1622 replies to this topic

[hlr53]

 

There has never been a different app ID for the DX11 version. If you launch inside Steam they have a drop down box to select which version. We have complained for years to FarSight to no avail. People have tried some command line switches in Steam which I think didn't work. I will have to research. I know it can be done because FCM launches into DX11.

Good luck figuring it out - hopefully a little digging around in the system will turn up the answer.  Is FCM open-source?  You could always look at its source to see what it's doing if so.  If not, you might figure out what command options it's sending to Steam by looking at the command line with Task Manager - enable "Command Line" in the column list under the Process tab (right-click in the column header area and check-mark Command Line to show it).

Hopefully it's just a command-line option and not some horrible hack they're doing in the registry or something. 

If you do track it down, definitely let me know so I can add it to the help page for future reference.

 

 

The Task Manager command line showed when I launched C:\TPAFreeCamMod\TPAFreeCamMod.exe

 

then Pinball Arcade immediately launched showing C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\PinballArcade\PinballArcade11.exe

 

FreeCamMod is not open source.

 

When I do launch to FCM and getting to the main PBA menu, pressing Esc to get back to PBY does nothing. I have to manually exit out of PBA and then it returns to PBY.

 

For the heck of it I took out [Steam] in the executable field and added the above path. The C++ run time library did not care for that at all. I had to press abort on the error box to get back to PBY.

 

I changed the Process to TPAFreeCamMod.exe and when I hit Esc from the main menu a Windows 10 blue Dialog box came up asking if I wanted to shut my system down, or log out or restart, or change user....

 

As I mentioned, no individual table launches. PBA starts and I have to hit enter (Says Press Start) to continue on to the main menu. I can play with config settings.

[mjr]

then Pinball Arcade immediately launched showing C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\PinballArcade\PinballArcade11.exe

For the heck of it I took out [Steam] in the executable field and added the above path. The C++ run time library did not care for that at all. I had to press abort on the error box to get back to PBY.

 

Hmm... if pressing Abort on the error box took you back to PinballY, then the error box must not have been coming from PinballY - pressing Abort would have killed the PinballY process if that's where the error was coming from. 

 

So I'm guessing the error box was coming from Steam or PinballArcade11.exe, not PinballY.  Probably because it's just not meant to be launched directly like that - it probably assumes that Steam is launching it.

 

You could probably determine that for certain using Task Manager to see which process owns the error box window.  If you have a few minutes to test that out, it would be good to confirm that I'm right - if I'm wrong, and PinballY is actually what crashed, that's something I should fix.  PBY shouldn't crash no matter what you type into the system executable settings.

 

 

When I do launch to FCM and getting to the main PBA menu, pressing Esc to get back to PBY does nothing. I have to manually exit out of PBA and then it returns to PBY.

 

There are a couple of possibilities:

 

1.  PBY can't detect that PBA is running, so it gave up, displayed a "game never started" message, and returned to its normal UI.  It won't try to kill the game with Escape in that state because it doesn't think there's a game to kill.

 

You can test for that by Alt-Tabbing back to the PinballY window and see what it's displaying.  If it's showing a black screen with a "Running <game>" message, it knows the game is running and it should be monitoring for Escape.  If it's showing a normal UI with the game video and/or an error message about the game not starting, it doesn't think the game ever started, so it gave up waiting and returned to the normal UI.

 

Did you update the "Process" setting to PinballArcade11.exe?  If not, then PBY is probably waiting for PinballArcade.exe to start up, which is never happening because you're launching this other process, so PBY eventually times out and decides the launch failed.

 

2.  TPA or FCM is intercepting the Escape key in such a way that PBY can't see the keystrokes.  Plain TPA definitely doesn't do this on my machine (Escape works fine), so I'm hoping the whole issue is #1, but if you rule out #1 then we'll have to look into this.  I'm not sure how they'd intercept the key at such a low level, though, so there might not be much I can do about it if that's what's going on.

 

 

I changed the Process to TPAFreeCamMod.exe and when I hit Esc from the main menu a Windows 10 blue Dialog box came up asking if I wanted to shut my system down, or log out or restart, or change user....

