1002 replies to this topic

[gtxjoe]

can anyone give me some tips on how you might go about tweaking the magnetic flippers on Melon's new Twilight Zone table?  I fel like in the physmod they're not powerful enough, but I ont' know where to look to change things?  is it in the script or an object on the table I ned to tweak?

 

Not at home, but look for InitMagnet and you should find results like below, last value is strength so you probably have to increase that

InitMagnet LeftMagnet, 10

[gamefixer]

 

Just to show what I've done so far:

https://www.dropbox....New Physics.rar

 

 

VERY NICE! I love being able to make shots off the backsides of the flippers. So much more like real pins....

 

I just came off the route and was cleaning some pins today. Running PhysMod3 on the VPin is really getting close to the real thing!

[ronaldvg]

 

Thanks Mukuste, I must say I admire the speed in which you accomplish these changes and fixes. Just tried the new version in the Monster Bash Physics version and it plays very very good. Feels very close to a real pin.

 

Nice! I have to admit that I have basically no experience with real pinball machines, almost all I know about them comes from playing simulations and watching the fantastic PAPA videos. That said, recently I finally managed to play some real games, an X-Men last week and tonight, an actual Twilight Zone! I had a lot of fun with the TZ; the playfield was a bit warped, but apart from that it played quite well. It's just great to see this classic in the physical world with all the stuff that goes on on the playfield, the toys, the magnetic flippers on the Powerfield... (The Powerball, sadly, seemed to be AWOL. Would have loved to see that.)  It also helped that it was a rather benign game, 5 balls per game, soft kickouts, relatively slow pace, and for some reason I had almost no outlane drains. So that was great fun, and I actually somehow managed to get a replay on my first game, and then later two (!) free games out of the match feature.

 

But, to contain my enthusiasm and get back to the topic of the thread, what I noticed both on the X-Men and on the TZ is how much easier it is to do light taps on the real flippers than in VP. Somehow I got almost no community feedback so far on the physics mod as far as being able to do stuff like cradle separations and flick passes is concerned. In my opinion, the flipper still accelerates too abruptly, and the ball goes wild too often after what should be a light tap. I think the new parameter, Coil Ramp Up, will help with this. It will allow us to simulate how the flipper coil needs some time to reach its full force, and therefore short flicks of the flippers should be much more realistic with a proper choice of this parameter. I hope some people who have extensive experience with real pins will try their hand at tuning this new parameter!

 

If you try the new default table I attached above, I experimented a bit with this by setting the Ramp Up relatively high (8), but also increasing Strength to compensate for the lost speed. I think it plays quite well, but I'm curious what other people's feeling is.

 

 

Thanks for the reply ! You even seem to have time for that ;-) I own a Real Williams Indiana Jones and Addams Family and until now I used my Virtual Cab just to check out tables that I was interested in owning for real. But with your physics I really enjoy playing with the Virtual machine almost as much as with the real thing. For me a real pinball machine is like a piece of art which combines some processing power with a lot of mechanical things going on, all interactive because the player can more or less control what is going on.

 

What you say about the flippers is very true. I saw in a video of Unit3D that they were busy with a system for the flippers that treats the flipper coils not just as on/off but every time you press the flipper button some kind of time mechanism starts that handles the power delivery and inclination of the flipper. I am not sure (because it was just a video) but I think you could draw a line to (graphically) indicate how the delivery of the power was combined with the angle of the flipper. To make it more clear what I mean: say for instance the total time of the flipper to go completely down from the up position is 1.5ms, When you release the flipper button a timer is started that takes 1.5 ms to complete and when you press the button again during that 1.5 ms the flipper would be sent up again from the angle that is in at the moment you press the button again. In that way it would be possible to flip a tiny bit as you can on a real flipper. 

 

All this about the flipper is just my simple idea how to get to the result that the flippers in VP could be more like the real thing and there is no knowledge from me how to implement that, just an idea.

 

And concerning your enthusiasm: please keep it up and keep playing the tables. That way you can enjoy your work as much as we all do! Thanks again for your hard work.

Edited by ronaldvg, 26 April 2014 - 12:31 AM.

