491 replies to this topic

[Shoopity]

Please head over here for the Official release of AMH.  I would prefer any trouble shooting, bug finding, and what-not from downloading there to be posted in the support thread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the original first post, please follow this link

 

OK, Brand new Beta.  I've now updated the VP table to version 20 (to match what the current version of the real table is, as of this writing, 08/07/15).  I've added a bunch of graphics from Frenetic's VPX table, and included some methods and lighting tricks I learned when working with him on that version.  Things I know I still need to do, but wanted to put the table out there for the weekend:

• Add machine sounds like solenoids
• The War Fort advancing is not calling the right DMD animations so you'll see File Not Found
• Add Bumper Primitives
• Add Flasher lighting effects (they are pretty cool, check out the VPX version)

 

I know there's others, but that's all I wrote down for now.

 

Link to Music.

Put the contents of the Zip into a folder Labled "Music" in the same place as your VP executable.  E.G. C:\Program Files\Visual Pinball\Music\

 

Link to Gifs for UltraDMD.

Put the contents of the Zip into a folder labled "America's Most Haunted.UltraDMD" in the same location that you've save the .vpt table file.  E.G. C:\Program Files\Visual Pinball\Tables\America's Most Haunted.UltraDMD\

 

Link to VP9 Table.

I hope I don't need to tell you what to do with this.

 

Link to Frenetic's VPX Table.

 

Screenshot as of 08/07/15:

Edited by Shoopity, 21 August 2015 - 04:47 PM.

[gStAv]

frikking cool! Ben is shure a great guy! Would love to have this table on my cab. but it sure would be one 'heck' of a job!

[mameman23]

Got to play it at the weekend, pretty cool. Nice sounds. Looking forward to seeing the design files as it would be An interesting starting point for even building your own machine.

[freneticamnesic]

I have interest in working on it. It would need to be an UltraDMD project so it could be very buggy. The game was written in C so it won't be a straight conversion to VB but won't be difficult for a decent scripter......... hint not me. It would be a pretty large undertaking, converting that script and making it all work in UltraDMD. UltraDMD still has limits though so maybe something else should be figured out.

[Shoopity]

OK, he shared a TON of stuff with me.  I'm still going through it all.  In the first post, I've put a table I quickly threw together, what I call VP's version of a white board.  I would say it's 90% physically accurate, just missing a couple targets here and there.  Nothing works yet though other than the plunger and flippers.  The light show is pretty accurate as far as I can tell (there aren't many videos of this table out there).  I also have come across a ramp problem where the ball doesn't go under ramps, regardless of how high that ramp is.  I haven't done much trouble shooting and I won't be able to get back to work on this until Monday.

[freneticamnesic]

Played a lot of games on this tonight. Very good game, I'm impressed

[freneticamnesic]

Here's some pictures I took tonight 

https://app.box.com/...qkxi2zxfdiu4g09

[The Loafer]

thanks for taking this project on.  Ben is one heck (sorry!  ) of a guy to allow this! 

[Joe]

So I just got word from Ben Heck, he seems willing to share ALL of the design files, sound files, 3d Meshes, everything for America's Most Haunted.  I think I'm going to have to send him a HDD because he said it's all about 70~80 Gigs worth of data.  Of course this wouldn't be a VPM table since VPM doesn't emulate the Parallax Propeller, so the code would have to be understood and re-written in VP.  But, this is also a DMD heavy game, so I would think Ultra/HyperDMD would be a requirement.

 

Is anyone else out there interested on working on this?

 

***Edit 11/14/14***

OK, here's something I threw together in a couple days.  He gave me over 100 gigs of stuff; although a lot of it has little to do with building a table as far as VP is concerned.  He included a bunch of videos (many he posted), even the .prproj files he used when editing/making those videos.  Lots of .spin and .h code.  I haven't dug through all the media, but I haven't found many .bmp files so I'm not sure just how much source material there is for the DMD.  Definitely all the audio though.

 

Most recent America's Most Haunted table.

If you can get hardware info and rom files (having the source code is good as well) then it can be added to pinmame as well.

[freneticamnesic]

the source is available as well, but adding it isn't the easy part

[Shoopity]

Yeah, this is done on a Parallax Propeller, which VPM doesn't emulate. Last year I asked Destruk regarding this for Bill Paxton Pinball.  Seeing as of right now there is only one commercially available pin that uses this chip, I don't expect it expect it to be emulated any time soon.

 

As of right now, I think the only route to take is to go through the code and do my best to transfer it to VBScript.  The hard part for me is how coding for a microcontroller is different from coding for a program.  Micro-controllers are cycle based.  That is, you have one main loop that runs hundreds or thousands of times per second that checks the state of every switch and sets variables appropriately depending on current modes and what-not.  When I was working on BPP, I realized it's not quite as easy as I thought it would; it's easy to miss stuff, or overlap modes that shouldn't be overlap-able.  Like in a real pin, you have to worry about debounce (when a ball rolls over a switch, the physical switch might actually bounce and trigger more than once, so you have to ignore switch activations for a certain amount of time after the first activation), in VP you don't, so you ignore that part of code for a micro-controller.

