DMD Ripper in your Browser

[neophob]

Hi

I'm the author of WPC-Emu, a Williams Pinball Machine emulator running in your browser: https://neophob.github.io/wpc-emu/

One of the latest features I added is DMD ripping, you can export vpinmame raw compatible frames from all the available games.

I'm looking for some feedback about it's usability.

Cheers

Michael

[slippifishi]

this looks very useful indeed; am i right in thinking the dumps are limited to 1000 frames? or am I doing something wrong?

it would be great if the UI buttons for switches could reflect their state as well as the switch in matrix

[neophob]

1 hour ago, slippifishi said:

this looks very useful indeed; am i right in thinking the dumps are limited to 1000 frames? or am I doing something wrong?

 it would be great if the UI buttons for switches could reflect their state as well as the switch in matrix

yes currently the maximal frames are limited to 1000 frames - just because its stored in ram. what do you think is a reasonable frame count?
 

and ui buttons should be mapped to the current state (only visible in the SWITCH IN matrix).

[slippifishi]

1 hour ago, neophob said:

yes currently the maximal frames are limited to 1000 frames - just because its stored in ram. what do you think is a reasonable frame count?
 

and ui buttons should be mapped to the current state (only visible in the SWITCH IN matrix).

errr, no limit/dump everything ?  I appreciate that is probably not possible, but i feel like a few thousand more, at least, would be helpful; would 10,000 be doable? Or even make it configurable? 

For instance there is a sequence of frames in Flintstones after high score entry that all told is well over 1000 frames, maybe even 2000 I haven't looked that closely yet. Admittedly if I'm colouring that I will cut it up into chunks much smaller, but having the whole sequence all in one dump is invaluable in my opinion. That's just one example, and I do already have a dump of it, but i'm just trying to show that sometimes there might be cases to want more than 1000 frames. I would be interested to see what anyone else thinks, especially some of the more experienced colour artists.

As for the UI buttons, I do see that the switch matrix lights change to reflect their on/off state, but it is not always obvious which light/space in the matrix relates to which UI button; you can eventually learn which is which with practice, but if I could look at the button and know it's on or off without having to toggle it and watch for a change in the matrix it would be great. I hope I am being clear with that description.

I will add I'm being very selfish and approaching this as a tool to help me dump specific sequences in games rather than a tool to do an entire dump - though undoubtedly with enough patience (and enough frames to dump!) you could walk through an entire rom here in a very methodical and precise manner. I know for the TOTAN colouring there are still some missing camel race frames, maybe this tool could be used to quickly run through all the possibilities and find that missing sequence? Perhaps quicker than trying to do it by hand or drag a ball around VPX...

[neophob]

Thanks @slippifishi for the feedback.

Well being selfish is not bad I want this tool is valuable for others, so I try to listen to users.

I just pushed v0.8.18 out, including those changes

## 17/1/19

- DMD Ripping: show how many DMD frames has been ripped

- DMD Ripping: increased maximal ripped DMD Frames from 1000 to 8000

- DMD Ripping: once 8000 frames has been reached, download dump and continue ripping

That should address your issues. Especially the last point. If I would not limit the amount of ripped frames, the browser would get sluggish and die somewhere in the future.

Let me know if that improve things!

Cheers

[Thalamus]

@neophob Thank you very much for making this tool. I saw it the other week and I simply didn't think that using it as a bumping tool would be one use case for it. Now, with the update it is maybe the most useful tool we've got ❤️

[neophob]

7 minutes ago, Thalamus said:

@neophob Thank you very much for making this tool. I saw it the other week and I simply didn't think that using it as a bumping tool would be one use case for it. Now, with the update it is maybe the most useful tool we've got ❤️

thanks - I guess those 20 minutes were well spend then

[neophob]

Note: I updated the URL for WPC-EMU to http://playfield.dev 

lots of changes are waiting for you! Cheers

[slippifishi]

The switch state appearing direct in the browser UI is such a subtle but incredibly useful change - thank you so much!

This tool has really been invaluable in my colouring projects so far and is helping me on my current project; the fine control over when the dump starts lets you essentially set up the table in exactly the right state to capture exactly the scenes you are after and no more; you can also get lots of related scenes in one hit very quickly and easily.

Now, if you can just make it render through freezys DLL and/or let us run our colour projects through this it would become the ultimate ripping and testing/demo tool

[vbobrusev]

I think is awesome thing! But how I can do dumps via your solution like I do via my pin2dmd? Because your dump is different from than dumps which pin2dmd make. And I can’t use it in game colorization 

[neophob]

@slippifishi thanks - I hoped you like it

what do you mean with freezys DLL - something like https://github.com/neophob/wpc-emu/issues/19

Do you mind writing down how you rip the frames and what other tools you use? then I would add that to the readme - it might help others

[slippifishi]

@vbobrusev The .raw format files dumped from the browser are compatible with PIN2DMD Editor, at least they are in the latest version! You can load and navigate through just like you would if they were a compressed txt dump from vpinmame. I'm afraid I've never tied creating a dump directly through my PIN2DMD so I'm not sure if that format is different but perhaps lucky can clarify.

