tricks, but I'm too tired to list them!

If you're already using the LEDBlinky plugin, just put the new files in the LEDBlinky folder. Otherwise, the files can be installed to any folder.

Feedback and suggestions are always welcome. There may still be a bug or ten , so let me know.

Download LEDBlinky Animation Editor

Here's a screen shot...

[arzoo]

Here's the first animation I created with the editor. It took about 5 minutes to finish!

[headkaze]

Sweet looks great arzoo!

I would love to see this program generate plasma type effects like I have in my plugin. They really look great. Send me an e-mail and I'll dig up the source for you.

Also I wrote the PacDrive SDK last night which includes a nice C++ DLL called PacDrive.dll which also has source examples in Delphi. It would be nice if you could add support for that in there.

I'm thinking of adding support for these hardware devices into CPWizard because plugins are hard to debug as you would know. So this will be a great tool for creating animations for it.

Great work, and check out CPWizard when you get some free time

[arzoo]

Sweet looks great arzoo!

I would love to see this program generate plasma type effects like I have in my plugin. They really look great. Send me an e-mail and I'll dig up the source for you.

Also I wrote the PacDrive SDK last night which includes a nice C++ DLL called PacDrive.dll which also has source examples in Delphi. It would be nice if you could add support for that in there.

I'm thinking of adding support for these hardware devices into CPWizard because plugins are hard to debug as you would know. So this will be a great tool for creating animations for it.

Great work, and check out CPWizard when you get some free time

Thanks Headkaze. This app was a real pain. 

Have you posted your PacDrive SDK? I guess I'll need to get hold of the hardware. I see that Andy has a dev kit - but there's no info on how to get it. I've sent him a pm.

[loadman]

Have you posted your PacDrive SDK? I guess I'll need to get hold of the hardware. I see that Andy has a dev kit - but there's no info on how to get it. I've sent him a pm.

Keep in mind that if you have MaLa running (in the background/minimised) you can control the Pacdrive for Animation creation using MaLa messages,

That is what my my latest version of the Speech plug-in does, so you can test that 'Flash N speak' works

[headkaze]

Sweet looks great arzoo!

I would love to see this program generate plasma type effects like I have in my plugin. They really look great. Send me an e-mail and I'll dig up the source for you.

Also I wrote the PacDrive SDK last night which includes a nice C++ DLL called PacDrive.dll which also has source examples in Delphi. It would be nice if you could add support for that in there.

I'm thinking of adding support for these hardware devices into CPWizard because plugins are hard to debug as you would know. So this will be a great tool for creating animations for it.

Great work, and check out CPWizard when you get some free time

Thanks Headkaze. This app was a real pain. 

Have you posted your PacDrive SDK? I guess I'll need to get hold of the hardware. I see that Andy has a dev kit - but there's no info on how to get it. I've sent him a pm.

The PacDrive SDK is now available at the bottom of Ultimarc's PacDrive webpage here. If there are any problems with it, let me know.

[loadman]

The PacDrive SDK is now available at the bottom of Ultimarc's PacDrive webpage here. If there are any problems with it, let me know.

Did you make that? 

[headkaze]

The PacDrive SDK is now available at the bottom of Ultimarc's PacDrive webpage here. If there are any problems with it, let me know.

Did you make that? 

Yeah, why are you so suprised?

[loadman]

The PacDrive SDK is now available at the bottom of Ultimarc's PacDrive webpage here. If there are any problems with it, let me know.

Did you make that? 

Yeah, why are you so suprised?

Badly worded..  No No you are the SDK king and it's fantastic that you offer it in so many flavours including Delphi..

What I meant to say is I'm surprised you created that before you finished the GameEX plug-in,....  but thinking again about it I suppose it's not so strange. You have to write the code to talk to it first anyway .

[headkaze]

The PacDrive SDK is now available at the bottom of Ultimarc's PacDrive webpage here. If there are any problems with it, let me know.

Did you make that? 

Yeah, why are you so suprised?