 

No idea what's going on with that.  PinballY certainly won't (intentionally) trigger a Windows 10 power dialog.  Maybe the Windows key is stuck down or something weird like that?  Or maybe it's FCM's doing?

Edited by mjr, 05 September 2018 - 10:35 PM.

[hlr53]

I'll play with it again tomorrow after work and try out what you have suggested. I will also check the log files. It will get worked out. I'm sure I will need two different Pinball Arcade systems setup. Some people may end up with 3 as the other executable is for the Arcooda cabinet.

FarSight could have made this much easier for table launch. For whatever reason, they did not want their tables exposed via XML. Zaccaria is the same way. Now the Zen Studio boys in Budapest have the Williams/Bally license!
 
I thought I set the DX11 exe to Process but I will check again. Yep, the error was definitely not from PBY or it would have crashed. It had to be Steam complaining.
 
No fun testing if you can't crash or break software stuff :-)  
 
As an off topic aside, I [carefully] took out the Pinscape KL25 this weekend for my other project and installed Zeb's V2 plunger kit. It shows up fine in Devices but no buttons worked. After trying to troubleshoot I emailed Steve and then it immediately dawned on me I didn't hook up the ribbon cable that contained the common pins. I was just sending my buttons the signals with no ground return. Getting senile in my old age. He confirmed. Will fix next weekend.

Edited by hlr53, 06 September 2018 - 12:49 AM.

[Tempest43528]

@mjr - the new rotate commands did the trick extremly well.   What I found works best was to seperate everything into using both sets of Run Before/After.   First I issue I use rotate for PBY and then run the AHK script putting a 500ms pause before having it rotate the display and start DMDExt.

 

I did see a potential bug in my testing.    I have Esc mapped to exit the emulator.   While I was messing around with the rotate command if I hit Esc before FX3 fully got focus it would cause PBY to exit and then leave FX3 running in the background and not return to Front-end.   If I let FX3 fully start everything is working fine.

 

Great work and thank you again for taking all the suggestions.    You are adding some really great features that really enhance the front-end experience and make it so much more fluid.

Edited by Tempest43528, 06 September 2018 - 01:10 AM.

[mjr]

FarSight could have made this much easier for table launch. For whatever reason, they did not want their tables exposed via XML. Zaccaria is the same way. Now the Zen Studio boys in Budapest have the Williams/Bally license!

 

Interesting!  That could be good news if Zen has a little more interest in pin cab players.  The Farsight versions are fine for casual play on an iPad, but I never really liked them on the PC because they just didn't mesh with the cab setup.  If Zen can make that work better, the license change could be a net win.  In any case, I'm glad WMS didn't just withdraw the license rights from the market entirely, which is what I thought had happened; good to know there's enough interest in these games that more than one company is out there competing for the rights.

@mjr - the new rotate commands did the trick extremly well.  

 

Great!

 

 

I did see a potential bug in my testing.    I have Esc mapped to exit the emulator.   While I was messing around with the rotate command if I hit Esc before FX3 fully got focus it would cause PBY to exit and then leave FX3 running in the background and not return to Front-end.   If I let FX3 fully start everything is working fine.

 

Ah, yeah, I didn't think about that case for the two-phase launch process, where you sneak in with the Escape key in the Steam phase of the launch.  I'll take a look at it.  

[Brer Frog]

How do you update the Game file name but keep all the game details intact?

For example a table is updated from vers 1.0 to 2.0. A new .vpx table file should appear in PinballY as an unconfigured game. All the images (playfield, backglass, flyers, etc.) should be kept the same as the previous table version.

When you do the Game Setup for table vers 2.0, and if Game Details > Title stays the same, then I’m presuming the images will be shared with table vers 1.0? At least until table vers 1.0 gets deleted.