[BigBoss]

I noticed on physmod3 if you load the CV table, the menagerie ball keeps moving in a circle nonstop. If you reduce the "wild ball" ball size from 60 to 53 it is fixed.  If you don't do this and hit the menagerie ball, the whole table horribly stutters for a bit. While it's an easy work-around for this one table, I am not sure if it warrants any investigation for other compatibility.  I'm not sure how to separate the table out. 

 

I'm not sure the best way to help display this, so I made a patch using vppatch based off Circus_Voltaire_VP9.1x_v1.1FS. 

http://pinballbulbs....1FS_physmod.zip

[gtxjoe]

I exchanged some physicmod tables with bigboss and all the tables i load dont start. No error message8

 

I got the roms so thats not the problem checked the ntfs permissions all seems ok. Tried to run as administrator Tried to save the table with another name Uac is disabled Tried different vp versions tables are loading in vp921 but not in physicsmod2 Anyone could help? Edit: Tested on my 2th pc and there it works, so it must be something non vp releated. Ill let you know if i figured it out what the problem. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

I had the same problem.  Press play, DMD and playfield show up for an instant and then return back to VP editor.  No error message.  

 

I figured out what it is - Click on Backdrop and change "Override by Global Physics Set" from 1 to 0

[BigBoss]

Ya. Or load one of the tables, explorer the physics then import them as global physics so that the global physics aren't corrupted for the new version.

[BigBoss]

So with physmod3, I'm getting massive ramp drop problems where the ball flows the ramp then at the end stops and won't drop. So far out of about 10 tables I've messed with, it's happened on about 4 of them. The very easiest one to reproduce it on is this airborne. Plunge the ball fully and the ball is stuck on the left ramp, no shots to make. You can repro instantly. Is this something that can be fixed in the code version easily or is every table going to have to be reworked?

http://pinballbulbs....es/Airborne.zip

 

Deleting wall30 (and wall28, wall35, wall33 on the other 3 wire ramps) solves it. In each case I've solved it by deleting whatever is at the end of the ramp.

 

Also, with physmod3, I'm getting balls just vanishing all over the place. The airborne table is another good example of that. Happens dropping from left ramp, shooting near spinner on right.

Edited by BigBoss, 26 April 2014 - 06:46 AM.

[mukuste]

 

What you say about the flippers is very true. I saw in a video of Unit3D that they were busy with a system for the flippers that treats the flipper coils not just as on/off but every time you press the flipper button some kind of time mechanism starts that handles the power delivery and inclination of the flipper.
 

 

I saw that video too! It was part of the inspiration for the new Ramp Up parameter. How they do it is to draw a curve for the power ramp up, so you have an extreme amount of freedom, but I think it can get quite difficult for the table authors to know how exactly to draw that curve. So instead I went with a single parameter which describes the duration of this curve, and in between the start and end you can imagine the power curve simply as a straight diagonal line from bottom to top. It's not as much freedom but I think the result will be quite similar.

 

 

Hey mukuste. Thanks for the updated version. Going to play with it now. Did you see my post on eos and the power cut at end of the flip range?

 

Yes, thank you, very valuable information. I think the end result is similar in that model: the high power coil is active for a short burst and then goes to low power after a short while, so when the flipper rests in the up position only the low power coil is active. When a ball deflects the flipper down, it will reactivate the high power coil for a bit. So, while it's implemented in a different way, I think the physical result is almost the same?

 

 

So with physmod3, I'm getting massive ramp drop problems where the ball flows the ramp then at the end stops and won't drop. So far out of about 10 tables I've messed with, it's happened on about 4 of them. The very easiest one to reproduce it on is this airborne. Plunge the ball fully and the ball is stuck on the left ramp, no shots to make. You can repro instantly. Is this something that can be fixed in the code version easily or is every table going to have to be reworked?

http://pinballbulbs....es/Airborne.zip

 

Deleting wall30 (and wall28, wall35, wall33 on the other 3 wire ramps) solves it. In each case I've solved it by deleting whatever is at the end of the ramp.

 

Also, with physmod3, I'm getting balls just vanishing all over the place. The airborne table is another good example of that. Happens dropping from left ramp, shooting near spinner on right.

 

The first problem is simply due to the changed ramp collision model. Before, the ball would simply drop through the end of the ramp as soon as its center wasn't over the ramp anymore. Now, it will properly roll off the ramp edge. So making the offending ramps a bit shorter should also work.

