Where's everybody been??!

[jibmums]

So the 3dArcade forum is back! What's it been, four years? Who's still around? Well, Jibmums is still around, and he might actually have a few models to post that were nearly finished when the forum disappeared. I'll post in my buried-but-soon-to-be-exhumed threads in the WIP section when I have stuff ready to go. I don't know if there's anyone who can still upload the zip files to the models page, so if you want any of the new models you'll likely have to PM me your email address so I can either send you either the file directly or download links.

Well, chime in and let me know what you've been up to, old 3dArk pals! I'm looking at you, Peter, Skurdt, DondiNET, btribble, etc. I know what fossil's been up to as I just saw him this morning.

[fossil]

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!" -Jibmums, apparently.

[3DIan]

....inside a 3D Arcade for the last 10 years

[dondiNET]

So the 3dArcade forum is back! What's it been, four years? Who's still around? Well, Jibmums is still around, and he might actually have a few models to post that were nearly finished when the forum disappeared. I'll post in my buried-but-soon-to-be-exhumed threads in the WIP section when I have stuff ready to go. I don't know if there's anyone who can still upload the zip files to the models page, so if you want any of the new models you'll likely have to PM me your email address so I can either send you either the file directly or download links.

Well, chime in and let me know what you've been up to, old 3dArk pals! I'm looking at you, Peter, Skurdt, DondiNET, btribble, etc. I know what fossil's been up to as I just saw him this morning.

Currently trying in-vain to get a functional Director version resurrected again on my Cocktail Arcade cabinet. I think the old core2Duo board is DOA and currently looking to cocbble-together a WinXP install to replace it.

Been banging on Proxmox with WinXP VM for the past few weeks and the GPU passthrough is buggered. Have an ASUS B550 Gaming MB, ASUS GT740 GPU, etc., but can't get the VM to work correctly. XP is installed, but the GPU passthrough is kinda dodgy--the hardware is present in XP and the drivers for the 740 went through, but there are bang symbols in the Device Manager and Proxmox throws these ioctrl reset errors for the hardware passed-through. Bonus though, my HAPP UGCI Fighter USB gaming controller interface cards work!! Ha.

I know spanner has been claiming that Win10 can run the 3DA Director FE, but this has not been my experience. On same hardware, created a Win10 image, even installed Shockwave player, but still no joy. It actually started-and-ran on the very first boot of Win10, but every subsequent boot, the fe would start, go to a brief black screen and then quit.

I am at a crossroads of what to do next. I have a few old Xeon machines. Eyeballing using the Lenovo C30 workstation to throw WinXP on it and see what it does. Think the last resort would be to buy "new" old hardware; LGA-1155 MB, i5/i7 CPU, DDR3 RAM, etc. :shrug

I spent a LOT of time reskinning the FE and standardizing all the CFG lists and gathering any-and-all arcades for 3DA and populating the arcades with pretty-much all emus and roms. Even had a few flavors of Flynn's Arcade in the FE. Did all this at the end of 2018. Have moved across the country since and the arcade cabinet is just now being addressed and attempting to be risen from the ashes.

I would most-definitely be interested in any new W3D models for the FE if/when they are available. Good to see the 3DA crowd still around.

[jibmums]

A new face, and and old one, that's awesome! Fossil and I were starting to believe (or years into believing, actually) that we were the last of the 3dArcade users. Would be great if there was a new burst of activity here. I'll do my part; five new models already available, and I'll put up a new WIP post later with a few pics of what else I've been working on since I dove back into 3dsMax a month ago.

DondiNET, PM me here with your email addy and I'll send you the new models I have done - Moon Shuttle, Colony 7, Polaris, Zarzon, and Space Demon.

[dondiNET]

A new face, and and old one, that's awesome! Fossil and I were starting to believe (or years into believing, actually) that we were the last of the 3dArcade users. Would be great if there was a new burst of activity here. I'll do my part; five new models already available, and I'll put up a new WIP post later with a few pics of what else I've been working on since I dove back into 3dsMax a month ago.

DondiNET, PM me here with your email addy and I'll send you the new models I have done - Moon Shuttle, Colony 7, Polaris, Zarzon, and Space Demon.

Yeah. been itching to get this machine back up. 3DA was just the best.

Hey, there is a #3d-arcade-director-wip-models channel on Spanner's 3DA Discord. Maybe be best to throw it up on there. I see you are already a member of Petr's 3DA Discord. Doesn't look like you've joined Spanner's though. All my 3DA stuff is in-flux ATM, so here is an invite to the other discord. I can grab them whenever I am ready to get stuff sorted, and maybe it can turn into an alternate repository for fresh 3DA assets: 3DArcade/Emulaxian Front End Discord

[jibmums]

A new face, and and old one, that's awesome! Fossil and I were starting to believe (or years into believing, actually) that we were the last of the 3dArcade users. Would be great if there was a new burst of activity here. I'll do my part; five new models already available, and I'll put up a new WIP post later with a few pics of what else I've been working on since I dove back into 3dsMax a month ago.