Badly worded..  No No you are the SDK king and it's fantastic that you offer it in so many flavours including Delphi..

What I meant to say is I'm surprised you created that before you finished the GameEX plug-in,....  but thinking again about it I suppose it's not so strange. You have to write the code to talk to it first anyway .

Yep, I needed to write the dll first anyway, so I thought I would do the SDK first this time. I'm in no rush to get the plugin done. I really want to get CPWizard released out of beta and a website up before I work on that.

[loadman]

The PacDrive SDK is now available at the bottom of Ultimarc's PacDrive webpage here. If there are any problems with it, let me know.

Did you make that? 

Yeah, why are you so suprised?

Badly worded..  No No you are the SDK king and it's fantastic that you offer it in so many flavours including Delphi..

What I meant to say is I'm surprised you created that before you finished the GameEX plug-in,....  but thinking again about it I suppose it's not so strange. You have to write the code to talk to it first anyway .

Yep, I needed to write the dll first anyway, so I thought I would do the SDK first this time. I'm in no rush to get the plugin done. I really want to get CPWizard released out of beta and a website up before I work on that.

Will the Website be called 'HeadSpace' ?   

[arzoo]

Hey guys, no offense, but can we get back on topic here?

[headkaze]

Hey guys, no offense, but can we get back on topic here?

Sorry arzoo. I will be checking out your animation editor soon when I update LCDPlugin to support the new lwax animation files. Thanks for your great work, I for one appreciate what you do for the scene. It takes a while for people to digest new releases so don't feel bad about lack of response here. People do appreciate the work and will use this. Also thank your wife for letting you spend the time to work on this

[arzoo]

I gotta say, considering the umpteen hours I put in on this thing, the lack of response has been a bit disappointing. But I appreciate the props hk - same goes for all your efforts!

[RandyT]

I haven't downloaded it yet, but it looks very cool and I'm sure that your efforts are quietly appreciated.  There are far too many LED-Wiz's out there now for it not to be

I tend to think, however, that not enough people frequent the software section of the board.  Most do eventually, but it seems to take a while .  If you'd like (and this offer goes for anyone who develops software for any GGG product) I can place links to these types of things in the product descriptions of the hardware it supports.  That should help it to get some more exposure.  Just email me the link and the description you want placed on it.

Thanks for the hard work.
RandyT

[dna disturber]

I second that E-motion !

I for one am glad to see this great editor.....
Still had no time to make my own animation BUT
when I do..... the work will be done in notime because of your great work.
So thanks again Arzoo     

And just as Randy said I think it'll be used more than you think

Keep up the good work !!! 

[arzoo]

Updated to version 1.0.0.1
Fixed a couple of bugs when using the arrows keys to move around the LEDs.

Randy, DNA, headkaze - thanks for your posts!

[pod]

Great app Arzoo! Thanks for taking the time to contribute this. I find the frame handling controls very easy to use, and the configuration of the panel in layout mode is nice. I'm using the version included with the latest LEDBlinky btw, LEDBlinky integration is seemless. Again, very nice utility 

I haven't find any bugs, I have a couple of usability suggests from my own testing, mainly to do with things you can do with groups of objects. It would be cool if selecting multple buttons in the layout editor would allow them to be dragged together. Similarly when animating, it would be cool if right click events like ramp rates applied to all selected items. I find myself liking to use  ledwiz ramps alot, so in my case it would actually be handy to have all of the possible led assignments (such as ramp) down with the Intensity sliders. Anyway, thanks! I'm going to have a lot of fun with this.

[arzoo]

Great app Arzoo! Thanks for taking the time to contribute this. I find the frame handling controls very easy to use, and the configuration of the panel in layout mode is nice. I'm using the version included with the latest LEDBlinky btw, LEDBlinky integration is seemless. Again, very nice utility 

I haven't find any bugs, I have a couple of usability suggests from my own testing, mainly to do with things you can do with groups of objects. It would be cool if selecting multple buttons in the layout editor would allow them to be dragged together. Similarly when animating, it would be cool if right click events like ramp rates applied to all selected items. I find myself liking to use  ledwiz ramps alot, so in my case it would actually be handy to have all of the possible led assignments (such as ramp) down with the Intensity sliders. Anyway, thanks! I'm going to have a lot of fun with this.

pod,
It's good to hear that the editor is working bug-free. By the way, you can drag all selected LEDs - just hold Crtl while you drag. As for the built-in blinking, I didn't think it was really useful because you can't sync the hardware blinking with the software - I guess I may have to rethink the feature and make it easier to use.

