Sega Versus Billboard Commander

[twistedsymphony]

Some of you may know that I've been working on reverse engineering the Billboard unit found in Sega Versus City cabinets (as well as the Billboard Marquee for Blast City and Megalos) (you can follow that here if you're interested: http://www.arcade-projects.com/forums/i ... el-3-naomi)

At some point it was suggested to me that those who own a cab with a billboard would like to control it, so I built a thing to allow for that to happen



So if you own a Versus City, New Versus City, or a Blast or Megalo with the Billboard Marquee Then this will allow you to issue any command to the billboard as well as play back your own custom macros/text scrolls etc.

All it will require is a Pi3 in addition to a simple harness to connect the Pi to the billboard connector in your cab. and that's pretty much it.

Once I build an interface to program and save your own macros I'll release the first version. For future revisions I plan on adding a feature to allow for manual score keeping in games, complete with winner lamp flashing an animation fanfare for each win scored. So if you wan to keep score on a game that doesn't support the billboard you can do that.

In the mean time I want to get some feedback, let me know what you think or if you have any ideas on how to make this better.

[cools]

Nice work!

[d123456]

Awesome, I was interested in the topic and especially for which games it works. Great work!

[twistedsymphony]

Awesome, I was interested in the topic and especially for which games it works. Great work!

So games that support the billboard. I've done a lot of research into this. It seems the Billboard was a joint effort between Sega and Tecmo that started with the Model 2 hardware. The only hardware that I've found with support is Sega hardware and only Sega and Tecmo games on that hardware. No CPS2 or CPS3 games support this, neither do any Capcom games on NAOMI hardware (sorry to burst that bubble ). This was the reason I'm looking into building a manual score keeping feature.

Sega ST-V Games (list probably complete):

• All Japan Pro Wrestling Featuring Virtua /Zen Nippon Pro-Wrestling
• ? unconfirmed: Critter Crusher / Tatakot (supports 7-seg displays but might not be billboard system)
• Hanagumi Taisen Columns : Sakura Wars (needs cabinet type set to vs in game test mode)
• ? unconfirmed: Mausuke no Ojama the World / Kiss Off (winner lamp only, I think)
• Super Major League / Final Arch
• ? unconfirmed: Taisen Tanto-R 'Sasissu!' / DaeJeon! SanJeonSuJeon (winner lamp only, I think)
• Tecmo World Cup '98 (winner lamp only, I think)
• Virtua Fighter Remix

Sega Model 2 Games (list probably complete):

• CyberTroopers Virtual-On
• Dead or Alive
• Dynamite Baseball (winner lamps only, I think)
• Dynamite Baseball 97 (winner lamps only, I think)
• Fighting Vipers
• Last Bronx
• Sonic Championship /Sonic The Fighters
• Virtua Striker

Sega Model 3 Games (list probably complete):

• CyberTroopers Virtual-On Oratorio Tangram MSBS 5.2
• CyberTroopers Virtual-On Oratorio Tangram MSBS 5.4
• Fighting Vipers 2
• Virtua Fighter 3
• Virtua Fighter 3tb
• Virtua Striker 2
• Virtua Striker 2 '98
• Virtua Striker 2 '99
• Virtua Striker 2 '99.1

Sega NAOMI Games (list probably complete):

• CyberTroopers Virtual-On Oratorio Tangram MSBS 5.66 (needs billboard enabled in game test mode, otherwise it's winner lamp only)
• Virtua Striker 2 Ver.2000
• Virtua Tennis
• Virtua Tennis 2

Sega NAOMI 2 Games (list probably complete):

• Virtua Striker 3

Sega Tri-Force Games (list probably complete):

• Virtua Striker 2002

Yes I did try Dead or Alive 2, and Virtua Fighter 4, and Virtua Striker 4, and Virtua Tennis 3... it appears that billboard support was dropped on all of those games.

The only other game I suspect might support the billboard that is not on this list is Virtual On Force on the Sega Hikaru Hardware, but I would need to talk to someone who owns that hardware to confirm one way or the other. The Sega Baseball games on NAOMI may also, but they're not currently net-bootable (AFAIK) so I've been unable to test.

[bagheera369]

TS, you are awesome. A very cool thing you've done, to just hand it back over to the community.

[d123456]

Wow, that's alot of games! I've always wanted a vs. city. Now more than ever!

[twistedsymphony]

There are actually a couple of New Versus City cabs in the Captains Auctions this weekend for anyone in California looking for one.

