1388 replies to this topic

[epthegeek]

I'm so un-impressed by this 'video' on youtube! All I see is another lame attempt by some individual who will bring NOTHING to this community.

This video was released for personal gain. Enjoy the video while it lasts.

Whoa. Harsh. Am I missing some history that I should know that drives that hostility?

Edit: Serious question, by the way. I was around in the early days of VP, then gone for a long time. By the time i got back FP was already mostly dead and VP was vastly improved. If there was a lot of other "hey look at this" with no delivery in the middle, I would have missed that.

Edited by epthegeek, 13 September 2011 - 02:21 AM.

[destruk]

The last time I looked at Unity 3D, they had a physics engine for real world applications in 3D environments, and to use a DLL with it you had to buy their 'professional edition' so I didn't investigate it further. Has that policy changed?

[kruge99]

I'm so un-impressed by this 'video' on youtube! All I see is another lame attempt by some individual who will bring NOTHING to this community.

This video was released for personal gain. Enjoy the video while it lasts.

Whoa. Harsh. Am I missing some history that I should know that drives that hostility?

Edit: Serious question, by the way. I was around in the early days of VP, then gone for a long time. By the time i got back FP was already mostly dead and VP was vastly improved. If there was a lot of other "hey look at this" with no delivery in the middle, I would have missed that.

I'll offer an apology if he shows up here and joins the dev team. Until then all I see is a person, using some software to make a fun thing to put on his programming resume for a job application. As I said, I'll apologize if said person shows up here with the intent of furthering the development of virtual pinball.

[johnparker007]

The last time I looked at Unity 3D, they had a physics engine for real world applications in 3D environments, and to use a DLL with it you had to buy their 'professional edition' so I didn't investigate it further. Has that policy changed?

True true - it is interesting, so I thought it was worth a post. But yeah, now I understand what's going on - it's relying on a commercial app, so it doesn't actually add anything to the open source Visual Pinball project... unlike that proper 3D renderer Cupid was working on, now that is very interesting

[epthegeek]

I didn't realize that you have to use the pro version of unity for the DLL communication. I just heard back from louizou12 on youtube, and he confirms this - he'd have to pay the $1300 license fee to release anything.

For the badcats table used in the demo, this is what he said about how he imported it (it is UW's FP table):

"for badcats : 3D data was ripped from future pinball table with 3DVIA printscreen =>retextured in 3DSMAX=>imported into unity engine where i had scripts to handle VPM and the table components"

He had to re-texture everything in 3DS Max, doesn't have a way to import FP tables directly -- but he mentioned that was his next goal. To try to write a way to import FP tables into something the unity could use directly, so that the FP editor could be used for creating tables rather than 3DS.

So there probably won't be anything more on it, as expected.

Edit: He updated the video description to mention future pinball and UncleWilly - not in much detail, but at least it's there.

Edited by epthegeek, 13 September 2011 - 01:48 PM.

[xio]

I sent the guy a message on youtube, but I don't know any french so it was stuffed through google translate and probably didn't make any sense in the end. heh.

Why did you write in french, the guy should understand english.

Anyway, if u need I can help u with the french part (but not the unity 3D part)

[epthegeek]

I sent the guy a message on youtube, but I don't know any french so it was stuffed through google translate and probably didn't make any sense in the end. heh.

Why did you write in french, the guy should understand english.

Anyway, if u need I can help u with the french part (but not the unity 3D part)

I've gone back and forth with him a few times on email now, and he does speak pretty good english - but I didn't know that going in.

[epthegeek]

From talking to him via email, it sounds like he's got the unity 3d <-> pinmame part working just fine. He's just wrangling with how to make editing tables easier than using something like 3Ds max to model the whole table.

I'd tend to think that if a program got released that did 3d rendering with pinmame, some people would adapt to making tables for it in whatever editor was necessary, whether it was a simplified FP style editor or a full blown cad program. But maybe I'm crazy.

[destruk]

I'm sure everyone would use whatever program worked best. Without knowing how it actually plays or how difficult it is to generate a table using this, or what the real physics capabilities are I know I'm not willing to drop $1300 to 'test' -
perhaps someone will release a table without using roms for it to satisfy curiosities like these.