 

There's also things that can be done in Parallax that can't be done (directly) in VBScript or VP specifically.  Like in BPP he had a sound priority setup where a sound would play only if it had a higher priority than the sound currently playing (or if no sound was playing).  VP has no way, built in, to know when a sound stops playing, or if a sound is currently playing.  The only thing I've come up with so far is to time EVERY SINGLE sound effect and pass that time into a routine; that would be a pain when you're talking about hundreds of sounds.  It would be so much easier if VP had a SoundIsPlaying function or a SoundStopped event.

 

And a game like this makes really good use of the DMD, so the only option is use HyperDMD/UltraDMD.  I'm not even going to entertain the thought of coding my own DMD.

[BigBoss]

Like in BPP he had a sound priority setup where a sound would play only if it had a higher priority than the sound currently playing (or if no sound was playing).  VP has no way, built in, to know when a sound stops playing, or if a sound is currently playing.  The only thing I've come up with so far is to time EVERY SINGLE sound effect and pass that time into a routine; that would be a pain when you're talking about hundreds of sounds.  It would be so much easier if VP had a SoundIsPlaying function or a SoundStopped event.
 

i don't think this is a huge problem. You simply write a new function like "PlayPrioritizedSound" and use it instead of PlaySound. In here you can track the state of sounds just like the real game does.

[Shoopity]

Yeah but VP doesn't know if a sound is playing so something like

If IsSoundPlaying = 1 Then...

won't work.  And no event is fired when a sound stops playing, so you can't do a

Sub SoundStopped()

either.  The only thing I've thought of is to do a

PlayPrioritiezedSound("SoundToPlay", PriorityNumber, LengthOfSound)

Then in that sub I could start a timer, set a variable, etc.  But like I said, that would require figuring out the length of EVERY SINGLE sound effect.  Then another problem with VP is that while there is a StopMusic, there's not a StopSound, so even if there was a higher priority sound, I wouldn't be able to cut the current playing sound; I could only either play the sound on top of the current one or queue it up to play as soon as the first sound finished.

 

Please, if I'm missing something, or not thinking of something that's obvious, let me know.

Edited by Shoopity, 16 November 2014 - 03:13 AM.

[Shoopity]

OK, I posted a newer White Board Version.  Still no game logic, but this table has the following:

 

Please try different Backdrop settings to get a really good look at the ghost.

• My own personal Trough System.  I know other people were/are working on one, but I never even looked at those tables, so there's no chance that I was influenced by them.  Push the Up Arrow (sorry for those who only have VP on a cab) to serve the ball.
• All the inserts are done as far as I can tell.  I still have to add the few Flashers that are in the game, but according to the Light Matrix, just about everything is there.
• I believe all the physics are right, but I might be missing a post here or there (now that I think about, I know I'm missing a post by the scoop).  By saying "physics are right", I don't mean you can make the exact same shots as you can on a real table, or that things like the scoop kickout is dialed in correctly; I just mean all the things the ball can interact with are there.
• Spooky Door is in, textured and animated.  Of course on a real table I don't think much was done to texture the door, but I'm using the ScratchedMetal pic.  This is a straight mesh from BH's design files.
• The Ghost is textured, animated, and has some lighting.  I'm actually very proud of myself with the lighting.  I think in the real table, he's lit up better/brighter, but with the subdued internal lighting effect I chose, I think it really makes it pop even more (increasing the strength of the internal lights loses things like the creases less apparent).  This too is a straight mesh (though I had to remove all the inside parts and decimate the crap out of it).

Edited by Shoopity, 18 November 2014 - 09:54 PM.

[gStAv]

Looks really nice Shoopity!

[Shoopity]

OK, I uploaded a pic to the first post, but I have not updated the table yet.  There's still no brains to the table, but I sort of have a question.  BH uses SD cards for videos and sounds; since memory is so cheap (especially compared to the 90's), he has uncompressed stereo files.  The sound effects alone take up 530 megs.  The music is another 213 megs.  Now, I plan on converting the music to MP3s, but the only thing I can do with the sounds is lower the sample rates (since vp can't play more than one mp3 at a time).

 

They're currently either 32 bit or 16 bit, and I can lower it to 8 bit, but then you hear a definite quality drop.  And that has shrunk it down to 30 megs, and that's also bringing it down to mono.  And the table is currently sitting at just under 20 megs.  Again, I haven't added/converted the music yet.  So we're lookin' at a 60~70 meg table, and that's with "crappy" sounds.  Or, I could just not include the plethora of sounds for the same event; e.g. he has about 19 different End of Game clips.

[Shadowsclassic]

Your call Shoopity, I would like to have a complete remake, but I know there are limits both to peoples storage capacity and to your build patients.

[Shoopity]

I just found there are even sounds for menu stuff; e.g. if you're in the Switch Edge menu and push the right flipper, the game will actually say "right flipper" (spoken by BH himself).  So maybe I can get rid of the maintenance stuff initially (since I would only add test menu stuff later, if at all).

[Shadowsclassic]

Maybe you could release a basic set of sounds, and then have add on pack(s) if anyone wanted to dedicate the space.  Just a thought.

[freneticamnesic]

Did he send you 3d models of the ramps, too?