**************************************************************************************
                    Visual PinMAME
                     Version 1.59
                  (February 17, 2007)
                http://www.pinmame.com
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Latest Info
-----------
  See the whatsnewVPM.txt for latest additions to Visual PinMAME!

What is it?
-----------

Visual PinMAME is a totally new emulation project which is based on the current 
PinMAME source code. If you're new to PinMAME, check out the included pinmame.txt file.

Visual PinMAME is a Windows COM object which can be controlled by scripting languages 
such as Visual Basic Script. This allows other programs to 'control' Visual PinMAME. 

As an example, users can program their own front end for it, using Visual Basic, 
or even an HTML front end. 

Any software that has VBS support and can create COM objects can interact and control 
Visual PinMAME. 

Control of Visual PinMAME includes setting which game to play, 
setting options for controlling gameplay, setting & reading the state of switches 
programmatically during gameplay, receiving programmatic information regarding the 
state of the lamp matrix and the solenoid matrix during gameplay.


What does it do?
----------------
 It allows programmers to control PinMAME emulation. Essentially PinMAME is entirely 
encapsulated into the Visual PinMAME object. Practically anything PinMAME can do, 
Visual PinMAME can do, only programmatically so the user has control over how certain
things work.


Installation:
-------------
 
 See the Installation Guide.html file for step by step instructions on how to install Visual PinMAME.


How to Program Visual PinMAME
-----------------------------
We've included a file called interface.html which describes all the properties and methods 
that are available from Visual PinMAME to scripting languages. We've also included some
samples to help demonstrate possible ways to use Visual PinMAME.


Minimum System Requirements
---------------------------

To use:
Visual PinMAME is a Windows COM object, and as far as we know will only work on Win9x,NT,2000,XP computers.

To Program:
Any scripting language that can create COM objects, such as Visual Basic or Visual Basic Script.


Known Bugs
----------
  None specific to VPinMAME yet, but we're sure you'll find them!


The Visual PinMAME Development Team
-----------------------------------

Steve Ellenoff     (sellenoff at hotmail.com)
Tom Haukap         (Tom.Haukap at t-online.de)
Martin Adrian      (wpcmame at hotmail.com)
Gerrit Volkenborn  (gaston at pinmame.de)
Brian Smith        (destruk at comcast.net)
Thomas Behrens     (TomB1709 at gmail.com)
Oliver Kaegi       (okaegi at freesurf.ch)
