3889 replies to this topic

[toxie]

@hmueck, translation:

 

The next build will fix issues with the new bulb light option for the backside lighting of transparent materials (like playfield plastics). Especially on FS setups there should've been a ton of weird issues with this new feature so far (lights not lighting anything, or being cut off, etc).

Thanks to bodydump for the test table.

 

 

[fuzzel]

Kicker behavior: It might be necessary that you have to check "Legacy" to all hidden kickers in existing tables. That depends how kickers are used there. In legacy mode the kicker behaves like the old magnet kicker in earlier versions of VP. Without "Legacy" the kicker won't fire a hit event until the ball rests in the kicker cup/hole but that might be not the desired effect when you use a kicker as a trigger

[Hyper]

 

With rev2003 the kicker in JP's WOW-monopoly doesn't work anymore 

select all kickers and check "Legacy" for all of them.

 

Thanks worked 

[hmueck]

"- fix wrong zbuffer reads when rendering the bulb light buffer for the transparent material pass"
what's wrong with that? I you like we can send you each commit message to verify the gramma

It's not the grammar, it's the content i don't quite understand. But that's probably why i'm not a VP Dev Team member.

@hmueck, translation:
 

The next build will fix issues with the new bulb light option for the backside lighting of transparent materials (like playfield plastics). Especially on FS setups there should've been a ton of weird issues with this new feature so far (lights not lighting anything, or being cut off, etc).
Thanks to bodydump for the test table.

 
 

Thank you very much!

[sliderpoint]

Significant drop in the kicker power on this update.  Even in the default table the center kicker does not have enough umpf to get the ball out of the kicker with the original value.  Also, if you switch center kicker to legacy it doesn't register the hit event at all.

 

-Mike

 

 

Edit:  nevermind.  After restarting the table twice it started working.  The hits are definitely more sensitive and there is less power on the kicker, but it is functioning.

Edited by sliderpoint, 29 May 2015 - 04:32 PM.

[Shockman]

Kicker behavior: It might be necessary that you have to check "Legacy" to all hidden kickers in existing tables. That depends how kickers are used there. In legacy mode the kicker behaves like the old magnet kicker in earlier versions of VP. Without "Legacy" the kicker won't fire a hit event until the ball rests in the kicker cup/hole but that might be not the desired effect when you use a kicker as a trigger

Kickers that create balls are not working either. Are those balls not resting where needed? Is visibility the only need for legacy code? Why not build that into visibility? Making a kicker hidden should not be an option without the flag that would make it still work being set automatically.

 

What exactly is hit height? The actuator is actually at a negative z number, yet setting hit height to even zero disables the new behavior. Is 40 (the default) where the center of the ball is when in a kicker? 

 

The new behavior is a good start. The speed that is a certain grab works well. Too fast and off center to grab is very subtle but works. What's missing is the off center hit that will ride the rim around but still be caught. 

[fuzzel]

rev2005 is up and fixes the kicking and create ball issues of the kicker.

Edited by fuzzel, 29 May 2015 - 06:38 PM.

[ninuzzu]

Hello,

sometimes, during multiball, the balls don't collide at all, especially when they are sitting on one flipper.

This happens with previous revisions, didn't try the latest

Edited by ninuzzu, 29 May 2015 - 08:13 PM.

[freneticamnesic]

I believe that is due to collidable primitives. That was the fix on randr's Frumpty Dumpty build. I don't know if a bug report got submitted...

[jimmyfingers]

Thanks fuzzel / Toxie for the latest build and quick kicker update.  After even just a quick assessment it's a definite improvement and already adds something that, for at least mimicking missing the real life saucer on hard shots, saves a lot of head ache and coding.  In my BMPR mod of JP's Mata Hari - going on 3 years old now - I had used several techniques, some from observing other authors and some I came up with myself, for simulating both the missing / jumping over the kicker at higher speeds and the rolling around / looping for the funnel aspect, the latter using magnets as others have done.  While the result using a magnet could be quite cool, it was complicated and now with just the kicker alone it definitely adds more realism with some "cupping" and the big one being the black hole like force no longer being present from how any speed ball over a kicker would get seated.

 

Spending only a brief amount of time on the default table some nice results were observed and especially when making the kicker a slightly larger radius and positioning on a slightly lower wall surface (-10 around).  The bigger radius gave for more "cupping" or circling the drain / ball trajectory impact and the somewhat lower surfaced kicker gave more difficulty for the ball getting caught.  

 

I see above that there was talk about combing legacy and hidden / invisible modes to have legacy forced on when chosen, but I would suggest this would only limit options instead of creating them.  Keeping the legacy checkbox and the kicker type for view separate (not forcing to legacy mode for hidden / invisible kickers) allows for some options I can already see, where, as a test / example, I created a 40 radius physical (new) kicker that was hidden but active (for the physical effects), but then made another kicker slightly smaller (35 units) that was visible but not enabled.  This gave some freedom to expand the area for which the kicker would cause the ball to change trajectory but not look out of place for size or once the ball was in the cup and appeared to be seated, although not actually, in the smaller inactive cup, while the larger active one was invisible.  Also this allows further combining of positioning on lowered surfaces as I was testing around -10 with nice results but this could also be tweaked using two kickers in total as described with possible slightly varied heights (depths), but completely needing the hidden / invisible option to still be available for the new type as well (forcing to legacy would break what I already see as useful for creativity from authors).

