Metallica 1.06 works fine, I just loaded it. What doesn't work for you the audio or the DMD display images? Yes, a very cool tool for sure.

Metallica Pro 1.05 works 1.06 does not.
Great work, this program is amazing.

sam_tool.jpg

So the Stern Logo is compressed-7, you can't put in your own logo then right? It must be Raster-12 type? There are probably only 10 frames in the whole rom that are Raster-12

Its not one photo, its like 75 percent of the video is missing in when you load tron. There are only the arcade, flynn sequences and the scoring,startup. Load the rom and see what you get. Perhaps tron has another compression section that is getting bypassed so you cant see the screens? Maybe all of the split screen stern games have this too. Like ij4 and wheel of fortune....

Confirmed. Excellent work! With the latest rom, check out segment beginning at 16EA showing where QUORRA lost her arm, that wasn't used in the game. Interesting ...

Yes this is a major improvement. Not only can you export, but you now know the exact size of the image in case you want to reproduce it. Great work!

Export-16F6.png Export-18CB.png Export-170A.png Export-185E.png Export-1745.png Export-1766.png

That looks cool.

There is a whole arcade segment in the rom thats not used. What would happen if you removed the arcade segment and loaded up your GEM. How do you point the animation to the correct frames?

Can you upload this modified rom for us to try? The one Russo121 modified is giving me a crc error and won't load. Perhaps the way you inserted the frames overwriting the other frames will be succesful.

Was this segment used in Spiderman? If I recall this was the part in Spiderman-3 where venom made this in the web... Its really interesting peeking inside these animations. Look how much free space is still left in this one.

rom_tool.jpg

ok, this loads in the tool. Curious what his looks like in my game I noticed 21 frames in the tool starting at 0x1FA8, but I thought you inserted 6 images. Does the tool account for timing?

Oh my gosh this is awesome! I pulled music from XMEN I never heard before.

I loaded the exported wave into audacity and the same song extracted from CD in wav format. I chose Unforgiven to compare.

When I exported sound-301 (unforgiven), it was slightly slow and a bit flat.
In Audacity, I increased the speed 2.0 percent and increased the pitch 2 half steps and it sounds pretty close to the original. Maybe this helps with your calculation?

Very very fun tool.

Thank you! I will continue exploring the options tonight. Can't wait to try it. The audio features are great.

Not only do I appreciate the work oga has done on this tool, but it also allows you for the first time ever to appreciate the hard work done on the dots and audio as you can now see how they are assembled and hear them all. Surprising to hear many sounds/music selections for the first time.

The audio work on Metallica is brilliant. Something like 12-15 snippets of each song in varying lengths from 10 seconds to full song, and played back no doubt with some gametimer running to keep track of time played. I know some people don't like the replaying of the song, but its very cleverly done and I think its great. It also gives the programmer lots of snippets to work with and would allow adjustments in the code without new samples.

In Metallica, I guess End of the line is the WIZARD MODE? Since its not in the game at the moment, and not selectable as a start song (although the other 11 are). The song is in the rom and can be played on the pop up radio, but not in gameplay. I imagine a huge surprise is waiting in a future update.

oga, about the sounds requests. I noticed you can have many audio files tied to sound request. Is it the programming that decides which audio file from the sound request to play?

Is there anyway to export a group of images instead of one at a time? Whats the little drop down box next to the image name?

btw did anyone else notice the family guy chicken fight in the shrek rom?
I don't know what's more fun to play with - the sounds or the images! Great stuff.

Thanks, I see now. I thought the .dat file was for importing. Got it now.

Yes this is true, each song has many snippets of varying length and if you want to replace a gameplay song, you'd have to have the song in those durations. This is the only rom like this.

You can try replacing the songs in the radio as a test. They are full songs and that should be easy.
Based on the time (greater than 6 min), here are a few to check out:

0x2C0
0x2D9
0x300
0x315

Yes, I haven't figured out the song letters either in the radio.

This is great news DugFreez! Nice discovery! How did it sound with the song replacements, did you like it? Did it add variety to the gameplay?

The variety I am speaking about is when you play a game and get used to a certain song and pattern happening, you know exactly whats is going to happen. But if you replace the song, the game isn;t what it was before. The song cues you know so intimately are different now. I'm wondering if it will seem like a new game, or parts that were unremarkable in the game, may take on a new mood. Anyway, can't wait to try it with one of my games.

