235 replies to this topic

[DonRobby]

So I guess we still need to find a road in the middle without curveballs.

And still being able to live catch or cradle seperate and also making sure it doesn t lag on most graphic cards and also improve the centre shots.

Soo much variables to deal with doesn t really make it too easy as well.

I decided to reduce the slope again back to 6,5 and carefully made some changes on the ramp frictions as well and making sure all settings match each other wich was not the case.

But to make sure I also don t mess that up by making the ball stuck again is still the question.

Still can t beat the game with the new settings but I never felt like it was unrealistic or that the ball was sliding so I hope by changing back the slope the game becomes a little friendlier again.

Any feedback for me Clark about some of my settings?

[ClarkKent]

Clark now I have tried to tune yours and here is what i came up with.
 
Physics
gravity 0,85, playfield friction 0,02, playfield scatter and scatter falloff  0
 
Dimensions & Slope
Slope min & max difficulty 7,5 ( for that PAPA table feeling)
 
Flipper Physics
Mass 1,6, Strength 3200 ( then I can make a proper backhand on the ramps), elasticity 0,7, elasticity falloff 0,25, friction 0,3, return strength 0,06, coil ramp up 2,5
Thats pretty close to the flippers of Groni's Attack from Mars wich is the best setting I have seen yet for decent cradle seperation when you have 2 balls at 1 flipper and even a live catch although that still is pretty hard to do with this engine.
 
Also some other things I have changed to my own preferences are the plunger release speed set at 185 and made the pop bumpers have a radius of 46, lowered the slingshot force to 5 and have set that unwanted slingshot underneath the catapult to 0 although I m not sure why that slingshot is placed over there at all.
 
And that is all I know I can change, I hope this can help you.
About the other issues i mentioned I simply don't know enough about this engine, I work with Unity 3D making simulations of fairground rides, but in this being all alone I never be able to join in the development circle.
Also that other hobby of mine simply consumes too much time to being able to make that happen anyway.

I have to appologize and thank you very much for your findings! First I thought you are exaggerating but your settings are totally a step in the right direction!

flippersettings 1,6/3.300 are really really good for backhands - I must admit that I didn't consider that as I'm not really a backhand player... But almost these settings were in the original release anyway, so no big change here. I left elasticity at 0,9, falloff at 0,3 and friction at 0,45 (because of the better centershots with higher speed balls, but revising is possible).
With Coil Ramp Up 2,5 ball controll is also better than 1 but you lose a little bit strength because of the high Coil Ramp Up. First I thought I set it lower because I feared a high lag but you are right - there is almost none.
Gravity feels ok with 0,85 at a slope at 6,5 but I have to investigate in this case because gravity should be 1. Mukuste has a master degree in physics and mathematics - I think he thought well about this recommending gravity 1...
I left playfield fricition at 0,05 - I think it's not good to make the ball roll (slide on lower settings) too fast. On 90's machines the ball is not THAT fast. And I do not like the ball sliding at low friction settings.

All settings are in constant change until I find the perfect ones.

All in all your comments were VERY helpful! You should advice table authors in future, too!

Can you share your latest table revision?

Edited by ClarkKent, 16 February 2016 - 08:33 PM.

[jpsalas]

After spending a lot of long talks with jimmyfingers, I realized that if I used a low playfield friction, like 0.025 (and that was the one I was using and defending ), the ball will get insane spinning. And if at the same time the walls/rubbers do not have enough friction, then the ball will do weird things, like accelerate upwards, for example on the flippers lanes, leaving you with the mouth open completely perplexed So the settings that fuzzel explained in the other thread should be the start point, and all the friction of the objects must be in balance, otherwise you will see strange ball behavior, with insane ball spin, and when it hits something with a normal and correct friction then it will "bite" and it may do completely crazy changes. What fuzzel wrote is the result of countless hours experimenting, mostly done by jimmyfingers, and I should use that at the starting point, and I think the only thing you may want to change is the elasticity of some rubbers, if you want a more bouncy table. I was too stubborn to use a higher playfield friction than 0,025 and I spent almost a year without finding right values for the other objects, and I almost gave up those new physics. But by starting with these minimum values: playfield friction of 0.07 and a rubber friction of 0.6 and a plastic/metal minimum of 0,15 then the ball will start to behave more normally. So try those values and you'll see that your tables will behave much better.

