AGEMAME HQ

I mentioned yesterday how the system works by setting up a base image, and overlaying the lamps onto it, but didn’t mention the VFD code (which has now changed, to be a little better resolution, but still not as high res as Aaron’s shiny new LED primitives, which I may be tempted to steal for MPU4, but not Scorpion, as it’s LEDs are really lamps).

The way it works currently is to draw the either an ‘on’ segment or an ‘off’ segment, depending on the status of the segment according to the controller. This is then scaled by the layout to give the display.

Problem is, not every display controller is identical, and they all see the actual display differently, in terms of how their output pins match the fluorescent elements. As part of phase 2 I intend to finally correct this problem for MPU4 games (the only reason they seemed to be fine in the first place is because of the similarity between the Bellfruit and OKI character sets, they’re actually meant to be different in quite significant ways at detail), while possibly using the idea of the primitives to make VFDs act less like individual screens, and more like the current treatment of LEDs.

PS. The AWPVideo system is still being fixed up for non-artwork use, so the patches to u4 will take a little while longer (the MAME code’s fine, but mine is currently assigning screens to blank spaces seemingly arbitrarily, which is a big problem).