29 replies to this topic

[Tweegster]

Setup Guide for VP9 / HP / UltraVP / DMD



Version: 1.0.5
Category: Tutorials

Author(s): Tweegster

Description:
A guide I made for setting up software to work in Windows 7 64bit. It can also be applied to other versions of windows 32bit or 64bit
This is a Step by Step guide showing anyone how to install Visual Pinball 9 / HyperPin / UltraVP Server and your DMD from start to finish.

Screen Shots for almost every step along the way in clear and easy to understand English.

Recently updated to include a Table of Contents by popular demand to make it easier to find the stuff you want as well as a few additions to how to setup a few things.

View File

Submitted by Tweegster, on Oct 3 2010, 09:02 PM

[Rawd]

Incredible work man! This guide will be VERY helpful for others. It is unselfish contributors like yourself that keep this hobby alive.


one thing I noticed.. "You will need to Launch UltraVP Server EVERY time before you play the game. Once it loads you can quite it. This is just so Windows knows where its located and so that the Animated Backglass will work."

This statement is not true... You only need to run UVP once when you initially set it up.

Edited by Rawd, 04 October 2010 - 03:27 AM.

[Tweegster]

Incredible work man! This guide will be VERY helpful for others. It is unselfish contributors like yourself that keep this hobby alive.


one thing I noticed.. "You will need to Launch UltraVP Server EVERY time before you play the game. Once it loads you can quite it. This is just so Windows knows where its located and so that the Animated Backglass will work."

This statement is not true... You only need to run UVP once when you initially set it up.

so you only need to run it once? even after you shut down or restart your computer?

I will update the tutorial to take this into effect.

Thank you for helping clear that up. I was under the impression from a post I read that you had to start it up and then close it every time before it would work.

If I can help just one person out with this tutorial it will be worth every hour, every minute of every day it took for me to figure this out and to make the tutorial.

[Rawd]

Incredible work man! This guide will be VERY helpful for others. It is unselfish contributors like yourself that keep this hobby alive.


one thing I noticed.. "You will need to Launch UltraVP Server EVERY time before you play the game. Once it loads you can quite it. This is just so Windows knows where its located and so that the Animated Backglass will work."

This statement is not true... You only need to run UVP once when you initially set it up.

so you only need to run it once? even after you shut down or restart your computer?

I will update the tutorial to take this into effect.

Thank you for helping clear that up. I was under the impression from a post I read that you had to start it up and then close it every time before it would work.

If I can help just one person out with this tutorial it will be worth every hour, every minute of every day it took for me to figure this out and to make the tutorial.

Yup, you should only need to run it once and exit after you install UVP the first time (I think it records its location to the registry). Try it on your own machine, and I think it will work just fine. I think someone mentioned long ago that they needed to run it everytime, and that dis-information snowballed into later posts.

You really went all out with this tutorial.. I am sure it took alot of work.

Edited by Rawd, 04 October 2010 - 03:57 AM.

[Tweegster]

It was frustrating for me trying to originally get everything working. Since I felt I was not alone in this I made this guide in the hopes to clear the air and help people out.

Future updates I'm working on.

+Including Future Pinball Setup
+Introducing Playfeild Videos to HyperPin
+Introducing Wheel Images for HyperPin
+anything else I can think of while I work on my Pinball cabinet

Edited by Tweegster, 04 October 2010 - 05:16 AM.

[Noah Fentz]

Fantastic work!

Thank you!

If I may make a simple edit request ...

Could you edit all instances of vpforums.net to vpforums.org?

Vpforums.net is just a forwarding URL.

Thanks!

[Tweegster]

Fantastic work!

Thank you!

If I may make a simple edit request ...

Could you edit all instances of vpforums.net to vpforums.org?

Vpforums.net is just a forwarding URL.

Thanks!

that's easily completed for the next revision I'm working on. I just went by the URL I had booked marked for the site. I've gotten a few other requests too and when I have time I will try and get them into this tutorial.
If all goes well I will have more details on other aspects of this subject in the next revision... Including if all goes well my really really bad spelling

[mml]

Im just getting started in this and couldnt have asked for anything more - GREAT DOC !! - Thank you !! timing is perfect - keep it up.

[settingsons]

Hey Tweegster! That really is a first class tutorial - I remember when I started out it took months to work all this out, but now we have a centralised 'all you need to know' document for newbies, and it is also a great reference book for regulars as well. I can see it was a lot of work so many many thanks!

[Tweegster]

This is my first Pinball cabinet conversion project, however I've built several Mame arcades for friends, or I converted their old non working arcade to a Mame Setup like the one pictured below.