@neophob Yes that is exactly what I am referring to, though I imagine it might be quite difficult to accomplish!

As for how I've been using this, well I will use Demo Man and Flintstones as examples...

First, I think this tool is most useful for concentrated and specific dumps - you need to know what you want to dump before you come here. Running through the whole game and capturing everything is certainly possible, but I have found especially useful in getting all related scenes in one hit (I think there is also an 8000 frame limit to the dumps, which is a lot, but not enough to capture the whoel game in one sitting). 

For example, in demo man there are 5 stand up targets on the playfield. As you hit these it gives a "standup millions award" each hit, you cycle through them 4 times, up to a total of 20. When trying to catch these through normal VPinball gameplay, they were often inconsistent in length (some would have 12 frames, some would have 13), and they would often get interrupted by some other animation - I spent >ages< hunting for the 14 million standup because every time I hit it, something else would get in the way and spoil the dump. In the end I managed to capture most of them, but they were split up over several dump files, and not in any logical order. I didn't mind trying to play for all the animations, but when you have a 200MB txt dump file and you just want 13 frames from somewhere roughly in the middle, it can be painfully slow and time wasting. Then came neophobs tool and changed my approach!

I have been using it as follows...

1) First load up the desired ROM in the drop down in the top left.

The page will reload, and all of the switches associated to the selected table will be shown on screen; there will be switches for the ball launch, credits, tilt, outlanes, slings, standups, etc, and also any special toys associated with the table. This is where knowing the table is important as you will have to manually activate these switches in order to get the game to the point you want to dump.

2) Insert coin(s) and hit the start button to begin a game

Note that (all of?) the switches act like toggles, so one click turns the switch on, the next click turns it off. The recent change to the UI means the button will now also reflect the on/off state, but you can also see the "SWITCH IN MATRIX" which also shows a secondary visual representation of all the switches. Honestly, I approach this step as if I am playing a game of pinball - start by inserting coin(s), then I press start, then I launch the ball, then the ball hits this switch, then that switch etc - "be the ball". I also taught myself to always toggle switches twice - always leave the switches in their default state otherwise when you want to click it again later you may have to click it twice!

3) Prepare to dump

Hit the necessary switches to get the game to the right state. Using Flintstones as a different example, when I was trying to capture the different strike/spare animations for the bowling game, you must first hit the left or right ramp; so you toggle that switch and notice that the DMD displays the animation associated to that switch (an animation of fred running). From my gameplay testing, I know that if I hit the left, centre or right bowling target (any 1 of 3 separate switches) within a second or two of that left ramp switch then I will get the animation I want.

4) Begin to dump

Before I invoke the animation, I need to begin the dump. Click the DMD dump button in the top right of the browser - the dump is now capturing.

5) Fire the animation(s)

Anything that fires while the DMD dump is enabled will be stored in the dump. Hit the switch(es) and watch the animation. When I was doing demo man I literally hit the 5 stand up targets one after the other, 4 times in a row. Just like that I had all 20 different animations, in a single dump, less than 1000 frames; and they were all in sequence, right after each other in the dump, it made finding them in the editor a breeze.

6) Save the dump

Click the DMD Dump button again; you will be prompted to saw the raw file.

You can now load the raw file into PIN2DMD Editor and use it like a normal dump.

Arguably you can achieve the same thing through VPX and dragging the ball around, or even by doing a dump using the real table and manually hitting the switches. But having it in browser does remove a lot of the set up necessary and make it much closer to hand  The temptation I am finding is to do a majority of my scene cutting via way of very controlled dumps!

Sorry for the wall of text, I hope this helps, if anything is unclear then let me know.

[neophob]

Who thanks for the detailed information! I'll add that to the readme and credit you.

Some updates/questions:

I think there is also an 8000 frame limit to the dumps, which is a lot, but not enough to capture the whoel game in one sitting

-> thats true, but after 8000 frames the broser starts downloads the first dumps but continue to dump.

I will use Demo Man

-> do you mean demolition man?

 

Do you know also about the keyboard mapping:

## KEYBOARD MAPPING:
  "1": Coin#1
  "2": Coin#2
  "3": Coin#3
  "4": Coin#4
  "5": Start
  "P": pause
  "R": resume
  "S": save
  "L": load
  "7": Escape
  "8": -
  "9": +
  "0": Enter