[hlr53]

System setup for running Pinball Arcade DX9

 

Running Pinball Arcade DX9

Table extension: .pinballArcade  DOF Prefix: FX3

Program EXE: [Steam]

Parameters: -applaunch 238260

Process name: PinballArcade.exe

Startup keys: I dunno yet :-)

Table folder: C:\PinballY\Farsight

 

I created a new System

 

Pinball Arcade BAM

Table extension: .pinballArcade  DOF Prefix: FX3

Program EXE: C:\TPAFreeCamMod\TPAFreeCamMod.exe (or whatever folder you have FCM located)

Parameters: -applaunch 238260

Process name: PinballArcade11.exe

Startup keys: I dunno yet :-)

Table folder: C:\PinballY\Farsight

 

PBY will prompt via a menu asking which version you would like to run?

 

Arcooda should be same as BAM except put PinballArcadeCabinet.exe for Process name.

 

MJR or anyone else,

 

Can you launch individual tables? I cannot but I will play with Startup keys.

Edited by hlr53, 06 September 2018 - 09:10 PM.

[mjr]

How do you update the Game file name but keep all the game details intact?

For example a table is updated from vers 1.0 to 2.0. A new .vpx table file should appear in PinballY as an unconfigured game. All the images (playfield, backglass, flyers, etc.) should be kept the same as the previous table version.

When you do the Game Setup for table vers 2.0, and if Game Details > Title stays the same, then I’m presuming the images will be shared with table vers 1.0? At least until table vers 1.0 gets deleted.

 

Exactly right.  The media name is based on the "Title (Manufacturer Year)" format, so if you give both table files the same settings for all of those, the media names will come out the same and all of the image/video files will be used by both.

 

So in answer to "how do you update the game file name?", I guess you don't really; you just set up the details for the new game to match the old one.  I've been thinking that the IPDB data makes it so quick to set up the new game that there doesn't need to be anything fancier, but if you have something more streamlined in mind let me know.

[mjr]

System setup for running Pinball Arcade DX9

Pinball Arcade BAM

 

PBY will prompt via a menu asking which version you would like to run?

 

It does prompt for system if you leave the game unconfigured, but you probably don't want to do that because then it won't be able to use media or show the proper game details.  When you configure a game, though, you have to select which system it runs with.  I haven't considered the case where you'd want the same game file to run with several systems.

 

One way you could do it right now would be to create a parallel set of .pinballArcade files - say, a .pinballArcade9 set and a .pinballArcade11 set.  Set the extension on each system accordingly.  That would let you create separate DX 9 and DX 11 entries for any games where you wanted the option - so you choose which version to run just by selecting one or the other game.

 

If you wanted to have three separate system options across the board for every TPA game (DX 9, DX 11, FCM), though, it would be pretty cumbersome to create three entries per game.  Is that where you're going with this?  I.e., is your vision for the final setup that you're going to want every TPA game to ask you which of the three modes to use, every time you launch a game?  If so I'll have to think about how to accomplish that.  It's not really possible at the PBY level because the "one game entry - one system" rule is pretty hard-wired into the database schema.  I think maybe the right way to think about this would be to merge the three modes into a single "Pinball Arcade" system definition, and somehow encode the launch-time variations into the system definition itself.  

[mjr]

Can you launch individual tables? I cannot but I will play with Startup keys.

 

I could last time I checked... but I wouldn't be surprised if it's already broken, since Farsight changes their @!%$ menu layout every time they push an update.  The key script probably has a two-week mean time between failure at best as a result. 

 

If anyone can figure out a better way to navigate to a specific game, I'd love to figure out something more robust.  My best alternative idea right now is to ditch the scripts and find a way to facilitate manual navigation, so that you can navigate their menus with the flipper buttons.  It wouldn't be as "automatic", but if the script is going to break every two weeks it might make everyone happier, plus it would be a lot faster - the script has to be really conservative about timing because TPA is so glacially slow to start up, and so unpredictable about its glacial slowness.  It takes anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds on my machine, so the script has to assume the worst and build in a 35-40 second delay just for the initial load.  With manual navigation you could at least start navigating as soon as TPA is ready.  The obstacle to manual navigation on a pin cab is that Farsight's menu uses the arrow keys, and the flipper and magna buttons on a cab are usually mapped to shift and ctrl.  You can remap their menu buttons, but I tried that and it didn't seem to work very well.  So I'm thinking PBY could do some kind of keyboard remapping while TPA is starting up.  But that's about as far as I've thought it through...

