3889 replies to this topic

[unclewilly]

Quick question for devs.
what has more of a performance hit, flasher objects of lighr objects. or are they about the same now.

Update on some stuff, not bugs but stuff that seems to work right now.

The static primitive collision works great now. I figured the best place to test would be on a ramp.

As of now i have the left side wire ramp in mb working perfectly with no invisible vp ramp objects. just the wire ramp primitive
for authors on this. Ive found that you need to be sureyour wire rings arent too low that they effect balls rolling underneath. Also if you make your ramps in fp but in vp you use a slightly bigger ball, like i did in mb, the ball may not fit or gwt stuck at the end.

In mb i use a 53 vp units ball and it works fine in the ramp but gets stuck at the end. To overcome this i just placed a hidden fall through kicker at the ramp end which also handels the ball drop sounds.

I havent tested vuks yet but that is next on the list. Also going to see if my scoop primitive works correctly, probably tomorrow when im off work.
so this saves a lot of time.

Question on this for the devs. Does the colision on static primitives work if they are set to not visible?

As soon as i get the inserts all switched over ill post a link to the wip table in my signature for people to play with.

Alot left to do on it just wanted to make it functional.

I h available ent checked if it has been updated but there is a new ball collision sub and rolling script that should be in the default table.

And i know jp is working on this also, but i am also working on an updated fading lights scriot that will combine the old flasher script and fading lamp script.

Not sure if it will be possible yet. May still need 2 script for fading images.

Thanks devs. Having a blast with this

[Thingamajiik]

I've downloaded the VPX beta and the test game "Papa Smurf" looks great, plays great! I especially liked the multicolored ball.

By the way i've tried to play Gottlieb's "Big Top" on it and it crashed. It's in a Beta status so i can't await any table to work on it.

[unclewilly]

Yes. Its not backwards compatible to vp9 tables.

[Chef Balsay]

I've downloaded the VPX beta and the test game "Papa Smurf" looks great, plays great! I especially liked the multicolored ball.

By the way i've tried to play Gottlieb's "Big Top" on it and it crashed. It's in a Beta status so i can't await any table to work on it.

 

The table format that VP10 support is .vpx. Wait that other tables have this file format (such as Papa Smurf) and VP10 will work better

[Thingamajiik]

No backwards compatibility?! are you guys Sony??

I'm Joking of course , this isn't always possible and doesn't have to be.

You have enough on your hands already you cannot enable every new version to be backwards compatible anyway!

I like seeing some new tables from you guys in the near future!

 

PS: Can you emulate "Pinball 2000" in this new version ???

[takut]

This is because the ball is an actual 3d object now, so FOV settings affect the ball where it didn't in VP9. FOV is supposed to be used to give a more realistic view of the pinball playfield, in my case I try to make it look best as I would be standing at my cab (I actually toned it down from what I'd prefer) - it seems to bother some people more than others but I'm not really sure they can fix it and keep it a 3d mesh.............

 

 

OK, thanks for the explanation.

 

I modified the Backdrop settings and now its better. That are not the best final settings but better than the first trail. I will testing further on.

 

 backdrop_ps02.jpg   28.49KB   33 downloads

 

But I also have one other question. If I change the view of the table to cabin view, the kickerCup eill not shown.

 

 kicker01.jpg   29.64KB   28 downloads

[kruge99]

PS: Can you emulate "Pinball 2000" in this new version ???

 

Pinball 2000 was demonstrated as far back as VP 9.1.2 I think so VP10 probably can do it too - that being said, we can't emulate Pinball 2000 for legal reasons.  The current Pinball 2000 intellectual property holder has indicated they do not want Pinball 2000 emulated.

[Thingamajiik]

 

Pinball 2000 was demonstrated as far back as VP 9.1.2 I think so VP10 probably can do it too - that being said, we can't emulate Pinball 2000 for legal reasons.  The current Pinball 2000 intellectual property holder has indicated they do not want Pinball 2000 emulated.

Oww that is sad, i did not know that. Would be cool though!

I visited a Pinball and Videogame exhibition close to Frankfurt Germany, i wanted to play either AFM or Episode one. I couldn't because it was too crowded . People were litterally standing in line to get to play it. So i thought i could play at le

ast an emulated version.

Edited by Thingamajiik, 01 February 2015 - 02:33 PM.

[chepas]

Ramps working good here too, same as a VUK. Not had to use the kicker fall through on the ends though.

 

Trying to find a good setting for a standard target, can get quite a bit of air ball on those hit with force. One ball even made it onto a ramp from a target hit.

