I worked on a dot matrix tool years ago for someone who was creating a custom pinball game - this might help those trying to make images. I'm not sure if the same applies, but here's what we did.

If converting color images into low-color format for use on a dot matrix display; try creating a palette file for photoshop (or your image tool of choice) that can be loaded when converting the image to 'dot matrix' color levels. For example, we used something like (RGB values shown)

0,0,0
100,0,0
150,0,0
200,0,0
250,0,0

You create the palette file in photoshop first, using only those colors (color mode, indexed color, custom - then create a palette). For oga's tool, you may need to use something like :

0,0,0
100,100,100
150,150,150
200,200,200
250,250,250

Save the palette to a file/place you will know where it is, you'll have to re-load it every time photoshop restarts when you want to convert things.

Next, get your full color image. You'll probably want to adjust the contrast and brightness and tidy up any 'noisy' areas before converting and cropping/resizing the image. You'll have to play with this a bit until you find a way that works best. Resize the image to the desired size, using nearest neighbor resampling, if I'm remembering correctly (I think I played with this a bit, really depends on how 'busy' the image is).

Now, you can try next to convert it using the palette file you created. If it doesn't look right, undo the change and tweak it more, for example increasing the contrast and maybe lowering the brightness. You'll also want to play with dithering types; for example 'pattern' or 'diffusion'. Try it, and see how it looks. If you don't like it, undo, and try a different type of dithering; or none - again this kind of depends on the image and how it converts and looks.

Again, I should mention I'm not familiar with the new Stern stuff, at the time we were limited to 4 shades + 'off'. But it might be a good starting point. If Stern stuff can use more colors, you could even try creating a 8 or 16 color grayscale palette (space out the intensities evenly through the color range) and see if that works. The reason I mention this is because doing this first on a computer might save you the hassle of having to re-flash the game every time you want to get an idea of how a DMD might display it. If it looks funky in grayscale, it will look like dog crap on a DMD. You'll want to compare what you see on your screen the first time you flash things to determine if you need to adjust your palette on the PC to reflect more accurately what the DMD is actually doing with the image.

I tried to type this out quick and I'm tired so there may be mistakes.

Sorry for duplicate post - please delete. I got an error when I hit post and thought it didn't work

Can this be used on a Mac?

I tried this and ran into a small problem that I thought I would share. I used Audacity to conver a MP3 I had. After I chose to export it (as a WAV) a box popped up that had tag information about the song (track name, artist name, ripped with itunes, ect). So I just clicked OK and let it ride.

Then when I went to import the WAV the Pinball Browser gave me a "this wav file is empty" "Can not use" error or something like that. So I checked the file and it played fine with Windoes Media Player. The I opened it again with Audacity and it showed as a 24000 hz WAV and played fine. I went to export again and this time when I got the the popup window with the tag information I cleared everything from the tag (there was a clear button) then saved it.

After removing the tag info from the wav it imported fine in Pinball Browser.

So just a little tip to pass on to anyone if they have this problem when importing.

Someone whip up a batch of gnarly Family Guy callouts & images please

Generic Marge & Lisa callouts for TSPP too please

TSPP was Whitestar (Pre SAM System) so this program won't work for it.

Here's a sample of converting an image using oga83's 16 color palette parameters.

Sure it isn't perfect, but I slapped it together fairly quickly. Large version for viewing, small version is 128x32 pixels and probably could be converted to BMP in your image editor and put into a game. I just googled "wolverine" and "xmen logo" to find images to play with, they are also below for reference.

898844-wolverine14.jpg
XMen-Logo.jpg

Result :
========
xmen_conversion_test.gif

128x32 version, could possibly be used on actual hardware.
Convert to BMP first.
====================================
xmen_conversion_test_128x32.gif

Edit : Here's what it looks like in pinmame, to give you a feel for it.

xmen_pinmame_sample.gif

That looks really good

Only if you run Windows through bootcamp.

I was hoping you could help me out with this image editing. I have used nothing but MS Paint. Is there a way in Paint to convert an image to the suggested color pallet? If not...what is a good program to use? Preferably free.

Keep in mind I am not interested in drawing anything myself....just converting color images to the correct 16 color pallet that was suggested.

Thanks

oga83, much improvement with the sound quality as far as exporting a sound from one place and importing it to another.

I did a pretty heavy job on my X-Men adding sounds from other games and also music from my MP3s. It all came out pretty well. I did see after my first attempt that I needed to take better care with balancing the volumes on each sound and song.

I was also wondering...I notice that the WAV files that are exported are stereo. This seems strange since SAM games are only mono. Are the sounds in the firmwares true stereo, just 2 mono tracks (fake stereo) or are the wavs that are output just stereo because of the way your program exports them.

I was wondering if converting a stereo mp3 to a mono wav would be beneficial over converting it to a stereo wav to import?...or would that be a bad thing?