If you can, post a video of your animations when you're done - I'd like to see how you used the LEDWiz ramps.

[pod]

Hi Arzoo, here's a very poor video of a couple of my animations using ramps. I'll try to get some better captures from a different cam. Mine does a very bad job of capturing the low intensity buttons (looks like the pwm freq on the led wiz is so low my cam captures it as flickering, it looks much better in person). Anyway, maybe it gives you some idea of how I'm using the animation editor with ramps.



Something else I noticed, there doesn't seem to be a way to adjust the individual ramps on an RGB led, so it always shows ramp effects as white. Playing around with the ledwiz taskbar control and experimenting with different RGB values with various ramps/intensities allows for some kindof cool color effects. Maybe I could achieve this by adding three separate leds in the layout instead of the single RGB to get this type of effect?

[arzoo]

Hi Arzoo, here's a very poor video of a couple of my animations using ramps. I'll try to get some better captures from a different cam. Mine does a very bad job of capturing the low intensity buttons (looks like the pwm freq on the led wiz is so low my cam captures it as flickering, it looks much better in person). Anyway, maybe it gives you some idea of how I'm using the animation editor with ramps.



Something else I noticed, there doesn't seem to be a way to adjust the individual ramps on an RGB led, so it always shows ramp effects as white. Playing around with the ledwiz taskbar control and experimenting with different RGB values with various ramps/intensities allows for some kindof cool color effects. Maybe I could achieve this by adding three separate leds in the layout instead of the single RGB to get this type of effect?

You're correct; the animation editor assigns the same ramp value to all three ports for RGBs. For now, you'll have to update the xml file manually to set the ports individually. I'll try to enhance the ramp features in a future update.

By the way, I think your cp with the animation looks really cool!

[lettuce]

Can this latest version flash the player start buttons on a credit insert yet??

[pod]

Hi Arzoo, here's a very poor video of a couple of my animations using ramps. I'll try to get some better captures from a different cam. Mine does a very bad job of capturing the low intensity buttons (looks like the pwm freq on the led wiz is so low my cam captures it as flickering, it looks much better in person). Anyway, maybe it gives you some idea of how I'm using the animation editor with ramps.



Something else I noticed, there doesn't seem to be a way to adjust the individual ramps on an RGB led, so it always shows ramp effects as white. Playing around with the ledwiz taskbar control and experimenting with different RGB values with various ramps/intensities allows for some kindof cool color effects. Maybe I could achieve this by adding three separate leds in the layout instead of the single RGB to get this type of effect?

You're correct; the animation editor assigns the same ramp value to all three ports for RGBs. For now, you'll have to update the xml file manually to set the ports individually. I'll try to enhance the ramp features in a future update.

By the way, I think your cp with the animation looks really cool!

Thanks Arzoo.

[arzoo]

Can this latest version flash the player start buttons on a credit insert yet??

As it stands, that would be a difficult feature to add. The mame output system does not support any type of coin indicator - this is by design. So the only way I see to do this would be for some app to sit in memory and monitor the keys pressed while mame is running. I believe that J5 can do this, but I could be wrong here. Anyway, using mame's output system, I've added a 'Pause' feature to LEDBlinky (not yet released), but unless the devs add a 'Coin' event to mame's output messages, I doubt I'll be adding a credit-blink feature. That's not to say it isn't a cool idea, just a pain to implement.

[Green Giant]

Would it be easier to add an option to flash a button whenever the coin is pressed?  If it is easier to have it running all the time it shouldn't matter.

