3889 replies to this topic

[fuzzel]

I think it's possible to simulate different saucers even with rev2009 but you need two kickers. An invisible one (legacy) and the other one disabled just for the look. So again do we need a accuracy setting for the kicker?

[Shockman]

Yes, but there is a certain point where the ball is not at that depth yet it is inevitable that it will get there.

 

It looks cool to have the ball ride the slope. It can get pretty wild. It can be very much more that veering. But even the 2 full circles you can get result in balls going in the kicker.

 

Given the slope of the table, weight of the ball, gravity, and non existence of explosives, The ball is not going to fly straight over a kicker hole and not drop. And if it drops, it is caught. It is going to continue to drop till it bottoms out. It is not going to drop and then fly out..

 

I suggest you do it your way. You are doing great. I am just trying to get across that the mechanism to give the true life reliability to your kickers needs to be either inherent, or provided.

If that mechanism is the legacy behavior, so be it.

[Shockman]

As it is now, it just demonstrates that gravity is not right. You explanation of how it works make sense (depth -25%). I just think it should reach that -25% 100% of the time, if the ball is over the hole and not the bevel.

[gtxjoe]

I guess making that value of -25% configurable would give us the most control. Set it to 0% and ball does not escape the saucer. Set it to -90% and the saucer become a challenge to hit.

Yes you should be able adjust gravity to get the desired result but then that would effect all the physics of the other objects

[Shockman]

The kicker is at the bottom of a hole. The bevel is above all that. Hitting the kicker is incorrect. Hitting the cylinder just below the bevel is a catch. Hitting the kicker is just a belated register. If the bevel is 9 deep, the value should be 9..

I don't know what percentage of the ball size that is.

 

I fixed the kicker showing through everything by using the editor correctly. The kicker at the skill shot is using the new physics, but with invisible guides and one way invisible gates to ensure no misses resulting from a hit. The result would make you think it is using the legacy code though. I may be able to adjust that.

 

I really do like the work being done. The action on hitting the bevel is nice, if understated, but much better than the way it has been.

[ClarkKent]

I played around a little bit with the new kickers on the test table but I can not see the wobbling in the kicker before the ball rests in it - it just immediately snaps in. Maybe it was a coincident, I'll continue my tests. But it's really really really great the there are more options to the kickers now! Thank you very much!

[fuzzel]

Yes the wobble effect is very subtle. Take a look at the king Kong table the kicker hole of the upper playfield produces a nice wobble effect.

[BobAlbright]

Where do I place the bass.dll file that is included with the latest beta?

[The Loafer]

In the same place as the vpinballx.exe and the other dll's

[randr]

Man have I fallen behind! I need to catch up with these builds

[BobAlbright]

Thanks Loaf

[ClarkKent]

Yes the wobble effect is very subtle. Take a look at the king Kong table the kicker hole of the upper playfield produces a nice wobble effect.

Can you post a link to the table?

[fuzzel]

It's in the VPX table thread. But I've already found a bug in the kicker physics which prevent the wobble effect when a kicker is on the playfield. It will be fixed in the next revision

[Shockman]

One test I did was to kick out on the hit event without delay. Using 4 kickers that kicked the ball outside another kixcker at a place where it would hit the other kicker and observed at many angles the kick happened before the catch. It hit where the kicker was but would not drop in. It will kick out before even hitting the inside of the bevel. Obviously in that case there was always a hit (no wobble) but it sure seems to show that whatever physics are going on, (wobble, hit or miss, and even the drop in) is called after a hit. 

 

That might be related to the problem you found. This was going on on the playfield.

 

Will the next version have the reliability option with the new physics? I'm not suggesting there should be no near misses, only that some kickers when the ball is inside the bevel, is caught, even if it has not dropped enough to register yet.

[Shoopity]

Two more bugs to report:

 

I wouldn't call this a bug, so much as an update slipping through the cracks: The Command Reference still says Primitives have a TopVisible Variable, but it' doesn't work;  Visible, does work (personally that makes more sense to me)

I have four primitives in a Collection; putting them in a Collection affects how their textures are rendered

 

Here is a screenshot of them NOT in a collection:

 screenshot.16.jpg   105.81KB   17 downloads

 

Here's a shot after adding them to a collection (and before any code affects their textures):

 screenshot.14.jpg   104.36KB   17 downloads

 

And Here's a shot after adding them a collection and letting the code change their .image:

 screenshot.15.jpg   101.7KB   17 downloads

 

The lane guides are number 1 - 4, Left to right; the previous shots were such that the order in the collection was ascending.  Interestingly, here's a shot when I change the order to descending (i.e. 4, 3, 2, 1:

 screenshot.17.jpg   84.42KB   15 downloads

 

When I change the order to something random, like 3, 1, 4, 2, it follows suite:

 screenshot.18.jpg   94.28KB   16 downloads

 

It seems the primitive in the first spot doesn't get textured at all, the primitive in the second spot barely gets textured (you can see the top tip of the lane guide, and I think one of the sides which you can't see from this angle), and the primitives in the third and fourth spots appear perfect.

In the mean time, I'll just code the image swapping one object at a time.  I also haven't tested this with larger Collections.

Edited by Shoopity, 01 June 2015 - 06:52 PM.

[fuzzel]

You shouldn't combine animated and non-animated primitives into one grouped collection. The grouped collection is only used for static/non-animated elements.

rev2012 is up with a big kicker physics update. You can define the hit accuracy of a kicker. The default accuracy of 0.3 produces a nice wobble effect. This update might break some existings tables so you have to revisit them and check if the non-legacy kickers are still functioning as expected.

[Shockman]

Wow. That is nice. Thank you. It works as well as I wished. 

It didn't really break my table, but it made all the invisible helper elements I made around the kicker useless.

Edited by Shockman, 01 June 2015 - 09:26 PM.

[randr]

just noticed drain kicker on hercules not working... think its 100 unit ball trying to fit in a 50 hole? will update table

 

upping 1.3 of hercules for kicker fix. same link

Edited by randr, 02 June 2015 - 03:02 AM.

[ICPjuggla]

just noticed drain kicker on hercules not working... think its 100 unit ball trying to fit in a 50 hole? will update table

lol big balls, small holes!!! :-)

[randr]

yeah. all my tables are broken... hercules should be ok but others are broken... will need to figure out new kicker code and find a solution.....