My other project (the one linked in the first post) will allow anyone who wants a billboard unit to build one. it uses an Arduino and will function exactly like the real billboard unit once it's done. This project started because I wanted to add some billboard units to my Virtual On Twin unit since the game supports it and I thought it would make a cool addition to the cab.

The billboard unit in the video isn't even mine, Xed was kind enough to loan me his so i could finish decoding the communication protocol and test out my software on actual hardware

[Stompp]

Awesome work, mate! I was just gonna look into this sine I have these four arriving soon. They seem simpler and bear no identifiable markings so we'll see what they are when they arrive.

displays.jpg

[AMurderOfCrows]

Fantastic Work TS. Now, if there is a way to manipulate the Cyberlead LED marquee, i'd be quite a happy camper.

let me know if you want to take that on

[twistedsymphony]

Fantastic Work TS. Now, if there is a way to manipulate the Cyberlead LED marquee, i'd be quite a happy camper.

let me know if you want to take that on

I'd love to. Those are a lot more complicated though. The game downloads artwork to the IO board on boot up and then issues jvs commands when it wants them played back during gameplay.

it does look like the link between the I/O board and the LED board is just a serial interface though. My hope is that it uses or is similar to an existing LED display protocol. If that's the case then it'd be possible to disconnect it from the I/O board and connect it to a device like the Pi to display whatever you want on it.

I need to get my hands on the hardware (at very least the LED board/display) to play around with before I could do anything though so if you know of any cheap cyberleads in the north east usa let me know.

[AMurderOfCrows]

I can't supply a whole system, but until I get my jamma to JVS boards fixed, my cyberleads are essentially dead.

I was trying to get some parts including a color led marquee from Ross, but he stopped pming me after selling an i/o board from under me.

I'd be willing to ship off the red only led marquee to you if it would help.

[twistedsymphony]

I don't have time to start working on the Cyberlead stuff right now, I want to get the Vs billboard project out of the way in addition to a few other projects I'm working on. But, if you do manage to find a multi color LED board I'd be interested in buying the red one off of you. Similarly if you come across any of the equipment for sale, let me know.

I do already have an early rev Namco cyberlead I/O board so there's that. The process would involve running the display normally, capturing the data between the I/O and the display and then trying to figure out what it means. I think I should be able to do that without a game since I believe the I/O board has normal attract mode data pre-programmed.

Maybe you can answer me this. is the LED control board built into the display itself or are they separate boards? I also can't seem to get any straight answers about which parts are compatible with what when it comes to the red only, and multi color displays, or even game compatibility. So that's a whole thing that needs to be sorted out too.

There was almost no information on the Vs Billboard when I started Even now the only picture of the control PCB I've ever found is one from an old build thread here, the newer board used in the Blast/Megalo/New Vs City cabs had 0 pics anywhere until I tracked someone down and asked them to take a pic for me.

[Steffo]

Freaking awsome work mate. People like you who give back to a community in such a big way desrves a thumbs up! I dunno if im a wierdo but Virtua Tennis was a game i always liked

[twistedsymphony]

Small update... I've been making some good progress on the editor.


the main macro editor UI has been built, currently it allows for creating new or opening existing macros, viewing, editing, removing and inserting steps as well as importing or exporting macros from the program (macros are all stored on the Pi, but if you want to download them for sharing with others or manual editing of the files/re-import them).


Still left to be done:

-work out a bunch of details in the save functionality, mostly sanitization and validation of what you're trying to save and checking that you're not overwriting something you're unaware of

-I'd like to add a "test" button so that any time you can test your macro in progress to see how it plays on the billboard

-I'd like to add a few "tools" such as the ability to quickly made a text scroll by typing what you want scrolled and the program builds the macro for you, as well as the ability to convert a macro for the P1 side to the P2 side, or mirror a macro so that it plays on both sides. and a speed multiplier so you can increase or decrease the speed of every step by a given amount.


In my video I said it'd be out "soon" so I just wanted to let you all know I'm chipping away at it.


Anyone familiar with Git-Hub? I've never use it but I'd like to set this project up there and would be interested in talking with someone about the best way to go about it.

EDIT:
The project has been added to github for anyone that is interested: https://github.com/twistedsymphony/vs_b ... _commander
if you want to use it you'll need to setup a Pi with Apache and the pigpio library, though I plan on building a complete image so people can just burn it to an SD card and use it without any setup.

I also put up the source to my Arduino based vs billboard module (for people who want a vs billboard but don't have one), though that code still needs some work as there are some bugs with the winner lamps, it's missing attract mode, and I need to re-program the output code to remove the necessity for shift registers.