I think the coolest thing about acdc and metallica is the ability to replace the radio songs and not replace the gameplay songs. Since metallica doesn't have the titles onscreen that would be even better. Ride the white lightening anyone? And yes dirty deeds and big balls would be my choice for song replacements on acdc in the radio for sure.

Lots of new images in the metallica 1.13 that are not used yet. Good stuff!

I wonder what the album titles are doing in the MEtallica rom ... hmmmmm

This is interesting.

Metallica PRO and LE are identical with regards to images and sounds.
BUT the LE has much less free memory available, which can only be attributed to programming rules and messages!

Name = METALLICA LE Version : v1.13 Date : JUN. 10, 2013 Free memory : 270079
Sound System :
1152 sound requests 3518 sound scripts (v3) 1174 sound fragments Type 1 : 1174
Display System : 4791 images (v2) Raster-0 : 1895 Compressed-1 : 720 Compressed-3 : 2 Compressed-7 : 2086 Compressed-9 : 18 Raster-12 : 70
Messages : 1589 messages

Name = METALLICA PRO Version : v1.13 Date : Free memory : 314815
Sound System :
1152 sound requests 3518 sound scripts (v3) 1174 sound fragments Type 1 : 1174
Display System : 4791 images (v2) Raster-0 : 1895 Compressed-1 : 720
Compressed-3 : 2 Compressed-7 : 2086 Compressed-9 : 18 Raster-12 : 70
Messages : 1567 messages

Its truly amazing what you have accomplished oga83 with this tool. Thanks for your continued work.

Is it possible to see the rules programmed in the rom? I understand it's a compile, but it would be very cool to peek inside and see the rules or the programming logic even if it was impossible to change the code. It would help to understand the complexity and marvel of these games.

Nice work Dug, I hear shadowcat will make her debut in the next version as a ball save animation!

Wow, I like the new adjustments feature.

I loaded MetLE and noticed there are adjustments for End Of Line starting mode. Perhaps a glimpse of how it will work when implemented - 50 snakes, 50 grave markers, etc. Cool stuff.

Can't wait to peek in the other game adjustments. Looks like it pulls the standard game and game specific adjustments. Great idea!

Of all the games, i think Tron is just about perfect the way it is. I can think of 2 songs that i'd like to add, like especially solar sailer, but David Thiel did an incredible job with the sound. I agree the daft punk soundtrack is excellent!

I would like to complete the phrase thats missing the key word when sam is about to enter the arena. What am i supposed to do with this .... SURVIVE.

I just compared the new Metallica rom (1.16) and it has:

11 new messages
2 new adjustments in the menu
171 new images
37 new sounds

In metallica there are multiple copies of each song, but only 1 entry is the full song.
Every other copy is a varying length of the full song. The earlier post shows the entry point of each full song. If you replace the full song, the snippetsmget replaced automatically.

My understanding is the 2 full length songs are for:
(1) for game play snippets
(1) for the radio feature

Why they can't use 1 full length song for both, I don't know, but I am sure its necessary this way or they wouldn't use the space.

Knocker? you mean solenoid?
So if I understand this, you can associate the breakout game to play when you hit a certain solenoid, like a VUK, scoop, trough, etc...

Hmm, unable to download the new version, says its not there. Are you going to upload it again?

Wow this sounds exciting! We can't view the picture you posted and there is no download link to try it yet. Maybe you are still working on it...amazing stuff man!

I dont see any performance hit when selecting led mode. The images change to whatever color you have selected and now have dots all over. Not sure what i should be seeing ... I thought there were going to be different colors on the image associated with the shade intensities?

Thanks oga, I got it now. Very cool albeit crazy colors displayed. Still amazing and I will be watching your development on this feature for sure! Great stuff indeed.

Its been said many times before. Passing bin files is a sure fire way to get Stern interested doing something about this great tool. Right now they dont care and oga was kind enough to add macros so anyone can pass on the macro and make the changes themselves ( with the necessary audio files on your own computer).

I just tried to open it running the latest AVG virus scanner and its fine. No problem oga.
Avast is giving you a false positive.

