Ridge Racer Full Scale (3 screens)

[John Bennett]

Multi screens? Namco ? ... one word : Galaxian3 please! 

Yes, it had crossed my mind. I think the lack of c139 comms is the least of the G3 driver’s issues though.

You dumped the laserdisc in high def (domesday?) format yet?

Rotunda - I’ll try to reply later when not on a phone.
John Bennett2020-08-06 16:00:55

 

[John Bennett]

Regarding the 'triple screen' ROMs - if you look at MAME, there's a set in there with the description:

"Ridge Racer (Rev. RR2 Ver.B, World, 3-screen?)"

Sadly it appears to be just another version of the standard board

, so that description needs changing.

I had hoped the triple-screen version was just 3 standard boards, but I've looked at the disassembler and debugged them loads and I can't see any of the required features for linkup in the standard ROMs:

There's no way to set the L/R/Centre like in full scale

There's no useful comms code being transmitted

The code that packaged up all the data for comms isn't present.

So I think there IS a specific 3-screen ROM variant out there and it's undumped too.

The higher-res textures is an interesting thought. I can't see it in the video (maybe I need to look harder), but as you probably know the game more than anyone, I'll have to take the idea seriously

.

It doesn't mean the game can't be hacked to get the textures a lot better (although easier said than done).

Unless I'm missing something, it's three System22 Ridge Racer PCBs with different ROMs. So unless the ROMs themselves die, you can probably keep it going by swapping the video board and ROMs onto a standard Ridge Racer PCB. Maybe been done once or twice already.

It's good that they're trying to keep it going, but I think their best isn't going to be enough for something that old and rare. I'd rather see it restored in some sort of museum, but that's me personally. I did e-mail the operator that owns it once (HB leisure). They said was in 'perfect working order'..... Anyway, if there was a chance of them letting us near it, I'd get ahold of a Ridge Racer PCB and see if there were means to get the ROM and PALs off without desoldering (including making up tools to do it). Of course they could have a copy

As an update on the emulation, I'm still working on it, but looking at the aforementioned multiple MAME/PC linkup route (which we'll need for all the multiplayer linkup games). I'll resist videos/pictures until it's working a bit better though.

Worth folk looking at 'global_inputs' in MAME - you can already do 8-player Outrunners and Virtua Racing across a network (and/or) with multiple instances on one PC. It's very cool.

 

[Guests]

I had hoped the triple-screen version was just 3 standard boards, but I've looked at the disassembler and debugged them loads and I can't see any of the required features for linkup in the standard ROMs: There's no way to set the L/R/Centre like in full scale There's no useful comms code being transmitted The code that packaged up all the data for comms isn't present.

So I think there IS a specific 3-screen ROM variant out there and it's undumped too.

Damn, that sucks then! Yes I've been trying to spot a 3 screen model for years and years. Never seen one online nor have i seen one in person. Literally only seen about 5 pictures of them. EXTREMELY rare unfortunately.

The higher-res textures is an interesting thought. I can't see it in the video (maybe I need to look harder), but as you probably know the game more than anyone, I'll have to take the idea seriously . It doesn't mean the game can't be hacked to get the textures a lot better (although easier said than done).

I really do think this is the case take this picture for example...

The decals on the car and the lights etc just don't look as defined what so ever. Perhaps its projector vs CRT or smaller CRT vs a massive 30 odd feet projector screen I'm not sure but if you look at the video you can see the car details, clouds etc seem so much more detailed.

Unless I'm missing something, it's three System22 Ridge Racer PCBs with different ROMs. So unless the ROMs themselves die, you can probably keep it going by swapping the video board and ROMs onto a standard Ridge Racer PCB. Maybe been done once or twice already. It's good that they're trying to keep it going, but I think their best isn't going to be enough for something that old and rare. I'd rather see it restored in some sort of museum, but that's me personally.

Correct, it is to my knowledge that it is the 3 rom sets which are different everything else is the same so you could in theory replace the larger GPU board or smaller GPU board over with a normal PCB. I've heard of the CPU side going as well but i assume that would be the same...? It has definetly been repaired a number of times already the tech told me that. They sent the board off to Namco in London who repaired it. didn't go into detail what exactly was done but i presume a GPU swap out.

I did e-mail the operator that owns it once (HB leisure). They said was in 'perfect working order'.....

