195 replies to this topic

[fuzion]

Do some members still think this person is someone else?

J

[barcrest junky]

Do some members still think this person is someone else?
J

I can confirm that my post was a genuine response to NQ's post and is agnostic to the identity of the OP.

[Benjamoose]

 

Before all the arty people pull themselves unconcious - am I missing the point?  I thought the whole point of a DX was to use the machine artwork.  "Brand new shiny colours" will make it look like a simulation.

 

Won't it?

 

That said, you know me, I'll still download it, and play it to death.

 

 

NQ.

 

 

 

 

I see it as achieving the same means-to-an-end really.

Without playing the physical machine directly in front of you, literally anything you do in MFME is an attempt at getting as close to reproducing the experience of the game as possible and without physically scanning the machine with a portable hand scanner, you'll never get ultra clear graphics for the simulation.

In theory you could create a 3D model of the machine then render these graphics onto that I suppose for the absolute best possible purist experience in terms of replicating the physical machine, but I digress .

All that said, I totally understand preferring photo reconstructions to a degree. But I guess it's all personal preference and different strokes for different folks and all that .

I just personally prefer having the game be high resolution,clear and easy to play when it comes to how the machine's controls are laid out.

Also, if you build a physical cabinet for MFME like uptown47's, having the graphics like this would look better in full-screen as they'd fit flat to the screen's edges, so it ultimately ends up being more flexible.

Thanks for the comment! I hope you still enjoy playing the finished layout

 

Its worse than that NQ do you not think side art is so 2003?

 

Sorry if I'm disappointing you in some way? On the plus side you can always crop it, but as my first layout I was just inspired by my favorite layout (that got me into MFME), so my initial template was built upon that for sizing/scale:

http://www.fruit-emu...green-1280-wdx/

But at the same time I feel like my efforts should allow me a little wiggle room in getting things to specific user's preferences

 

Do some members still think this person is someone else?

J

 

I really hope not.

I felt uncomfortable as it was with feeling pressured into posting myself publicly in video-form last time and thought it was now all behind me.

For anyone in the most recent replies with any doubts:



I had actually made this video hidden again for my own personal privacy, but c'est la vie :/

Edited by Benjamoose, 01 January 2018 - 02:40 AM.

[Benjamoose]

As you guys could probably tell from one of my last updates, I was getting the layouts working in MFME and now as a result my redrawn Homer's Meltdown is now working and playable!

I have the releases ready to go, but I wanted to cover maybe a couple of other things that I didn't cover in previous updates, since I figured you all might find it interesting.

How I did the lights:

As some of you may remember, I showed a "lamp guide" that I made that documented all of the bulb locations fairly early on.

I achieved this by tracking down photos of the rear of the layout glass:



I then cut this out edge-to-edge and corrected all of the skew and scale.

Then, after mirroring it, I used the small bits of visible layout through the tiny holes, to match it up 1:1 to my artwork.

 

I then created a set of circles in the center of each hole and color coded them for my own convenience so that I knew which ones were grouped together (lighting the same thing).



Using these circles I then created a new layer and changed them all to white.



I then blurred this layer slightly, duplicated it, then blurred the lower layer even further. Creating a blurry white circle that has a perceivable sharper edge towards the center (similar to what the lamp mask looks like in MFME).

I also put it on a dark colored backdrop:



At this point I already had all of my "lit" elements on a separate layer so I used the above as a mask on a folder containing all of the elements.



The upshot is that things like the "Homer's Meltdown" logo (that can all be linked to one lamp) have the correct amount of visible bulbs bleeding through the artwork.

Whereas doing this in MFME from fresh artwork wouldn't achieve the same result.

Another thing I didn't cover when I was working on the "SUPER JACKPOT" area. I forgot to keep the parts that were supposed to light up separate on the final merged and scaled versions.

So I had to cut them out manually by watching YouTube videos to see which bits of the console lit up and which didn't.

Edited by Benjamoose, 01 January 2018 - 08:30 AM.

