Scripted vs. Rom emulated ?

[Jeff Strong]

Most of Firepower's bugs are scripting related, so ROM emulation would fix almost all these bugs:

http://digitalpinballfans.com/showthread.php/3861-Master-Issues-List-Firepower

And of course, it would make the lights, sounds, and timing of the mechanics all more accurate to the real machine.

 

[kimkom]

I hope FarSight will update the relevant tables with the emulation software, although I think they did a cracking job with Gorgar. I take it that Genie is also on the list due to lack of emulation for Gottlieb ROMs at the moment?

Is it likely that the upcoming PC versions will be updated and ROM emulated?

 

[Fuseball]

I would like to think that once Black Knight is emulated then Gorgar and Firepower would be relatively simple to get converted. The pcb architecture is broadly similar on the three games. The physics on Gorgar and Firepower are pretty good and both play close to the original games. The biggest thing I miss on the scripted games is the attract mode. The light animations on some of those games are simple but beautiful.

 

[Worf]

The guy who does the software behind the emulator (Steve Ellanoff) was the primary maintainer of (V)PinMAME until he left for FarSight a few years ago. If anyone knows how to emulate it, he does. Heck, he probably wrote it in the first place.

The only difference is that he has to start from scratch because of the MAME licensing, so it takes a little while to build up the emulation framework.

 

[kimkom]

Hmm, interesting. Thanks Worf.

Good thing is, if Steve is having to build from scratch, I'm sure he'll be implementing some upgrades over the PinMAME emulation software!

 

[Worf]

No, when Steve went to FarSight "to work on a secret project" (which became Pinball Hall of Fame) he gave up control of PinMAME to the next maintainer in line (it's changed hands several times since then). I also think to keep a "clean hands" deal going, he's not allowed to touch, see or edit PinMAME code. Otherwise there can be sticky licensing issues that I'm sure FarSight would rather avoid.

His experience in PinMAME though allows us to have TPA and licensed recreations so these pins will never be forgotten and can be played and enjoyed by far more people now. Pins are hard to find in real life, so TPA is often the only experience people will have of some of these machines.

 

[kimkom]

Oh yeah, I get that.

What I mean is, he'll obviously have experience of PinMAME code and how it operates (including any bottlenecks etc). So if he has any ideas about better ways of coding, TPA surely provides opportunities to refine and improve upon how PinMAME operated.

 

[Mark W**a]

Oh yeah, I get that.

What I mean is, he'll obviously have experience of PinMAME code and how it operates (including any bottlenecks etc). So if he has any ideas about better ways of coding, TPA surely provides opportunities to refine and improve upon how PinMAME operated.

I'd say they already do a great job. Just look at Ripley's on mobile. Great looking table, most modern emulated board so far (2000 era stern), runs butter smooth 60 fps with great geometry and good lighting for an iOS game. And that was at launch things have probably improved since then.

 

[Carl Spiby]

RBioN is the only table that doesn't run at 60fps on my Nexus 10

 

[Baron Rubik]

RBioN is the only table that doesn't run at 60fps on my Nexus 10

Runs great on an N7 though!

It's the screen res on the N10 that must be pushing your device down to 30fps.
I think Ryan stated Ripleys was the most resource intensive of all the roms to run.

Wonder how that table runs on an SGS4?

 

[superballs]

Runs nicely on the note2 as well. Can't say much about the s4 but I bet it's nice

 

[Baron Rubik]

Runs nicely on the note2 as well. Can't say much about the s4 but I bet it's nice

I was thinking it might not be as nice as some lower spec devices.

Latest devices are getting very resource hungry due to resolution demand from the displays.

The SGS4 screen is - 1080 x 1920 pixels, 5.0 inches (~441 ppi pixel density) with Quad-core 1.6 GHz Cortex-A15 & quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 and PowerVR SGX 544MP3 GPU.

Compared to the N10 - 2560 x 1600 pixels, 10.1 inches (~299 ppi pixel density) with Dual-core 1.7 GHz Cortex-A15 and Mali-T604 GPU.
I'm planning to get an S4 in a month or so once the prices drop, but am curious/worried about performance due to the screen.
If any table would test it in TPA, it would be Ripleys.
Zen would be more of a push.

Would love to hear from an early adopter. (was disappointed to hear about the - can't move to SD issue, and framerate disappointment in Nena2 benchmark).

 

[Worf]

Careful with the SGS4 because there are two models. The US one uses the quadcore Krait instead (at 1.7GHz) with Adreno something or other. The international one has the Samsung Exynos octacore.

 

[brakel]

Careful with the SGS4 because there are two models. The US one uses the quadcore Krait instead (at 1.7GHz) with Adreno something or other. The international one has the Samsung Exynos octacore.

Why do we need to be careful with that? Or why would we care?

 

[DornoDios]

Why do we need to be careful with that? Or why would we care?

I believe he is saying to 'be careful' because the US version of the phone is actually inferior to its international counterpart. Not the phone itself, but, the processor being used. Unfortunately this isn't the first time or company that has done this. It was the same way with HTC One X, although in that situation it was at least justified due to the Tegra 3 not being compatible with LTE at the time. So they couldn't use the Tegra 3 in the USA until they came out with HTC One X+.

Whether or not you actually care about that is up to you. However, it is something that is good to know about.

TLDR: SGS4 has a better processor in the international version.

 

[Shaneus]

They're all ROM emulated except Black Hole, Genie, Gorgar, Firepower, and Black Knight (for now), and of course Big Shot and Central Park since those two are EM's.

I had no idea Firepower was scripted I was under the impression that basically everything was emulated except for Black Hole and BK?

Do we know if they've redone the scripts for the older tables since they were on PHoF?

 

[Mike Reitmeyer]

Do we know if they've redone the scripts for the older tables since they were on PHoF?

For the most part, scripts are copied over and reworked to work with our new engine/framework. Big Shot was an exception, I just redid the whole table from scratch rather than try to figure out what someone else wrote 8 years ago. I think Genie was also redone from scratch, but I didn't do that table so I'm not 100% sure.

 

[brakel]

For the most part, scripts are copied over and reworked to work with our new engine/framework. Big Shot was an exception, I just redid the whole table from scratch rather than try to figure out what someone else wrote 8 years ago. I think Genie was also redone from scratch, but I didn't do that table so I'm not 100% sure.

Mike, I think you did a great job with Big Shot! The scripting seems good on Genie also but I've never played Genie in real life.

 

[Worf]

I believe he is saying to 'be careful' because the US version of the phone is actually inferior to its international counterpart. Not the phone itself, but, the processor being used. Unfortunately this isn't the first time or company that has done this. It was the same way with HTC One X, although in that situation it was at least justified due to the Tegra 3 not being compatible with LTE at the time. So they couldn't use the Tegra 3 in the USA until they came out with HTC One X+.

Whether or not you actually care about that is up to you. However, it is something that is good to know about.

TLDR: SGS4 has a better processor in the international version.

Exactly.

There was serious debate as to which was faster - the SGS3 or an iPhone 5. The international version was definitely faster than the iPhone, but the US version was a touch slower. It skewed benchmarks because they were both marked as SGS3 and confused many people.

The reason for this is the Exynos does not support CDMA, required for Verizon and Sprint when there is no LTE service. The international version uses HSPA for 3G when LTE is not available.