No telling if and when the mame devs will add that, so why not use the only method that would work right now.

[headkaze]

Can this latest version flash the player start buttons on a credit insert yet??

As it stands, that would be a difficult feature to add. The mame output system does not support any type of coin indicator - this is by design. So the only way I see to do this would be for some app to sit in memory and monitor the keys pressed while mame is running. I believe that J5 can do this, but I could be wrong here. Anyway, using mame's output system, I've added a 'Pause' feature to LEDBlinky (not yet released), but unless the devs add a 'Coin' event to mame's output messages, I doubt I'll be adding a credit-blink feature. That's not to say it isn't a cool idea, just a pain to implement.

Some games implement led0-ledx output's already so it's actually a very easy feature to add especially if you've already added support for the pause output message. An easy game to test this is DigDug. When you insert a coin for player 1 it will send led0 and set it's state to 1 and 0 which you just redirect to the player1 start led on and off. It works similarly for player 2 and player 2's start button. So your 99% there already, you just need to associate ledx output's to LED's on the LEDWiz. All I've done for my plugin at this stage is associate led0 with player 1 start button and led1 to player 2's start button.

Here is an example of the output from DigDug

mame_start
id 0 = 'digdug'
id 12346 = 'led0' <-- Player 1 Coin button is pressed
update_state: id=12346 (led0)  state=1
update_state: id=12346 (led0)  state=0
update_state: id=12346 (led0)  state=1
update_state: id=12346 (led0)  state=0
update_state: id=12346 (led0)  state=1
update_state: id=12346 (led0)  state=0
update_state: id=12346 (led0)  state=1
update_state: id=12346 (led0)  state=0
id 12345 = 'led1' <-- Player 2 Coin button is pressed
update_state: id=12345 (led1)  state=1
update_state: id=12346 (led0)  state=1
update_state: id=12345 (led1)  state=0
update_state: id=12346 (led0)  state=0
update_state: id=12345 (led1)  state=1
update_state: id=12346 (led0)  state=1
update_state: id=12345 (led1)  state=0
update_state: id=12346 (led0)  state=0
mame_stop

[arzoo]

hk - I recall reading that only about 30 games support coin lights, can you confirm? I'm not sure if it's worth the effort for only a handful of games.

[headkaze]

You havn't read the MameInterop readme have you?

I wrote a simple program to search out drivers with led, lamp or digit in them. Then I calculated the games that used these drivers and here are the very rough figures I got.

These are total approximations for Mame 0.111

- 1477 ROMs support led outputs
- 33 ROMs support lamp outputs
- 31 ROMs support digit outputs

[arzoo]

You havn't read the MameInterop readme have you?

I wrote a simple program to search out drivers with led, lamp or digit in them. Then I calculated the games that used these drivers and here are the very rough figures I got.

These are total approximations for Mame 0.111

- 1477 ROMs support led outputs
- 33 ROMs support lamp outputs
- 31 ROMs support digit outputs

Does this indicate that 1477 games provide an output message when the credit button is pressed? If that's the case, I guess it is worth the effort!

[headkaze]

You havn't read the MameInterop readme have you?

I wrote a simple program to search out drivers with led, lamp or digit in them. Then I calculated the games that used these drivers and here are the very rough figures I got.

These are total approximations for Mame 0.111

- 1477 ROMs support led outputs
- 33 ROMs support lamp outputs
- 31 ROMs support digit outputs

Does this indicate that 1477 games provide an output message when the credit button is pressed? If that's the case, I guess it is worth the effort!

Actually it doesn't mean that at all It means that ~1477 games have ledx outputs in their drivers. These could be led's for other things besides flashing start buttons _but_ I would say the majority of them are for this reason. But still alot of people use the ledutil program to flash the capslock/scroll lock lights on their keyboards using led0 and led1 outputs. Why not have it flash the player 1/2 start buttons using the LEDWiz instead? Makes sense to me. But there is no way to say without going through each game which one's are for that. But again, I would expect most of them are for that reason. In the MameInterop SDK readme.txt I give a list of games so you can actually test a few out.