Edited by chepas, 01 February 2015 - 02:58 PM.

[fuzzel]

Flashes and lights should performs in the same way. It depends how big the Flaherty light is and what options do you use. But I wouldn't expect big slowdowns

[dark]

Quick question for devs.
what has more of a performance hit, flasher objects of lighr objects. or are they about the same now.

Update on some stuff, not bugs but stuff that seems to work right now.

The static primitive collision works great now. I figured the best place to test would be on a ramp.

As of now i have the left side wire ramp in mb working perfectly with no invisible vp ramp objects. just the wire ramp primitive
for authors on this. Ive found that you need to be sureyour wire rings arent too low that they effect balls rolling underneath. Also if you make your ramps in fp but in vp you use a slightly bigger ball, like i did in mb, the ball may not fit or gwt stuck at the end.

In mb i use a 53 vp units ball and it works fine in the ramp but gets stuck at the end. To overcome this i just placed a hidden fall through kicker at the ramp end which also handels the ball drop sounds.

I havent tested vuks yet but that is next on the list. Also going to see if my scoop primitive works correctly, probably tomorrow when im off work.
so this saves a lot of time.

Question on this for the devs. Does the colision on static primitives work if they are set to not visible?

As soon as i get the inserts all switched over ill post a link to the wip table in my signature for people to play with.

Alot left to do on it just wanted to make it functional.

I h available ent checked if it has been updated but there is a new ball collision sub and rolling script that should be in the default table.

And i know jp is working on this also, but i am also working on an updated fading lights scriot that will combine the old flasher script and fading lamp script.

Not sure if it will be possible yet. May still need 2 script for fading images.

Thanks devs. Having a blast with this

 

In regards to primitive collision, I was also playing around with this and found it to be quite responsive.  The mesh's collision seems accurate but there are problems, some of which you mentioned already.

 

You can see here I used some mesh's from Mario Mushroom World and the plastic ramp from Jurassic Park.  While I couldn't make a shot up the yellow toad ramp with much success the JPark ramp works nicely, I even tried it using the primitive ramp diverter I made for it and the ball will travel which ever direction you want it to, not to mention if the ball reaches the end of the ramp it will actually fall through the hole at the end (rather proud of making the hole nice enough for the ball to physically drop through it ).  You can also see I used the yellow mario tube as the plunger lane exit, the ball travels nicely along this curve and can be shot back to the plunger lane through this tube/tunnel.

 

An immediate issue I ran into with these ramps is that I find shots from certain angles at high velocity have a very good chance of jumping off the ramp.  The yellow tube for example with the absence of the pop bumpers that it would normally circle around its possible to fire a hard shot at the bend/curve of the model and jump the ball over the mesh and get it stuck in the corner.  

 

The conclusions I can draw from some of this is that we could potentially use 3D mesh ramps without VP ramps at all, however the ramps dimensions would need to match the real life dimensions accurately in addition to the table physics needing to be very close to the real thing.  I don't think 3D ramps will be able to replace VP ramps effectively in it's current state but it shows the potential to.  Ramps aside though, these tests still demonstrate that the primitive static collision is quite accurate to the mesh's geometry and for a beta/pre-beta test phase it's rather impressive so far.  This being a new aspect of game physics, I'm sure it will bring about new difficulties as well,  but I'm sure we can cross those bridges when we reach them.  I think even if a 3D ramp has problems like balls flying over its walls or it not dropping through its holes we can still figure out work-around's like UW mentioned adding a fall through kicker or in the case of ramps adding extra VP walls to give the ramps walls extra height (or ceilings) to prevent flying balls.

 

I also tried playing with the Last Action Hero crane a bit, I was able to angle the crane down towards the play field to make it a dead-end ramp just to try out and sure enough the ball could be shot all the way up the crane.  This got me a bit excited because it showed the potential for moving the game ball just like the real table would with the actual toy for future LAH updates.  Also having a new 3D ball means we will be able to make near seamless transitions between game ball and primitive mesh ball for when we need to make the ball appear to move with primitives (examples: TAF thing ball, LAH crane ball, JPark LW snagger ball etc).

 

A question I have that I'm not sure if it's been addressed as of yet is, can we make our own materials?.....and if so, how does that work exactly?

While the current materials look good they don't leave much for customization, like some plastics for example have high specular and high gloss while others are more flat.

[kiwi]

With Fren's Vernes World, the ball almost always invisible, it seems like missing refreshments.

 

Max

Understood, the AntiAlliasig enabled is the cause of the problem.