Try Gimp or Irfanview

GIMP 2.8 for image editing (free. Laid out like photoshop)

http://www.gimp.org/

oga83, I have another suggestion.

I see in version 1.65 that you have the the window that shows the lumped together sound requests. When you select the sound request from that window by highlighting it....it automatically moves the slider above it to the correct position for that sound.

I was wondering if you could have the same thing, but in reverse. What I mean is...if you are using the slider and find a sound effect....can you make that auto highlight in the lower window so you can see all of it's related request sounds?

As it is now, as you scroll down the list in the window (on the X-Men LE firmware anyway) the slider jumps all over the place. So without the feature I suggested...it can make it tricky finding all of the same request sounds if you run into the sound by using the slider.

It's a bit tricky to describe, but it basically boils down to tying the window to a slider selection, just as the slider is already tied to a window selection.

I think this would make it a bit easier to find sounds and their related sound request group.

Thanks again for your work. I am thinking of starting a thread with some simple tutorials on getting sound clips prepared to import using Audacity. I am still experimenting with getting sound level set and things like that, but I figured some simple tips on how to convert mp3s may be helpful.

Incredible, just in awe over what you are enabling. Love seeing Pandora's box being opened! Really hoping that no manufacturers are threatened by this and put in methods of stopping this in the future. It really breathes life in to the hobby I think and scratches the modders itch so nicely!

Bug Report?

I have been playing with X-Men LE 1.24 and noticed some music was missing. I had searched the entire slider of sound and didn't find them.

Then I started going through the request lists and found them.

It looks like the slider doesn't go far enough to the right or something. The farthest the sound slider will go to the right is position 0x3E3. If you look at request 28 it shows a file at 0x3EB (which is beyond the sliders range).

It will play the files that are beyond the sliders range, but only if select them from the request list.

Others requests I found beyond the slider range were:

33 0x3E4
34 0x3E5
46 0x3E6
47 0x3E7
48 0x3E9
51 0x3E4
64 0x3E5

There may be more, but that is all I ran into.

After looking some more I see that there is a file at 0x3EA and 0x3E8 that neither have a request (that I could see) nor could be reached with the slider. The only way I found them was to first select request 28 and then click the left button on the slider. This got to them even though they are normally out of the sliders range.

If people start sharing modified versions of the firmware then that is when the manufacturers will take action.

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.

I commend the work you are doing, and can not wait to benefit from using it.

The reason Stern would not want this info out, is to protect the license of the game being altered. Marvel for instance would not want anyone to assume the added swear words or nude pics of Storm were ment to be in XMEN.

Another thing Stern has tried to keep under wraps is the LOTR LE mod to a regular LOTR.

Can we just say NOW that OGA83 needs a IndieGoGo funder for his work on this?

IMHO, I think Batman DK could use a system overhaul in the quotes/graphics/music department. Any way to add this clip would be epic:

I'm working on the music/quotes now.

I might actually try to pull Batman quotes from the animated series. Kevin Conroy was freakin' awesome, and there is a lot more to pull from.

Right now, I'm just messing with some music clips. It's tough getting them to loop correctly.

Pete

I love it, and as a software guy I am totally cheering you on as I can't wait to make all my tables 'my own'

I just hope that Stern doesn't get upset about content being released that perhaps they thought was safely hidden away. Once we see how much is missing from the current release code it could cause some folks to think they are getting shorted (like me lol, I want all the sexy Tron speech implemented!). They wouldn't take the time or be bothered to cut out all the unused content in the future just to keep a fraction of their players from peeking inside I'm sure.

Getting ready for the first trial run on this program...heading to flash my Stern Batman.

(I replaced the three main music themes...which I think are pretty awful. It's like they wanted to sound like a Batman theme, but without getting sued...so it comes off as Batman-ish, but 100% awful).

I messed around with the "Molossus" track off of the first soundtrack (ie: Tumbler rooftop chase from the first movie). I got three pretty good "themes" out of there, and was able to get them to sound decent at the loop.

I'll use those to replace the Ball 1 theme, the Ball 2 theme, and the Final ball theme. I'm leaving the rest as-is for now.

If this works, I'll start replacing "Fake Batman" with Kevin Conroy, and "Fake Alfred" with....dear god, anything.

Wish me luck.

Pete

Good luck. I'm surprised you got so deep into getting things ready before giving it a small test flash. Let us know how it goes.

On a related note...no need to worry about looping "Ride the Lightning" if you want it to play instead of "Creeping Death" during Electric Chair multiball on Metallica....they are the same length. I like Creeping Death better as a song, but I have to say Ride the Lightning is a much more fitting song in that scenario. I just wish I had a Met to see how well it works or doesn't work with the song breaks.

PS: "Blackened" fits nicely in "The Unforgiven" time slot if you trim the intro a bit.