How long a go was this? I saw the machine back in 2018 or so, so if it's fairly recent that's really good to hear the machine is still chugging along.

Anyway, if there was a chance of them letting us near it, I'd get ahold of a Ridge Racer PCB and see if there were means to get the ROM and PALs off without desoldering (including making up tools to do it). Of course they could have a copy

I mean, all you can do is ask? To be honest, someone needs to put forth interest that if in the event the machine does fail or they want rid of it that someone who is interested in the PCB's would get a call. It will only end up in the dump otherwise. I wish i did that with Namco London, I could of got my hands on the diagnostics for system 22 which they threw out... ARGH!

I hope that day never comes but I can't see it going on forever. Plus i hear a lot of people want them for the MX 5 shell... the Mazda MX 5 community will pay good money for an effectively brand new mazda MX5 chassis etc. The entire car is there so they are desirable to MX5 fans. I heard the one at SEGA world was purchased and actually turned into a track day car. God knows where it is now.

 

[John Bennett]

Regarding detail, the FOV is narrower for each screen in full scale, so it's a bit more 'zoomed-in', which might make things look more defined. Suppose it doesn't matter - we ain't got the ROMS, and if we ever do, we'll find out

I saw the machine in 2018 too, so no idea what it's like now. Hopefully not in 'perfect working order' in a skip. I did register an interest, i could do again. Would leave me with the mad situation of having to take a real red 1992 convertible MX-5 out of a lockup, to put this MX5+ room thing in it's place

. I might regret that...

 

[Guests]

I always thought Andy at arcade club would be the best person to take this machine on as he has a lot of spare RR PCB's and space but i spoke to him ages ago and i don't think he wanted to give it the floor space.

Such a shame that the one thing that makes it so unique is also it's biggest problem.. size.

 

[chubsta]

Fond memories of playing one of these at Folkestone when I was supposed to be at work...

 

[Guests]

Fond memories of playing one of these at Folkestone when I was supposed to be at work...

That's where my name on here came from

though ironically i was too young to play the machine back when i was a kid. I don't even recall seeing it when i used to visit the Rotunda. That machine was later moved to another Jimmy G's location then stored for many years i called to see if they still had it and as usual it had been scrapped. They did confirm it was only in recent years that it was scrapped though so for all those years about 2004 - 2017 it was sitting there.

Drives me nuts thinking about it.

Regarding detail, the FOV is narrower for each screen in full scale, so it's a bit more 'zoomed-in', which might make things look more defined. Suppose it doesn't matter - we ain't got the ROMS, and if we ever do, we'll find out

I saw the machine in 2018 too, so no idea what it's like now. Hopefully not in 'perfect working order' in a skip. I did register an interest, i could do again. Would leave me with the mad situation of having to take a real red 1992 convertible MX-5 out of a lockup, to put this MX5+ room thing in it's place

. I might regret that...

I think you could be right to be honest i think it might just be the sheer size of the screens... To be honest they were pushing the System 22 hardware so hard with Ridge Racer so i doubt higher res textures would have been possible. Who knows though.

The thought of it being in a skip is so bad but possible... Sadly given Covid and Blackpool Pleasure Beach being closed for the season i could see this being a bad year in terms of the machine staying there. Little known fact about these that not many know about.. behind them is a massive set of inverters as they were never made for 240v they all came from Japan so needed MASSIVE transformers to step up the voltage. The tech i spoke to told me theres literally almost a room behind the machine which is massive transformers which increase the entire size by a third at least. Floor space is just insane with these and also they use an absolute TON of power. 3KW... They can't be cheap to run.

As you've probably noticed i have a bit of a thing for this game and i had been looking for a Full Scale since 2006, the only ones i've ever know of is a stripped down one in Japan which looked like crap and must be gone by now.

A REALLY strange almost prototype looking one in Australia

The one in Barcelona ("New Park" Las Ramblas arcade center, apparently) although last image i saw of this was a video in 2006 and the screen was faded as hell and it was in REAL bad shape so i highly expect it to be scrapped by now.

And of course the one at Blackpool Pleasure Beach which last i heard is still around. All the others i have no clue what so ever.

I would genuinely love to know how many actually still exist but honestly..? I think Blackpool may well be the last one unless there is one tucked away in Japan somewhere as they have a habit of taking good care of their stuff and arcades are still a thing over there.

rotunda2020-08-07 21:18:39

 

[John Bennett]

Bump....

