SAM Build with modular DMD drivers for pindmd1,2,3 and PIN2DMD

[bent98]

Lucky1, I just upgraded to the latest 2.36 firmware and I needed to upgrade my devicedmd.dll and XDMD.dll's to get my setup to work. Can you make a new vesion of devicedmd.dll that supports the dmd color logo image staying on screen after launching in PBX if its an EM? You made one for me before. Also I noticed some of my wheel logos look washed out after flashing the firmware. I tried to adjust the brightness in the p2dmd.exe tool but moving the slider does nothing to the brightness. Any suggestions?

 

One last question. How can I tell if I have 2.36 or 2.36a firmware flashed on the board? Will it say 2.36a on the splashscreen when you reset?

[TerryRed]

54 minutes ago, roar said:

Just got all my files updated and played MET with the colour dots... my goodness... that is AMAZING! Thank you so much freezy for getting this working with the pinDMD3, lucky1 thank you for all your work and letting it work on the pinDMD3 to boot! And to the folks who colourize the dots... holy smokes, bang up job! Now to go find some more tables and try and the other ones.

 

I'm still trying to sort all this out. (I use virtual DMD) I'm using freezy's newest DLL, which now works with custom colours in PinMAME, but only if there is no palette file present. If I disable colorize, it has no effect and still uses the palette file.

Could you tell me where you got the rom files, etc...or what you needed. I'm also not totally sure where the "newest" SAM enabled PinMAME is.

I have the "palette" files from here:

....and they are installed and working, but I'm not quite sure what to do from here to get anything that is more than 4 colours for SAM and non-SAM tables. The 4 colour palette files look good for some tables....but terrible for others.  Is there a way to get more than 4 colours with TOTAN, and other older tables, or is this not done yet?

I got the walking dead le working with 16 colours, "I think" because I am using a customized cleland rom. 

I know I can get these files here:

http://vpuniverse.com/forums/files/category/87-table-support-files/

...but I'm not exactly sure what to do with them....

I guess, what I'm asking is....does anyone out there have a nice collection of the colorized roms, or the files needed....all ready to go without patching,etc...?  

Or could someone help explain to me how to get more than 4 colours working (if possible), etc.......

[lucky1]

1 hour ago, bent98 said:

Lucky1, I just upgraded to the latest 2.36 firmware and I needed to upgrade my devicedmd.dll and XDMD.dll's to get my setup to work. Can you make a new vesion of devicedmd.dll that supports the dmd color logo image staying on screen after launching in PBX if its an EM? You made one for me before. Also I noticed some of my wheel logos look washed out after flashing the firmware. I tried to adjust the brightness in the p2dmd.exe tool but moving the slider does nothing to the brightness. Any suggestions?

 

One last question. How can I tell if I have 2.36 or 2.36a firmware flashed on the board? Will it say 2.36a on the splashscreen when you reset?

If it is working it is 2.36a. 

latest DLLs are always on github.

[bent98]

So 2.36 didn't work at all? Also can you answer my question about the brightness and can you please make a modified dll to fix the issues where it clears the dmds logo after launch in pbx!

[roar]

Hey Terry... took me a couple of go's to get everything working but in the end everything that I had done wrong was all PEBKAC.

I think these are the steps in the end that worked for me, I'll use Metallica as the the example which I just repeated for ACDC and Spiderman... haven't tried Avengers yet, having too much fun with Spiderman :). There is a general assumption here that everything else in your setup is already working... just updating to the latest files really. I also know you know more about this stuff than I do so everything I've written below I'm pretty sure you've tried so this may boil down to the difference of me being on a pinDMD3 and you being a virtual DMD, but I'll write what I've done in hopes it may help someone else too

1. Grabbed the latest dmddevice.dll

 

2. Updated to the latest SAM Build 2.8b02, 

 

3. Added the dmddevice.dll and ini to my C:\Windows\syswow64 directory, this was annoying as I couldn't find the syswow64 directory under system32 like most documentation indicates it should, it was in the root of my windows directory all along.

4. Downloaded the patch and palette file for Metallica 

 

5. Downloaded the bin to patch directly from the Stern Website http://sternpinball.com/game-code/metallica-pro

6. Downloaded the bsdiff tool for windows (The link from the bsdiff page for the windows port gives an error, I think this one should work) http://www.pokorra.de/coding/bsdiff.html

7. Created a folder in my vpinmame director to copy the palette file from the file in Step 4 C:\Visual Pinball\vpinmame\altcolor\mtl_170c

8. Extracted the .diff file from the file in step 4 to the directory where I extracted the bsdiff files from step 6

9. Updated name of the BIN file from step 5 to be MTL170.bin rather than MTL17.bin and copied it into the directory I created for the bsdiff files in step 6

10. I ran the command found in the readme from the file in step 4: bspatch MTL170.bin mtl170c.bin mtl170c_ByPinballMikeD.diff

11. I added the newly created mtl170c.bin file to a new zip file named mtl_170c.zip as directed by the readme file in step 4

12. I copied the new mtl_170c.zip from step 11 to my rom directory: C:\Visual Pinball\vpinmame\roms

13. I loaded the Metallica VPX file in the latest 10.2 version of VP and edited the script to change the cGameName = "mtl_170c" 

14. I ran it!

Note: I did test the ROM first from the pinMAME setup.exe and verified it loaded before getting it running through VP.