[hlr53]

 

Can you launch individual tables? I cannot but I will play with Startup keys.

 
I could last time I checked... but I wouldn't be surprised if it's already broken, since Farsight changes their @!%$ menu layout every time they push an update.  The key script probably has a two-week mean time between failure at best as a result. 
 
If anyone can figure out a better way to navigate to a specific game, I'd love to figure out something more robust.  My best alternative idea right now is to ditch the scripts and find a way to facilitate manual navigation, so that you can navigate their menus with the flipper buttons.  It wouldn't be as "automatic", but if the script is going to break every two weeks it might make everyone happier, plus it would be a lot faster - the script has to be really conservative about timing because TPA is so glacially slow to start up, and so unpredictable about its glacial slowness.  It takes anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds on my machine, so the script has to assume the worst and build in a 35-40 second delay just for the initial load.  With manual navigation you could at least start navigating as soon as TPA is ready.  The obstacle to manual navigation on a pin cab is that Farsight's menu uses the arrow keys, and the flipper and magna buttons on a cab are usually mapped to shift and ctrl.  You can remap their menu buttons, but I tried that and it didn't seem to work very well.  So I'm thinking PBY could do some kind of keyboard remapping while TPA is starting up.  But that's about as far as I've thought it through...
 

Personally, as long as I can navigate to the main menu in PBA and use my cab buttons to move about, I'm good. I have 4 extra cab buttons installed for navigating like arrow keys. If you could kludge together a partial manual setup we would certainly welcome it.
 
A LOT of man hours have been spent trying to keep up with their menus.
 
The day they broke navigating within PBX (in 2017?) it was obvious to me they were going for some type of swipe system (ending up being for Arcooda) plus they do multiple platforms.

Edited by hlr53, 06 September 2018 - 11:43 PM.

[Brer Frog]

 

How do you update the Game file name but keep all the game details intact?

For example a table is updated from vers 1.0 to 2.0. A new .vpx table file should appear in PinballY as an unconfigured game. All the images (playfield, backglass, flyers, etc.) should be kept the same as the previous table version.

When you do the Game Setup for table vers 2.0, and if Game Details > Title stays the same, then I’m presuming the images will be shared with table vers 1.0? At least until table vers 1.0 gets deleted.

 

Exactly right.  The media name is based on the "Title (Manufacturer Year)" format, so if you give both table files the same settings for all of those, the media names will come out the same and all of the image/video files will be used by both.

 

So in answer to "how do you update the game file name?", I guess you don't really; you just set up the details for the new game to match the old one.  I've been thinking that the IPDB data makes it so quick to set up the new game that there doesn't need to be anything fancier, but if you have something more streamlined in mind let me know.

 

 

Setting up the details for the new game to match the old one.does seem pretty easy.to me. I just didn't know if sharing images between two games would cause a conflict of some sort.

[hlr53]

 

System setup for running Pinball Arcade DX9

Pinball Arcade BAM

 

PBY will prompt via a menu asking which version you would like to run?

 

It does prompt for system if you leave the game unconfigured, but you probably don't want to do that because then it won't be able to use media or show the proper game details.  When you configure a game, though, you have to select which system it runs with.  I haven't considered the case where you'd want the same game file to run with several systems.

 

One way you could do it right now would be to create a parallel set of .pinballArcade files - say, a .pinballArcade9 set and a .pinballArcade11 set.  Set the extension on each system accordingly.  That would let you create separate DX 9 and DX 11 entries for any games where you wanted the option - so you choose which version to run just by selecting one or the other game.

 

If you wanted to have three separate system options across the board for every TPA game (DX 9, DX 11, FCM), though, it would be pretty cumbersome to create three entries per game.  Is that where you're going with this?  I.e., is your vision for the final setup that you're going to want every TPA game to ask you which of the three modes to use, every time you launch a game?  If so I'll have to think about how to accomplish that.  It's not really possible at the PBY level because the "one game entry - one system" rule is pretty hard-wired into the database schema.  I think maybe the right way to think about this would be to merge the three modes into a single "Pinball Arcade" system definition, and somehow encode the launch-time variations into the system definition itself.  