Being that this was my first attempt to build a Pinball Cabinet, it's had its challenges. However I didnt get the Achievement point for it as I had to cheat and make myself a tutorial, but it looks like I will get an Achievement for helping out others and thats worth more points in my books.

I'm still finding things out and more things I'm looking to add to this tutorial, like just recently I tried to get The Party Zone working and for the life of me I couldn't get the DMD to resize (it would revert back to the default small size) but then I just quite Visual Pinball, went into the VPinMame program, tested the rom and resized it during the rom test and that seems to have fixed my little issue.

Below some pictures of my Pinball machine WIP and a completed Mame conversion for a friend using his old UN Squad Cabinet.

Attached Files

•  pin2.jpg   79.81KB   76 downloads
•  pinball_cabinet.jpg   78.54KB   122 downloads
•  mame_cabinet.jpg   58.21KB   81 downloads

[hgpinball]

Hello Tweegster,

thanks for this great tutorial. I referenced it inside the Installation Guide.

[ta2686]

Great tutorial Tweegster!

I think this should be pinned!

[Tweegster]

Just updated the guide with more information on setting up your pinball cabinet. Hope this other information helps everyone.
Special thanks to ta2686 for letting me add his Volume Adjustment tutorials to mine.

BTW Thanks to everyone who's been sending me suggestions and things they would like to see in the next version. Keep them coming and I will keep updating the tutorial.

Edited by Tweegster, 06 October 2010 - 03:03 AM.

[Dazz]

Your tutorial is great, but your section on editing the registry for DMD positions can be greatly improved. I'll see if I can find some time to write up a tutorial that will help even further. It may take a while as October is an extremely busy month for a haunted house reviewer.

Anyway, the first step is to use VPM and open, save default settings, then close each and every ROM. The rest involves exporting the VPM registry keys and then using Notepad++ to do several wildcard search/replace. I spent about 2 days opening and closing each and every rom, but then spent only 5 minutes on moving the DMD position for every ROM. I now never have to reposition a DMD unless new ROMS are added to VPM support.

[Tweegster]

Your tutorial is great, but your section on editing the registry for DMD positions can be greatly improved. I'll see if I can find some time to write up a tutorial that will help even further. It may take a while as October is an extremely busy month for a haunted house reviewer.

Anyway, the first step is to use VPM and open, save default settings, then close each and every ROM. The rest involves exporting the VPM registry keys and then using Notepad++ to do several wildcard search/replace. I spent about 2 days opening and closing each and every rom, but then spent only 5 minutes on moving the DMD position for every ROM. I now never have to reposition a DMD unless new ROMS are added to VPM support.

If you would like to make that tutorial with screen shots I would love to add it in (with you as credit to it, or link to a place to download your tutorial)
I think that would be a great thing to have as I don't know much about doing that kind of tweaking to the software yet. But Im learning fast it seems.

[J3SteR]

Yes great job! I'm going to use this to setup my cab when it's done. The dmd saving for the 400 series is priceless! Should be pinned!

[DedRok_V]

Great job.

I have it as short cut on my desktop.
Just click and open when i'm setting up my cab.

[blur]

Great manual Tweegster, I used it in for my setup of ultravp since it is most complete guide on the subject.

I found some stuff that could be added thought:

for non dmd games you have to set dmd to hidden (check bent's guide on hs forum), in with controller part of the script you have to add .hidden=1, here is example from spiderman:

CODE

    With Controller
        .GameName = cGameName
        .SplashInfoLine = "Spiderman by Bob5453" & vbNewLine &_
                          "Original VPM Script by Gaston"& vbNewLine &_
                          "Table and Plastic Pics by Blownfuse"
        .HandleKeyboard = False
        .ShowTitle = False
        .ShowDMDOnly = False
        .ShowTitle = False
        .hidden = 1
    End With

and few things from my uvp post:

game name doesn't really have to match uvp, png and all artwork names

game name only has to match table file name

game description!!! has to match uvp name, png name and all other artwork file names

that's also mentioned in hyperpin installation manual that comes with HP, but who reads manuals
it can confuse you if you find in many other manuals that game name tag has to match uvp and png and then you don't fix description tag, and then of course nothing works

and last thing - UVP file name, png file name and description tag CAN'T HAVE "_" cause uvp server will not work, didn't test all other letters but conclusion is that uvp server is very picky with letters and all peculiar letter should be avoided

since directory location of uvp server is part of all uvp and png full file names - directory also can't have "_" in its name, this is proven by guy on hyperspin forums that could not run uvp because of his HP location (C:\_____Hyperpin)

Edited by blur, 23 April 2011 - 05:30 PM.

[maxxsinner]

Great manual tweegster and very much appreciated.

[bladexdsl]

it says you have to open uvp server each time but when i open it takes up the whole playfield screen and i have to close it can't keep it open?