Ho Ho Ho! Merry Blitzmas!

Blitzmas Miracle!

The time has come for all you good little boys and girls and Santa has brought you a gift on this joyous Blitzmas day (exactly on time and in no way late in any way, shape or form).

If you are brave, you can be one of the first loyal believers to test out Blitzmas. This is a beta version, but it has been successfully tested by many members of our discord server with great results!

If you are familiar with our other mods such as FnF, Outrun, Dragon's Lair, Pinner, etc, this mod works the same way and should not cause any issues for you. Please see the documentation for some of those mods for more details until we get more comprehensive walkthrough videos compiled here.

Brief instructions (full readme coming sometime later):
1. Download the MysteryBlitzmas windows application to set up your cab:
https://mega.nz/file/OIhTEabY#mK-FUoxH-cC30LfHXz4qCby0wdQVzZlNrTf3vdDqxgw

2. Download the USB contents with SAM on it. Prepare a fast, high quality USB drive (exFAT) and extract the contents of this .zip file to the root of the drive (This is very important. Do not create a folder to put any of this in or mess with the paths in any way or it won't work.)
https://mega.nz/file/TQYz2b6a#DsezSdqIK-wQ1phadjsqJuqj-WJ5tschFSmaTATiYls

Follow these instructions to install Blitzmas:

Remove power cord from the PCB on the back of the cabinet.
Switch flash switch to "OFF" Position, NOTE: It won't be labeled but ON should be and it can also be hidden behind a "QC" sticker which you'll need to remove.
Download and launch the MysteryBlitzmas software on your PC.
While the application is open and waiting for the PCB to be connected, insert the USB cable to the PCB and PC.
Insert the power cable back into the PCB
Turn on the cabinet using the on switch
Press the install button to flash the PCB and wait till it reaches 100%.
Wait 2 minutes or so, and turn your cabinet off, and restore the flash switch to the "ON" position.
Prepare the USB drive as instructed above if you haven't already.
Insert the USB, and power on the cabinet normally, The cab will boot to SAM Blitzmas edition if all worked well. Removing the USB drive and booting will boot the cab normally

Late hits!?

When you launch a game, holding the start button in for a few seconds will bring up the retroarch menu and allow you to exit back to SAM. You'll notice a mysterious game called "Blitzmas Treat". If you beat this shitty game, you will unlock late hits in Blitz2k in the stock Arcade1UP version when you next load it up (after a reboot)! This is extremely proof of concept, so we locked it behind this fun and annoying treat for now. Let me know how it works! The other games will come in an update later.

Managing games within SAM

Adding/removing games does require some more advanced editing of a few files on the USB drive in the sdl folder. menu.xml drives the menu and titles displayed in SAM and launch.sh is the execution script for each of those items. You should be able to follow the examples to add more. This PCB is pretty underpowered, so don't expect a ton of stuff to run well, but experiment and let the community know. Eventually we will release an update that makes managing games easier, but for now this is it.

SAM itself also has some new improvements such as working volume controls with overlay, a new game loading overlay when a game is selected and performance refactoring for smoother menu navigation.

I hope you enjoy! This is considered a beta release until we get some more testers and documentation, but I wanted to hit the Christmas deadline and thank all of you that have stuck with me through the dev process. Let us know what you think and what you'd like to see improved.

Merry Blitzmas and Happy New Year from DMod and Team Encoder!