Duimon - HSM Mega Bezel Graphics and Presets - Feedback and Updates

Duimon · 22 May 2021 21:43

Why not just make 10 louder?

Here’s some progress on this.

Baby steps. The monitor is still raster from my original graphic. I managed some small toggle switches.

They’re not perfect but since they are so small I think they will work. I may tweak them a bit.

At this stage nothing ever seems good enough. As more objects are added the individual perfection stops mattering so much. The whole is enough to trick the mind into filling in the missing details.

With the MAME overlay I wasn’t satisfied with the green lamps. Eventually I changed them to amber in the code. and compiled my own MAME binary.

As I was saying. Even with the MAME games that have default layouts, like the color vector games, there is an actual layout file that is compiled into the binary. You can see it if you look at the source.

Not so with the PDP-1. None of the hardware is exposed. All the layout stuff is hard coded into the pdp1.cpp and pdp1.h files.

I am trying to figure out a way to color the lights amber using the shader but no blending mode on the layer I am using over the lamps has the desired effect. The best I can get is an ugly pea-green.

If there were individual color controls on each screen I could use grade. I am going to try it on the whole thing and see what happens.

I spent months finding various images of this computer on the Interwebs that I could piece together to make the original. I will probably spend an equal amount of time on this version.

That being the case I will probably work on it part time while I do the rest of the core graphics. I would really like a complete set by the time the shader hits v1.0.

Duimon · 22 May 2021 22:22

I managed to find a way to turn the lamps amber. I used grade to change the hue of the screen until the lamps were amber. Then used the cabinet glass layer in multiply blending mode to turn the screen green. (Since the Gel layer does weird things in dual screen mode.) The pdp-1 actually used a radar screen so it was quite green.

Now that I can change the color of the lamps I can change the color of the lamp diffusers back to off white. (Instead of the dark amber I was using in this attempt.)

I am going to try a brighter green on the glass layer also.

Duimon · 23 May 2021 14:48

Getting better!

Even the black on the screen is a bit green after I lowered the contrast just a hair.

I’m not sure this is desirable, and the lamps are still a WIP. I see a lot of potential though.

akuma22 · 23 May 2021 20:07

Duimon you are going to have to remove the sam coupe from the list, because I have no way of emulating it with mame.

Duimon · 23 May 2021 21:52

It was never on the list.

akuma22 · 23 May 2021 22:48

Well, better because you save work, because it doesn’t work.

Duimon · 23 May 2021 23:03

Here’s a little video I made showing the WIP of the PDP-1 and Spacewar.

Duimon · 24 May 2021 04:50

Here’s another WIP shot.

I turned the contrast back up so the screen is blacker. (I will eventually have a reflection on the screen anyway.) I also reduced the opacity of the screen overlay to just past the point where it tinted all the pixels green. (It was too saturated and it was eliminating intensity variation.)

I also increased the phosphor persistence.

The screen is also hard coded into the driver so although bloom works, a vector shader will not really work here, even the phosphor persistence is hard coded.

My increased persistence was really geared toward the lamps. They were incandescent bulbs and fairly persistent themselves. (They look better now than they ever did in the MAME overlay. )

Next up is the monitor. Then it’s time to put this to bed for a bit and do something else.

Like the original, this may seem like a lot of work for just one game, but I feel the historical significance of this particular game is worth it. It is a labor of love.

Leatherface · 24 May 2021 08:37

Thank you Duimon ! These Arcade backgrounds are really great !

Duimon · 24 May 2021 17:34

Here’s something new!

The Amstrad GX4000 WIP!

I had a couple of choices on what parts of the console I showed. (The outer-most parts are also cool and distinctive, but the LED would have been hidden.) I chose to show the LED.

Duimon · 24 May 2021 23:14

Here’s another.

The Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP!

And I decided to give the GX4000 a lighter background. The extreme contrast looked funky.

akuma22 · 25 May 2021 08:52

Magnificent, you have been luxurious as always, wanting to try the gx4000.

Duimon · 25 May 2021 10:24

I’m waiting on a shader update before the WonderSwan are in the repo. I’ll get the others up ASAP.

Duimon · 25 May 2021 22:32

Here’s another WIP on the PDP1.

And with a custom flipped night image. (Custom because right now I need to cut a hole in it.)

The original had custom lighting. I will eventually add that so there won’t be a need for the night layer.

The monitor will never live up to the 3D render I did originally. I could just render a 4K version but I’m not sure how I feel about that. It doesn’t fit into my mission statement.

There is still a bit of work to do on the monitor so maybe it will get closer to the rendering by the time I am done.

HyperspaceMadness · 25 May 2021 22:57

For my 2 cents I would go for the 4K render, the rendered one is so nice with all those shadows and metal shading

Duimon · 26 May 2021 00:55

I hear you. Turns out I rendered it in 4K originally. Looking at the two though, I think I’m almost there. I am going to work at it a bit more.

One thing I have going for me is that, unlike my usual Interwebs source, I have a really good source to work from.

Duimon · 26 May 2021 22:28

Here’s what I have now.

I think it measures up pretty well.

Side by side there is really very little difference between it and the rendered version. The shadows are some tricky blends and masks.

Duimon · 27 May 2021 02:38

I was setting things up for the next step and realized I had some incorrect scale.

Here is the new fixed version.

And a mock-up of the next pieces to the puzzle.

For many reasons the tape reader will be difficult.

The source shows the reader in motion, so the tape is jumping around and there is a lot of blur.
How in the heck do you draw thin paper tape in Illustrator?

Here’s hoping I can sort it out.

(Full disclosure… I think that the tape holding rack is just kind of stuck to the cabinet, it is the least important feature and I may nix it. For that matter, no rule says there has to be tape in the reader either.)

One more:

This one shows the screen reflection from the original, which I will be keeping. It is a ghostly reflection of the PDP-1 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

I created it intentionally to act as a phosphor layer and give the screen an authentic feel.

@HyperspaceMadness My friend, it is truly an amazing pleasure to use the features in the Mega Bezel. It just blows my mind that I can do this without changing a single line of code in the MAME core!

HyperspaceMadness · 27 May 2021 11:57

That’s great! It’s good that you can do what you need without having to do special code and recompile an emulator!

Mind you, I find your tenacity that you did that in the past quite impressive.

Duimon · 27 May 2021 14:18

Thank you. I thought then, and still do now, that this MAME driver needs more love.

I have an issue posted on the MAME GitHub hoping someone will add what is needed to allow this game to run via normal SL methods instead of command line parameters. No bites so far.

I may try to convince the devs to change the lamp color. My work around does the trick though. The only thing I can’t do is move the vertical row of lamps over to the center.