Star Wars Trilogy

[gubbin]

17 minutes ago, bushav said:

I suggest loading your project into your pin all along and trying out your work. It’s disappointing when the triggers work in the editor and don’t trigger on the pin. Amazingly the real DMD throws random pixels sometimes, screwing up what seems like a good trigger. 

 

Sound advice.  I've actually been doing that. I think I probably need to load vpx on my main PC so I can increase my efficiency with loading the .pac back and forth over a file transfer.   This particular scene.  I'm not even sure where to cut it to start coloring.

[bushav]

11 hours ago, gubbin said:

 

Sound advice.  I've actually been doing that. I think I probably need to load vpx on my main PC so I can increase my efficiency with loading the .pac back and forth over a file transfer.   This particular scene.  I'm not even sure where to cut it to start coloring.

Yep. I ran a Pin2DMD on my desktop so I could watch what was going on without going to the cabinet. On the desktop screen I ran the ROM DMD. You could compare the two displays. Sometimes the ROM version would be chugging along while the colored version was still stuck on a replace scene. 

[Terranigma]

On 9/26/2022 at 12:08 AM, gubbin said:

  In fact,  Using the Vader's collar suggestion seems to cover at least those scenes and looking like several others with a border along the bottom there!

 

Thats great! But remember to look at all your scenes overall and compare the detection mask and see if you need to adjust it slightly. This could be the difference of reusing it a couple of times or 10+ just by changing the shape so it capture the pixels in the Vader scene, but also captures others. An example would be if another scene has some data just outside the mask you have created, you could redo the mask and add some "wings" or tabs so it also captures the other scenes. On Vader if the extra wings capture empty space and it's still all static, that's fine, when you create the detection for that it will look for the collar still. On your other scenes it will create the trigger for the extra parts needed.

Just think of different patterns you can utilise to cover as many different scenes as possible. You could have a rectangle, but you could also have something that looks like a space invader, there is no real restriction in your space as long as it covers what you need.

 

On 9/26/2022 at 11:18 PM, gubbin said:

I'm really enjoying learning this new process.  There's some scenarios that happen that almost lead to.. Endless combinations of possibilities. -ie, the heroic mode shot seems to choose a random mode.  There's, I think 9 of those.  Just thinking about the math of how many different combinations there makes my head spin.    I'll certainly be looking for advice for those.   My previous statement about the timing on those attract scenes , seems to be false.  They are going faster than the original rom/scenes, I'll need to tinker with that.    I think the Vader Mask is working for now.  I still need to do some testing and load up multiple players.  The insert Coin scene has one frame that doesn't color and I need to figure that out. 

 

 

For scenes with endless combinations of possibilities, you may want to look at using Layered colour masks. Martin has a great video on this and there is also a really good explanation here: https://pin2dmd.com/chapter-8-advanced-coloring-using-colormask-layered-mode/

You will be able to capture, colour and trigger every combination of a mode as a frame and add each one to a single LCM scene. You will then create a trigger / keyframe pointing to that LCM scene. This is handy when you have multiple instances and possibilities of different objects, and it may not be practical or even possible to colour and keyframe every frame individually. This may or may not apply to the heroic mode, I haven't had a look yet, but I am certain it will apply to other areas of your project. It's a great technique to learn but may take some getting used to. As long as you know this mode exists, you can work out what you think will best fit for an LCM or if it can just be a standard color mask or replace scene.  

 

On 9/26/2022 at 11:18 PM, gubbin said:

For, now I'm working on coloring scenes and less focused on key framing.  I'm really pleased with how these are looking.

 

 

I think that's a great approach. Sticking to one thing at a time, especially when starting out can help you map out your project and give more time to each section. Everyone is different though, so if you get bored of colouring and want to switch it up, that can give you some more motivation to keep going.

 

12 hours ago, gubbin said:

Sound advice.  I've actually been doing that. I think I probably need to load vpx on my main PC so I can increase my efficiency with loading the .pac back and forth over a file transfer.   This particular scene.  I'm not even sure where to cut it to start coloring.

 

Do you have a real Sega Star Wars pinball machine or just a Vpin cabinet? I think what bushav is referring to here are the "dirty" frames that are missed on a real pinball which are not found in a vpin dump which is classified as mainly "clean". If you have a real Star Wars pin I would also load onto that and use the dumps and testing as the main device for key framing and triggers. For general colouring, your Vpin with a real Pin2dmd is fine. If you don't have a real pin and don't have access to real pin dumps at the moment, I wouldn't worry and just continue on as you have been. I know Rob was going to get some for you once he sorts his machine out, but this would be to fill in the missing dirty frames or extra frames the real pin has that aren't present in the vpin dumps/output. 

