357 replies to this topic

[unclewilly]

I'm gonna add you as an author shoopity, in the next and hopefully final update.
I've been trying to make that smooth for months.
I so much appreciate this

[Shoopity]

Aw Shucks .  I'd highly recommend some testing, I don't know how robust my code is.  Little things like, Drac sometimes moves the wrong way if he changes directions because the timer kicks in before the mech can change the direction variable (I think it's easily fixed by having the stopping set the direction to something other than 0 or 1 so instead of the timer moving drac in the last direction then changing, it doesn't move at all until the mech sets the direction).  Or I don't have any "just in case" code if drac gets outside the 70 ~ 170 degree range (which would require a restart, but a good coder would write code to handle that rare possibility).  Or maybe change the code so the ROM controls the movement speed (as it is right now, it's a constant speed).

 

So I'm not familiar with how the RL game works.  The manual makes it sound like solenoid 1 makes drac move one way, and solenoid 2 makes him move the other way.  But, VPM activates both solenoids at the same time (and in no particular order because I tried writing code that would lock out the second activated solenoid, but they get activated at the same time); is there some sort of clutch mechanism in the real game?  Or is VPM "short circuiting" those two solenoids?

Edited by Shoopity, 06 June 2014 - 02:02 AM.

[The Loafer]

ok guys, just tried it, comments:

 

#1 - Shoopity: you are a genius

 

#2 - The drac movement is now smooth, butter smooth, perfectly butter smooth in fact!

 

I have a gear motor and DOF and was running the volume low.  For the uninitiated, DOF allows the use of toys like contactors, gear motors, shakers and led lights (and more) to similar a real pin.  With the DOF for MB, the gear motor give you that extra immersion when Drac or Frank moves. 

 

So let's start with Drac and with the obvious:  his animation is now perfectly smooth, in fact it knocked me over for a loop, I wasn't expecting it to be that smooth.  During initial test he was smooth. During multiball he was smooth.  Basically, he's freaking smooth.  During Drac Attack, sometimes I heard the gear motor and didn't notice drac moving, but he was still registering the hits so if I did not have the gear motor running, I would not suspect any issue so it's possible there's an adjustment required or something wrong with a DOF call.  Another possibility is I need to delete my nvram and restart because when I exited VP and restarted, came out before the game started and he was hittable but when the ball went into the scoop we'd see a ball search before the ball was ejected.  So I'll try deleting the nvram and retry to see if this issue is resolved.

 

On another note, I had not tried the last few versions (been busy testing physmod ).  IF I understand correctly, Frank was also adjusted recently to be very smooth and I can concur he's amazingly smooth too.  Just fantastic to see the mummy coffin, the drac and frank toy and the frank target bank to be so smooth.  I also love the scoop ball jumping animation when its ejected. At the moment, I don't see any negatives, just fantastic and everything on my rig stayed PERFECTLY smooth, no frame rate hiccup during any of the multiballs (thanks again Mukuste and VP devs for vp9.9.0)

 

Kudos to all, especially to Uncle Willy for the tireless work on this and for those incredible models by Randr.  Seriously, along with a select few such as the most recent CV, this table is probably now the pinnacle of VP recreations.  Also kudos to me for the awesome testing. I'm awesome. 

 

You want a "demo" table to show off your pincab?  Look no further friends, look no further.  Congrats on this achievement friends, wow!

[The Loafer]

FYI, I just restarted the game without deleting the nvram and it worked right off the bat, so weird that one, but no problem, no deletion required

[randr]

Canadian likes it finally! Eh?

[mountaingamer]

Congrats Guys - much more buildup & I might explode!!! Thanks for all your time and effort:)

[Shoopity]

I admit I'm bad at taking compliments, but UW already had a smooth Drac, he just ran into the problem with the fact that VPM was activating both forward and backward solenoids at the same time, so he implemented VPM's mech (which I don't think I ever would've been able to do).  So he had to choose between butter smooth movement but no accurate control, or accurate movement but "manual" animation.

 

All I did was come up with the idea to use the mech's ability to tell VP the direction and combine that with timer butter smooth movement.  Sometimes it takes a lesser mind to solve the problem, or just fresh eyes that hasn't been stairing at the same problem for months.  I'm just happy I was finally able to give something back to this community that has given so much to me.

[The Loafer]

yep, ya all take a well earned bow!

Interesting, the drac issue happened again.  To recap, from a cold vp start, the drac toy pops out during the boot sequence before starting a game, but instead of going all the way to the left, I think he stops at the second position (not sure).  If he's there and I start the game, he stays there and at some point I'm going to put the ball in the scoop and the game loses track of it.  If Drac positions himself to the complete left, then when you start a game he moves all the way back to the drac coffin and everything is fine.

