3D Arcade Frontend

TheMcD

sXe And Better Than You
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Big Hurt, Tommy, Safecracker, Addams Family, Frankenstein, Hook, Four Horsemen
Now if the room was a virtual arcade and you could wander around and check out a collection of pinball machines in VR, that would be cool. But when you play one you need a consistent POV and a decent framerate.

Did you ever check out the frontend 3D Arcade? It may be one of the hardest to pull of correctly, but it's highly rewarding.

Now it may be even harder since mameworld, the site that hosted the main page for 3D Arcade, went the ways of expiring domains.

I found the forum here: http://echo.messageboard.nl/2243/index.php

Dunno if it's even worth trying right now.

The McD
 
3.5GB for a front end. Jeeze is that over the top or what! :(

It may be impressive but that has got to equate to a lot of sloppy code surely.
 
You don't have to download that whole DVD, since it's got a whole load of MAME and other emu stuff on it... unless you want that too.

http://www.btribble.com/3da_vp.html
Here's Yogi's tutorial by the way. It helped me with getting it to run, highly recommended.

Still looking for a pinball model pack... no luck so far. Maybe Groni can help, seeing as he's registered over there and makes models too.

The McD

EDIT: Elton, think about it: That DVD contains every model they made so far. Now think about how many games there are in MAME alone... The frontend itself is about a bit less than 50 megs AFAIK. The models are what bloats it up.
 
Phew ... tghat's better. I though we were talking about only the front end. But if it's bloated by models that explains it. Thanks McD for the clarity. :)
 
Went looking for yogi's 2 part zips but no luck. Plenty of links to mameworld.net, which as you say has gone.

Didn't look hard enough at Riveted studios.
There is a 2.3G download in two parts under '3D Arcade pinball' at
http://ftp.rivetedstudios.com/mame-downloads/cat_view/40-mame-files/43-pinball.html
Not much documentation, on the downloads, though.

However found a 15 MB exe file called fe096.exe from
http://emulationrealm.net/modules/wfdownloads/viewcat.php?cid=225
which claims to be the 3D arcade frontend. Hope it doesn't trash my disk!!!
Also a 85M file called VPMTF.rar from riveted which I'm hoping contains models... maybe...
If I can sort it out and get working might upload them here with info.
Hopefully yogi's install tips will still work....
 
Well it works, and yogi's instructions were invaluable...
Don't have any artwork for the tables, though. I suppose that's part of what comes in the large downloads. Can't seem to find anything on the web

Does anyone know where I might find backglasses and playfield images for use in a frontend?

Thanks
 
Went looking for yogi's 2 part zips but no luck. Plenty of links to mameworld.net, which as you say has gone.



Yogi's a really nice guy. If you PM him I'm sure he'd send you a copy :)
 
Thanks all. That's the first time I hear from anyone (trying) to use my tutorial. :wave: :yes2:

IIRC the tutorial describes, how to implement a folder of VP/VPM tables into the frontend. Don't use your whole table collection!!! The frontend somehow "loads" all tables and the table artwork (backglasses, playfields, cabinet front and side art). If you don't have a monster PC, it's overloaded by a too large number of tables in the 3D Arcade frontend. The frontend then becomes slow/unuseable. I recommend to build an arcade there only with your prefered tables or with the collection of i. e. JPSalas. I can't give any recommendation for the number of tables, but next time I wouldn't take more than 30-50 on my outdated PC. Better build another arcade or more and just name them differently.

I'm sure I have a good load of much of the table artwork that was available at my backups. Feel free to ask. I can't make all of them available in one download as my upload speed is very slow, so please don't ask for too much. But I'm sure willing to offer individual packages for limited table collections, as far as have the files myself.

@Meecro Hyperion: The tutorial isn't there as a zip download. It's only the website in html. Forward to page 2 at the very bottom of page 1.
 
Thanks Heaps Yogi!! Your tutorial was _very_ helpful, and probably saved me hours and hours of frustration! Thanks also to TheMcD for the link.

Yes I followed page 2 for the backglass and playfield instructions, and then realised I had no artwork.... I was (naively) expecting 3d arcade to suck the artwork out of VPM, but then realised that this is not possible anyway for the backglass which is (necessarily) different in VPM than the real tables.