 

Honestly, ALL I wanted to do today was launch either DX9 or BAM/DX11 and get back to PBY with the Esc key. That was all I was showing. I hadn't begun to think about how to set it all up.

 

I think most users will use only 1 system. Users with older systems may have to use DX9. I use only DX11 with BAM. Some may use DX11 without BAM (I have to see how that launches?)

 

Users that own the Arcooda package will have probably have 2 systems. Arcooda and straight DX11 with or without BAM, since Arcooda is a subset of all the available tables.

 

I'm open for suggestions on what is easiest to do and await others guidance :-)

[bord]

I have an error in Alpha 19 64 bit that is not showing any of my favorites list. The directory is there, the file is there and the settings are looking at the correct directory. All tables listed in favorite say "No Table Selected". Have uninstalled and reinstalled with no change.

I get this error screen at startup: http://vpforums.org/...t/162/error.jpg

[mjr]

I have an error in Alpha 19 64 bit that is not showing any of my favorites list. The directory is there, the file is there and the settings are looking at the correct directory. All tables listed in favorite say "No Table Selected". Have uninstalled and reinstalled with no change.

 

Dumb question, but you actually have designated some games as favorites, right?  Are you're still seeing everything if you go back to the All Tables filter instead?  Once you get there, try spot-checking a couple of the games that you *expect* to be in the favorites list, and see if "In Favorites" is actually listed in the main menu for them with a checkmark.  That will tell us whether there's something wrong with the favorites filter or if there's something wrong with the memory of which games are in your favorites list.

 

 

I get this error screen at startup: http://vpforums.org/...t/162/error.jpg

 

Well, wish I could see the rest of the error there... two bugs apparently, one being the COM error and the other being the drawing for the error box.  Do you see anything in the log file (PinballY.log in the main program folder)?  Hopefully the full text of the error appears there.

... But I'm guessing it's DOF - try enabling DOF in the Log File options if you're not seeing anything in the log file about the error.  Are you using 64-bit PinballY, by chance?  Did you install the NEW R3++ I posted a couple of days ago?  If 'yes' and 'no', that would be the issue.  64-bit DOF support requires the new R3++ version because some of the COM info required for 64-bit mode was missing in earlier versions.

 

 

And re: the weird error message glitch:  what kind of monitor are you using?  (I mean:  HD, 4K, something else?) 

 

Has anyone else had drawing problems with message boxes like that?

Edited by mjr, 07 September 2018 - 04:31 AM.

[bord]

I do have a favorites xml in the proper directory. It was working fine over the last few weeks until Alpha 19. Everything is correct in the All Tables filter. When I go to sort by era or manufacturer it is pulling from my favorites XML, but my favorites list is still blank. I have run an uninstall and fresh install and this persists.

 

Here is my log:

Friday, September 7, 2018, 9:58:22 AM: Session started
PinballY 1.0.0 (Alpha 19), build 6470 (x64, 20180905-0354)

DOF (DirectOutput): initializing DOF client
+ Launching DOF surrogate process.  This is required because PinballY is running
  in 64-bit, and DOF is a 32-bit COM object.  Surrogate command line:
  >"C:\PinballY\Dof3264Surrogate.exe"  -parent_pid=10800 -clsid=83e0d6fa-b7a0-44bd-b792-7fefd35d371d

DOF: creating DOF COM object (a23bfdbc-9a8a-46c0-8672-60f23d54ffb6)
DOF: CoCreateInstance for DOF COM object (a23bfdbc-9a8a-46c0-8672-60f23d54ffb6) failed: No such interface supported

DOF: shutting down DOF client

Friday, September 7, 2018, 9:58:43 AM: PinballY session ending

 

The error box is happening in 64 bit PinballY with the new R3++ installed. It does not show up with a 32 bit PinballY installation.

