4027 replies to this topic

[BrandonLaw]

Hey nice!  Works!  Thanks, Fuzzy-wuzzy.

[wiesshund]

 

rev359 is up (Release Cadidate):

 

- fix table default scatter value handling

- fix table info where table author was copied to the email edit box

- add an additional left<->right flipped stereo3D interlaced mode

- implement serial port communication via VBS (see CommandReference.txt)

- slightly optimize DMD copies

 

 

When you have time, could you look at analog nudging, and see what you think may have happened to it
It would have gone bad right around the time the SDL controller support got added (which i like)

 

In a condensed nutshell version if you dont want to look back a page or 2
if you load the nudge test table, turn the nudge way way up even
Now, nudge the hell out of the table, in fact, if you can, take something with a physical axis so you can make a constant full on nudge in any direction

now slam the balls any direction you desire

 

watch the indicator on the apron, you will see it moves appropriately

but watch the balls on the table, which should be pinned to what ever side of the table you are applying full nudge input to

but you will instead notice that the balls only react by bouncing up slightly, when they should be acting like you just flipped the cab on its side or end.

and no matter what direction you apply the nudging, the balls will only bounce up, mildly at that.

 

If you only have a KL25Z, put it on a long USB cord and then swish it hard any direction for as long a distance as your arm can swish for
(and dont let go of it or they make nasty little holes in the wall)

[fuzzel]

When you have time, could you look at analog nudging, and see what you think may have happened to it

It would have gone bad right around the time the SDL controller support got added (which i like)
 
In a condensed nutshell version if you dont want to look back a page or 2
if you load the nudge test table, turn the nudge way way up even
Now, nudge the hell out of the table, in fact, if you can, take something with a physical axis so you can make a constant full on nudge in any direction
now slam the balls any direction you desire
 
watch the indicator on the apron, you will see it moves appropriately
but watch the balls on the table, which should be pinned to what ever side of the table you are applying full nudge input to
but you will instead notice that the balls only react by bouncing up slightly, when they should be acting like you just flipped the cab on its side or end.
and no matter what direction you apply the nudging, the balls will only bounce up, mildly at that.
 
If you only have a KL25Z, put it on a long USB cord and then swish it hard any direction for as long a distance as your arm can swish for
(and dont let go of it or they make nasty little holes in the wall)

The reason why I didn't look into this is that I don't have any analog nudging devices to reproduce this...

Edited by fuzzel, 16 December 2021 - 07:36 AM.

[wiesshund]

have a cheap USB gamepad hanging about?

even a PS3 or Xbox360 wired or xbox1 wireless controller etc?

[Thalamus]

He said he was not the man to fix it. This is open source, you can look at the changes and revert them. You can also cross your fingers and wait for someone that actually has any of those units to step forward and fix it. A solution, if this involves a few guys - maybe a feature to enable/disable that change is a way. Registry, whatever.

Edited by Thalamus, 16 December 2021 - 09:33 PM.

[toxie]

Sorry for not checking this thread for so long..  :/

 

@wiesshund: was it really starting to happen exactly with the SDL change? weird.. i'll double check that commit..

[vbousquet]

First, thanks a lot for all your work on VPX. It's an amazing project with an amazing community!

 

Here is a feature proposal to discuss. If you think this is a good idea, I can work on it and propose a PR on github.

 

Feature: add 'additive blending' for primitives, like flashers.

 

Use case: there are advanced lighting situation where the lights or flasher are not sufficient. For example, when you want to bake the projected lighting of a flasher (like in latest Flupper release), for advanced baked inserts (like in VPinWorkshop tables), or for other fancy effects like baking a RGB led strip lighting the whole table.

 

Workarounds: for the moment, I can see 2 workarounds:

- either bake to a primitive bigger than the existing table and modulate the primitive's material opacity to make it more or less visible. This has the drawback that this is not additive blending, so you need to include the base color as well which is not always possible, depending on the table layout.

- or (like for VPW inserts) make the illuminated primitive slightly transparent, put a primitive below it and use BlendDisableLighting with high value to make the additive blending visible through it. This has the drawback to make a lot of primitive alpha blended, which is not good for performance and needs to be cleanly laid out for depth sorting. It also lead to slightly grayed out colors for the base primitives (barely noticeable).

 

Proposal: There are 2 things to be tackled: select additive blending, and define the blend strength. This can be either added per material or per primitive. I would think that per primitive would be easier to use (somewhat like flashers with a mesh) especially if used with lots of lights light inserts or led strips. So this would need to add 2 properties per primitive (boolean for additive blending, float for amount, same as flashers) and adapt RenderDevice.SetMaterial to accept these parameters.

 

Just tell me if you think this is worth the effort, and I will try to propose something clean and simple.

 

Regards,

 

      Vincent

 

Edit: I have made a preliminary implementation of the proposal here. I will go for more testing and cleaning. The first tests give fairly good result so far.

Edited by vbousquet, 21 December 2021 - 10:21 PM.