 

This can cause timing issues, you may have 14 frames on your vpin dump but 17 on the real pin dump. Your project is only seeing and triggering/colouring the 14 frames, the extra 3 could break your scene, cause timing to be off, drop your colouring for a frame or 2 and then go back to full colour or give you a frame that is needed to complete the scene completely. There are also many ways around this such as, changing the timing of the frames if the dirty frames aren't needed and you're using a replace scene, or if your mask on a dynamic scene is keyframed off a static part of the whole scene, which is also included in the dirty frame and also many other scenarios.

 

[gubbin]

@Terranigma  Thanks again for sharing your knowledge and keeping me focused.  

 

I've watched the layered color mask video several times and will have to play with that.  

 

I don't have a real star wars pin, only my cab virtual Pin with a Full DMD  (laptop screen with dmd underlays). I do have a few strange things going on there, black boxes around color masked scenes, mixing pixels etc.    It sounds like maybe I need to invest in an actual pin2dmd setup if I'm going to make this a real community project.  I just ordered a Deadpool pro so I'm strapped for cash but will consider this.  For now, I'll press on with the easier scenes and see were it goes.

[Cliffy]

8 hours ago, gubbin said:

It sounds like maybe I need to invest in an actual pin2dmd setup if I'm going to make this a real community project. 

well can we beer ya? 

[gubbin]

1 hour ago, Cliffy said:

well can we beer ya? 

I appreciate the offer 😃  Let me  get through some of the growing pains and see if I can actually complete it before we get to far

[gubbin]

Is there a limit to the number of color palettes?

[bushav]

I don’t think so. You will be limited by the number of trigger “areas” allowed. As your project becomes more complex you want more real estate defined and the triggers aren’t available to you. Very limiting. Left corner, right corner, center, bottom three lines, etc and before you know it you are out of definable areas. Try to use the same trigger areas on as many scenes as possible and keep some in your pocket. 

[gubbin]

10 minutes ago, bushav said:

I don’t think so. You will be limited by the number of trigger “areas” allowed. As your project becomes more complex you want more real estate defined and the triggers aren’t available to you. Very limiting. Left corner, right corner, center, bottom three lines, etc and before you know it you are out of definable areas. Try to use the same trigger areas on as many scenes as possible and keep some in your pocket. 

 

Okay, Yeah.  I think I got that.  I've been using Pallettes, conservatively and a couple of times written over some color choices not realizing I'd used them in another scene. 

 

 

[gubbin]

A little progress today. Quirky/un-expected things happen - Like, the very last of a scene will drop color, there appear to be dark boxes around some scenes, and the usual of some scenes not triggering.  We press on. 

 

It looks like the Vader head turning scene is working. 

 

This is one of the scenes that seems to be dropping the very last frame

 

 

This was a fairly time consuming scene that seems to be working in my early tests when I can make the multiball start shot.  I like the way it turned out.  It's cool how your eyes look past the pixels to create images.    I learned a hard lesson here and lost a lot of work after losing a save.  SAVE OFTEN FOLKS

 

 

This progress during falcon multiball seems to also be working.   Starting a 2nd falcon mb is a little hard as there's a timer on the 2nd time around between loops and I'm not that good at pinball =/

 

I Also think the match scenes at the end are working.    There's a little bit of color walking in the yellow of the match.. Like the top 5=10% not coloring. 

 

 

My full DMD doesn't show the contrast in the colors as well as the GIFs. I'm not sure if that's a setting on my pin or just the way it's going to be.  The gray shading in R2's helmet looks all white. 

 

 

This weekend I think I'm going to setup VPX on my main pc that I'm also editing so I can easily use ball control and unlock most of the scenes.  

 

[Terranigma]

12 hours ago, gubbin said:

Is there a limit to the number of color palettes?

 

There was a limit, I ran into this with TMNT and Martin also ran into this, but this was extended in FW 4.35

 

new version V4.35 …

- allow more than 256 palettes

 

You will know if you run out when the pallets start getting overwritten and start disappearing in your list. It is unlikely you will need 256 let alone more than that, but it is good to know the limit is even higher now.

 

8 hours ago, gubbin said:

This is one of the scenes that seems to be dropping the very last frame

 

Check the delay on the last frame, you may want to extend it out to a larger number so it stays until the next keyframe is detected. This is also covered in Martins tutorial I think.

 

8 hours ago, gubbin said:

My full DMD doesn't show the contrast in the colors as well as the GIFs. I'm not sure if that's a setting on my pin or just the way it's going to be.  The gray shading in R2's helmet looks all white. 

 

 

Always check your final result on a real Pin2dmd if you have one. The gifs/PC display are not an accurate representation of your final product.

