My 2 Rush 2049 SE conversions to emulation racing machines (work log)

[purbeast]

I got the fans installed and they push out some good air, especially when on full blast. It's kind of hard to tell from the pic since it's blurry at the bottom, but the cable is long enough that I can actually connect it to the PC and use the pwm feature. I planned on cutting the wires off and just wiring up 12v but didn't have to. It also is pretty damn loud when you just have it on full blast, so I think I'm going to use the pwm feature, at least initially, and see how it goes. It's pretty quiet when running "normal" speed.



And the vent still fits as well with those new screws there.




However I opted to keep the vent off after doing a comparison with the air coming out with it on versus off, and I can clearly feel more air coming through with it off, so might as well just keep it off since no one can see it anyways.

Here's a view of the ass when all closed up!



I am FINALLY going to be able to get my basement back to it's normal state hopefully later today!

I also lost my damn security bit that is used for like all of the security screws on the cabinet so I have to either find it or grab a new one cause I need to screw the seat back onto one of them, and I also want to replace the LED lights in the first one with the newer ones I got since they fit better.

 

[bobbyb13]

Nice work.
Maybe a little piece of screen stapled over that fan port will be good enough.
Is that antenna the cabinet link because it is via radio instead of cat6 line?

 

[purbeast]

Nice work.
Maybe a little piece of screen stapled over that fan port will be good enough.
Is that antenna the cabinet link because it is via radio instead of cat6 line?

I'm honestly not even worried about it since it's going to be back up against a wall in my basement.

As for the antenna, yah that is the wifi antenna. I compared keeping it inside the cabinet versus outside and it gives me 1-2 more bars when outside so I opted for that.

The ethernet jack on the actual PC is hard wired to a switch though. Both of the PCs are hooked to a switch and must be in order for linking to work.

 

[Bobwiley]

This is amazing! When you get situated with it, a shot of the game selection screen and a confirmed list of games that have worked linked for you would be swell!

Also wanna know how your kids like racing Pixar Cars!

 

[purbeast]

This is amazing! When you get situated with it, a shot of the game selection screen and a confirmed list of games that have worked linked for you would be swell!

Also wanna know how your kids like racing Pixar Cars!

Thanks!

I finally got the basement back in order and put everything back together.



My son has played Cars a bit however that game has issues. I am going to upgrade Teknoparrot and see if that resolves it. I've had instances where that game just completely goes black and it makes my PC basically lose video. And then his buddy came over for a play date and I tried to load up the linked version of it, and that is when I ran into the issue on one of the machines, and then when you quit out of the game it doesn't go back to Hyperspin properly.

I just haven't had time to mess with it yet and took a break from the whole project once I got everything put back together and I want to finish up Silksong before I get back to it. I've been playing that game in my spare time but once I wrap it up, I'm going to start messing with the configuration on it.

I was able to just load up Daytona 2 for them though since that was the game I was using to test stuff out since it basically works out of the box, and they were having a blast with that!

 

[lgsteelers]

Thanks!

I finally got the basement back in order and put everything back together.

View attachment 853970

My son has played Cars a bit however that game has issues. I am going to upgrade Teknoparrot and see if that resolves it. I've had instances where that game just completely goes black and it makes my PC basically lose video. And then his buddy came over for a play date and I tried to load up the linked version of it, and that is when I ran into the issue on one of the machines, and then when you quit out of the game it doesn't go back to Hyperspin properly.

I just haven't had time to mess with it yet and took a break from the whole project once I got everything put back together and I want to finish up Silksong before I get back to it. I've been playing that game in my spare time but once I wrap it up, I'm going to start messing with the configuration on it.

I was able to just load up Daytona 2 for them though since that was the game I was using to test stuff out since it basically works out of the box, and they were having a blast with that!

Daytona 2 (and more) in a Rush 2049 ! @Pitas_arcade

 

[bobbyb13]

We'll see when my parts arrive and I can get mine put together so we can start comparing notes!