3D Arcade seems to split the collection up into sets of 25 tables in alphabetical order,so it isn't much of a strain on the machine at all, at least without artwork...

Yogi, Thanks for your offer, but I think I can get everything from IPD, now I think about it. I'm very new to Virtual Pinball, so still feeling my way around.

Has anyone ever tried to run an original table (i.e. romless) from 3dArcade. I can make a gamelist, and see the tables in the room, but if I try to play one I get a 'file not found' error. I assume that's because 3d arcade is designed to run PinMAME, which is not required for original tables. Any thoughts?
 
I found it easier with originals - strangely enough ;) haven't fiddled with it for a while though, but all my originals work fine, in fact many of my tables include the skins for 3da in their downloads! and there is a skin pack at PO for a few others too.

Problem is you have to be EXACTLY the same file name - case sensitive and all that, and I have had a couple of times where something silly like the VPT extensions is upper case or the like. You're still pointing it at the vpt files, regardless of it being opnmame or originals or romless. I have found 3da prefers ALL tables, regardless of type, in the same folder - no sub folders. So if you set it up with your VPM folder, you would have to put your originals in that same folder for it to work. Not strictly gospel, but I found this occasionally to be a problem.
 
That was it, Anthias. Only one game path allowed per emulator. Shame. The config program allows you to make a gamelist from an arbitrary path, but must then discard the path information and just keep the names, requiring them to be in the games directory for that emulator.

Oh well, I can live with that, I suppose, and rather than collect games in separate folders create separate gamelists instead.

Also figured out that a gamelist for the default pinball arcade can only have 25 machines. The 'create gamelist from folder' option grabs the top 25 games alphabetically and discards the rest, duplicating the gamelist within the startup interface - giving about a dozen duplicated gamelists with the same name in different colours. I guess I will have to manually create gamelists in order to be able to choose from the whole collection.

Then again Yogis suggestion of creating gamelists from favourites is probably the way to go, since I haven't even scratched the surface of the collection given to me on a DVD by a friend. Find I prefer to play originals, actually. Have you played starman7007s 'nova'? It is phenomenal once you persevere enough to figure out the rules and get to multiball. Found a bug in it yesterday - have to try to contact him about it.

BTW - Had a good crack at Bleach last night - really fun table! Only glitch was the ball failed to reappear after reaching the drain in the flipperless section. Once I tilted it, though, it (sometimes) popped out from the right side which I imagine is where it's supposed to reappear. Reproduced this a couple of times... And sometimes the ball got stuck in a loop in the kickback in the right lane, being dislodged (during multiball) by another ball which took it's place! was using vp8.1, should I have been using 9?
 
I made the tutorial, because when I first heard of 3D Arcade and saw some screenshots, I was thrilled, but I didn't manage to set it up. After a long time of try and error and many questions and some abandonments in the meantime I finally found out what to do. I thought, when I have to setup 3D Arcade once again, maybe a year later, I don't know anything anymore. I first just wanted to save the 'how to' for myself, but then later I thought I could make a tutorial of it. So I renamed the installation folder of 3D Arcade and run the setup once again. While that I made a screenshot nearly each step and added comments and the signs/symbols/marks.

I know it's not perfect, but the best I could do that time. The frontend is still a miracle to me anyway.

I remember to try out several different things and that was fun, especially to implement real faces from member pics to the moving models.

At the time when I made the tutorial I used Deniros Damned Dungeon Arcade and I don't think the number of tables was limited in any way. As you can see in the screenshot, Bugs Bunny Birthday Ball 0.91 is table number 70 from 573 tables altogether. Really, that table number was much too large!

Let me know if you need anything. I have some arcades and artwork in my backups.
 

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Hey, it's 3D Arcade. You can't declare this as off topic!!!
 
Thanks for the links, yogi - the two part zips are collectively 8M larger than the single exe I got from emulationrealm.net, hopefully with a few more models, so Ill start over - Only 1 pinball model from 3darcade.web (apollo 13), but it should make a good template.
Your tutorial was great - got everything working first time. Now trying to get animated playfield and backglasses to work - thought it might be as simple as replacing jpg's with cst's made from bitmaps but no such luck - need to do a 3d model with animated textures - so I'm going to delve into the user guide to figure it out. If I do I'll take some screenshots and make a third page to add to your tutorial.