 

The message glitch: I am using a 4k higher dpi monitor (96 maybe?). You had implemented some changes to the video capture for this 4k/higher dpi setup that fixed video capture a while back.
 

[mjr]

I do have a favorites xml in the proper directory.

 

Ah, okay, that might the issue - "favorites xml" isn't a thing.   When you select "Favorites" in the main menu, it selects tables you've designated via the "Add to Favorites" command in the main menu, and only those.  Have you ever done that?  If not, that's why the Favorites list is empty when you view it from the main menu.  There's no XML file storing that list; it's internal to the PBY database (the specific location where it's stored is the GameStats.csv file).

 

It sounds like you manually created a file called "Favorites.xml" and put it in one or more of the table database folders, PinballX-style.  Is that what you're talking about?  If so, that's treated a whole different way.  In PinballY terms, that's a Category.  You can filter for a category by going to the main menu, Filter by Category, and then select Favorites from the category list.  Do you think that's what you might have been doing in the past?  Because that's the way it's worked from day 1.

 

And just for future reference, there's no need in PinballY to manually edit XML files to create categories.  You still can if you really want to, but you can also do it directly from the UI.  Go to the Game Setup menu and select "Select Categories".  That will let you checkmark any number of categories to include the game in.  Use the "Edit category names" command at the bottom of that menu to add or rename categories. 

 

 

 

The error box is happening in 64 bit PinballY with the new R3++ installed. It does not show up with a 32 bit PinballY installation.

 

Are you absolutely sure that you have the very latest R3++, the one dated 2018-09-04?  I might have made this a bit confusing because I posted one a few days earlier that's NOT 64-bit compatible, dated 2018-08-30, and it's still listed as the "current" release.  The one you need is the "Experimental" release listed below that on the page.  

 

You can check to make certain you have the right version by going to the DOF folder and getting the file properties for DirectOutput.dll.  On the Details tab, "Product version" should say 3.1.6820.34694.

 

If you do have the right version, how did you install it - manually or via the Windows Setup installer?  If you installed it manually, did you run RegisterDirectOutputComObject.exe after installing the new files?  You have to do that again with the new version even if you already did it with past versions.

 

If you do have the latest version listed above, and you installed it manually but definitely did the COM object registration again, the COM object registration program might be broken.  If you could try again with the Setup installer, that should get the registration right for you.  Let me know if that's the case so I can look at why the registration program didn't work.

Edited by mjr, 07 September 2018 - 08:06 PM.

[mjr]

I think most users will use only 1 system. Users with older systems may have to use DX9. I use only DX11 with BAM. Some may use DX11 without BAM (I have to see how that launches?)

 

That's been my thinking as well.  For the TPA DX9/11 choice, it seems like they're the same game either way, so it's a function of your system, not a playing preference at time of launch.

 

We can explore it further if this becomes a big problem for anyone, but hopefully the one game-one system mapping will be workable for most people.

 

 

Personally, as long as I can navigate to the main menu in PBA and use my cab buttons to move about, I'm good. I have 4 extra cab buttons installed for navigating like arrow keys. If you could kludge together a partial manual setup we would certainly welcome it.

 
A LOT of man hours have been spent trying to keep up with their menus.

 

Clearly "external launcher" isn't on their radar.  Or if it *is* on their radar, they hate the idea so much that they're actively trying to make it impossible.  You could easily believe the latter given how ridiculously hard they make it, but Hanlon's razor is usually right in these situations.

 

Anyway... I gave it another try with remapping keys in their UI, and maybe that's the way to go.  Try going to the TPA Controls > Keyboard/Mouse settings (I'm talking about the Pinball Arcade UI, not the PinballY settings), and map the menu commands like so:

 

Menu Select:  1    (pin cab start button)

Menu Back:  2   (pin cab extra ball button - if you have one; use one of your extra buttons if not)*

Menu Left:  Left Shift  (pin cab left flipper button)

Menu Right:  Right Shift  (pin cab right flipper button)

Menu Up:  Left Ctrl (pin cab left magnasave)

Menu Down:  Right Ctrl  (pin cab right magnasave)

 

Those settings don't seem to create any interference during play, and they let you navigate all of the TPA menus with just the basic pin cab buttons.  The up/down arrows are the only ones that are a little weird, because you have to translate left/right magnasave in your brain to up/down.