DondiNET, PM me here with your email addy and I'll send you the new models I have done - Moon Shuttle, Colony 7, Polaris, Zarzon, and Space Demon.

Yeah. been itching to get this machine back up. 3DA was just the best.

Hey, there is a #3d-arcade-director-wip-models channel on Spanner's 3DA Discord. Maybe be best to throw it up on there. I see you are already a member of Petr's 3DA Discord. Doesn't look like you've joined Spanner's though. All my 3DA stuff is in-flux ATM, so here is an invite to the other discord. I can grab them whenever I am ready to get stuff sorted, and maybe it can turn into an alternate repository for fresh 3DA assets: 3DArcade/Emulaxian Front End Discord

Probly not gonna happen, every time I have tried in the past to get onto Discord I have always had problems, so I just avoid it.

[thewigmuseum]

Sadly, I don't have 3DA running at all on my latest PC. I tried, encountered problems, and really didn't haven't the will to go digging around rooting out the problem. But 3DA and the community back then, small as it was, meant a lot to me and so I still pop into this forum and the two new discords every so often, say hi, get all misty eyed about the halcyon days of 3DA, and hope everyone who was/is involved is happy, healthy, and rich beyond their wildest dreams.

[jibmums]

Good to see you, Wig! Hopefully you'll somehow get 3dArk running again someday. Fossil bought himself an old laptop to do just that.

[thewigmuseum]

Good to see you, Wig! Hopefully you'll somehow get 3dArk running again someday. Fossil bought himself an old laptop to do just that.

I just might do something similar one of these days. I would hate to think I've walked through Deniro's Dungeon or any of Fossil's arcades for the last time. I still retro game from time to time (that will never end), but these days, the games, flyers, marquee images etc are cranked up through Gamebase, not 3DA. My emulated platforms are MAME (of course!) and all the consoles and computers I owned in my misspent youth: ZX Spectrum, Colecovision, Atari VCS, Vectrex, Commodore 64, SNES. I get all misty-eyed just typing out that list!

[jibmums]

I just might do something similar one of these days. I would hate to think I've walked through Deniro's Dungeon or any of Fossil's arcades for the last time. I still retro game from time to time (that will never end), but these days, the games, flyers, marquee images etc are cranked up through Gamebase, not 3DA. My emulated platforms are MAME (of course!) and all the consoles and computers I owned in my misspent youth: ZX Spectrum, Colecovision, Atari VCS, Vectrex, Commodore 64, SNES. I get all misty-eyed just typing out that list!

I must admit that I've never actually used 3dArk for a frontend, I just use each emulator's GUI for that 3dArk is for when I want to remember what it was like being 14 years old and spending Friday and Saturday nights in the arcades, specifically Fossil's Time Out, the actual arcade in the Sunrise Mall that that was modeled after. That mall is now slated to be demolished soon, it's sad to see another part of my childhood disappear.

I've still got some new models going on, check out the Centuri Compendium in the WIP section, and recently I finally finished the last four models for Project Taito II. There's nobody to upload them to the models page though, so if you want them, pm me your email and I'll send you the zip files.

[dondiNET]

I must admit that I've never actually used 3dArk for a frontend, I just use each emulator's GUI for that 3dArk is for when I want to remember what it was like being 14 years old and spending Friday and Saturday nights in the arcades, specifically Fossil's Time Out, the actual arcade in the Sunrise Mall that that was modeled after. That mall is now slated to be demolished soon, it's sad to see another part of my childhood disappear.

I've still got some new models going on, check out the Centuri Compendium in the WIP section, and recently I finally finished the last four models for Project Taito II. There's nobody to upload them to the models page though, so if you want them, pm me your email and I'll send you the zip files.

Wait... you grew up on the south shore of LI too? I did not realize this. Believe Fossil credited the both of us when he released TOGA; I was helping with remembering the surrounding stores & flora on the first floor of Sunrise Mall. That was my stomping grounds in the 80s, as well as Busy Bee on Unqua Rd across the way.

So, I bit the bullet and ordered a few Gigabyte H61 LGA-1155 motherboards and a couple CPUs (i5 2400 and i7 3770) and had a nVidia GeForce GT740 on-hand and installed XP. FINALLY got my 3DA back up-and-running and now "installed" in my re-assembled cocktail cabinet. It's been kicking for the past week and have some tweaks to do, i.e., remapping of joysticks as XP wasn't so kind when plugging-in 4 USB joysticks... Joystick 1 today wasn't necessarily Joystick 1 tomorrow. May also need to re-wire some buttons and maybe just refresh the wiring a bit. But, all-in-all, the cab has been up 24/7 since power-up and chilling-out in attract mode when not being messed with. Not many 3DA crashes of note. Just once in a blue moon with the, "Do you want to write a detailed log? yes / no", I hit NO and then the "Do you want to exit the front end? Yes / no", I hit NO and then continue what I was doing. Usually navigating back up the menu tree to the top-level.