 

This may be an nvram issue but it's odd that if I exit VP completely and restart Drac positions himself fine.  Thought you'd like to know.

... and forget what I just said, started VP from scratch, new game and Drac moves to the far left and... stays there. GRRR, guess the highscore's gotta go LOL

[Shoopity]

If I had to take a wild stab (I'm not on my PC with VP on it), I would say this is somewhat related to the ROM.  Drac always starts in the coffin (please say if this isn't the case), sometimes after the load and just after the "bong" sound, he randomly decides to move to some other position (maybe the ROM just feels like doing a test?).  I only did two tests, and only one time did Drac decide to move out.  And as soon as I hit the play button, Drac moved back into the coffin.

 

He has 5 positions, coffin, right orbit, ramp, scoop, far left.  Each of those positions is associated with a switch.  When I initially got this working, I had to expand the area where the switches are triggered.  In other words, Drac was moving past the point faster than VPM could detect that the switch was thrown.  Maybe he gets "lost" because the game misses a switch trigger and then thinks he's broken so it goes into broken mode?  If you want to test something, go into the test mode (open the door with End, wait a second and push 0, keep pushing 0 until you get the B1 menu (depending on if the game thinks a switch is broken this can range from 1 ~ 3 pushes), use 8 to back up to the Test menu, push 0 to enter the test menu, push 8 to back up to the Drac menu, push 0 to enter the Drac menu, then you can push 8 and 9 to move him forward and backward) and let us know if he can move.  And if he does, does that fix the problem without having to restart (not that you should have to do that everytime, but it might help in any trouble shooting).

 

A few possible fixes (this is mainly for UW):

Are any of those switches set to 1 at the table init?  If not, maybe setting the coffin switch at the init might prevent the check from happening in the first place?

Maybe slow Drac down some?  I don't think widening the switch activation points would be wise as they're a little too wide as it is.

Is the drac rotation getting out of sync with the mech rotation?  If so, maybe code it so it moves using the timers, but when it hits the points its position gets manually set by the mech position?

Edited by Shoopity, 06 June 2014 - 03:40 AM.

[arngrim]

For DOF i mapped the solenoid directly, it doesn't always react like expected, as the drac movement was not great, before.
If the drac movement has been fixed by script, i surely can fix the gear to drac by injecting DOF lines into that script, i will have a look tonight

[unclewilly]

He is still controled with the solenoids so you may not need to.
I sent you the table.
Only think I might add to the script is an init opening a switch at start or running through the switch routine to trigger the correct switch at startup

[arngrim]

it should be okay without the solenoid, i already assigned the gear motor like this for

the spider of Scared Stiff

the clock of Diner

the moving ramp in Dungeons and Dragons

the rotating platform of safe Cracker

the clock of twilight zone

the moving ramp of high roller casino

the rotating lamp of genie in TOTAN

Edited by arngrim, 06 June 2014 - 11:29 AM.

[gigalula]

Canadian likes it finally! Eh?

Off course we do

[The Loafer]

Before I went to bed last night, I renamed the nvram and gave it a try again and immediately had the frank toy that won't go up in front of target issue (was mentioned in this thread, easy fix but too tired last night! Lol). Anyway, even with the messed up toy, it was still a blast to play.

Some other comments:
- personal preference: I really prefer the creature look from previous versions of this table. For whatever reason, the creature now looks very 2d, while before (your initial version 2.1 I think), he looks more 3d' ish. Perhaps its a video driver issue, but it almost looks like there is a transparency issue on my setup anyway.

- some of the lighting seems to go through the drac and frank toy, ie: their heads seem to draw above some of the lighting compared to rest of the body. This is hardly noticeable, no big deal here

Aside from that the only other comment I can add is I can't wait for the physmod version but in saying that, this is really playing very well as is, just another personal preference on my part for physmod tables.

Well done,

Rob

[unclewilly]

That is funny because in the old version. He is 2d, and in the update he is an actual 3d mesh

[randr]

I think it's all lighting. Old version he was a photo with shading and now the model just looks different do to flasher light. I agree movement and texture was closer to real thing before. I have I feeling this will be addressed now...with frank butter smooth and a little creature model tweaking this will be a perfect recreation in my opinion

[sigma415]

Hello Unclewilly,

 

thanks again for this great update.

 

I couldn't find the Day Option in 2.4, only some outcommented lines regarding this feature at bottom of the script

 

 

 

What's New in Version 2.4 (See full changelog)

• DownDate and Update:
• Reduced Texture sizes
• Added DOF Option
• Added Day Option which brightens the playfield

 

[unclewilly]

Due to how I raised the playfield raised and the holes are all real holes I couldn't include the day texture as it caused graphics glitches

[ClarkKent]

With the "real" holes it looks and plays more realistic in my opinion.

[arngrim]

drac to gear is fixed, will be integrated in next release