Note2: In order to get the Spiderman file working I did have to rename the .dat file that was in the zip to the generic pin2dmd.pal file name rather than the game specific .dat file

[TerryRed]

Wow....thank you so much roar....   my SSD recently dies in my cabinet, so I had to start from scratch (almost).

I only have access to my cabinet for 1 more week before I'm gone for 4 months for my job (military tech training), so I don't really have much time left to experiment....and I wanted to make sure I was getting the most up to date files,etc.....   and so much has developed over the last few weeks, that I started to loose track.....

Thank you. Very helpful!

[TerryRed]

Thanks to roar's help....and doogie helping me out with some pre-modded roms to start with.... I was able to get this set up very nicely!

Man....it almost reminds me of when I was a kid with my Atari 2600, and I could only play it on my black and white TV.... but when we finally had a colour TV to use....it was like the Wizard of OZ!

 

I was able to get Spider-man VE, Metallica, Mustang LE, ACDC, Big Buck Hunter, and Avengers working great. Thanks doogie!

 

Now I have seen videos of people having very nice colour (16?) with TOTAN, Medieval Madness, and some nice older non-SAM tables on real DMDs. Anyone have a list of 16 colour modded non-SAM tables?

[lucky1]

8 hours ago, bent98 said:

So 2.36 didn't work at all? Also can you answer my question about the brightness and can you please make a modified dll to fix the issues where it clears the dmds logo after launch in pbx!

2.36 had a bug in licensing with pin2dmd.exe. Did you try the DLL from github ? No idea about the brightness. Did not change anything there.

[Jodannar]

Fantastic step by step guide roar. might be worth breaking this into a separate pinned post outlining the process. I just followed it for my first colourised rom and it worked like a charm. Thankyou!

Edit: it has introduced insane audio and pinmame stutter on mustang Le though. Unplayable. However,Metallica tables fine as is AC/DC.

[lucky1]

4 hours ago, Jodannar said:

Fantastic step by step guide roar. might be worth breaking this into a separate pinned post outlining the process. I just followed it for my first colourised rom and it worked like a charm. Thankyou!

Edit: it has introduced insane audio and pinmame stutter on mustang Le though. Unplayable. However,Metallica tables fine as is AC/DC.

If you use a pin2dmd, do you use the pin2dmd dmddevice.dll or Freezy´s ?

 

[bent98]

5 hours ago, lucky1 said:

2.36 had a bug in licensing with pin2dmd.exe. Did you try the DLL from github ? No idea about the brightness. Did not change anything there.

Ok that did the trick!

 

Can you test your setup and see if you can adjust overall brightness level with teh pin2dmd.exe tool? The slides doesnt do anything for me.

 

 

Also, Anyone else having stutter when using the latest dmdext, firmware 2.36a and pinball fx2?

 

If I run the table standalone with  just steam I dont get stutter.

 

Looks like its the DMDext causing the performace issue.

 

[lucky1]

4 minutes ago, bent98 said:

Can you test your setup and see if you can adjust overall brightness level with teh pin2dmd.exe tool? The slides doesnt do anything for me.

Works ! Do you have a SD card ? If yes please delete the pin2dmd.dat on it and try again.

4 minutes ago, bent98 said:

Also, Anyone else having stutter when using the latest dmdext, firmware 2.36a and pinball fx2?

If I run the table standalone with  just steam I dont get stutter.

Looks like its the DMDext causing the performace issue.

Please open a new thread about that or even better a github issue here 

https://github.com/freezy/dmd-extensions

[roar]

13 hours ago, Jodannar said:

Fantastic step by step guide roar. might be worth breaking this into a separate pinned post outlining the process. I just followed it for my first colourised rom and it worked like a charm. Thankyou!

Edit: it has introduced insane audio and pinmame stutter on mustang Le though. Unplayable. However,Metallica tables fine as is AC/DC.

Hi Jodannar,

Did you use the same .diff file for the Pro and just patch the LE Rom from the Stern site? When I do that I can't get that ROM to load, pinMAME tells me it has been terminated.

[freezy]

I'm working on the performance issues. I've refactored my render graph so it now can output palette-encoded bitplanes which are easier on the DMD's CPU and the port's bandwidth. Lucky1's PIN2DMD driver already does that, but mine should do it too now. Good news is that the original dmdext benefits from this as well, e.g. Pinball FX2 will get performance boost with PIN2DMD/PinDMD3 displays as well.

