Hacking Arcade

Arcade not only allows you to create animations for the installation. As a programmer, you can directly participate and write your own Arcade games. To support this, we have written a programming library - the Blinkenlights Library (blib) - that is provided freely as source under GPL.

Furthermore, there are other tools that can help to create, convert and edit animations. A simulator allows to completely simulate the Arcade (and the original Blinkenlights) installation on your PC. You can even hook up live when Arcade starts playing on Sep 25th and receive the real-time data stream directly from the Bilbiothèque nationale de France.

The code that was written for Arcade is an evolution of the original Blinkentools. After having finished this project, we will release the code as GPL once more.

Check out the most recent updates of the software at http://sven.gimp.org/blinkenlights/.

blib

blib is the Blinkenlights Library, a programming library that gives you a kick start into development with Blinkenlights/Arcade. blib also provides the Game API with which games for Arcade can be developed. blib provides:

functions to read and write BLM, BML and GIF animations.
functions to receive and send the Blinkenlights protocol

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blinkensim

blinkensim is the project's simulator. Using blinkensim you can receive the Blinkenlights Protocol as it is being sent by the Blinkenlights Chaos Control Center to the Matrix Control Units (the computers that take care of controlling the lamps).

blinkensim das graphic backends for DirectFB and GTK+ 2.0. It should run on all Linux systems on all Linux systems using one of these backends. GTK+ and a little tweaking should make it run on Mac OS X as well.

For a working blinkensim installation you also have to install the blinkenthemes that contain the necessary graphic files for the simulator.

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MPlayer speaks BML and Blinkenlights Protocol

The program MPlayer for Linux supports the Blinkenlights Protocol since version 0.90pre8 natively. This means that all video formats supported by MPlayer can be sent to blinkensim in realtime. The Blinkenlights Team has seen quite a couple of Futurama episodes on Arcade :-). Furthermore MPlayer can directly write BML making it an alternative to the blinkentools converters.

MPlayer must be translated with the option --enable-bl to support Blinkenlights. A transmission gets started with mplayer -vo bl:arcade:[host=hostname:port|file=foo.bml]

blinkentools

The blinkentools have been enhanced significantly for Arcade. They contain the following tools for the command line:

b2bml	Converts GIF or BLM to the new Arcade BML file format.
b2gif	Converts BML or BLM to GIF file format.
b2blm	Converts GIF or BML to BLM file format.
bsend	Sends BML, BLM or GIF in Blinkenlights Protocol format to the MCUs or the blinkensim simulator

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blinkentools (version 2.3)