Wow, excellent work! The soundtrack is a terrific pairing with a great game! Well done!

I thought there was a text file created when you update the audio or images with pinball browser? This is the macro people are asking for.... This will make the update reproducible for anyone provided they have the audio files necessary.

I tried to load the latest xmen le code (1.51) and I get an error unknown firmware. This is with the latest pinball browser (version 3.14)

any update oga? I'd like to take a peek at the latest Metallica 1.50
I'm using 3.14 and get the unknown firmware error when loading the rom.

I'm getting an error code HRESULT 0xc))D36E3 when I try to play audio from any rom with this new version 3.20
I can export and import, but can't play the audio in pinball browser.

************* Exception Text **************
System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0xC00D36E3): Exception from HRESULT: 0xC00D36E3
at NAudio.MediaFoundation.MediaFoundationInterop.MFStartup(Int32 version, Int32 dwFlags)
at NAudio.MediaFoundation.MediaFoundationApi.Startup()
at NAudio.Wave.MediaFoundationReader..ctor(String file, MediaFoundationReaderSettings settings)
at  .(String , UInt32 )
at  .(UInt32 )
at  .(UInt32 , Boolean )
at  .(Object , EventArgs )

Yes, XP service pack 3. I know, its almost time to upgrade, but Im holding on until the end.
I cant play any rom audio IN the browser i get that error. I didnt try to export and play it with my audio player, which i am sure would work, unless i could mass export all audio samples from the rom, i wouldnt want to export a file just to hear it. Thanks oga

Wow this works great oga, I just tried it in XP with the latest MET. Awesome!

oga, is there anyway to extract a bunch of images at once to a folder instead of one at a time? Same goes for the audio, it would be cool to extract a bunch of samples at a time and pick and choose the exported files instead of one at a time.

Excellent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cant wait to try this and donate. Great work!

Oliver do you get a key in the email when you donate?

Doug, the earliest XMEN LE rom I have is LE 1.2 and this opens and plays the sounds fine in the latest pinball browser.
Is LE 1.1 somewhere I can try?

Correct. At this time only Stern SAM and WPC are supported. Sega is an early whitestar boardset and is not supported.

Can you show a WIP video of what your colorized XMEN looks like in the game?
I understand there are tons of frames to go, but it would be very cool to see at least a few seconds of XMEN colorized on the LCD of your game.

I was watching the first stern metallica pinball making of.

Seems that Stern creates their DMD animations in color and then drops them down to 16 shades of gray to display on the red dmd. Here is a frame of the metallica making of pinball. Notice the dmd frames are in color. At 0:53 you can see the pallette in the lower right... Hmm

Wow, well done! I like the color choices! Surely a labor of love, but it will be fun to see this on the LCD when its done!
Thanks for sharing and looking forward to your video when you get everything hooked up!

Yes, a usb stick is required to update the new rom to the game. Also read the "preparing sound files for pinball browser" thread somewhere on here as you need to prepare your new sounds a certain way in order to hear them clearly (compression, range, etc). Its not hard, but you have to follow the suggestions for the best results, you can't just drop a few mp3s in the browser and expect magic to happen

Yes, the update process is the same as any other SAM rom update. You are creating a new rom with your new music. You can update your rom without losing high scores. Do yourself a favor and read the thread listed a few replies back. Its all explained by OGA and others that have done it. Have fun!

No. The file structure is very different. Maybe someday.

With version 3.2 of pinball browser, some new features are reserved for those that donated to the project. One time donation gets you a registration key that opens up all features. If I recall the auto conversion of audio files that were not 24khz is one of these features. The program still works without donating, but you will have to feed it 24khz wave files if you want to use the free version. I think oga asked for $10 or so as a donation. A super bargain as the program has had constant updates for the past 2 years. Click on donate in the program if you want to donate to the project and oga will send you a registration key.

Whoops sorry didn't see the previous poster answered

Seriously oga, you ROCK! Thanks for letting us customize our games.

The official link is in this post. Download it from there.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/acdc-display-and-modify-dot-matrix-images/page/38#post-2722290

Wow, whitestar in pinball browser very cool! Is there any way to display the DMD frames or is it just sounds for now?
Thanks!