[ClarkKent]

You are totally right. But with playfield friction 0.07 you have to set the gravity higher otherwise the ball will get extremely slow. And the whole thing starts from the beginning...

 

Which thread do you mean where fuzzel explained this?

Edited by ClarkKent, 16 February 2016 - 09:32 PM.

[fuzzel]

I suppose JP meant this one http://www.vpforums....topic=33305&hl=

Edited by fuzzel, 16 February 2016 - 09:56 PM.

[Ben Logan]

Groni, jump in here and tell us how you got your physics results. They're unique and great!

 

Dozer - forgive everybody (mainly me) for temporarily hijacking the Medieval Madness thread for a physics discussion. Personally I think the physics on your MM table are super. And, I love learning about further tuning to personal taste. The more we can all learn about physics tuning, the less you amazingly patient developers will have to hear players' gripes. We'll just "fix" things ourselves! 

 

[DonRobby]

I m glad that my feedback gets received so well.

I also would like to thank JPSalas for giving his thought on the friction and I must confess this also happens with me.

The ball hits like the corner underneath the catapult and off she goes into a wild cannonball sometimes resulting in a drain or an outlane.

I found a slingshot in the middle of the rubber with a force set to 8 but even shutting that down and realizing I hit the corner instead I see all those items are meant to give it a boost to help the ball's ricochet effect.

Still 8 is a lot higher then the real slingshot wich only have 6 instead,

But finding the balance depends on soo much ingriedents, you want a rubber post to give a little elastic bounce effect as well and not hit a concrete wall that stops the speed.

Some machines have black rubbers, some have white wich both react differently.

You may find a wire gate to be acting a little to tough, like I just find that capapult shot having too much resistance at the gate.

 

I'd say we all need to throw in our thoughts on the physics subject and maybe even take it to a new topic if somebody else agrees to give it their thoughts for debat.

After all VPX is young and not too hard to tune. 

Also then we can try out some other games because i believe no 2 games could ever be the same so there also never will be a real default to simply copy and paste onto the next. 

Could be done for a starting point but then you may find yourself still needing to fine tune some things.

Each game is designed differently and also tweaked to make some shots become better after some testing points out.

The only thing that is always the same is the ball and the flippers and the mylar that is used on the playfield.

For now I got some ingredients to cook up something new so Ill combine the feedback from both Clark and JPSalas and see what I can come up with wich I ofcoarse will share again.

 

I am also willing to make a tutorial if we succeed in finding the middle road in wich all of us are convinced this is what we all want.

Then i think it's the right time to share some files, maybe as mods or if allowed as official updates.

And maybe we can see what we can do for the future of VPX.

[nFozzy]

You're definitely not going to find consist physics between tables with different ball sizes

 

see: http://www.vpforums....e=4#entry329591 (The whole thread is worth a read)

[CaptainNeo]

the top lanes off the plunge are about 70/30.  for the most part they go down the same lane, but sometimes it bounces and hits the rubbers up in the lane dividers enough to go down the other lane.

[ClarkKent]

I'm using pf friction 0,06 as 0,07 seems to be too much, the ball is slowing down just a bit too much. A slightly higher gravity and friction 0,6 on the flippers (and some other small adjustments). Updated the table link. But I have to admit that I do not see THAT significant difference (I didn't address the friction of the rubbers or ramps anymore, this has to be done yet). Only Coil Ramp Up 2,5 makes it a bit more challenging and easier to do tricks.

[Umpa]

Well I'm sure this is lost in this thread but thank you dozer. Loos amazing!
Looks

[ClarkKent]

If you look at this video, I think with the latest settings it feels extremely similar:

 

[DonRobby]

Thanks for the update Clark, this new update feels a lot better indeed.

I guess some finetuning still is needed on walls, rubbers and posts.

None of these settings match the recomandations I have read on the other topic or the recomandations made by JPSalas.

I'm not gonna change anything anymore since I m also convinced we have got a nice setting here but the last tuning still must be done to balance things out properly.

Some shots give a weird rebouce still leading into a curveball.

Taking a shot at the castle with your right flipper became really risky as well. It's seems the ball falls dead in it's track back and even 3 nudges resulting in a tilt went directly to the drain.