[wiesshund]

Sorry for not checking this thread for so long..  :/

 

@wiesshund: was it really starting to happen exactly with the SDL change? weird.. i'll double check that commit..

 

Round about that time, but i wont say 100% sure since that sort of snuck in on me.
It is easiest to see, without taking your cab apart, if you have some sort of cheap little joystick/gamepad because you can apply the analog input
and hold it, as opposed to plugging in a 7foot USB cord to your KL25Z and slinging it around risking it flying off into a wall.

It does nudge, technically, but the only direction is up and the nudge amount is fixed, you can crank the settings to the max or turn them way down and it makes 0 change

[vogliadicane]

Bug report: When importing a new (e.g.) ball image, it does not appear in the drop down for the ball image. Only after saving the table and restarting VPX.

[chepas]

One to note... If you are working on an earlier table prior to VP10.7, I suspect it's down to the layer limit in the older versions.

 

If you are working on a 10.6 table and a more layers than 12? If you save the table it will wipe all the layers (leaving you very small vpx file), I literally had to grab a version from the autosave.vpx otherwise that would have been toast.

 

I've only noticed this with the last table I was working on and the table was originally before 10.6.

Bug report: When importing a new (e.g.) ball image, it does not appear in the drop down for the ball image. Only after saving the table and restarting VPX.

 

I think this is with any image if you already had that "options pane" open. It's doesn't update the UI if you're on that, only when you click on another object, no need to restart the editor.

[batch]

I know that most of users have a cab, but would it be possible to have a way to set backdrop darkness in the BACKGLASS window

 

Separate from "Night -> Day cycle", a kind of "Dark -> Clear cycle", just for the backdrop image

 

[jpsalas]

I know that most of users have a cab, but would it be possible to have a way to set backdrop darkness in the BACKGLASS window

 

Separate from "Night -> Day cycle", a kind of "Dark -> Clear cycle", just for the backdrop image

 

 

Nice idea. Maybe add a material to it? Just like we do it on the playfield?

[Albert]

Could it be done that the bumper skirts are still animated, even if a bumper has no hit event ("Bumper.HasHitEvent=0")?

 

This would make for a more realistic appearance when the ball hits a bumper in a tilted game.

[toxie]

One to note... If you are working on an earlier table prior to VP10.7, I suspect it's down to the layer limit in the older versions.

 

If you are working on a 10.6 table and a more layers than 12? If you save the table it will wipe all the layers (leaving you very small vpx file), I literally had to grab a version from the autosave.vpx otherwise that would have been toast.

 

I've only noticed this with the last table I was working on and the table was originally before 10.6.
 

 

So i don't know if i fully get it, so please help me a bit:

So you mean if one does open a table that was built with 10.6 in 10.7, and then add more layers to it, and save in 10.7, then these new layers are lost in 10.6, or do you mean they are also not there in 10.7, when reopening it?

 

If the latter, then please provide that table to us, along with detailed repro steps, cause that i never heard before.

@wiesshund: I looked a lot over all the commits during that XInput-addon commit phase, but i cannot spot any errors, and also cannot repro.  :/

Could you please test some more when this nudge problem exactly started to happen using the builds from https://github.com/v...pinball/actions, please?

[chepas]

 

One to note... If you are working on an earlier table prior to VP10.7, I suspect it's down to the layer limit in the older versions.

 

If you are working on a 10.6 table and a more layers than 12? If you save the table it will wipe all the layers (leaving you very small vpx file), I literally had to grab a version from the autosave.vpx otherwise that would have been toast.

 

I've only noticed this with the last table I was working on and the table was originally before 10.6.
 

 

 then these new layers are lost in 10.6, or do you mean they are also not there in 10.7, when reopening it?

 

 

When you saved it, all the layers disappeared and left the table at 12kb. Upgrading a 10.5/6 to 10.7

 

I haven't been able to replicate it on a quick test but I should still have a version of the game before it broke to do same steps, it wasn't a fluke because I had to trace and figure what steps was wiping the game. I think it will be a rare issue anyway, but pretty nasty if not paying attention.

Edited by chepas, 22 December 2021 - 10:26 AM.

[toxie]

Yes, please try to find that version. Sounds like a scary bug. Maybe some special case we do not handle properly.

[jpsalas]

I remember that layers bug a long time ago, where layers could disappear, but that was fixed a long time ago. I have updated many of my 10.6 tables to 10.7 without any problem. But in the latest revision still can happen sometimes that the layers disappear from time to time, then I simply save the table and open it again and the layers are there. It is just a bug in the menus not showing up, but nothing gets deleted.

[toxie]

But in chepas case it seems to be a bit more special in addition as the table size also went down to 12kb..  :/

[jpsalas]

I guess the table must have crashed and somehow the table got corrupted. I have never had that bug, and I have been using the 10.7 editor a lot

[chepas]

Yeah it was dodgy, something with layers, renaming / copying then saving it. I'll try with some older versions of the table to try and break again.