Could i ask aswell, as Amber looks like it'll be supporting some cool bwb machines, are we one step closer to emulating the bwb video's? I've also noticed the actual image in amber looks clearer. it'll look sweet on my projector. very excited!!
BWB Video is a whole different ball game. It uses the standard MPU4 board hooked up via a serial link to the MPU4 Video board, which is another motorola 68000 based system.
Visual Basic is fast enough to run the mpu4 (motorola 6809) but not fast enough to run the Video (motorola 68000). However it is possible to hook up a C++ written core with VB handling the peripherals (reels, payouts, coin mech, etc), which should be fast enough.
MAME are currently working on MPU4 Video (of all types, Barcrest, BWB etc) but its not working yet afaik.
So Amber will never run BWB Video alone, however it is entirely possible that one day Amber will be used as a design tool / frontend for MAME, in which case, BWB Video is likely.
As I am still discovering myself, emulation takes 1000000's of steps. So as for being 1 step closer, I would say we are several steps closer, but with lots more steps still to go.
To add a bit more about Amber regarding the layouts and scaling. At the present moment Amber's maximum layout size is 2048*2048, so the bigger the artwork you put in, the better it should look when scaled up/down. You have the option to scale a layout and/or scroll a layout. So you could view the artwork full size and scrol teh layout up,down,left,right to see the bit you currently need, or you can scale the layout to the size you want and every resolution your graphics can support is available. The layouts use a linear filtering tecnique if requested in the options, this makes things look a bit smoother, and is compatible with almost all available gfx cards and hardware. Anti Aliasing will be available in the final edition but because nVidia broke the drivers a year or so ago, DirectX8 Anti Aliasing will likely not work with any of their cards, hence linear filtering being used as it works on all OS/hardware atm.
You can also edit a layout whilst scaled or scrolled or both so you can make a huge layout on a tiny screen, something MFME can't do in any public version!