 

[purbeast]

I haven't updated in here in a while so I figure I'll give a little bit of one.

First of all, everything is working just fine and running well. I took some time off of the project because I was using my free time to play Silksong and was just kind of burnt out on those cabinets lol.

I have primarily just been trying to configure some stuff for the most part. I did end up convincing someone to add FFB to Pixar Cars in the free FFB Arcade Plugin, which is basically dead at this point as a year or so ago the Teknoparrot guys ended up basically converting that plugin into another thing called FFBBlaster, but it's now part of their subscription model. I was going to look into the FFB myself in Cars but the dev ended up just adding it in for me which was awesome lol. There is a very strange issue with it though where if you are playing linked mode, then if either P1 or P2 runs into a wall or something, then BOTH wheels get FFB from it. I was doing some debugging with it and using Cheat Engine and even without the plugin, it executes the code that code in the original game in both machines so I'm not sure if it's fixable or just how the original game was built with a bug.

I also messed with H2Overdrive after hearing it's basically Hydro Thunder 2, and damn it's awesome. It actually plays very well with the pedal as throttle and it's easy to jump by pressing boost and braking. I did run into an issue with FFB on there that I ended up getting working though, it had to do with me overwriting some DLL's in the game directory when I was upgrading this graphics card wrapper called dgVoodoo. With this game and Cars (Raw Thrills games) I ran into an issue where the game would cause the graphics drivers to crash when exiting the game, leaving you at a black screen. Long story short, I figured out I can bypass the dgVoodoo stuff and it makes everything work fine.

I also installed Cruis'n Blast since my son likes that game and it is working great as well, the only downside is that it does NOT have linked play which I didn't even realize. So I don't know if I'll be playing it much since it's just not very fun single player.

I also messed quite a bit with Sega Rally 3 and that game is fantastic. The FFB in it is pretty damn intense. I also forget that these are arcade games and quickly learned how short it is lol. It only has 3 tracks but it's still fun.

The linked stuff I've tried works fantastic too and is easy peasy. I played Cars with my son and he loves it, the only downside is that you only race against each other and no UI racers.

I do want to set up some of the lamps to just be on or flashing in some games without any outputs to them. One instance is Cars because most buttons do something, however in my dark basement it was kind of hard to see the buttons to push, so I want to get them lit up while playing. It's doable pretty easily with the back force feeder application that you use for every game.

I also plan on getting rid of a lot of the games from the Hyperspin wheel. I think I'm going to just have like 20-30 total games to select. There are a lot of variations of the same game in there and then some games that I just don't really like. I tried one of the Initial D games and just didn't like it. It had like 20 menus in Japanese before I even got into a game. I'm not sure if there are language patches or not but even the game wasn't fun. I've heard that there is a specific version of that series that is good but there are like 9 different ones on there. I also don't think I'll ever play Spy Hunter or Lucky and Wild on there, so games like those I plan to remove from the wheel.

Eventually when I do all that, I'll just copy my settings from the one machine to the other and then set it up so that it doesn't even boot to Windows desktop and goes directly to Hyperspin. Right now I'm just booting to Windows and opening single games in TeknoParrot when I've been playing them, but also because I've been messing with settings and stuff.

It's definitely a good time though!

 

[Pondscum]

How did you bypass dgvoodoo in cars? I am having a similar issue with it.

 

[purbeast]

How did you bypass dgvoodoo in cars? I am having a similar issue with it.

There is an option inside of it on the last tab (Think it was direct3D or something, it's not the Glide one it's the other one) and right at the top there is a checkbox that says something like (paraphrasing) "bypass this and let the graphics card handle things" and checking that basically bypasses using that to handle graphics stuff.

