Visual Pinball Engine - DMD Integration

This repository enables DMD Extensions / LibDmd output within the Visual Pinball Engine (VPE). It drives real DMD hardware (ZeDMD, PinDMD v1/v2/v3, PIN2DMD, Pixelcade), an on-screen virtual DMD in its own native window, and the in-scene DMD — all from one shared, colorized frame pipeline.

Structure

This project contains two root folders:

• VisualPinball.Engine.DMD wraps the cross-platform LibDmd.Core library (from dmd-extensions) and supplies the Unity plugins. It currently builds against local dmd-extensions projects and copies the managed assemblies and per-platform native binaries into the Unity package.
• VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity is the UPM package that integrates with VPE.

Unity Package

In order to use the package from our registry, open the Package Manager in Unity, and add org.visualpinball.engine.dmd under Add package from git URL.

To import the package locally instead of from the registry, clone and compile it. This will copy the necessary binaries into the Unity folder (see Development Setup).

Development Setup

For local development, clone the repository and build the proxy project first. This builds LibDmd.Core (with the Windows and SDL/GL-ES backends and the serial shim) and deploys the binaries into the Unity package — the managed assemblies into Plugins/Managed as a single, shared "Any Platform" copy, and the native libraries into Plugins/<rid>.

dotnet build VisualPinball.Engine.DMD/VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.csproj

Restart Unity after rebuilding the plugin binaries; the editor keeps loaded DLLs locked and cannot hot-swap them.

The build regenerates the platform-specific plugin .meta files. To keep those local changes out of your commits, mark them assume-unchanged:

git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/Managed/LibDmd.Core.Sdl.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/Managed/LibDmd.Core.Windows.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/Managed/LibDmd.Core.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/Managed/System.IO.Ports.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/Managed/System.Reactive.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/Managed/System.Runtime.CompilerServices.Unsafe.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/Managed/System.Threading.Tasks.Extensions.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/Managed/VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-arm64/libcargs.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-arm64/libserialport.0.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-arm64/libserialport.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-arm64/libserum.2.5.2.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-arm64/libserum.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-arm64/libsockpp.1.0.0.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-arm64/libsockpp.1.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-arm64/libsockpp.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-arm64/libusb-1.0.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-arm64/libzedmd.0.11.0.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-arm64/libzedmd.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-x64/libcargs.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-x64/libserialport.0.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-x64/libserialport.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-x64/libserum.2.5.2.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-x64/libserum.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-x64/libsockpp.1.0.0.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-x64/libsockpp.1.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-x64/libsockpp.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-x64/libusb-1.0.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-x64/libzedmd.0.11.0.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/osx-x64/libzedmd.dylib.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/win-x64/ftd2xx.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/win-x64/libSkiaSharp.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/win-x64/libserialport.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/win-x64/libserialport64-0.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/win-x64/libusb-1.0.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/win-x64/serum64.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/win-x64/sockpp64.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/win-x64/sqlite3.dll.meta
git update-index --assume-unchanged VisualPinball.Engine.DMD.Unity/Plugins/win-x64/zedmd64.dll.meta

Configuration

DmdBridgePlayer loads DmdDevice.ini when present (relative paths resolve from Unity's persistent data folder; DMDDEVICE_CONFIG is honored when set). The INI is read-only here — VPE persists its own settings. Supported sections include [virtualdmd] (native-window layout plus the dmdext style keys dotsize, dotrounding, dotsharpness, unlitdot, brightness, dotglow, backglow, gamma, glass, glasslighting), [zedmd], [pindmd1]/[pindmd2]/[pindmd3], [pixelcade], [pin2dmd], and per-ROM colorization.

Colorization runs once in the shared LibDmd converter stage; enable it with [global] colorize = true. If the component ROM name is empty, the bridge reads the active PinMAME romId; if the altcolor path is empty, it uses the DMDDEVICE_CONFIG folder's altcolor directory, then LibDmd's VPM folder lookup. Serum is tried first, then VNI/PAL/PAC, with [global] vni.key and [global] vni.scalermode honored.

License

This plugin is licensed under the GPL-2.0 license, matching DMD Extensions / LibDmd, which it builds on. The bundled native libraries (libserum, libzedmd, libusb, libftd2xx, libserialport, and their transitive native dependencies) retain their respective upstream licenses.