[epthegeek]

Tweaking all the physics would definitely be a long haul, I would think. Unless unity has a bunch of presets for things like rubber and metal type properties to start with as a base. Even so, getting all the strengths just right for flippers and kickers and whatnot. Oi.

Edit: Oh, and in his last email he mentioned he was going to look at Cupid's vp2k11 (or whatever it was called) on source forge to see about using vp files as a starting base for importing/making tables. Would take a lot of reworking I would think, since you'd want real lights and inserts and such in a real 3d rendered sim.

Edit again: I emailed him again and suggested the ROM-less flippable table idea to test it out. Even if it's just a non-scoring shell.

Edited by epthegeek, 13 September 2011 - 09:56 PM.

[BigBoss]

Who's working on this? Looks promising.

Bigscore Slam it was done in Unity.

According to the lead developer for SlamIt, it was *not* done in Unity. It was their own written thing which they consider unmaintainable at this point. They planned to port it all to Unity so that they could release multiple platform versions of their stuff, but they never got funding. I was in negotiations for this with them and they needed about $90,000 to complete the project.

[epthegeek]

Check it out for yourself!

louizou12 (he hasn't mentioned his real name) sent me a stripped version of the bad cats table. By removing the COM object (Pinmame) interaction and the table & ball reflections, it falls within the confines of the free unity license, so he can share it. What you get is the table geometry and flippers running in the actual unity engine that you can test out. Since pinmame isn't controlling the ball count and such, he set it up so that it just starts with 2 balls in the chute so you can launch them and get a pseudo multi-ball experience. Once you lose the balls, or they go into holes, you'll have to re-start to try it more. That part is slightly annoying, but at least you can test it out.

The controls for this early version are:
Left Flipper: A
Right Flipper: P
Plunger: M

You can get the file from this link for now.

Right now, all the surfaces have the same properties physics wise (rubber, metal, etc) -- he says the Unity engine handles those differences, but he didn't go through and assign different properties to everything yet.

Edit: fixed the link - sorry!

Edited by epthegeek, 14 September 2011 - 03:57 PM.

[xio]

I get an 404 error, can u check your link ep ?

[epthegeek]

I get an 404 error, can u check your link ep ?

Way to screw that up, me. I had just uploaded it too. So shameful. The link is correct now.

[destruk]

Do you know if the ball physics/gravity can be changed a bit? Because when the ball runs up the right inlane it kind of bounces in place for a few seconds before rolling back down - looks strange.

Edited by destruk, 14 September 2011 - 05:24 PM.

[Comicalman]

Getting failed to load mono (mono.ddl exists in the same directory as badcats.exe). I suspect its complaining aboot the dll itself - Any ideas?

[Rawd]

Mine loads, but i can't get the plunger to work? Flippers work fine.

[epthegeek]

Do you know if the ball physics/gravity can be changed a bit? Because when the ball runs up the right inlane it kind of bounces in place for a few seconds before rolling back down - looks strange.

He said there's a lot of work he can do on the physics - mostly handled by unity, it just has to have properties assigned. For example, I told him from my testing it that it seemed like the flippers pushed down really hard if the ball got behind them, which they shouldn't do so much as just fall back into place and he's already made adjustments to that (they're just not in the version I posted today). He did confirm in an email that right now all objects have the same properties as far as the physics is concerned.

Getting failed to load mono (mono.ddl exists in the same directory as badcats.exe). I suspect its complaining aboot the dll itself - Any ideas?

I just dropped the stuff into my existing vpin directory and it worked as is. I don't really know what specific requirements it has other than .net

Edited by epthegeek, 14 September 2011 - 05:59 PM.

[epthegeek]

Mine loads, but i can't get the plunger to work? Flippers work fine.

I just tested it on PC other than my vpin PC and it worked ok - the framerate was really slow (bad video hardware on that box) so I had to hold the "M" key down for a while for it to pull back far enough, but it worked just fine.

[Rawd]

Mine loads, but i can't get the plunger to work? Flippers work fine.

I just tested it on PC other than my vpin PC and it worked ok - the framerate was really slow (bad video hardware on that box) so I had to hold the "M" key down for a while for it to pull back far enough, but it worked just fine.

'M'.. Thanks. Works great here!