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Code change to enable SAM LE driver board support


DJRobX

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Stern SAM LE rom support, Modular pindmd support, Lamps with RGB support, flashers with intensity levels, crazy talk of native backglass support...

I can't keep up :) Awesome stuff going on here!  Thanks all! 

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28 minutes ago, gtxjoe said:

Stern SAM LE rom support, Modular pindmd support, Lamps with RGB support, flashers with intensity levels, crazy talk of native backglass support...

I can't keep up :) Awesome stuff going on here!  Thanks all! 

And last but not least Stern SAM Rom Controlled GI support which was enabled when DJRobX enabled the AUX board!

It appears that SAM supports 4 quadrants of the playfield with 4 separate outputs mapped to lamps in VP.   This would enable discrete control of 4 areas of the game but on Mustang and Star Trek LE games they appear to have just used the same effect on all 4 lamps to make it one whole playfield GI for lack of a better term.

For authors that wish to  use them - download the test table (posted earlier in this thread I think) and go into service mode once the rom starts running.  The 4 lamps that stay illuminated once all the others quit are the GI lamps.   Map your GI array using .intensity / 10 <  experiment with divisor until your brightness is ok and you'll get rom controlled GI (Yay! - no more VBScript routines for these games).

Big Kudos to DJRobX for this AUX emulation and for letting me bug him mercilessly :)

 

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7 hours ago, DozerAUS said:

And last but not least Stern SAM Rom Controlled GI support which was enabled when DJRobX enabled the AUX board!

 

Wait what?????????

so all those Sega/Stern tables

Simpsons

Sopranos

Lord of the Rings

 

that have the GI coded similar to a EM table can now be controlled by the Aux board?

if so how?

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LOTR / Sopranos and TSPP are all Whitestar and I could be wrong but I don't think that has been worked on?

I don't see any in Tron LE and Shrek either though so the older SAM games may not have used the AUX board for GI.

Missing GI in earlier SAM games may turn up as things progress.

 

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The Walking Dead LE and Metallica LE both seem to have it although there are more than 4 lamps on in service mode so with these it would probably be necessary to map all the lights that stay on during service mode to test lamps and see how they behave during play.  This is what I did with Mustang to confirm they were the GI array.  

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I think you said Metallica LE had color GI?   If so I would expect to see more than 4 (R,G,B instead of just one level).

Unfortunately this has nothing to do with GI on older SAM or even older WhiteStar tables.   Although I will see what I can find on those later.   Would be a lot easier to find had Stern put the switch for those in the test menu.   I know it's connected to the IO board, so I just have to locate that traffic.  

Here's an update to VPM that duplicates some of the strange WPC mappings when you have modulated solenoids enabled.    Dozer found that he needed to move the drawbridge solenoid.     This fixes that (although the new value you found works in all VPM builds, even old ones, so no real need to change it back)  It also fixes some of the flicker in SAM lights.   Thanks Dozer for all of the testing you've been doing.  

vpm102216.zip

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I don't want the hijack this thread but is there any way you guys can add support to load a pin2dmd color pallet for a specific rom so we dont have to add a another script to the table to manual load and unload it? 

 

I figure since we have have all this brain power  following this in one thread I would ask.

 

ps

I am so appreciative and excited about the progress made to pinmame and I want to thank everyone involved!

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5 hours ago, DJRobX said:

I think you said Metallica LE had color GI?   If so I would expect to see more than 4 (R,G,B instead of just one level).

Unfortunately this has nothing to do with GI on older SAM or even older WhiteStar tables.   Although I will see what I can find on those later.   Would be a lot easier to find had Stern put the switch for those in the test menu.   I know it's connected to the IO board, so I just have to locate that traffic.  

Here's an update to VPM that duplicates some of the strange WPC mappings when you have modulated solenoids enabled.    Dozer found that he needed to move the drawbridge solenoid.     This fixes that (although the new value you found works in all VPM builds, even old ones, so no real need to change it back)  It also fixes some of the flicker in SAM lights.   Thanks Dozer for all of the testing you've been doing.  

vpm102216.zip

Ah nice one - the Walking Dead also has colored GI on the LE model.  I wasn't sure whether they did this with RGB or fixed color leds - I reckon you're right though.

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1 hour ago, bent98 said:

I don't want the hijack this thread but is there any way you guys can add support to load a pin2dmd color pallet for a specific rom so we dont have to add a another script to the table to manual load and unload it? 

 

I figure since we have have all this brain power  following this in one thread I would ask.

 

ps

I am so appreciative and excited about the progress made to pinmame and I want to thank everyone involved!

Contact lucky1 on your pin2dmd suggestions.

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2 hours ago, bent98 said:

I don't want the hijack this thread but is there any way you guys can add support to load a pin2dmd color pallet for a specific rom so we dont have to add a another script to the table to manual load and unload it? 

This will be part of the modular dmddevice driver for pin2dmd

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On 20-10-2016 at 2:22 AM, PinballShawn said:

I'm also curious why full colorization hasn't been implemented into vp yet. Colordmd is actually an LCD screen, and once Batman goes into production no companies even use dmds anymore. I colorized all the standard vp dmd's already, but it's not the same as those full color ones.

just think about it the same way , is it possible to have full colorization for lcd users ?

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Since lots of people seem interested in GI support, here's a build that supports ROM controlled GI for the rest of the SAMs, and WhiteStar tables like LOTR.

Tested it with the TRON and LOTR Roms.      

Here's the script you need, it comes in over the existing VPM GI channel..   This is for TRON.    You of course also want to remove the GIOn/GIOff calls from other parts of the script now that the ROM will do it. 

Sub UpdateGI(no, Enabled)
	Select Case no
		Case 0 'Top
			If Enabled Then
				GIOn
			Else
				GIOff
			End If
	End Select
End Sub

set GICallback = GetRef("UpdateGI")

SAM and Whitestar control the GI with a relay on the IO board.  So there's no dimming possible here (the real tables won't either!)

vpm102416.zip

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6 hours ago, DozerAUS said:

Very cool man - look at us all nerding out over general illumination :)

Thanks again for testing!   Nerd statistics:  Adding this support took only 1 line of code, but a full day to track down where that damn bit was!   It's an inverse state (0 = GI On) and it's attached to the same output as something involved in MiniDMD writes (both SAM and WhiteStar).    Those two aspects made it harder to identify since it's not something you can catch looking for an unhandled memory write. 

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, DozerAUS said:

I can confirm that the above mentioned old SAM / Whitestar routine also works with the SAM based PRO version models - Metallica / The Walking Dead as well as Elvis (Whitestar). 

I can confirm Whitestar GI is also working on, Data East - Rocky and Bullwinkle, SEGA - X-Files, Stern - NFL.

Awesome stuff!

Thanks a ton!!

-Mike.

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