LED Effects Triggered by In-Game Action?

[Griffen]

I've seen some sweet LED implementation on control panels on the net. But I would love to see a step more.

Is it possible, in any emulator to cause an "LED Animation" on your control panel due to events in an emulated game (such as on MAME)

Imagine Marvel Vs. Capcom

Ryu summons his super charged energy attack /My Buttons Shimmer bright energized colors/

Ryu Unleashes

/Energized colors rush from left to right! through both players buttons!/

is that possible? or does that require info from the game that would be hard to tap?

Perhaps the button combination to cause the attack in game could case the animation on the panel?

[DJ Infinity]

I'm no programmer but that does seem to be a tall order

while we are wishing I would like to see skill buttons flashing on Space Ace in Daphne

[Brian Hoffman]

I'm no programmer but that does seem to be a tall order

while we are wishing I would like to see skill buttons flashing on Space Ace in Daphne

Well such a program wont realize what the game is doing... It may be possable to do it via sound. When the audio is intense (eg special attacks) it may blink.. Kinda like the way a graphical equilizer works by showing levels of audio intensity.

[headkaze]

Yeah I agree with Brian here, audio feedback would be best. Check out LuminAudio program.

[crummy]

To actually implement this, you'd need to go DEEP into MAME's code, on a per-game basis. I have little knowledge of this but I would guess it'd be very difficult.

[bkenobi]

If there were some hardware hooks already built into the game, it seems like it may be possible. For instance, there are already hooks in some games to flash the player start buttons when you need to add more money. Those kinds of actions are already captured by HK's plugin AFAIK. If you want to have it work the way you stated and with the current system that HK implemented, that would require hacking the rom to add those hardware hooks. That is NOT an easy task!!! If anything, I would also agree that a sound based scheme could be developed to do this, but it probably wouldn't work the way you want.

To me, this seems like something that would have to be developed into the game when it was initially programmed...

[headkaze]

The Mame Output System actually emulates the real game. So for example, DigDug will flash the P1 and P2 Start buttons when you insert a coin. This is emulation of the actual game. To add in other triggered events would be very dificult and like bkenobi says require hacking the ROM. As an emulator all it does is emulate the hardware, Mame doesn't know what is going on inside the game. I'm not even sure if Mame is aware you have inserted a coin in the game apart from the fact you pressed the insert coin button. Personally I think it would be great if they added more events to Mame's Output System, but I doubt they will go beyond emulating the events of the actual game.

[popcorrin]

Actually there was a person over at byoac that was doing exactly what you are asking a couple of years ago but he disappeared. The one event that I remember that he did have working was when the ball was ready to throw in Mr. Do it would light the fire button. If I can track down the thread I will post it here.

[Tempest]

The Mame Output System actually emulates the real game. So for example, DigDug will flash the P1 and P2 Start buttons when you insert a coin. This is emulation of the actual game. To add in other triggered events would be very dificult and like bkenobi says require hacking the ROM. As an emulator all it does is emulate the hardware, Mame doesn't know what is going on inside the game. I'm not even sure if Mame is aware you have inserted a coin in the game apart from the fact you pressed the insert coin button. Personally I think it would be great if they added more events to Mame's Output System, but I doubt they will go beyond emulating the events of the actual game.

Disclaimer: I don't know much about what I'm about to say so this if off the record (It can't be used to break my winning streak!)

I wouldn't know how you could get your "hooks" into it, but I think the easiest way to do something like this would be to use the Mame Cheats. Using Mr. Do as the example, The user would do a search for the value that changes between when the player has the ball, and when he doesn't. Then Name the cheat LEDWIZ.

Here comes the fuzzy part... you monitor that cheat, and then have the LEDWiz do whatever the user defines to have happen. So if the cheat is looking for a 1 at address F5A2, you keep an Eye on that address (which I know doesn't really exist), and do your thing when it goes to 1.

This is either genius, or idiocy...the bad part is I don't know which

[bkenobi]

That might work, but it depends on how the game was programmed. If someone was interested in this and willing to put the work in, that wouldn't be a waste of time.