[lettuce]

well the main game i had in mind was Teenage Muntant Hero Turtles, with the UK version (and 99% of other konami 4 player games) when you inserted a coin the 4 player start buttons would flash and thats what ive based my CP player start buttons on, so TMHT defently has led0-ledx output's for P1 to 4 start buttons

[arzoo]

well the main game i had in mind was Teenage Muntant Hero Turtles, with the UK version (and 99% of other konami 4 player games) when you inserted a coin the 4 player start buttons would flash and thats what ive based my CP player start buttons on, so TMHT defently has led0-ledx output's for P1 to 4 start buttons

I checked headkaze's readme and tested both those games (tmnt and tmht) and neither outputs the LED0 or LED1 messages.

[headkaze]

well the main game i had in mind was Teenage Muntant Hero Turtles, with the UK version (and 99% of other konami 4 player games) when you inserted a coin the 4 player start buttons would flash and thats what ive based my CP player start buttons on, so TMHT defently has led0-ledx output's for P1 to 4 start buttons

I checked headkaze's readme and tested both those games (tmnt and tmht) and neither outputs the LED0 or LED1 messages.

Not all outputs have been added to drivers yet. The output system was the brainchild of Aaron AFAIK but the more we use the output system, the more reason the Mame developers have to update drivers to support it. So I urge you arzoo to add support and then hopfully more games will be added later. I really want developers to get behind this idea because the output system has alot of potential for plugin and FE coders

BTW The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games are not in my list of support ledx outputs (yet). Sorry!

[lettuce]

So theres no way for LEDBlinky to know when button 5 on a keyboard or I-PAC has been pressed and tell the LED-Wiz to flash a certain LED??

[arzoo]

So I urge you arzoo to add support and then hopfully more games will be added later. I really want developers to get behind this idea because the output system has alot of potential for plugin and FE coders

Developer peer pressure 
I've already coded mame.dll into LEDBlinky, so it's just a matter of responding to the messages. More effort is involved with coding the config app than the actual plugin. But hey, it's only time. 

[arzoo]

So theres no way for LEDBlinky to know when button 5 on a keyboard or I-PAC has been pressed and tell the LED-Wiz to flash a certain LED??

Not easily. The plugin would have to monitor mame keypresses - which I would consider hack coding.

[headkaze]

So I urge you arzoo to add support and then hopfully more games will be added later. I really want developers to get behind this idea because the output system has alot of potential for plugin and FE coders

Developer peer pressure 
I've already coded mame.dll into LEDBlinky, so it's just a matter of responding to the messages. More effort is involved with coding the config app than the actual plugin. But hey, it's only time. 

I actually hard coded my plugin to just turn on/off the LED's mapped to P1_START and P2_START. That saves any config changes. I know what you mean about that though, UI's and options are a total pain.

[headkaze]

I just noticed that your LED levels only go up to 48. There are actually 49 levels where 0 is off, 1 to 48 is a PMW signal and 49 is "all on".

Also how about including some sample lwax's in the archive? Like the ones I converted from lwa format. It's just nice to be able to load up some animations and see them in action.

[loadman]

I just noticed that your LED levels only go up to 48. There are actually 49 levels where 0 is off, 1 to 48 is a PMW signal and 49 is "all on".

...sorry to sidetrack this thread.

Remind me that is only when using the dll not OCX right?

On my to list is to make the other ledw-wiz plug-in use lwax files and the standalone player.

Thanks arzoo for the lwax code and the dll examples (you sent a while back)

[headkaze]

I just noticed that your LED levels only go up to 48. There are actually 49 levels where 0 is off, 1 to 48 is a PMW signal and 49 is "all on".

...sorry to sidetrack this thread.

Remind me that is only when using the dll not OCX right?

On my to list is to make the other ledw-wiz plug-in use lwax files and the standalone player.

Thanks arzoo for the lwax code and the dll examples (you sent a while back)

No the dll is fine with level 49, I don't know if the ocx can handle it though, you will have to ask Randy.