[Benjamoose]

Some gameplay!



Eagle-eyes may note that the artwork shows a £25 jackpot.

I made a £5 and a £15 one (thanks to Johnnyafc for help with the ROMs on the £15 there!), and I knew how much you guys seemed to want a £25, so I figured "why not?".

So there are now three jackpot versions to choose from with unique graphics!

Buttons are clickable as expected, but I created two clickable coin insert amounts. If you click the obvious place on the right of the coin insert, it inserts £1, but if you click the left red square, it'll put in a single increment (10p/20p).

[Benjamoose]

Phew! Lots of sequential posts I know, but this should hopefully be the last one before a release:



Here's a preview of the final reel images. I redid the outlines and shadows on the symbols after cutting them out and correcting their size, skew and proportions. I really like the clean solid white background!

To keep things consistent, when a fruit symbol had a character face on it, I cut the character's face out and positioned it onto the blank fruit symbol that was already finished.

This way all the cherries are consistently the same, face or no face, vs. attempting to fix up a second instance of the same symbol.

Thanks a TON to Johnnyafc for providing me with the images I requested.

As for the numbers on the right. They used the same font as a font used on the main layout, so I was able to just recreate them from scratch!

The end result is a set of very crisp, clear and decent resolution reels!

Edit: I ended up using my own cut out elements for the reel overlays because MFME's overlay color remover left bad results.

It seems that it will literally only pick a color that's 100% the exact hex code that you selected.

The downside of this is that if you image has even the slightest amount of compression, it'll leave jaggy edges of color, as the compression creates slightly different colors that are off by 1 pixel or value.

Edited by Benjamoose, 01 January 2018 - 08:47 AM.

[vectra666]

A lot of hard work has gone into this and I expect it’ll be appreciated by most on here.
Look forward to seeing the end result soon, by the way you vid above doesn’t work!!

[Benjamoose]

A lot of hard work has gone into this and I expect it’ll be appreciated by most on here.
Look forward to seeing the end result soon, by the way you vid above doesn’t work!!

 

D'oh! My YouTube videos upload under "Private" by default and I forgot to change it.

Try it now, it should be unlisted.

[vectra666]

Works now cheers, as said before I take it the homer logo had the red lamps in place too? For IM boards

[Benjamoose]

Works now cheers, as said before I take it the homer logo had the red lamps in place too? For IM boards

I did create the red lamps for the logo, and I cut out the lamps with the wizard.

I figured since the wizard asked for the "Red" version along with the lit and unlit versions that when I created the lamp for the logo that the red one would be made too.

Is this not the case?

Do I have to do something manual to make sure this is as it should be?

If so it's an easy correction to make, but obviously I'd like to make sure before I upload anywhere.

[vectra666]

When you make the layouts final stages through mfme you should have, in this case three separate artworks
Off, on1 ( normal lamps) and on2 (which in this case is just your red lamps ie homers logo)
Via the lamp editor thingy in edit mode, you load the red artwork up and you extract the red lamps in the ON2 section. Same way the others which you've done already.

[Benjamoose]

When you make the layouts final stages through mfme you should have, in this case three separate artworks
Off, on1 ( normal lamps) and on2 (which in this case is just your red lamps ie homers logo)
Via the lamp editor thingy in edit mode, you load the red artwork up and you extract the red lamps in the ON2 section. Same way the others which you've done already.

Little confused.

I threw in the "off", "on" and "red" in the lamp creator when I made all of the lamps and when I cut out the logo it created a lamp with both "off" and "on" states, so I just assumed the red would also be automatically added.



I'm confused as to where it would be though if it did.

Should it be under "Lamp 2"?

If so I'll just quickly put it in there. Also, is there a reliable way to force the invincible mode for testing purposes?

Perhaps in the machine's settings?

Edited by Benjamoose, 01 January 2018 - 10:53 AM.

[wearecity]

This looks stunning. Haven't commented before, because I do see where NQ is coming from and my thoughts were similar.