[gubbin]

Some good news.  I was able to find a good deal on a used pin2dmd display that should be here this week!  

 

I took a little break this weekend so only a little bit of progress.  I did record a pretty long game of a dump with all the heroic and hurry up modes complete and the final wizard Vader redemption mode  complete.  

 

Here's a few more scenes that I have colored.  I'm going to have to go back and trim these down I think as I let some of them run, worried I would miss frames.

 

 

 

 

This is one that is a lot of repeat frames

 

 

Once you hit jackpot in Star Wars Multiball.  You have to hit each Force letter to get to super jackpot ready.   I think I'm going to have to capture every combination of Letters lit up in order to color every scene =/

 

[lucky1]

12 hours ago, gubbin said:

I think I'm going to have to capture every combination of Letters lit up in order to color every scene =/

 

No , since you use colormask you only need draw the area with the chosen colorgroup. If the letter is not activated it will be filled with color 0 of the group . If it is activated it will have color 3.

[gubbin]

26 minutes ago, lucky1 said:

 

No , since you use colormask you only need draw the area with the chosen colorgroup. If the letter is not activated it will be filled with color 0 of the group . If it is activated it will have color 3.

Thanks @lucky1, I'm honored to have you checking out my thread

 

I think maybe I've made a very large error in choosing my colors in my color palletes and which groups they reside in. 

[slippifishi]

3 hours ago, gubbin said:

I think maybe I've made a very large error in choosing my colors in my color palletes and which groups they reside in. 

 

Not at all, you didn't make any errors, you just learned a very important lesson!

 

If I had £1 for every time I screwed up my palettes then I would not be worrying about energy prices. lucky kindly added some tweaks to the fill tool for me that may help you recover your work a bit quicker - the "Tool size with the FloodFill tool" section of this page details the fill tool when you have different sizes selected, and this can help you to replace one colour with another, frame-wide...

 

https://pin2dmd.com/appendix-pro-tips/

 

If all you need to do is swap colours between groups, then you can use Fill with a tool size of 3 and easily swap all instances of that colour in the frame, including between groups - depending on how many frames you are dealing with, this might be quicker than recutting and recolouring from scratch.

 

Remember to backup regularly, save early and save often!

[gubbin]

@slippifishi That dithering technique is really cool!! I've missed that part of the tut.  Thanks for sharing, there's going to be some good opportunities here for it! 

 

 

 

I've had a bit of a light bulb moment with the detection masks finally.  The Yoda FORCE scene is working no matter which switch I hit. I'm honestly not sure why though.  I'm starting to  believe I might actually get a usable file outta this!

[gubbin]

So it's MOSTLY working. There's a part of the scene I missed where Yoda raises his hand.  I went back and used the add to scene function to add this in at the right spot.  It looks like it's getting over written by the colors underneath.  Same with his ear.  (sorry for the mobile phone pic of my screen quality) I've moved the colors around to different color groups thinking it's a priority thing but still no luck.  

 

  

[lucky1]

I guess the wrong colormask frame is triggering . Make sure that you design your detection mask in a way that only the correct frame is triggering.

[Terranigma]

11 hours ago, slippifishi said:

If I had £1 for every time I screwed up my palettes then I would not be worrying about energy prices. lucky kindly added some tweaks to the fill tool for me that may help you recover your work a bit quicker - the "Tool size with the FloodFill tool" section of this page details the fill tool when you have different sizes selected, and this can help you to replace one colour with another, frame-wide...

 

https://pin2dmd.com/appendix-pro-tips/

 

Hey man! Good to see you back around the place. Been meaning to have a bit of a catch up. 

 

I've added the pro-slippy-tips to the main colour file list guide section. I need to overhaul the guide part eventually, so will more than likely be linking to a bunch more of your content if that is ok.

 

11 hours ago, slippifishi said:

Remember to backup regularly, save early and save often!

 

I feel this isn't stated enough. 

 

@gubbin Looking good! I've added your project to the main colour file list. When you're ready to test on a real pin, @roboclan3 should be able to assist.

 

[gubbin]

Thanks for updating that @Terranigma - I've been backing my files up religiously since loosing a nights worth of work recently. 

 

11 hours ago, lucky1 said:

I guess the wrong colormask frame is triggering . Make sure that you design your detection mask in a way that only the correct frame is triggering.

 

This is one continous scene with only 1 detection mask at the start.  Maybe I need to break out the hand waving part for a different mask?

 

 

 

It occurs to me to that I cut out the hand animation part from a different part of the game and stitched it into my colored scene, does that make a difference?