[fuzzel]

Thanks Jimmy! My first intention was to bind the hidden/invisible kicker with the legacy mode. But while I was at it the same thoughts you had came into my mind. With the additional legacy mode you have the freedom to use the kickers as you like so I think that's it for a while on the kicker front

[hauntfreaks]

I dont think this had been brought up... in the "audio options" as in VP9 you can pick where the sounds will come from and where the music will come from... in VP9 this separation seems to work perfect, but in VP10 it doesnt seem to work at all, is this a VP10 thing or a VP10 table authors thing??

[Shockman]

The top saucer has to be set to legacy just to make it always catch the ball (it's as big as the lane it's in and no way to make the ball go too fast up the lanes, many don't even make it to the saucer). The lane is even tapered to give no room for a miss. I told you that straight on hits should hit enough of the time to not bother programming it to ever not. I have watched many hours of mmpac gameplay and never saw the left saucer miss catching the ball from either direction at any speed.

 

Other saucer, Legacy or not, It too has to be set to legacy to have sure hits surly hit though.

 

The ball feed now works with legacy off, but it sounds like it is playing 1000 copies of the ball feed sound just slightly out of sync with each other. It too has to have legacy on.

Maybe if you can have it do your thing once in maybe 500 it would be fine, but there seems to be a 50 50 chance of the saucer not even working. near misses that hit the bevel and are sucked in are working more than straight on hits.

Edited by Shockman, 30 May 2015 - 05:12 PM.

[fuzzel]

rev2009 is up:

 

- fix kicker's kick function, was too strong
- fix rubber collision bug
- draw bottom control point of a ramp in blue color in editor
 

@Shockman: I tried that on your WIP8 table and I couldn't hear 1000 copies of the ball feed sound maybe it's gone with rev2009 but will check it later again.

[jpsalas]

Very nice fuzzel fixing the rubber collision bug

 

About the kickers... could it be possible to adjust the level of randomness to hit a kicker?

[hmueck]

rev.2009:

 Unbenannt.png   162.35KB   16 downloads

The ball from below the playfield gets kicked so hard, that it flies out of its cage and rolls down the drain.

[fuzzel]

Do you have a test table? The previous revision had a multiplier applied to the kicker strength which I removed in rev2009. So now it's the same kicking function as always. I tested it on the latest Victory WIP and it worked well with rev2009.

[Shockman]

This is beta9

 

The strange sound (like a sound made for an initial hit being checked and played 'while' was beta9 too. I didn"t get it with 2009, but didn't always get it with the one before, and never before that. Not a problem.

 

I hit that saucer exactly zero times out of 7 just now with 2009. I don't think anything has changed from the beta before, it's just a fact of randomness. Next game I might actually hit it twice in a row.

This kicker is hidden in the DT view so the legacy flag takes nothing away. The other saucer has for quite some time had drop walls that made sure the ball would hit the saucer. Just one miss of a saucer hit in a game of Mr. & Mrs. PAC-MAN means nothing less than a broken game. You can see that there is no way to miss this kicker, other than a kicker that does not work. 7 out of 7 misses in one game. There is probably not 7 misses of that kicker in the history of the game, real and virtual.

 

The other saucer is visible, but it should of course not be as visible as VPX is displaying it. I don't mind using invisible or hidden, I can draw a saucer, but I was really hoping to use the new physics on it. A ball can miss so much that it does not even hit the bevel around it on that saucer, but there is nowhere to go but back down where it will be caught.

 

I think there is a lot of confusion about the nature of physics when it comes to a saucer. I think people make mistakes when they think the ball hit a saucer straight on and does not drop in. There is no way that a ball is going to not drop into a saucer it is straight over. It is not ballistic, it is not producing enough energy to counteract gravity. 

 

The saucers are not targets. They are not objectives. They are nothing but devices that let the machibe know that you did make the objective, you have gotten the ball all the way up a certain lane. if this failed one out of a million times it would not exist, they would use something that works that is reliable. It's not just mmpac that uses kickers in this way. That's why with admitting that it is theoretically possible for a ball to hit and bounce out of a kicker center, it is MALFUNCTION, and if you are going to simulate something as rare as that, as the normal behavior, reliable rewards in real games are going to be hit and miss in VPX. A hit of the bevel can go either way. But the pinch point of the lane in mmpac has no other purpose than to have the ball not hit the bevel other than the front. Why? To ensure 100% chance of a grab. 99% would have them at the drawing board, not assembly lines.

Edited by Shockman, 30 May 2015 - 08:20 PM.

[fuzzel]

hmm so what would you suggest here? The hit event and grabbing of the ball is based on the position of the ball. If the ball goes lower than a certain height the kicker will grab it and a hit event is signaled. I could add another setting for the accuracy of a kicker so you could adjust it. At the moment the kicker will fire an event when the ball height is lower than 25% of the normal height.

Edited by fuzzel, 30 May 2015 - 09:18 PM.

[gtxjoe]

There are just several types of saucers. Some are designed to allow the ball to go past the saucer and return back to the saucer. Dr dude has two and so does transformers

Here is dr dude playfield with wear past the saucers
http://www.hsapinbal...ALL/hsa33.html#

But I agree there are saucers that also should always capture the ball based on design and/or placement