Damn I can't resist - downloading the 1.7G part1 from riveted. Seems to be squeezed to 30KBps so 16 hours... Fedora 10 can wait til next month - bad priorities but what the heck!
 
3D Arcade posts split as requested.
 
Thank you!

Maybe this way some more people can take any advantage from the posts.
 
Thanks for the thread split Steve.

Warning - Don't expect any 3D Arcade content in the '3DArcade Pinball' Downloads avaliable from
http://ftp.rivetedstudios.com/mame-d...3-pinball.html
!!!!

Downloaded part 1 and 2, hoping for artwork and models but the downloads are exclusively tables and roms. Part 2 (500M) didn't work for me - got a rar file list but the archive itself was corrupt (can't be sure if it was uploaded that way or something went wrong in my download).

So I wound up with a few extra tables (lots of overlap with what I already had - but more recent table versions which now means a lot of work, sifting sorting and matching up with roms) which I probably will never play for 2.3 G download....

Oh well. That's what you get for blindly downloading undocumented archives....

So if you want a huge collection of tables and roms you can get a DVD full of them at the above link....

So yogi, anybody - Any hints on animated playfields and backglasses for 3D Arcade? The w3d model I downloaded for apollo 13 which I hoped to use as a template generated an error in 3d Arcade so I'm back where I started.

I can generate cst files from bitmaps in the 3DA config menu but don't really know what to do with them - not many hints in the manual, either, but I suspect they get associated with a model. Is this right?
 
Animated playfields and backglasses? For 3D Arcade? I'm sorry, I'm not aware of anything like that. I don't know anything about cst files. What's that?
 
Animated playfields and backglasses? For 3D Arcade? I'm sorry, I'm not aware of anything like that. I don't know anything about cst files. What's that?


From the manual under section 3.5 :How to create and assign skins;
animated bitmap cycling:

Because the main use is to create the illusion of attractmodes on all cabs in cylarcade and fpsarcade these are setup in arcade cfg files. But they can also be used to cycle between bitmaps on the screenshot sprite and the flyer sprite. (Flyer sprite cycling currently works only in the listbox menutype.)

...

overlays and backdrops:

These options are setup in the arcade cfg files and not in the skinner as they refer to what is shown in the 3dsprite itself. There are two layers of overlays and two layers of backdrops. Each can show bitmaps, bitmap cycles, video's and animated textures. The first overlay and backdrop when used have some special additional features.
The first overlay is created from a snaphot of the background bitmap behind the 3d sprite. When the background bitmap has no transparency the 3d sprite will seem to disappear but when the background has transparency the 3d sprite will appear to show behind the background. Especially useful to get rid of the rectangle borders of the 3d sprite.
The first backdrop will take a snapshot of the stage behind the 3d sprite, giving the effect that you can see through the 3d sprite resulting for example in the ability to let the 3d sprite hover above the background.
There are a lot of possibilities for each overlay and backdrop. To make it easier to use I already did setup some useful defaults that can be turned on and off by setting the first field either to true or false for each overlay and backdrop.
These are the options for each overlay and backdrop:

overlayfpsarcade|add this overlay=true,don't =false/blend/renderformat/video,foreanim,backanim or false/options/bitmapsprite/options/bitmappath/options|


The fe will first try to show a video or animated texture setup in field 4. If none is found or set to false the fe will then try to show the current bitmap from either the marquees, screenshot or flyer sprite setup in field 6. If not found or set to false it will try to find bitmaps from the pathname setup in field 8 that refers to a path setup in emulator cfg files. Either one of the existing paths like flyers, sshot or a custom path defined by the user. Ahum I went nuts here...almost anything can be done ;)
Renderformat in field 3 refers to how the overlays and backdrops will be rendered. By default 16bit colordepth and a 1bit alpha chanel will be used. For a full alpha chanell set this field to rgba8888. Foreanim and backanim refer to animated textures created from a set of bitmaps and stored in arcade\arcanimtextures. These are the same as used on environment models. To create them just put a set of bitmaps in an empty folder and use the option in the cfg utility to automatically create the animated texture. The options in field 5 are /(file to use:name.cst),(pause animation while moving through the list=pause or don't pause=play),(animation update frequency in milliseconds)/ for example /driesmamelogo.cst,pause,100/

So it can be done. I'll play around some more and see what I can come up with....
 
