Some good news. I noticed that the quality of our animation appeared to be a little better than the original machine. Steve and I have discussed this a few times and he never believed me until he ran some tests yesterday. It appears that we do draw frames more consistantly than the original. So we have actually improved the system if even slightly. The funny thing is that while playing you really don't have a chance to notice that much

Sounds Great!

Are you referring to frame rate issues? I can imagine the more powerful computer could keep up better. What frame rate is used in p2k video?

Related, are the graphics used in the games 'bitmaps' or are they rendered on the fly? I seem to remember hearing a ToPcast about using real 3d models in the games.

All of the animations in the game are bitmaps. I'm sure they used a 3d package to design and animate them then converted them to 2d.

Have you seen any improvement with switch responsiveness? An example is what happens when you launch a ball and it rolls down the lit lane - it takes awhile for the corresponding bonus score graphic and sound effect to run.

I have really noticed an improvement in the responsiveness of the switch to the right of the main target bank. I think it's a proximity switch. It didn't register well on fast shots on the original hardware. With our box hooked up it registers just about every time.

We do actually run the software faster than the original which is good for all sorts of reasons.

That capture lane proximity switch seems to miss a lot so this is great news. I've replaced them on my RFM and it didn't help any. I had been looking for a 266 mHz cpu for my machine but your solution seems better

Chuck wrote:All of the animations in the game are bitmaps. I'm sure they used a 3d package to design and animate them then converted them to 2d.

Yes, I think lightwave was mentioned when the dotguy was interviewed on topcast.

Interesting. I am an expert Lightwave user, and I always wondered if that's what was used to render the 3D stuff in the graphics package of RFM.

I also wonder why they left out eyeballs on the livestock in the "Big-O-Beam" mode!

Whoever set up and rendered the bar scene was pretty good at Lightwave, especially the character animation.

What if we could replicate the 3D models used and render out new, better graphics for the bitmaps used in RFM? I could do it alright, given the TIME. Just dreaming here.

-James

JB wrote:I also wonder why they left out eyeballs on the livestock in the "Big-O-Beam" mode!

I never noticed that...