This is my first post to this excellent forum (still doubting if this is the right section in the forum for this post)...as English is not my native language i hope you forgive my (hopefully little) mistakes.
Anyhow...I have something to share...but first of all some history.
Some half year ago i read an article in a German computer magazine on Visual Pinball & home-built cabinets...As I'm born in the mid 60's I played quite some pinball in my early years. So reading about VP i was curious and wanted to test it out.
Being a software & electronics ethousist (hobby-wise & professional) I quickly deciced to build my own cabinet.
I took me a few months to get all the part together and have my cab build. Next to a 3 monitor set-up I also added some hardware controlled lights (LED-strips on the bottom of the cabinet) & a real knocker. These are controlled by a arduino board & some power-electronics I made.
All works pretty well. The whole family (including my wife) enjoys playing...favourite game being Medieval Madness.
Have a look :
Setting up (tweaking) the software was not always trivial. Visual Pinball...Future Pinball...HyperPin..DMD-position...running under Windows 7...setting compatibility mode...running as admin...I guess most of you know what i mean.
Tried & compared both VP and FP. I don't want to start yet another tread on comparing these two (excellent) pieces of software...let alone criticize...but i quickly felt some room for improvement. VP playability/physics are great...FP has the good looks...
Also even today i notice some stuttering on VP...due to a lot of events which the VBSCRIPT interpreter has to manage (but can-not).
Anyhow...to cut a long story short: somewher around Christmas last year I decided to build my own pinball simulation program.
Being (maybe too) ambitious i set myself the following goals (read game-requirements)
'State of the art' graphics quality (>= FP's)
Realistic physiscs
Suitable for cabinet set-up & windowed (desktop) operation
support for 1, 2 or 3 monitor
one game-file which will support this (not 16:9/4:3 whatever variants)
Able to use VpinMAME for ROM-based tables
Able to build/use script based tables (fantasy tables)
..the list is even longer....but stored in my brain...and not written down yet
So I started coding 2 months ago. I decided to do some experimemts in C# & XNA...never tried it so it seamed to be fun.
So where am i today ? Did some implementation of a player (no table editor yet)...and using Medieval Madness as a test-case.
VPinMAME, Backglass & basic playfield anuimation have been implemented...
Have a look at this...probably more informative :
Anyhow..let me know what you think of this. I'm open to idea's and suggestions...I still have a lot of work to do...not sharing code yet as it is still in flux....but the idea is to release is as a opensource project.
Wow, that's an impressive start! Quite an ambitous project you have going there, but it looks like you're building it on a smart foundation. Definitely curious to see how it progresses. I would also be curious to see what some of the experienced table builders think of the ideas.
Very impressive, let me know if you need Some testers down the road.
PM me for any CNC needs. Find me on Facebook....Xtreme Pinball Doctor Who Cabinet Build Thread Here Tron Cabinet Build Thread Here Big Bang Bar Build Thread Here Mameman's cnc fun
Looks like a great start, although I'm saddened that you chose to use microsoft dependent software for development rather then more open standards.
Using more open standards such as OpenGL and python scripting would allow the simulation to be implemented on a greater diversity of hardware and OS systems.
To all above posters....thanks for the feedback so far .
Regarding
Looks like a great start, although I'm saddened that you chose to use microsoft dependent software for development rather then more open standards.
Using more open standards such as OpenGL and python scripting would allow the simulation to be implemented on a greater diversity of hardware and OS systems.
Yea...i've been thinking on a nr of languages & development environments...however I decided to to for C# as i like the language...besides this, as I still run both VP & FP i see Windows as the primairy platform for my developments. Next to this there's also the availability of VpinMAME (i don;t know if there are ports to other platforms).
"Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” ----Steve Jobs
Excited to see this project! Hopefully something comes of it. As mentioned before there is someone working to basically port FP to unity. It may be worth it to hook up with lou and see what you guys can accomplish.
Bear in mind that rendering a table is the "easy" (haha!) part - getting the physics/gameplay right is the real meat of the action. Sounds like you've got a great handle on the design/setup so far - good luck to you sir!