 

Balls vanishing is a bit more worrisome, so it would be good to have a simple way to reproduce this.

[BuckoBundy]

Thanks for the update!

 

I did find a new problem with V3 that isn't present in V2. When you cradle the ball and the wall it is against is thin and has a little gap, the ball will bounce around forever. Kind of hard to explain, so another test table it is:

http://www.filedropp...m/physmod3-prob

 

That table shows 3 situations. From bottom to top:

1 = the original wall from the default table, but made thinner --> no problem there.

2 = the same wall as 1 but with a slightly larger gap between it and the flipper --> problem here.

3= same wall as 2 but made thicker --> no problem.

[BigBoss]

 

 

Hey mukuste. Thanks for the updated version. Going to play with it now. Did you see my post on eos and the power cut at end of the flip range?

 

Yes, thank you, very valuable information. I think the end result is similar in that model: the high power coil is active for a short burst and then goes to low power after a short while, so when the flipper rests in the up position only the low power coil is active. When a ball deflects the flipper down, it will reactivate the high power coil for a bit. So, while it's implemented in a different way, I think the physical result is almost the same?

 

 

 

The important difference is that you said that you drop power by 1/3 towards the end of the stroke. But on modern games, there is no power loss until the stroke has already ended and the flipper bat is already fully raise. On older games that actually had EOS switch cut offs, the high power would end before the flipper hits the end of the stroke and slightly before the flipper is totally raised. If you are dropping high power before the flipper is fully raised in the simulation, it might be nice to be able to disable this until after the flipper is raised which should match all modern flipper behavior.

 

I am also noticing that when I cradle the ball on the flipper, it moves around in physmod3 but in physmod2 it didnt.  Are you aware already?  Also, I noticed performance is generally better on physmod3. I notice that my sound doesn't get "weird" in pinmame without hglass running anymore with physmod3 version.

[blashyrk]

If anyone wants to make a video comparing the physics mod vs the regular physics i'd be a happy camper
Since i decided not to play any tables before my cab build is finished.

[woodsy15]

Hi ClarkKent, dying to try this new engine but a bit of a noob.  Downloaded your WW table with the physics mod.  Full plunger drains the ball right down the middle, 3/4 plunger the ball rolls back after exit the launch tunnel and gets stuck top right ???  Can't try this yet :-(  Any advice, appreciate your posting a modified table :-) Thanks

[ClarkKent]

Hi ClarkKent, dying to try this new engine but a bit of a noob.  Downloaded your WW table with the physics mod.  Full plunger drains the ball right down the middle, 3/4 plunger the ball rolls back after exit the launch tunnel and gets stuck top right ???  Can't try this yet :-(  Any advice, appreciate your posting a modified table :-) Thanks

I corrected some small things, maybe you didn't download the latest one?

https://www.dropbox....New Physics.rar

[mukuste]

 

 

 

Hey mukuste. Thanks for the updated version. Going to play with it now. Did you see my post on eos and the power cut at end of the flip range?

 

Yes, thank you, very valuable information. I think the end result is similar in that model: the high power coil is active for a short burst and then goes to low power after a short while, so when the flipper rests in the up position only the low power coil is active. When a ball deflects the flipper down, it will reactivate the high power coil for a bit. So, while it's implemented in a different way, I think the physical result is almost the same?

 

 

 

The important difference is that you said that you drop power by 1/3 towards the end of the stroke. But on modern games, there is no power loss until the stroke has already ended and the flipper bat is already fully raise. On older games that actually had EOS switch cut offs, the high power would end before the flipper hits the end of the stroke and slightly before the flipper is totally raised. If you are dropping high power before the flipper is fully raised in the simulation, it might be nice to be able to disable this until after the flipper is raised which should match all modern flipper behavior.

 

I am also noticing that when I cradle the ball on the flipper, it moves around in physmod3 but in physmod2 it didnt.  Are you aware already?  Also, I noticed performance is generally better on physmod3. I notice that my sound doesn't get "weird" in pinmame without hglass running anymore with physmod3 version.

