LCD Files

[Chazz]

Is it possible to use the LCD Files with GameEx? I had it working great with MameWah on my Pro-Lite, but the LCD Smartie Plug-in doesn't seem to support this sign.

Thanks!

[bazzman69]

Is it possible to use the LCD Files with GameEx? I had it working great with MameWah on my BetaBrite, but the LCD Smartie Plug-in doesn't seem to support this sign.

Thanks!

how on earth do you go about doing this i love it and want this on my next cab

http://bazzman.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/index.jhtml

[Chazz]

A few more pics

[Ricci]

That is killer! Can you give some details as to how to add that to a cab??? Wow!!

[bazzman69]

That is killer! Can you give some details as to how to add that to a cab??? Wow!!

yes pls pls pls that looks awsome any chance on some info what components etc

cheers baz

http://bazzman.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/index.jhtml

[headkaze]

What you need to do is contact the company that makes the electronic sign and get a communication protocol document that details how you communicate to the sign via serial. Once you have the document it can be decided how difficult it would be to add support for the sign.

[Atari800]

This looks like you can copy a files to the COM port which this sign would be connected to

copy /b sign.lcd com1:

I am not sure what is in the sign.lcd file

The signs ranges from $70 to $200 on eBay

[headkaze]

Judging by the the basic source it would be easy to send text to this kind of sign.

[Chazz]

Thanks for the interest guys!!

I have two signs connected to my Cab. The top one is a Pro-Lite, and the bottom one is a Alpha 4200.

With MameWah I was able to use the LCD Files with the Pro-Lite sign using the COM port. As Atari800 said it's easy to send a LCD file using the excat command line he mentioned. Is there an easy way to do this with GameEx? Can this be done with a batch file?

The bottom sign is a Alpha 4200 which I can use animated GIFs with. I've made a bunch of arcade related graphics for the sign : Graphics

[bazzman69]

awsome are these graphics (the ones you made) the only ones available or are there graphics for every game also are they hard to make , how do you go about it im igoing nuts over this its just about the best thing you could add to a cab

[headkaze]

You can check out the software that comes with these signs here

I wonder if MinWah would be kind enough to share his source on supporting this sign?

[Chazz]

awsome are these graphics (the ones you made) the only ones available or are there graphics for every game also are they hard to make , how do you go about it im igoing nuts over this its just about the best thing you could add to a cab

Hey Bazzman,

These are the only graphics I have made so far. If you have any requests I might be able to do up some new graphics.

I use Photoshop to do the graphics, and for the animated images I use Photoshop and Flash. It's can be tricky to draw the graphics, but If you have the time it can be fun. The hard part is drawing the image when you're limited to only 120x16 pixels and 3 colors. This is the real size of the GIFs >

[headkaze]

So what is needed to add support for this sign to LCD Smartie? As far as I can tell it's just a matter of sending the .lcd files through the COM port. Am I right? Sending text looks like it's just using ascii with some escape sequences for effects.

[Atari800]

he mentions ANIMATED GIFS

so if you can identify the name of the game playing (Window Handle..title???) then it would probably be associated to the rom running

The (not to harp on Visual basic) read teh title of the window and grab the name then construct an OS call/batch file/whatever to do:

copy /b (insert rom name running in mame).gif com1:

Thats my guess...providing you had a gif named after the rom running

[headkaze]

he mentions ANIMATED GIFS

so if you can identify the name of the game playing (Window Handle..title???) then it would probably be associated to the rom running

The (not to harp on Visual basic) read teh title of the window and grab the name then construct an OS call/batch file/whatever to do:

copy /b (insert rom name running in mame).gif com1:

Thats my guess...providing you had a gif named after the rom running

It would more likely be an lcd file which would contain text and embedded gif files. So I would guess the software that comes with the sign would be used to create the lcd files. And you rename them (as you say) for each game, <rom name>.lcd, and when the game is launched and lcd file exists it will send it to the COM port. Pretty much how you said it Atari which is how I would expect it to work. But I'm pretty sure it has it's own custom format called *.lcd. The bundled software may import gif's but will probably remove the gif header and place the animited graphic data into the *.lcd using it's own custom format (just a guess). But I don't think it would be hard to do at all. If MinWah can do it, I think we can too!

If someone (who actually owns one and wants this incorporated into GameEx LCD Smartie) would do a bit of research into this and provide the raw methods we need to get this to work then it might have a chance of being added. I might even write class for it to save Tom doing it. We don't necessarily need code, since I have written a program to control a standard red led sign in VB6 a long time ago and I used a protocol document supplied by the manufacturer. If it really is as simple as sending an *.lcd file then that will be VERY easy to add.

I've never looked at LCD Smartie but I doubt it uses a batch file to send data to the COM port. I've got some code here somewhere for controlling the COM ports in .NET, so it's probably a nicer way to do it.

[Chazz]

Only the Alpha sign uses the GIFs which is just an slideshow of the graphics I've done. You couldn't just grab any image and send it to the sign unless it was 120x16.

The Pro-Lite is the one that I'd like to have interactive with GameEx as I did with MameWah.