For PinDMD3 I'll play around with the port speed, but I might end up just capping frames at a lower frame rate as Lucky1 suggested.

[roar]

9 minutes ago, freezy said:

I'm working on the performance issues. I've refactored my render graph so it now can output palette-encoded bitplanes which are easier on the DMD's CPU and the port's bandwidth. Lucky1's PIN2DMD driver already does that, but mine should do it too now. Good news is that the original dmdext benefits from this as well, e.g. Pinball FX2 will get performance boost with PIN2DMD/PinDMD3 displays as well.

For PinDMD3 I'll play around with the port speed, but I might end up just capping frames at a lower frame rate as Lucky1 suggested.

Thanks freezy... I'll give it a go whenever you think its ready as AC/DC was stuttering a bit for me. Spiderman play great though.

[Jodannar]

Hi Jodannar,

Did you use the same .diff file for the Pro and just patch the LE Rom from the Stern site? When I do that I can't get that ROM to load, pinMAME tells me it has been terminated.

Yeah I patched the Le rom with the pro diff. Works in that it runs but pinmame seems to really struggle with it. Stutters, stalls, doesn't recognise button inputs


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[Jodannar]

If you use a pin2dmd, do you use the pin2dmd dmddevice.dll or Freezy´s ?

 

Using the pin2dmd device dll at the moment I believe. I didn't update it


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[roar]

2 hours ago, Jodannar said:

Yeah I patched the Le rom with the pro diff. Works in that it runs but pinmame seems to really struggle with it. Stutters, stalls, doesn't recognise button inputs


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Hmmm,,,  I must be doing something wrong then as I can't get that far, What did you name the .bin and the zip if you don't mind checking?

[bent98]

6 hours ago, freezy said:

I'm working on the performance issues. I've refactored my render graph so it now can output palette-encoded bitplanes which are easier on the DMD's CPU and the port's bandwidth. Lucky1's PIN2DMD driver already does that, but mine should do it too now. Good news is that the original dmdext benefits from this as well, e.g. Pinball FX2 will get performance boost with PIN2DMD/PinDMD3 displays as well.

For PinDMD3 I'll play around with the port speed, but I might end up just capping frames at a lower frame rate as Lucky1 suggested.

 

I just got finished updating my pin2dmd to 2.36a firware and got all my color roms updated and compliant. I did notice my pinball FX2 now stutters when dmdext is running. I saw that you are improving performance. How are you addressing this? a new version of dmdext or a new version of dmddevice.dll? Also, I am a little confused as to which version of dmddevice.dll i should be using? Right now I am using the one that came with Lucky1's 2.36a package but I noticed you are releasing your own builds. Is that for the pindmd3 users ?

[Jodannar]

Correction. I used the LE Rom with this LE colourisation

And I believe I am still using the 2.x (pre 2.36a)Firmware for my Pin2DMD. I haven't updated since early December

[lucky1]

4 hours ago, Jodannar said:

Correction. I used the LE Rom with this LE colourisation

And I believe I am still using the 2.x (pre 2.36a)Firmware for my Pin2DMD. I haven't updated since early December

You need 2.36a to make colonizations work .

[freezy]

13 hours ago, bent98 said:

I just got finished updating my pin2dmd to 2.36a firware and got all my color roms updated and compliant. I did notice my pinball FX2 now stutters when dmdext is running. I saw that you are improving performance. How are you addressing this? a new version of dmdext or a new version of dmddevice.dll? Also, I am a little confused as to which version of dmddevice.dll i should be using? Right now I am using the one that came with Lucky1's 2.36a package but I noticed you are releasing your own builds. Is that for the pindmd3 users ?

Hmm and it didn't stutter before at all?

For Pinball FX2, you'd need to update dmdext.exe when I release a new version. Both the exe and DmdDevice.dll are based on the same code though, that's why optimizations apply to both projects.

The dmddevice.dlls from Lucky1 are pure C-implementations for each display, so you'd need a different one for each display. They are fast but contain only minimal features, i.e. sending frames from VPM to the display. The DmdDevice.dll from me is "universal", meaning one single file for all displays, plus virtual DMD support. It also implements Lucky1's frame-by-frame coloring algorithm that was previously only available from PIN2DMD users (because it was implemented in the display's firmware, not in dmddevice.dll).

[bent98]

So then pin2dmd users don't need to use your version of device dmd.dll and just update dmdext for better fx2 performance 

[freezy]

Nope, although it would nice to test it and give feedback. Spent quite a few hours rewriting it so PIN2DMD gets more optimized data. Will post a new binary as soon as Lucky1 validates it.

[bent98]

cool. I hope that helps with Cactus Canyon Continued performance when mirroring as it also creates stutter. Any chance you can support Proc natively?

 

Can't wait to test.