 

[purbeast]

I tried Outrun 2 last night as well and had never played it before, and damn that game is great. I love the whole drifting aspect of it. The FFB is great in it to however it hardly has any "spring" effect when you are just driving, so I think I am going to add a permanent spring in the settings of back force feeder for that game. Generally speaking I find racing games tough to control if you get no feedback when just turning the wheel to make turns while driving.

The one thing I am trying to solve with it though is that right now it's ONLY configured to be played linked. If you try to play it single player, it just hangs when trying to find the other machine. But when I load it up on the other machine as well, it works perfect, so yeah that is another linked one that I have now tested and it's flawless. I tried removing the network settings from the teknoparrot config but it still tries to load up network mode. I think it may be somewhere in the actual test settings of the game but I am unable to get into them right now so trying to figure that part out.

 

[purbeast]

I was talking with the developer of Project R this evening about the outputs and if his game actually outputted them, and after some confusion on my part I understood that he was outputting them to a bit map and he gave me the values that get set for each one. So I took that and started looking for values in cheat engine and ended up finding the memory address.

Long story short, I spent the past few hours messing with Output Blaster and ended up getting lamp outputs to work with Project R. It's in a hacky state right now in that the DLL is hardcoded specifically for that game instead of the generic output blaster that finds the right game, but I will get to that. I also have to inject it into the game via Cheat Engine which is not ideal by any means, so maybe I'll see if the dev can look for OutputBlaster dll at load time and load it up if it is there.

Here's a video of it in action. Rush the Rock also works fine I just didn't get a video of it.

 

[purbeast]

I had some time today to do some house cleaning and configuration. I went through the entire list of games and removed a bunch of games that I know I will never play. I didn't remove them from the entire PC, but they simply are not in the hyperspin wheel anymore. Here is a list of all the games I removed.

jambo safari
280 zzzap
badlands
blomby car
buggy boy
buggy challenge
bump n jump
chequered flag
champion sprint
change lanes
drift out
drift out 94
drivers edge
f1 grand prix
f1 grand prix 2
final lap
final lap 2
final lap 3
great 1000 mile rally
great 1000 mile rally 2
hot rod exciting racing
iron man off road
konami gt
lucky and wild
monte carlo
new rally x
neo drift out
night driver
rally x
road fighter
speed freak
sprint 1
sprint 4
sprint 8
spy hunter 2
stun runner
super sprint
top speed
thrash rally
sega turbo
tx1
wec le mans 24
winning run
winning run suzuka gp
winning run 91
world rally
battle gear 4
battle gear 4 tuned
battle gear 4 tuned pro edition
ford racing
initial d zero (there are 2 remove 1)
gti club supermini fiesta
ab cop air bike
hang on jr
hang on
racing hero
enduro racer
motor raid
daytona gtx
daytona 2 power edition
scud race
24 heurs de le man
club cart

That took quite a bit of time lol

There are still A LOT of games that I was on the fence about that just looked cool and I had never played before, that I kept and will eventually get around to trying them and probably removing quite a bit more.

Honestly my ideal setup would just have like 20-30 games or so, ones that are actually good with good FFB and lamp integration, and that's it. Sometimes you have so many games on there that you can't just select one to sit down and play. And like there are probably 7 or 8 initial D games on there. I don't need all of those and the one I did try was not good.

I also changed the interface so that the MUSIC and ABORT buttons move the wheel left/right when selecting games. Doing it with the wheel was just not good. It wasn't easy to be precise. And there was a weird issue where you exit a game and it just goes to the right on it's own even if not turning the wheel, so I don't have that issue anymore. I also set it so when in Hyperspin, the MUSIC and ABORT lamps alternate blinking so people know they do something.

The games also were not in alphabetical order which was annoying. They were grouped by emulator types and it was just the way they were ordered in the Hyperspin XML file. I changed that so that it is now alphabetical and it makes it much better. Before like you would have Sega Rally 1 and 2 in one area, and then Sega Rally 3 in another area. Now they are all next to each other which is what is expected, and if you know what game you want to play, you know which way to go since it's in order.