And yeah, I mostly just cruise around the arcades you guys have brought to life. This gives me the most joy... and yes, definitely the ones I hung out in as a teen; i.e., TOGA and Station Break

[jibmums]

Wait... you grew up on the south shore of LI too? I did not realize this. Believe Fossil credited the both of us when he released TOGA; I was helping with remembering the surrounding stores & flora on the first floor of Sunrise Mall. That was my stomping grounds in the 80s, as well as Busy Bee on Unqua Rd across the way.

So, I bit the bullet and ordered a few Gigabyte H61 LGA-1155 motherboards and a couple CPUs (i5 2400 and i7 3770) and had a nVidia GeForce GT740 on-hand and installed XP. FINALLY got my 3DA back up-and-running and now "installed" in my re-assembled cocktail cabinet. It's been kicking for the past week and have some tweaks to do, i.e., remapping of joysticks as XP wasn't so kind when plugging-in 4 USB joysticks... Joystick 1 today wasn't necessarily Joystick 1 tomorrow. May also need to re-wire some buttons and maybe just refresh the wiring a bit. But, all-in-all, the cab has been up 24/7 since power-up and chilling-out in attract mode when not being messed with. Not many 3DA crashes of note. Just once in a blue moon with the, "Do you want to write a detailed log? yes / no", I hit NO and then the "Do you want to exit the front end? Yes / no", I hit NO and then continue what I was doing. Usually navigating back up the menu tree to the top-level.

And yeah, I mostly just cruise around the arcades you guys have brought to life. This gives me the most joy... and yes, definitely the ones I hung out in as a teen; i.e., TOGA and Station Break

Yup, grew up in Massapequa Park, went to MHS class of 1984, lived around the block from Fossil and we spent most weekends at the Sunrise Mall's Time Out and Galaxy. Fos and I would hang around Time Out until the mall started closing up, then head down to Orange Julius and snag some free pretzels before they threw them out. Spent much time at Busy Bee, 300 Bowl, and the pool parlor right next to 300 Bowl too. You from Pequa? Chances are, if you spent time at Time Out between 1980 to 1985 or so, we probably ran into each other at some point. I was the one putting up high scores on Zaxxon every week for the 10 tokens they gave to the weekly winners.

Did you get the four final Taito II's and the Space Demon models?

[dondiNET]

Yup, grew up in Massapequa Park, went to MHS class of 1984, lived around the block from Fossil and we spent most weekends at the Sunrise Mall's Time Out and Galaxy. Fos and I would hang around Time Out until the mall started closing up, then head down to Orange Julius and snag some free pretzels before they threw them out. Spent much time at Busy Bee, 300 Bowl, and the pool parlor right next to 300 Bowl too. You from Pequa? Chances are, if you spent time at Time Out between 1980 to 1985 or so, we probably ran into each other at some point. I was the one putting up high scores on Zaxxon every week for the 10 tokens they gave to the weekly winners.

Did you get the four final Taito II's and the Space Demon models?

Yes, got the models and also posted them in Spanner's Discord in the WIP MODELS channel.

I graduated '86 from Mepham and ran-around with a motley crew from all around the south shore; Wantagh, Seaford, Massapequa, Massapequa Pk & Bethpage, mostly as a result of hanging out at USA Roller Rink -- we were the "rink rats" of the day, and when we got old enough to drive, we did the usual hangouts and would get chased-away by the cops from Hempstead Tpke (Tri-Cty Flea Market, Uncle Sam's / Spit parking lot), All American, Alhambra Beach, etc. Even though I lived in Bellmore/Merrick, I hung out mostly in Seaford/Massapequa areas from pre-teen through HS. I'm sure if we played "Hey, did you know...?" we'd hit on a bunch. My main girlfriend of 5+ years graduated from MHS ('87; she lived on corner of Washington Pl. and Forest Ave (south side of Merrick Rd., behind Merit Gas Station LOL)

I tended to favor Galaxy arcade over TimeOut as my preferred arcade. Was more out-of-the-way down by that secluded offshoot by Sbarro's. TO was too busy down there by the main entrance (bus people) and Nathan's etc.

[jibmums]

Hah, I had All American for dinner just last night, drove down from Huntington.

I have searched the internet for photos of Galaxy but apparently it was nowhere near as well photographed as Time Out. Just one pic popped up in a Newsday article about L.I. malls a year or so ago, I'm posting it below. Too bad, Galaxy would have made a fun arcade for 3dArk, with its unusual layout and the outer space murals on the walls. Fos and I ate at Sbarro's whenever we were up at Galaxy for a few hours.

We drove past the Sunrise Mall while we were down there, totally empty except for Dick's Sporting Goods and that will be gone soon. The parking lot is being used to store extra cars & trucks from some dealership. I'd love to snag one of the "SUNRISE MALL" signs before they get demolished, but I tend to avoid trying to get arrested.