LED Blinky & Game EX LED Plugin

[Visitor Q]

What if any are the main differences between these two programs?

[Invincer]

What if any are the main differences between these two programs?

Just to throw my two cents in, IMO HeadKaze's plugin is much more useful and easier to configure. LED Blinkie does NOT give you the ability to feed text to BetaBrite or other LED sign displays; you can set up in one fell swoop events ranging from sounds, LCD buttons, and LED messages to play events on any number of things...

Just my two cents...

[Robert]

I don't want to hijack the thread with my own problem, but this at least relates. LED Blinkie does this nice thing that when you're in a mame game and press pause, it blinks each button as it announces the function of the button: "shoot," "thrust," etc. I could have sworn that my cab used to do that with HeadKazes's plugin, but it has stopped working and I can't figure out why.

[headkaze]

Yes my plugin does speak the Mame controls when you pause Mame. I would check your Mame settings in the Plugin Manager.

The main difference IMHO is that my plugin is more customized for GameEx. It has a bunch of extra events triggered from GameEx and a few other things like the plasma effect. Also as Invincer mentioned it supports some extra hardware such as LCD's and LED scrolly signs.

At the end of the day it's really up to the user to try them out and choose what they like the best. I have alot of respect for Arzoo (author of LEDBlinky) and have infact helped him add a number of features to LEDBlinky. He probably wouldn't mind having a few extra GameEx users running LEDBlinky so by all means give it a try.

[Endaar]

headkaze, does your plugin have any support for the various MAME outputs (lamps, etc.) other than flashing the start buttons?

Thanks for everything you do for the community.

Endaar

[headkaze]

headkaze, does your plugin have any support for the various MAME outputs (lamps, etc.) other than flashing the start buttons?

Thanks for everything you do for the community.

Endaar

It supports digit output to LCD screens and led or lamp outputs to LED's.

[Endaar]

Sorry Headkaze, I should have been more specific. I don't see a way to do per-game event settings. Thanks again.

[headkaze]

Sorry Headkaze, I should have been more specific. I don't see a way to do per-game event settings. Thanks again.

Currently there is no way to do this in the plugin. Can you give me an example of how you would like to configure this for specific games?

[Endaar]

Couple examples...

In After Burner II, one of the lamps lights-up when you have lock-on. I'd like to flash the fire button in that case. In Chase HQ, there are two lamp outputs that make up the flashing lights of the siren. I have a number of LEDs around my monitor that I'd like to use for this purpose, so that lamp0 lights a few LEDs in blue and LED1 lights other LEDs in red.

LEDBlinky has this functionality, but it only supports one output per lamp and as you know doesn't do everything that your plugin does. Mamehooker covers pretty much all the bases when it comes to handling MAME's outputs, but I suspect the LEDWiz API resets the board when a new program accesses it, so running it concurrently with your plugin results in it turning off the LEDs lit by the plugin.

I hope all that makes sense. Thanks.

James