The LCD files are just simple text files that get copied to the COM port. Here's an example for Vs. Super Mario Bros.

SUPRMRIO.LCD = <ID01><PA>Vs. Super Mario Bros.

I have all the LCD files for every game in a LCD folder with Mame.

[headkaze]

Okay I've done a bit of research and I think you can get a BetaBrite working in GameEx quite easily.

What you need to do is download the LCD Gen program and generate the *.lcd files for the BetaBrite. Move them into a folder (Eg. C:\MAME\lcd) Then use a batch file to send the rom name to the serial port or directly copy it using the Run on launch (ShellBeforeLaunch) command in the Advanced Mame Settings.

E.g.

ShellBeforeLaunch=copy /b C:\MAME\lcd\[ROM].lcd com1:

GameEx will replace [ROM] with the actual name of the rom. None of this has been tested, so can you get back to me and let me know if it works.

[Atari800]

If that works I am going to SAMS CLUB and buying one

[headkaze]

If that works I am going to SAMS CLUB and buying one

I can write a little app to send the *.lcd files to the COM port if the copy command dosn't work. But I'm pretty confident you can get it to work with GameEx using the method above.

Also, as for the Alpha signs that use 120x16 gif files, has anyone thought to batch convert all the marquee's to that size? That would be bloody cool to have it display the marquee of the game while your playing. If someone here has an alpha sign, I'd like to see if I can get that to work.

[Chazz]

What you need to do is download the LCD Gen program and generate the *.lcd files for the BetaBrite. Move them into a folder (Eg. C:\MAME\lcd) Then use a batch file to send the rom name to the serial port or directly copy it using the Run on launch (ShellBeforeLaunch) command in the Advanced Mame Settings.

IT WORKS!!! Sending the file to the COM port with Run on Launch works perfectly!!! Thank you so much Headkaze!!! I didn't think it would be that simple!!!

I'll take some pics later tonight!

Thanks again!!

[Atari800]

Chazz

How many Animated Marguess things do you have created?

or better yet...

Approx. how long does it take to make one?

Is there a program that automatically can resize and adjust color levels or is that all done with Photoshop?

It would be cool to get "something" to do the bulk work

I know the animation part would be the longest - but is there some generic things the LCD can do?

-like dissolve a picture in, or slide it in, or spin it in....some built in features?

Also, what about the weight and does it put off any heat?

[Chazz]

Chazz

How many Animated Marguess things do you have created?

or better yet...

Approx. how long does it take to make one?

Is there a program that automatically can resize and adjust color levels or is that all done with Photoshop?

It would be cool to get "something" to do the bulk work

I know the animation part would be the longest - but is there some generic things the LCD can do?

-like dissolve a picture in, or slide it in, or spin it in....some built in features?

Also, what about the weight and does it put off any heat?

Hey Atari800,

I have about 10 animated marquees that I've done. They take a few hours to a day to do, depending on what it is.

There are programs that will resize images for you, but I doubt it will work with the sign. Resizing any image to 120x16 will look crappy, that's why I had to draw all mine from scratch. Here are all my GRAPHICS.

The sign has the basic animations like wipe, slide, split, and stuff like that. It doesn't really put off too much heat, a little warm, but not hot. And I'm not sure how much it weighs, but it's not light.

[headkaze]

It certainly wouldn't look as good as hand doing the marquee's like you have done Chazz, but using a program like Image Magick would allow you to bulk convert all the marquee's to 120x16 using a variaty of algorithms (nearest neighbour would probably be best) then lowering the colours. But yeah, the results could be questionable.

BTW I'm glad to see the method I showed worked okay. But was there anything you needed to change, just so in the future if someone asks the same thing we can give them the right command line argument.

[Chazz]

It certainly wouldn't look as good as hand doing the marquee's like you have done Chazz, but using a program like Image Magick would allow you to bulk convert all the marquee's to 120x16 using a variaty of algorithms (nearest neighbour would probably be best) then lowering the colours. But yeah, the results could be questionable.

BTW I'm glad to see the method I showed worked okay. But was there anything you needed to change, just so in the future if someone asks the same thing we can give them the right command line argument.

Hey Headkaze,

The command line worked excatly as you said, I didn't have to change a thing.

As for Image Magick, I just gave it a try and I'm not having much luck. I resized a marquee to 120x16 and saved it, but nothing seems to be saved. It saves it as a blank file (0 bytes). Could you try resizing one and let me know what you come up with? Also, how would I convert the colors to only Red, Yellow, and Green?

Thanks!

[headkaze]

Hey Chazz, I got Image Magick converting the marquees to the format you need okay, but the results vary alot depending on the marquee. You need to make a batch file and copy one of your images over that has the palette you want (in this case I used your pacman.gif). Say you have a directory of png files, the following command will convert them all to gif, resize them to 120x16 and use the palette from the file pacman.gif. You might want to look at the mogrify command line switches and try some other switches to see if you get better results.

mogrify -contrast -interpolate nearest-neighbor +antialias -resize 120x16! -colors 4 +dither -map pacman.gif -format gif *.png