Get the latest vpinmame version from vpuniverse. It has cabinet mode and ignore CRC so modified roms (like pinballbrowser saved) work fine without any errors.

pinmame_ignore_CRC_(resized).png

If you keep the name of the bin and zip that vpinmame has defined it works. For example:
Clelands TWD PRO version. This would crash vpinmame until it was renamed to the defined name.

twd_156.zip (twd_156.bin inside the zip)

If you want to know the names. Click on setup in the vpinmame folder, then test and it shows the name of the binary that vpinmame has defined for the game/version. Of course if its a SAM game you also need the sam.vbs

The samples in the STERN SAM roms are 16 bit mono. Anything that is replaced will also be saved in 16bit mono so don't expect audiophile quality out of the Stern SAM. I've been playing TWD resamples by various folks and don't notice any crackles.

See post 798 in this thread for sound file specifics. You can't just use a high bit rate stereo wave file, it has to be mono

I'm curious. Are the animations stored as movie files or are they compressed images?

Is there anyway to play back the movies in the .spk or .img for batman 66?

That's some fine work oga!!!

I thought you could do that right now? Aren't they just mp3 files in a folder on the sdcard? pinballbrowser is not needed for this.

Get an older version of pinball browser 4.40 or earlier and you can export sounds.

No. Stern Sam, spike, white star and wpc
See first post for faq

You have to use an older version of pinball browser 4.40 or earlier or 6.00 (corrected, thanks oga!)

I took a quick look and it appears they used 2 images.
Image-0x07C5 - the eye ball on the left
Image-0x07D6 - the flaming tail on the right

If you overlay both of these you get the image you posted. Not sure what would happen if you modified the individual frames, it probably would mess up the animation.

Looks like Pinball Browser can't open the latest ACDC 1.70. I tried the PRO and LE roms and neither load with the latest pinball browser. The program just hangs and spins its wheels and you have to kill the process. 1.68 all variants load just fine.

oga, are you able to load the latest ACDC code in pinball browser? Several of us have tried the Pro or LE and the program just spins and spins.
I tried several versions of pinball browser including the latest.
http://www.sternpinball.com/games/ac-dc/pro

Thank you!

Thanks! Confirmed, I had no problem opening 1.68 and 1.70 with the new version. Great work!

Pb is a great tool for pinball customizations but colorizing an entire Sam game is next to impossible since the color data will fill up availabile memory in the rom. Would you rather spend 6 months colorizing your game and getting some of the game colorized or drop in a colordmd and have the entire game already colorized to enjoy now? I guess if you want to do it for fun go for it. I know what I would do.

True but you can't test SPIKE roms on the vpin.

No, p-roc games don't use Roms.

Spooky changed to new electronics with all their games since TNA so pinball browser will do nothing with the p3roc games.
AMH, Rob Zombie, dominos, and jetsons use the ben heck board.

Nope

There are no roms in P-roc games. Audio files(music/sounds) are discrete files saved in the assets folder.

I think you'll see this with every release from now on unfortunately.

Match number is dynamic, like a score. You won't see this as an image in pb.

Nope, sending the macro to someone simply gives them the pointers they need to build the modified rom. The user you give a macro to will need to have the songs/clips on their computer in the correct directories for the macro to work. No copyrighted content is sent in the macros so they are tiny files.

Nope. The tool does nothing to gamecode so there is no option to change any gamecode.

Yes, its a rom memory issue (nothing to do with the pc or sdcard). it doesn;t seem like all colored frames will fit in the rom space, you'll run out fast.

lucky1 had some advice on maybe using another tool to get around the size limit. Other people have failed at coloring SAM titles for the same reason. (post 4076)
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/acdc-display-and-modify-dot-matrix-images/page/82#post-5816778

of you can turn off the sound if I recall in the settings on the pinball machine.

Nope, not possible with pinball browser.

probably better to ask in the AIQ threads

Question. If you replace a video in Bond for instance with another video, does the imported video have to match the pixel size?
The Bond video I am replacing is 988x446. Does the video I am importing to replace have to be converted to 988x446? (Its currently the same length but is 1920x816.

The video imported fine and looks ok in the pinball browser viewer, but I wanted to check before putting this in my game.

Ahh that makes sense thanks!