Hmmh?

Please don't expect me to understand. It's from a manual. :D

I mean, yes, I can read the text, but don't I don't manage to translate many (also technical) vocables/words and then I don't manage to understand the whole content. Sorry, but my English is very limited.

It was the same with the pinball setup. I didn't understand the manual. Because of that I searched for other explanations und instructions. My tutorial is exactly the result of my own incompetence! :miffed:
 
From the manual under section 3.5 :How to create and assign skins;
animated bitmap cycling:

Because the main use is to create the illusion of attractmodes on all cabs in cylarcade and fpsarcade these are setup in arcade cfg files. But they can also be used to cycle between bitmaps on the screenshot sprite and the flyer sprite. (Flyer sprite cycling currently works only in the listbox menutype.)

...

overlays and backdrops:

These options are setup in the arcade cfg files and not in the skinner as they refer to what is shown in the 3dsprite itself. There are two layers of overlays and two layers of backdrops. Each can show bitmaps, bitmap cycles, video's and animated textures. The first overlay and backdrop when used have some special additional features.
The first overlay is created from a snaphot of the background bitmap behind the 3d sprite. When the background bitmap has no transparency the 3d sprite will seem to disappear but when the background has transparency the 3d sprite will appear to show behind the background. Especially useful to get rid of the rectangle borders of the 3d sprite.
The first backdrop will take a snapshot of the stage behind the 3d sprite, giving the effect that you can see through the 3d sprite resulting for example in the ability to let the 3d sprite hover above the background.
There are a lot of possibilities for each overlay and backdrop. To make it easier to use I already did setup some useful defaults that can be turned on and off by setting the first field either to true or false for each overlay and backdrop.
These are the options for each overlay and backdrop:

overlayfpsarcade|add this overlay=true,don't =false/blend/renderformat/video,foreanim,backanim or false/options/bitmapsprite/options/bitmappath/options|


The fe will first try to show a video or animated texture setup in field 4. If none is found or set to false the fe will then try to show the current bitmap from either the marquees, screenshot or flyer sprite setup in field 6. If not found or set to false it will try to find bitmaps from the pathname setup in field 8 that refers to a path setup in emulator cfg files. Either one of the existing paths like flyers, sshot or a custom path defined by the user. Ahum I went nuts here...almost anything can be done ;)
Renderformat in field 3 refers to how the overlays and backdrops will be rendered. By default 16bit colordepth and a 1bit alpha chanel will be used. For a full alpha chanell set this field to rgba8888. Foreanim and backanim refer to animated textures created from a set of bitmaps and stored in arcade\arcanimtextures. These are the same as used on environment models. To create them just put a set of bitmaps in an empty folder and use the option in the cfg utility to automatically create the animated texture. The options in field 5 are /(file to use:name.cst),(pause animation while moving through the list=pause or don't pause=play),(animation update frequency in milliseconds)/ for example /driesmamelogo.cst,pause,100/

So it can be done. I'll play around some more and see what I can come up with....

Wait, WHAT?

Jesus, that sounds damn confusing. If I put some paragraphs in there and read it sentence by sentence, I MIGHT understand it. I might. Animations would fuck my arcade up anyway (I use(d) Scapino's arcade with about 120 tables, animations would kill my machine).

Good luck.

The McD

EDIT: For the record: I am able to understand advanced English, but this is just some technical gibberish to me. That's why I NEVER read manuals.
 
Yup. I agree wholeheartedly!!!

The manual is very difficult to understand, but it _does_ contain some tantalising hints as to the frontends capabilities, if not how to actually implement them!

After seeing how much better the tables look with playfields and backglasses, I went looking in the manual to figure out how to do the outside cabiniet skins (which I still haven't got working), and read the above sections hinting at minimally animated attract modes.

McD, you started me on this merry little chase, and in for a penny, in for a pound as they say - I only want about a dozen or so tables in my arcade, and to have them running in (simulated) attract mode would be really cool, so I'll persevere. If I have any luck I'll do a yogi-style tutorial for others....

Damn frontend needs a frontend.
 
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