[jedimastermatt]

Just catching up on this thread.  Great progress so far.  The learning curve for the editor is a bit steep; but, once you get the hang of things you can usually figure your way out of just about anything.  Take a look at my Shadow thread for some of the challenges and things I learned along the way I’m tackling that monster with a ton of dynamic transitions.  
 

The biggest piece of advice I can give is don’t be afraid to dive in and figure out the LCM modes.   You can take control of really complex “downstream” events by getting into an LCM and then using the power of its masks to sort out problems.  

For example, your Yoda challenges above.  Instead of trying to get a bunch of masks at the “root” level of the game to accommodate the variables of his hand or other text - if his face is always on the screen, use part of that to jump into an LCM and then once you are in the LCM you can use a ton of sub masks to accommodate the variables.  Basically you could mask anywhere but his face to trigger anything else that changes.  So, with the example pics you’ve got above - in the LCM have it trigger based on everything but the score (or face if nothing crosses over it).  

[gubbin]

32 minutes ago, jedimastermatt said:

Just catching up on this thread.  Great progress so far.  The learning curve for the editor is a bit steep; but, once you get the hang of things you can usually figure your way out of just about anything.  Take a look at my Shadow thread for some of the challenges and things I learned along the way I’m tackling that monster with a ton of dynamic transitions.  
 

The biggest piece of advice I can give is don’t be afraid to dive in and figure out the LCM modes.   You can take control of really complex “downstream” events by getting into an LCM and then using the power of its masks to sort out problems.  

For example, your Yoda challenges above.  Instead of trying to get a bunch of masks at the “root” level of the game to accommodate the variables of his hand or other text - if his face is always on the screen, use part of that to jump into an LCM and then once you are in the LCM you can use a ton of sub masks to accommodate the variables.  Basically you could mask anywhere but his face to trigger anything else that changes.  So, with the example pics you’ve got above - in the LCM have it trigger based on everything but the score (or face if nothing crosses over it).  

This is very helpful and helps me better understand LCM.  I'm making little break throughs every day with my understanding of what's actually happening with the editor.    BTW The Shadow is my favorite pin at my local pub..  Nice job on that colorization. 

[slippifishi]

On 10/5/2022 at 6:51 PM, gubbin said:

This is one continous scene with only 1 detection mask at the start.  Maybe I need to break out the hand waving part for a different mask?

 

It occurs to me to that I cut out the hand animation part from a different part of the game and stitched it into my colored scene, does that make a difference?

 

<snip>

 

 

Edited August 17, 2023 by slippifishi
No more free advice, but maybe the quotes will save you

[gubbin]

7 minutes ago, slippifishi said:

 

The problem you are experiencing is because of the d-mask you are using - the hash doesn't change when yoda raises his hand, so it will keep triggering the same keyframe for the flat scene with no hand raised.

You will need to use a different d-mask that somehow encapsulates the dots that make up some part of his hand, for example:

 

 

Both of these will generate a different hash for the frames of the hand lifting (for which appropriate keyframes will need to be added), but you might need to take care that the text "FLASHING TARGETS" / " .... SUPER JACKPOT" doesn't cross into the d-mask area, and if it does, then you either need to adjust the mask so they don't, or add some keyframes for those hashes.

 

As has been said before, you do need to manage your d-masks and try and limit their number, but at this early stage of the project, don't worry too much about that yet - guaranteed at some point in the future you will decide to rework a significant sequence as your understanding of the editor and hashes improves, so don't be afraid to experiment a bit. Personally I would try and use the upper example mask I provided, a lot of my projects have a similar sized mask in that location - corners are generally a reliable pick/reusable later for d-masks. The key thing is that the d-mask has to cover the part of the display that his 'hand lifts into' - you need the hash in the d-mask to change as the hand lifts, this is what tells the PIN2DMD to trigger a different keyframe.
 

 

 

I see,  I was thinking the D mask could never have moving content in it. It just can't have "dynamic" content in it.  

 

 

[slippifishi]

With the greatest respect to jedimastermatt, LCM is probably a good way to solve this, but I personally think you should focus on color mask and replace sequences only for now (and palette switches, if you are using them) - understanding those two types correctly is key to fully exploiting the other scene types. Your not understanding why Yoda's hand is breaking the display suggests to me the penny of hashes and d-masks hasn't quite dropped yet, but you are really close man, stick at it!

 

Here is a post I made that discusses "replace sequence" vs "replace". Neither of those types is suitable for the Yoda scene, but I think it does give some good examples of how hashes work and how you need to think about triggering them when they change, maybe. At the very least it's got some diagrams!

 

 

Absolutely d-masks can have moving content, before long you will be cursing the fact that you made your d-mask that size because there is some movement you didn't realise  They can have dynamic content too, if you want, and sometimes the scene may even require it.