Ok, I've not done anything much on this in a while, but folk wanted to have a try of the multiplayer linkup WIP.

So, if you download this link, you should be able to have a go at:

Rave Racer

Ridge Racer2

https://philwip.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Mamejb_1.zip

Install it then get the ROMs for those 2 games.

In the folder you will see some batch files

linkup1_to_2.bat

linkup2_to_1.bat

Run both of these to open 2 MAME instances and open the game twice.

It will run like sh*te (1fps) until both instances are open as there's a comms wait in there I need to improve somehow.

Anyway when both running, go into the service menu (Tab, dip switches) and set the CPU number to 2 in the second player and maybe pick a different car colour). Unset the dip to save it. MAME should have two sets of configuration folders - one for each instance. It might be a pain to do as the keyboard may input to both sides, but you should be able to muddle through.

It should now work with 2 players on one PC. Windows will ask for access rights for MAME - say yes. This is because it uses 'globalcomms' to link the games up, the same way the Sega stuff does.

If you read up on how to use that, you should be able to put one instance on another PC over a LAN. It'll involve editing the addresses in the bat files. I've never tried it.

If you want a play of fullscale, then so linkups1_to2, 2_to_3 and 3_to_1 (as it's 3 instances). I think I set the jumpers right for it to run. It's obviously a technicolour nightmare with bad video ROMs. Needs a beefy PC, but it's now spreading the load over multiple cores, unlike one instance of MAME, so I can run it at 60fps here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztgspA9GuCg

3 or more players craps out on RR2 and Rave Racer - too many dropped packets in the chain. I need to think of a sync method, but it's hard when there is no 'master' PCB in the Namco system (all boards are considered equal).

Ignore any other 'supported' games in this mini-build - just things I've been dicking on with. You'll want to turn scanlines down too - not appropriate for VGA games and looks awful.

Anyway, this is NOT any kind of official release and I don't know when I'll get to work on it again, but consider yourselves playtesters if you like.

John Bennett2021-09-10 08:10:06

 

[yoganuggy]

John this is amazing! I'll test this out over the weekend on a rave racer twin cab. I'll be trying the 2x PC over LAN method. Riiiiiiiidge Racer 2!!

Thanks you for posting this

 

[Guests]

Wow! I need to find myself another rig to try this. So epic!

Are the devs at MAME aware? I bet they would love to see this.

 

[yoganuggy]

folks, I've just noticed any posts in this sub-forum do not appear on the home page for some reason so a lot of people will not see this good news...

 

[John Bennett]

Yeah, my brother is a fairly regular contributor.

I think right now it's waay too naughty to every get accepted. When I get round to it I'll tidy it up a bit and then it is what it is, whether acceptable or not (it'll always be available)

 

[John Bennett]

folks, I've just noticed any posts in this sub-forum do not appear on the home page for some reason so a lot of people will not see this good news...

I think it's like the member's sections - got to be logged in and you still don't see it on the main site.

It's probably not that big news anyway

 

[John Bennett]

Rotunda/Jay: You probably didn't know it was me, but I asked you on your Youtube video - have you got any reasonable photos of the startup screens in Fullscale - e.g. the instructions with the picture of the dashboard, the car graphic - things that are unique to Full Scale?

 

[Bods]

really need to get my twin mame driving machine finished and all working

Did try PC Version of OutRun 2 linked last, kept screwing up when game running on 2 connected with network cable, then I remembered, needs to be crossover cable, doh... been a long time since I connected two PC together

Be awesome if you can have some twin driving games linked, because the emulators on them were starting to get quite good, it was reason I decided to sell the Sega Rally Twin, can you play that linked these days so it runs demo over the 2 screens? always looks awesome on original cabs

Bods2021-09-14 11:21:49

 

[yoganuggy]

Hi John,

Thanks again for posting this.

I'm still working on getting this going 100%. Some notes below on the progress

PC#1 in Cab #1, hostname: ARCADE-RR-LEFT

MAME.ini config set to listen on port 15111 on all IPs, remote server ARCADE-RR-RIGHT on port 15111

PC#2 in Cab #2, hostname: ARCADE-RR-RIGHT

MAME.ini config set to listen on port 15111 on all IPs, remote server ARCADE-RR-LEFT on port 15111

turn off windows firewall on both PC's

ping ARCADE-RR-RIGHT from ARCADE-RR-LEFT and vice-versa to confirm connectivity.

run jbmame on left cab first. Mame will stutter until jbmame is launched on right cab (as you say above, 1FPS stuttering as it tries to net link to cab 2). With both MAMEs running they run smooth.

