PupPacks with Altcolor DMD

[Magius74]

I have spent alot of time in the past getting PupPacks to work on many tables and have learned alot and have several working just fine. But I guess I have something new to learn because I have noticed as more and more great colored DMD projects come to fruition I have finally come across some that involve tables that I also run a pup pack for and they will not work.

In these cases we are talking about a ROM based table and a Pup Pack that relies on Screen grabs of the DMD as a reference for triggers. SO not the PUP trigger events in the table script but just monitoring the DMD for a specific screen coming up to trigger the next Pup event. From what I read on Nailbuster's site this is perhaps the easiest and most common way to create a Pup Pack so this is probably gonna be a major problem for me as I add more tables with colored ROMs. 

It's pretty obvious (assuming I am right] that the PupCapture is expecting to "see" a DMD screen that is orange. The large list if reference image files in the PupCapture folder seem to verify that. SO a colored DMD no longer looks like the reference image that PupCapture expects so there is no triggered event.

My current work around is to simply Turn on "show external DMD" in VPinMame options so I get that "extra" DMD that is separate from Freezy's DMD and thus is not colored. With this DMD visible the PupCapture can reference that. The only issue with this method is that now I have another DMD that I gotta stash somewhere on my cab screens. I have 4 screens; PF,BG, FullDMD, Topper. I just try to make it as tiny as possible and stick it in a unobtrusive corner of the backglass monitor. But it seems a bit...... inelegant. 

Curious if anyone here either A-Has a better solution or B-Discovered that there is an actual fix for this or C-Would like to correct my assumption of how this works and why it is actually not a problem. 

Appreciate an observations or informations anyone is willing to share. 

Thanks fellow Ballers!

[Cliffy]

Pupcapture is looking for shapes, not colors or even actual text.  However, I've used your workaround for Robocop where the pup pack simply will NOT trigger if you use the version with Scutters flexdmd. In that case, like you, I had to check the "show dmd window" box and then hide it behind the Flexdmd. 

 

Right now we have 6 different colorized dmd formats. fsq, pal/vni., pac, SAM color patched, Flexdmd  and serum cRZ. I admire Freezy and Lucky1 for being able to make these all work, holy cow. On top of that now we're all migrating to 64 bit and then we want all that to work with nailbusters pinup pup pack system. whew! 

[Magius74]

Thanks for the reply Cliffy. There is alot going on and some exciting changes happening. I do appreciate all the work by these guys but there are alot of challenges for all of us to figure out.

I appreciate your clarification that pupcapture is looking for shapes and so color shouldn't matter but I wonder......is it possible that the image shifts just enough during some colorization processes that it is no longer recognized as the correct shape?

I admit I am not familiar with all the details of the various colorization methods/formats. I just know it is a HUGE amount of work for these guys. My understanding is they have to go frame by frame. I thought it was just applying a sort of "palette overlay" to the existing rom images but then I have also seen people dump out all the rom images to aid in colorizing projects and it kinda makes me wonder if there is a point where those images are "reintegrated" into the rom or something? IDK, just spit balling. I have not heard anyone else having issues so I am not sure yet if this is just a me thing.

Thanks for verifying that at least it is for sure a thing with FlexDMD which does make sense considering it looks totally different. Glad you have a work around.

[Cliffy]

Here's nailbusters page about pup capture

https://www.nailbuster.com/wikipinup/doku.php?id=pup_capture#:~:text=hang of it.-,PUPCapture,-(Rom based Tables

 

I *think* pup capture is intercepting the output of pinmame, not the output we see from freezy or luckys dmddevice dll's. But I could be way wrong