The ball did not move a centimeter and that felt really unfair.

I wonder why nudging was made this weak at all but I hope one day they will improve such things by implementing trigger force for nudging and flippers.

Flippers would also need that in 2 phases, you can hold the lower flippers without activating upper flippers.

Right now I believe they have chosen for the soft nudge for control but for a game like this it really misses the strong nudge wich I consider neccesary to make a safer shot at the castle.

And now I am also really sure that the pop bumpers were misplaced as well indeed.

Making them symetric will optimize scoring for sure.

I'm sure if you look at the playfield's texture image and line up how the pop bumpers are placed you will see it as well.

I am also happy you cranked up the release speed on the plunger wich makes the shot a bit more randomized.

 

Also I messed up big time when I tried to tune the ramps by removing a light texture and forgetting to undo my action.

And then I also saved it and during a test the game gave me an error on that so I was back to first base.

Very cool video by the way.

Funny how the DMD colours are different from the original but other then that there hardly is anything noticable different then the original was.

[ClarkKent]

I know, I know. Sometimes weird rebounces and direction changes, etc. Unfortunately the table is a real chaos besides the flipper and pf physics. Sorry for not setting everything right, it's just too much at the moment. I think the whole table needs a new VP10 rebuild (not only a VP9 conversion) with the nice primitives available now. But I'm in the planning phases of my favorite table, a total rebuild - so I think I won't fully adjust MM either...

I think all rubbers, posts, guides, etc should be grouped to easily change settings for all at once. Would be much easier for testing and findig the right settings.

But I at least plan to look into the bumpers problem. It's certainly only anorher inaccuracy.

Tomorrow is my first MMR experience...

Edited by ClarkKent, 17 February 2016 - 07:29 PM.

[DonRobby]

Maybe I can take a look at the settings but I m not good enough at repositioning things.

I guess those pop bumpers are probably the last thing I cannot do myself and for the repositioning maybe somebody would be willing to take a look at that or we should just accept it for now.

Maybe you are right about the table needing a rebuild to make it easier to work on but on the other side that would be soo much work that it will require the most skilled developers out there.

So a conversion surely is a good thing to make good improvements with the physics on VPX and now we already have a decent amount of games out there and VPX is still soo young.

And in the end that's what the engine needs, the more games the more interested people become in it and maybe even consider themselves to upgrade some hardware to move along with time.

 

But I will not make the same mistake twice by removing stuff and I ll guess I will make more copies of the save files as well.

And then I will carefully try to tune some walls and rubbers as best as i can. 

I love this table soo much that I really want to make it the best it can be.

And I really respect you for the things you have changed on my advices.

So if you can fix that pop bumper issue for me then I will finish the rest for you.

How does that sound?

Maybe we can even consider making an official release after that.

[ClarkKent]

Ok, will look into this the next few days or so.

[DonRobby]

Thanks, until that time I will try out some tuning on other tables with the recomended settings from that other topic.

[ClarkKent]

I just started to look deeper into the construction. What a mess! It's totally inaccurate. I imported the playfield without all shadows and the moat (I have the original pf photoshop file) and placed it over the construction to see why all the problems happen. Man, not even the screws are on the right place. Somehow I have some appetite to correct all of this mess - but I do not know if I find all the time for this...

 

There is such a good teardown gallery to see how it should look:

1http://gallery.slam-..._madness?page=1

Edited by ClarkKent, 17 February 2016 - 10:20 PM.

[Ben Logan]

Clark - I love the tuning work you're doing with physics, etc. And, with due respect, I can't help feeling we'd do really well to be extra mindful and respectful of all the hard work that goes into any of our so called "messes!" Every time Dozer drops a table on us, my afternoon or evening is made.

[jbg4208]

I agree with Ben on this.

 

Clark, I get what you are trying to do. I really do. I'm right there with you on wanting great physics and to further the experience with VPX for all the community to enjoy.

 

BUT, Dozer and others have put in a whole lot of time on this great creation, and for free I might add. Maybe it's a language barrier or something but calling this table a mess just doesn't seem right.

 

It's a great recreation that I really enjoy. Also it is my 12 yr old daughters favorite table. 

Thank you Dozer and team

 

Also thank you Clark and Don for all the hard work making the table adjustments to fit everyone's liking.