 

Max

[ClarkKent]

can the day/night slider also be programmed by script to set the table to the appropriate setting according to the daytime?

[unclewilly]

Hey dark try dropping the ramp a unit or 2 on the z axis

[dark]

Hey dark try dropping the ramp a unit or 2 on the z axis

For the yellow toad ramp?  I tried that, it seems it's too steep and since the walls of the lower section are so small, it's more likely to fly off than anything.  The JPark ramp works fairly well though.

[jimmyfingers]

 

This is because the ball is an actual 3d object now, so FOV settings affect the ball where it didn't in VP9. FOV is supposed to be used to give a more realistic view of the pinball playfield, in my case I try to make it look best as I would be standing at my cab (I actually toned it down from what I'd prefer) - it seems to bother some people more than others but I'm not really sure they can fix it and keep it a 3d mesh.............

 

 

OK, thanks for the explanation.

 

I modified the Backdrop settings and now its better. That are not the best final settings but better than the first trail. I will testing further on.

 

backdrop_ps02.jpg

 

There is indeed a ball symmetry / perspective issue but exists also outside of merely aspects of how the view settings can make it appear worse.  Even with the table perfectly proportioned with X and Y scale even, no layback, and ball stretch set to off, the 3D ball distorts in the corners of the playfield and can be seen even just in the plunger lane.  The incline and FOV setting alone are enough to throw it off and make it look disproportionate and angled in a way that seems to follow somewhat the table angles.  

 

Although I get that the problem is rooted in the ball now being a 3D mesh, a real pinball does not distort from any perspective aside from only getting smaller when further away as it is a perfect sphere.  

 

This issue hopefully can be addressed in some way as we never should look at a sphere and see it not round.  This poses two problems in that it now limits the view settings people can make without making the ball look even more unrealistic (trying to not use layback or scale adjustments to tone down the effect) but even when other more distorting settings like layback and stretch are set to none there are still problems that make the ball not follow what would be the case in real life.

 

I hope there's a way to resolve this as it does affect the illusion of the simulation a fair bit especially when you see the ball changing shape as it rolls from one side of the table to the other.  There used to be the anti-stretch for full screen modes but of course with a 3D mesh it's likely not having the same effect any more or complete enough for the new distortions, however, hopefully there's a way to resolve this and not skew the ball as the table is skewed even if some real-time anti-stretch / proportioning routine needs to be enacted or some way to process the perspective on the ball different from the table and only allow it to grow smaller when further away and not angled or egg shaped.

Edited by jimmyfingers, 01 February 2015 - 07:48 PM.

[gtxjoe]

I am noticing the same distortion in the 3d ball mesh.  I assume if you proportion the table appropriately, its not so noticeable.  Maybe the one of the Ball Aspect Ratio settings could force the ball to allways be round, may look at x, y and z widths and force them to be all the same value as it moves around the table

 

Another topic:

 

The NightDay setting does not do anything in the script.  I can't read or set the value.   I am thinking you could use this with the table GI, i.e when the GI turns off, you could drop this NightDay setting by 50 points so the entire table darkens when the GI turns off.  GI turns back on, bump the NightDay setting back to its orig value.   Hmm, might even want to fade this value up and down  

[atarian]

I played with the new VP10 and the new improvements and additions are excellent, so thanks to all the devs for their efforts. To have the new PM5 physics (thanks Mukuste ) in the new build along with all the new features such as lighting (thanks Toxie and Fuzzel) is such a treat and we know the virtual creations will get even better than they are already.

After I converted the Smurf table (thanks JP) to full screen I also noticed the distorted oval ball. I played with the various anti-stretch options but as JF said they were added for the old 2D engine so are most likely not suitable. I think Cupid added these way back after he added layback, etc so I guess a different algorithm is needed for the new engine?

By the way, after turning the lights down, and changing to the dark ball without stripes those reflections on the ball from the table lights look just fantastic

Edited by atarian, 01 February 2015 - 08:15 PM.

[fuzzel]

rev1611 is available, changes:

 

- remember custom control points for wire/none shape while editing a trigger. The control points are only saved for the current selected shape.

- mouse selection issue fixed

- playfield material clearcoat set from white to black

[zany]

Wow...i REALLY love how VP10 handles materials. I have had many issues with transparency and have it look good in VP9, but NOW we're talking!
This is made with the build in materials....didn't even have to add my own material!

YES...this will make life SO much easier in the future!  

Attached Files

•  ramtest_vp10.jpg   84.05KB   27 downloads