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In Progress Operation Demolition Man on Steroids

I have almost completed this project, its now has all the audio upgrades done;

JBL Amp & 12v 30amp Power Supply
Backbox speakers
Subwoofer

And PC installed internally.

I still need to screw-down the 12v 30amp power supply, annoying thing is there is no easy way to do this so may have to use long cable-ties.

As yet there are no Bass rumble units installed, but I have found the 8" monster pioneer sub is enough to shake the cabinet just fine.

I will not be upgrading the GI to LEDs as the DMoS code uses dimming effects, as such the ones I did put in flicker, another option would be the GI OCD board but as yet this has problems with our 50Htz supply.

I will post a video of the project thus far very soon.

But the great thing is its all in the one unit now, i.e no external PC or speakers.

Sub-project will next be to learn pyprocgame and 're-work' Road Show and/or Dr Who.
 

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Dennis got that flasher fix applied and working, not sure if he's planning to do anything with it though. Since you're running Windows, you can also still run the original DM game via pinmame, although from memory it doesn't control the claw very well.

Sent from my KFSOWI using Tapatalk
 
Snux said:
Dennis got that flasher fix applied and working, not sure if he's planning to do anything with it though. Since you're running Windows, you can also still run the original DM game via pinmame, although from memory it doesn't control the claw very well.

Sent from my KFSOWI using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Hey Snux, I pinged the flasher fix details over to Dennis and he said he had tried that but still not working, maybe I'll ask him again.

I am planning to try to get pinmame and the original DM code working via the PC, I'm also going to try and setup a dev environment of a PC visual pinball and P-ROC to assist with re-coding RS or DW that way I wont 'need' a physical machine for a while.

I wonder why the claw causes so much trouble? i.e DMoS you can not 'control' it and by the sounds of things with the original code on PC via pinmame its the same! Must be down to an incompatibility with the P-ROC system, any one?
 
Dennis worked with Gerry and found that after making the code change he'd forgotten to recompile it, I got an email from him saying it was working. Although I guess seeing as it hadn't been working maybe he hasn't got anything programmed in for it anyway yet.

When running custom code via pyprocgame (like DMoS) it should be possible to get good control over all motors. The challenge is that often they are designed to work on a duty cycle of less than 100%. So regular coils and lamps are either just on or off. Simples. Motors are often driven with (for example) 80ms 'on', 20ms 'off' so they don't run at full throttle (ones which run full throttle are fine). Trying to determine what the appropriate on/off times (when they are not documented by Williams) is tricky, one way is to use an OScope on a machine running the original software to try and see what it's doing. Once you've got the timings right, the P-ROC should be able to replicate it. I'd expect with DMoS that Dennis could get the claw working but I think he's regarding it as complete for now, not sure that he's developing more for it.

Pinmame is a trickier beast (I know cos I look after the P-ROC branch of the code these days). Basically we interrupt the pinmame code many times per second. We look at the state of the coils and lamps that pinmame has internally and compare each of them to the state that the physical machine currently has. We then process any changes by sending the appropriate on/off to the P-ROC to get things to match to how pinmame wants. We process switch events from the P-ROC back to pinmame in a similar way. Again for lamps, coils etc it generally works a treat. When running something at lower than 100% cycle though, the "many times a second" gets kind of lumpy and we sometimes miss an 'on' or an 'off' and it goes screwy. We do have ways around it, but again it can be a little trial and error (or OScope use) to get the correct on/off timings and so far nobody spent the time on DM to get it accurate, I'm sure it could be improved though.

Hope that makes sense. If you want more info or need help with pinmame, check out the main pinmame thread on pinballcontrollers forum or drop me a message, no problem!

Mark
 
Snux,

Thanks for the info, I may have to pick your brain at some time in the near future....

Any interest in assisting re-working a machine ala DMoS?
 
Snux said:
I think my F14 "Second Sortie" is going to keep me busy for the moment, so not really looking for another project or my wife will kill me !

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/f14-tomcat-second-sortie-information-and-on-going-development
Click to expand...

Awesome work Snux, no wonder you have you hands full!

I was planning to see if I can get Judge Dredd working with the visual pinball version on a PC as I understand this is already fully working!?!
From there 'cut' my teeth on understanding the processes and lean python i.e. almost do a re-code of JD.
Once happy either get a JD and put my work into the real-world, or simply move onto the Road Show or Dr Who project I have in mind.

If I run into trouble is it OK to PM you? or is it best to post to the pinball controls forum?

Cheers

Julian
 
Hi Julian,

I think the JD virtual version is working, but I've never tried it. Best bet for questions is to post them on the pinballcontrollers forum - I'm sure whatever questions you have (and whatever the answers are) will benefit other folks in the future too !

Mark
 
Near Horsham.

I replied to your post earlier, I was trying to put 2+2 together to see if it was you.

Trust me, I've had a right mission with this VP over the last week but all is Hunky Dory now! I did a decent middle man job to get Marks F-14 going and can get any table to fire up with some basic starting code now. If you need personal help with the vpcom bridge just give us a shout. Because you WILL come into some more problems , it's very difficult to find answers other than mocean.
 
dave said:
Near Horsham.

I replied to your post earlier, I was trying to put 2+2 together to see if it was you.

Trust me, I've had a right mission with this VP over the last week but all is Hunky Dory now! I did a decent middle man job to get Marks F-14 going and can get any table to fire up with some basic starting code now. If you need personal help with the vpcom bridge just give us a shout. Because you WILL come into some more problems , it's very difficult to find answers other than mocean.
Click to expand...

Horsham, my sister is there, folks are in Billingshurst.

What pins do you have?

Well I've got JD to start on VP (P-ROC) now, but pressing start seems to just freeze the DMD, no ball kicks out but I can flip the flippers!

Is it easier to dev a game using an actual machine?

You see I am looking to pick up on JD or re code Dr Who and was planning on cutting my teeth on a computer then get a machine once I was better understanding things.
Or am I adding a layer of complexity doing it on a PC in VP?

Cheers


Julian
 
Only 5 miles out of Billingshurst. No pins yet , not really got the room.

Did you find moceans latest build of vpcom? Should register that if you hadn't already. He went through that a lot over last week to make it better than when I first started trying this.

Once you get the VP table going it should be almost exactly the same as an existing machine. The mechs/toys could be slightly different than a vbs script but all the machine config should be the same as manual/table.

I had no help with machine config for a few days and almost got my game running on my own but the numbering is different than what i'm used to when building virtual pins. Switch number 1 wouldn't be 1 but 11. Col/Row 11-18 21-28 etc. Solenoids/flashers are standard numbers but lamps go the column route <. Add VPROC.controller to the script and really that's all the problems you should have. I've kept a simple build of starting code if you want to try Dr.Who.

I'm fast tracking learning the framework atm with VP so I'm still very new to it but clicking fast and I will say the framework manual is pretty crap tbh. Lack of code snippets really wind you up and lead you on wild goose chases through other games code. The Earthshaker code I looked at last night is the best looking & easier to understand of them all. I'm not having too much fun with the VgaDMD, maybe I'm pushing it too far @ 720p but did drop down to 240p. Using a lot of memory, I can imagine by the time the games done it would be using too much.

If you pick up a JD you could pretty much be ready from the get go. All your game code is there plus all the machine config is done etc.

VP is a real help away from table to work on it wherever you are, to learn the framework. Unless you have a table with decent physics , the table is going to be gash to actually play test it. Unit3D pinball will be a different story when/if we get the bridge going for that. Physics & gfx can be better than all of the sims put together, that would be playable. Debug shots and stuff.
 
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