I think I am setup with how the wheel works now and everything so I don't think I'll have to mess with it more.

After that I had some time to play a few games.

I tired Crazy Taxi and that game just sucks to me. It's just too repetitive and not fun. There is like no sense of speed in that game and it doesn't have FFB so it's simulated with the BFF software and I dunno just doesn't feel that great.

I also tried out Batman and that game is pretty damn neat. The FFB is pretty awesome how the wheel just shakes when you fire the gun. It doesn't have lamp support but I'm going to see if I can possibly figure out how to implement it myself with the Outputblaster program.

I also tried this Tokyo Cop game cause the preview video looked cool. And that game blows. I will probably remove that from the wheel lol.

There are a lot of games that I have never played nor heard of, but also a lot of them are very similar. Like the previews for a lot of the F1 games all just look so damn similar. I mean I guess there is only so much you can do with racing lol. But there are some other games that look neat that I am curious to eventually try.

 

[bobbyb13]

Zeb is trying to figure out sending mine to me and gave you props for helping tweak the whole system for Rush. Thanks for your (not small) contribution!
Can't wait to build mine up.
Looks like you left the original Spy Hunter on the list?
Have you played that one yet?

 

[purbeast]

Zeb is trying to figure out sending mine to me and gave you props for helping tweak the whole system for Rush. Thanks for your (not small) contribution!
Can't wait to build mine up.
Looks like you left the original Spy Hunter on the list?
Have you played that one yet?

Yeah I had it on the keeper list but I got rid of it because realistically I doubt I'd ever play it lol. It's there though. I hadn't played it though.

I also have started my own forks of the FFB Plugin and the Output Blaster project. It's very specific to the UFFB setup too and my plan is to make it all work with UFFB out of the box.

I got I was trying to add the outputs to some games earlier this evening but I just don't have the knowledge on how to do some of this stuff yet, but I'm trying to learn. Like I found the memory addresses for the lamps in both Batman and KO Drive, however I need to figure out the pointer addresses to it which I am working on. This is just not in my wheel house lol. I'm a webapp dev and this is pretty low level stuff like trying to debug ASM code. But I'm super intrigued by it and want to see if I can figure it out. I used to do C++ but this is still a bit about my current skill level.

 

[purbeast]

Got Batman all configured with FFB/lamp outputs. The game itself has a TON of lamp outputs but I'm just using 2 of them - start and fire - since the other ones are all cosmetic on the original cabinet.

I have also since changed some settings. If you watch that video, when making selections in the menu, the start button is not lit up, which I found odd, but that is the actual way the lamps are implemented. I also noticed that if you look on screen, it says to press the fire buttons to select - the buttons on the wheel in the real cabinet - and pressing fire does not select anything. So I don't know if that is an error on the TP implementation of the game.

What I've done though is just make the MUSIC/ABORT buttons BOTH be the start and fire button. I also adjusted the outputs to match so that those 2 output lights in the same manner.

I also thought that would be better for people playing so they can fire guns with either the left OR right button, since I don't have buttons on my wheel like the real game does.

 

[bobbyb13]

Nice!
Seb got back to me about shipping my boardsets out so hopefully I'm working on mine come December.
Boy will I have a few configuration questions for you Drew!

 

[jawhn]

Seb got back to me about shipping my boardsets out so hopefully I'm working on mine come December.

Holy carp. I may be able to experience this joy soon! LMK if there are any smaller obsolete computer or arcade parts you'd like me to bring with. I have tons of older RAM and misc PC crap from eons ago.

 

[purbeast]

Nice!
Seb got back to me about shipping my boardsets out so hopefully I'm working on mine come December.
Boy will I have a few configuration questions for you Drew!

I will be able to save you some time and headaches probably with some of my button setups and what, and I can send you the custom FFB Plugin and Outputblaster (for lights) that I have made and still working on to add new support for the cabinet.