 

It's a pain to do the manual navigation every time, and seems especially outrageous since you just selected the same game in another UI!!!, but they make it so hard to keep automated key scripts working that this might be the lesser of two hassles.

 

* Why not Escape = pin cab Exit button?  Because PinballY monitors Escape and would override "menu back" to mean "terminate the whole game".

Edited by mjr, 07 September 2018 - 10:24 PM.

[bord]

 

I do have a favorites xml in the proper directory.

 

Ah, okay, that might the issue - "favorites xml" isn't a thing.   When you select "Favorites" in the main menu, it selects tables you've designated via the "Add to Favorites" command in the main menu, and only those.  Have you ever done that?  If not, that's why the Favorites list is empty when you view it from the main menu.  There's no XML file storing that list; it's internal to the PBY database (the specific location where it's stored is the GameStats.csv file).

 

It sounds like you manually created a file called "Favorites.xml" and put it in one or more of the table database folders, PinballX-style.  Is that what you're talking about?  If so, that's treated a whole different way.  In PinballY terms, that's a Category.  You can filter for a category by going to the main menu, Filter by Category, and then select Favorites from the category list.  Do you think that's what you might have been doing in the past?  Because that's the way it's worked from day 1.

 

And just for future reference, there's no need in PinballY to manually edit XML files to create categories.  You still can if you really want to, but you can also do it directly from the UI.  Go to the Game Setup menu and select "Select Categories".  That will let you checkmark any number of categories to include the game in.  Use the "Edit category names" command at the bottom of that menu to add or rename categories. 

 

 

 

The error box is happening in 64 bit PinballY with the new R3++ installed. It does not show up with a 32 bit PinballY installation.

 

Are you absolutely sure that you have the very latest R3++, the one dated 2018-09-04?  I might have made this a bit confusing because I posted one a few days earlier that's NOT 64-bit compatible, dated 2018-08-30, and it's still listed as the "current" release.  The one you need is the "Experimental" release listed below that on the page.  

 

You can check to make certain you have the right version by going to the DOF folder and getting the file properties for DirectOutput.dll.  On the Details tab, "Product version" should say 3.1.6820.34694.

 

If you do have the right version, how did you install it - manually or via the Windows Setup installer?  If you installed it manually, did you run RegisterDirectOutputComObject.exe after installing the new files?  You have to do that again with the new version even if you already did it with past versions.

 

If you do have the latest version listed above, and you installed it manually but definitely did the COM object registration again, the COM object registration program might be broken.  If you could try again with the Setup installer, that should get the registration right for you.  Let me know if that's the case so I can look at why the registration program didn't work.

 

 

I was just being a bad troubleshooter. My xml file was generated from within PinballY UI and is called Visual Pinball X.xml. Sure enough none of my favorited tables are checked in the universal menu. Why would I have lost all of those?

 

The R3++ that I had updated was not the experimental one. Installed that and the error message goes away.

 

Here is my gamestats file: https://drive.google...GmqCHHBgw6dn5Qj

Here is my xml: https://drive.google...oZ2cNIZ73Vkgr78

[mjr]

Sure enough none of my favorited tables are checked in the universal menu. Why would I have lost all of those?

 

Not sure... is it possible that you might have just wiped the PinballY folder at some point during one of the uninstall/reinstall cycles?  If you deleted the whole folder, that would have deleted your old GameStats.csv file, and that's where the Favorites flags are stored.  Using the Windows "Add or remove programs" uninstaller won't delete that file, as Setup only deletes files it added, and that's not one of them; it's created on the fly.  But manual folder deletion would have nuked everything.

 

 

The R3++ that I had updated was not the experimental one. Installed that and the error message goes away.

 

Great - glad that did the trick.  Hopefully DOF is actually working now for you, too!