Oh, I'm just a big baby that didn't want to lose my high scores or audits. =)

(I took down all those notes before flashing it. I'm a stat junkie).

It worked...but the audio was way too soft. (I tried pumping it up beforehand, but it still couldn't keep up with the things I didn't remove).

I tried again, this time cranking up the volume in audacity...even hitting some peak reds. I also adjusted the treble to make the main theme "stand out" a little bit better. That trial worked better....but I think I can still make improvements.

I'll keep playing around with Audacity and this awesome program by oga83.

Pete

I have flashed 2 or 3 times and all of my scores and settings stayed. I figured this was because the error after the update. I figured as long as the update wasn't finalized it keeps all settings, scores and audits (that's just a guess though).

The music that is imported does seem to vary a lot. I have maxed the volume out on all of the music I have imported with Audacity (max volume without red lining). Some sound like they are mixed well with the original music and others (most) are way to quiet.

I just got back from Vacation and I am seeing the very cool program.
There is hope for me to get AC/DC Dirty Deeds in my pin.
Great work!

I'm guessing Stern is compressing and normalizing all the audio they use first, they're not looking for any kind of dynamic range from pinball sounds.

Right.

You want to compress your audio. It makes the "average" louder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

Right.
You want to compress your audio. It makes the "average" louder.

Thanks for that tip. I think I see how to do that in Audacity and just with some quick toying around I understand how this would help with the low volume issue.

I took some screen shots to compare:

The top track is exported directly from the game software.

The second one down is an MP3 that has been converted to the proper format for importing into Pinball Browser. The volume has been adjusted to the max that it can before red lining and causing distortion in the peaks. No compression has been applied.

The third track is the same as the one above it except compression has been applied.

You can see that after the compression it look much more like the one that is taken from the software. I didn't tweak the compression and it does to have a bit more compression than what the software version has. It looks like it would be about the same volume overall, but not as dynamic as the original.

Audacity did have quite a bit of adjustments in the compression settings. I will probably play around with them a bit and add this info to my audio conversion tutorial thread. Aurich and vid1900...thanks for the info.

Compression_demo.jpg

I wish I had an AC/DC to toy with. The first thing I would do is replace all of the A.M. Stations (live songs) on the attract jukebox to AC/DC greatest hits that aren't included on the game....and yes, Dirty Deeds would defiantly be one of them.

I plan to play around with this replacing some tracks on Metallica.

Gone will be

Fade To Black 6:57
Sad But True 5:24
The Unforgiven 6:26

Replaced with the following trimmed to fit:

Orion 8:28
Ride The Lightning 6:36
Suicide & Redemption 9:57

I'll let you know how it goes...

This is proving to be much more difficult than anticipated.

For example, I am trying to replace 'sad but true' with a good song.
The problem is that the song is split up into 35 different clips of varying lengths,
from Request 785 - 820.
If I were to replace the song, I imagine I would have to replace each and every segment with another of the same duration.

Is this the case? If so, MET will be too much effort to convert.

I was also wondering about the wording on the song selection radio.
There are no programmed "words" on the DMD, just letters that are configured in particular patterns. Not that it matters at the moment, but I haven't been able to find out where or how to change the song title displays.

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 isn't the case.

Ex: I replaced Blackened for The Unforgiven. The only track I replaced is REQUEST 1019 (aka 0x300 on the slide bar). This automatically replaced all of the The Unforgiven snippets.

It seems that MOST of the songs have 2 FULL LENGTH sound locations on the software (ex: The Unforgiven has REQUEST 1019 & REQUEST 1040). I don't know why they have 2 requests and 2 locations, but it seems if you replace 1 it over writes the second and all of the snippets.

Here is a list of the request locations (and lengths) I have found for each full song:

Battery: 308 & 330 5m09s956ms
Creeping Death: 394 & 427 6m34s629ms
Enter Sandman: 465 & 485 5m30s489ms
Fade to Black: 537 6m56s721ms
For Whom the Bell Tolls: 590 & 604 5m09s297ms
Fuel: 628, 639, & 642 4m29s131ms
Master of Puppets: 688 & 712 8m32s911ms
One: 756 7m24s715ms
Sad But True: 807 & 79 5m23s807ms
Seek and Destroy: 877 & 906 6m50s180ms
End of the Line: 954 & 979 7m51s403ms
The Unforgiven: 1019 & 1040 6m26s335ms

Also keep in mind that when I replaced Creeping Death (394) and The Unforgiven (1019) I replaced their first request / location. I don't know if it would make a difference if you replaced the first or one of the later requests, but I do know that replacing the first "complete" song automatically replaced all of the song parts that that I was replacing.

You will also notice when you look at the entire songs info under the scroll bar...it has more fragments than any of it's song snippets. I'm guessing all of the snippets get thir info from these complete song locations.