Left cab, tap F2, game settings, set to Car #1 Yellow

Right cab, tap F2, game settings, set to Car #2 Blue

(same as what needs to be done on the official cab.)

However at this point, the link says "link on 1" for both cabs for some reason. Compared to the official cab, cab#1 should automatically say "link on 2".

I started the game anyway on both cabs but no link working yet. I'll keep plugging away at this.

By the way, MAME is saying Ridge racer is 640x480 yet the monitors in my official cab are 15k (MS8) - is this 480i interlaced or should there have been by 31K 480p monitors in the cab?

 

[John Bennett]

Have you set the CPU numbers or just the car colours?
It should say link on 2.

I've never tried it across a network, just on one PC, so might be worth checking you can get that bit working as well, via 2 windows of MAME.

It sounds like it is communicating if it stops stuttering when the second instance of mame is opened. I might have to remind myself of the debugs I put in the DOS window you get alongside MAME, as I used that to look for missing packets of data.

I'm not sure what you'll do about the resolution. The game is 640x480 via 480i interlace. What do folk normally do to drive 15kHz CRTs from MAME in interlace?

@Bods, I nicked the network hookup code off Virtua Racing for MAME, which does up to 8 instances (as does Outrunners).

 

[yoganuggy]

It works perfect John!

The problem was the network port. I assumed you were just using different ports (15111 and 15112) as you were on the same PC and needed to use a different port for each instance, but actually the port number is used to point to the next car number.

PC#1 Left side, Car 1, hostname: ARCADE-RR-LEFT

Uses port 15111 locally and points to the right side PC hostname ARCADE-RR-RIGHT on port 15112

mame.ini settings:




# CORE COMM OPTIONS
comm_localhost 0.0.0.0
comm_localport 15111
comm_remotehost ARCADE-RR-RIGHT
comm_remoteport 15112
comm_framesync 0

PC#2 Right side, Car 2, hostname: ARCADE-RR-RIGHT

Uses port 15112 locally and points to the left side PC hostname ARCADE-RR-LEFT on port 15111

mame.ini settings:



# CORE COMM OPTIONS
comm_localhost 0.0.0.0
comm_localport 15112
comm_remotehost ARCADE-RR-LEFT
comm_remoteport 15111
comm_framesync 0







With this in place, Car 1 is set automatically to link on 2 and Car 2 is set automatically to link on 1.

Works perfect. Amazing work.




Thank you again John!!

yoganuggy2021-09-15 00:13:21

 

[John Bennett]

Wahey!, that is good to see

.

I'd just took your word those ports had to the the same when on a network as I'd never tried it. I should give it a go now you've made the effort (I was too lazy to try).

Maybe at some point when a dozen other projects are out the way, i'll try to work out if there's a way to get 3 players. Data's getting through, it's just too bitty to work reliably (although enough for full scale, even though it has a bit of lag sometimes).

So what did you do about the screens and interlace?

 

[yoganuggy]

It's really good. Playing Rave Racer two player we honestly could not tell the difference between the real boards. It's wonderful to be able to then switch to Ridge Racer 2 in a matter of seconds. I haven't tried any other games in linked mode yet but Ace Driver is next on the list for tonight.

As for the display, the 480i is great. That is exactly how the original PCB displays on the stock CRT.

The left screen is a stock MS8 15k monitor. Im using EMU Driver on an ATI graphics card to force 15k output of the PC and it runs all these namco system 22 games from your MAME build at 480i.

I added an ultimarc VGA amp board last night to boost the brightness but now it's a bit too bright as you can see from the image above and I need to make some adjustments to the monitor.

The right side had a 31k monitor installed by the previous owner and a converter board to upscale the 480i image from the PCB to 480p. Using the 2nd PC with your jbMAME build, again I just installed EMU Driver for the ATI graphics card and this time forced 31k with the VMmaker app. The PC outputs the display from jbmame with a crisp 480p image. It looks really well like this and reminds me of a naomi game actually.