 

 

I drop the power to 1/3 on the last degree. You might want to pull out your protractor and check just how small 1° actually is It basically means that power is cut when the stroke is finished. One could try a larger low-power area to simulate the behavior of these older flippers you mention though. I just don't know how noticeable the effect on gameplay actually is; in other words, is it really worth having a parameter for this?

 

I haven't seen the moving cradled ball yet, it doesn't happen on the default table at least. Would like a test table.

 

Nice about the performance, I did make some small optimizations but didn't really think that it would amount to something noticeable. Also, as far as performance is concerned, you should now be able to play with vsync on, which is much less critical performance-wise compared to the hundreds of fps we needed in VP9, and also gives VPM more breathing room.

[Arcade4]

 

Hi ClarkKent, dying to try this new engine but a bit of a noob.  Downloaded your WW table with the physics mod.  Full plunger drains the ball right down the middle, 3/4 plunger the ball rolls back after exit the launch tunnel and gets stuck top right ???  Can't try this yet :-(  Any advice, appreciate your posting a modified table :-) Thanks

I corrected some small things, maybe you didn't download the latest one?

https://www.dropbox....New Physics.rar

 

Ball still gets stuck at the skill shot drop off.

Ball still screams straight down the middle on regular plunge.

[BuckoBundy]

I haven't seen the moving cradled ball yet, it doesn't happen on the default table at least. Would like a test table.
 

 

I posted a test table that demonstrates the mentioned problem. It's just a few posts above. I posted another test table that shows the ball going through the playfield, quite some time ago.

This reminds me that a forum is a bad format for reporting bugs and making suggestions. Things get lost easily.

 

Not your fault. I think you are doing an amazing job. But maybe for vp10 we can use some sort of issue tracking solution, like JIRA?

[mukuste]

In physmod3, the end of the plunger ramp in Whitewater needs to be raised a bit so that the ball has space to roll below it. I don't know if CK has adjusted for this new version yet.

 

The full plunge straight down the middle, I'm told, is quite realistic. You can try nudging to still save the ball; at least with the keyboard nudging it's easy to do.

[connorsdad]

Hi guys I'm looking for some advice, at the minute I'm using plain old VP9, I would love to try out these new physics or even the DX test versions, but....

I have no idea how to alter table settings, hell I had a tough time getting to grips with uvp and b2s. So what is the best option for myself and other noobs, risk messing up our table collections or sit tight and wait for a new database consisting of new physics/DX/VP10 tables ?

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

[woodsy15]

@ClarkKent - still gets stuck, 1 in every 12 balls I can get in play down the middle off the right flipper tip.  Tried to follow the guide that Mukuste posted with version 3 but got stuck.   Found the Backdrop physics settings but could not figure out the flipper settings.  Under preferences>physics options there are some global ones but some of the settings mentioned in the guide are not there ??  As per Connorsdads comment some guidance for us dweebs would be appreciated.  I was trying to use AFM night mod and there are other tables that would be great to try too.  Is anyone going to post any more tables here for us ?  (puppy dog face with big eyes)

[mukuste]

 

I haven't seen the moving cradled ball yet, it doesn't happen on the default table at least. Would like a test table.
 

 

I posted a test table that demonstrates the mentioned problem. It's just a few posts above. I posted another test table that shows the ball going through the playfield, quite some time ago.

This reminds me that a forum is a bad format for reporting bugs and making suggestions. Things get lost easily.

 

Not your fault. I think you are doing an amazing job. But maybe for vp10 we can use some sort of issue tracking solution, like JIRA?

 

Thanks for the test table, I saw it before but hadn't had time to check it yet. I also wanted to download your "ball through PF" test table yesterday already but it seemed the external host deleted it or whatever. It would be MUCH better, not to mention faster, if you could simply attach them to the forum posts.

 

A tracking tool would be really good... problem is, many people here just aren't that tech savvy and probably wouldn't use it, especially if you need to register for it, and then the onus is on me again to enter everything into that system myself. In the DX9 thread, gtxjoe maintained a spreadsheet which served that purpose. It worked ok, and it was great of him to do it, but even then people had to be pushed really hard to enter something into it, and NOBODY ever checked if the issue they were reporting in the thread was already in the spreadsheet. So, it's more of a community/social problem to get this to work. I'm open to suggestions though.