 

Perhaps the cabinet at the bottom could have the base of the machine shown.

 

But it's still a very impressive reproduction and is definitely a work of art.

[Benjamoose]

This looks stunning. Haven't commented before, because I do see where NQ is coming from and my thoughts were similar.

 

Perhaps the cabinet at the bottom could have the base of the machine shown.

 

But it's still a very impressive reproduction and is definitely a work of art.

 

Thanks for the comment !

As I mentioned I ended up choosing this format partially on personal preference, but also because it fits to a portrait screen much better for things like physical cabinets.

At this point it's too late to change without sacrificing quality though unfortunately.

If I skewed out the bottom it'd resample that section (plus the wider parts would be bigger than the original artwork was so it'd lose some resolution there too) and I'd also have to re-lamp the bottom section three times over (since I've made three variations).

Some might see this as negligible but it sort of goes against the philosophy of why I redrew it to begin with (high resolution clarity).

Sorry if anyone feels let down by this, but this is most likely how I'll do any layouts I make.

That said there are already a few Homer's Meltdowns made from cabinet photos (which I highly recommend downloading since they're by some of the awesome folks in this thread), so there's something for everyone .

 

 

In response to my last comment:
I found the lamp testers in the "Test" service mode for the machine, so that answers one of my questions .

Edited by Benjamoose, 01 January 2018 - 11:17 AM.

[Benjamoose]

 

Heeeeey! Looks like I guessed correctly.

The lamp tester made life a lot easier there too.

Looks like it's time to pack it up!

[vectra666]

red lamps go into lamp 2 (on2) in the lamp /image/import/export/mask  tool

Attached Files

•  Untitled.png   338.49KB   0 downloads

Edited by vectra666, 01 January 2018 - 11:31 AM.

[wearecity]

In the above picture, it certainly looks great for the cabinet users.

 

Looking forward to giving it a go on my MS surface pro.

 

As for who you are, I couldn't give a rats arse, you're bringing something stunning to the FME table, that's for sure.

[Benjamoose]

red lamps go into lamp 2 (on2) in the lamp /image/import/export/mask  tool

 

Indeed. I threw the red one in there when making the other lamps but I guess I had to select it when cutting it out or something.

All is well though. I just put it in manually and it's all good:

 

[Benjamoose]

In the above picture, it certainly looks great for the cabinet users.

 

Looking forward to giving it a go on my MS surface pro.

 

As for who you are, I couldn't give a rats arse, you're bringing something stunning to the FME table, that's for sure.

 

Thank you. I do have to say that regardless of the awkward start here I've been really appreciative of all the support and help.

Being able to politely ask for photos of specific parts of the inside of someone's Fruit Machine and have them deliver to support your project shows how really awesome some of the folks here can be.

There aren't many places like that where people will put themselves out for you when they barely know you.

 

I'm planning on adding a special thanks to all the people that helped me out in this thread to the release description, 'cause I couldn't have done it without you folks!

Edited by Benjamoose, 01 January 2018 - 11:36 AM.

[Benjamoose]

I will say this however; if you suspect me (or anyone for that matter) of something, but you're not 100% sure, when you do your sleuthing into my personal sites, could you guys at least talk to me like I'm a person and not an object in your investigation?

 

I've blanked out the avatar and username because I don't really want to throw anyone under the bus or make waves, but I do at least want to make a point of this.

I know some of you are just trying to get to a truth of some sort, but if you consider at any point that your assumptions are wrong, this isn't really a great way to approach or talk to people.

I responded politely to the message but I didn't get a response.

I've also had someone email my Voice Over site's business email (one of them I didn't mind though as they were just asking to be a beta tester).

I'm a friendly guy. I'm a little introverted at times, but I'll respond to anyone in a polite manner and I'm willing to talk to you.

I'm not sure why anyone would have any doubts at this point given I literally went on video, but at the very least I'd appreciate a friendly or sociable approach over poking me with a stick.