35 replies to this topic

[destruk]

There must be some way like you said, just I'm too stupid to figure it out, so it sits gathering dust until someone smarter than me has an idea.

[Themer]

As you know, I currently have very little time left. However, I would love to have a look at it. When you can figure out the functioning of the ROMset, I can look into the code to make the thing actually work I'm relatively sure I can figure it out.

Ps. Are you aware of "Walls" which are set to "Can Drop" being partly invisible on ATI graphic cards? They are partly visible through other walls as well.

Edited by Themer, 05 October 2011 - 07:11 PM.

[destruk]

I'm not sure why you'd need the romset to work - it's a VP issue. If you can figure out some way in VP for it to do what needs to be done, then the rom is a secondary issue.

If you have a wall that is set to can drop, and it is inside another wall that can drop, that's a known problem since forever. If you check 'flipbook animation' it should help as then the dropped wall isn't rendered at all, or you can uncheck the ATI reorder box and manually set it to draw in front or draw in back to fix that. DirectX9 could fix that problem. While we're on did you know - did you know if you place a target, and drag one of the control points so it overlaps the other three, it renders weird?

Edited by destruk, 05 October 2011 - 07:53 PM.

[Themer]

Never tried that issue with the targets. Currently I see no need to test it either

Back to the problem with the walls, I have a wall (in my situation I rather call it pin) which has the property "Can drop". A static wall is placed on top of this 'pin', that is, they don't cross each other in depth. I've tried this table on three different computers, with three different makes of graphics cards, these are: NVidia GeForce, ATI Radeon and Intel integrated graphics card (laptop). The problem of the partly invisible rendered "Can drop" objects only occurs on the ATI Radeon and only with Visual Pinball 9.1.2 (not in previous versions). I tried the table with both the ATI-setting turned on and off, but this doesn't make any difference.

What is the problem you have with the "Ice Cold Beer" machine? I guess it is the lever by which the ball is brought to the top? If so, how do the controls work? I guess the left control is to pull the lever up at the left side and the same holds for the right side. If this is correct, I'll take a look on how to do it with just 3 wall objects The holes can be made with kicker cups I guess.

[destruk]

Never tried that issue with the targets. Currently I see no need to test it either

Back to the problem with the walls, I have a wall (in my situation I rather call it pin) which has the property "Can drop". A static wall is placed on top of this 'pin', that is, they don't cross each other in depth. I've tried this table on three different computers, with three different makes of graphics cards, these are: NVidia GeForce, ATI Radeon and Intel integrated graphics card (laptop). The problem of the partly invisible rendered "Can drop" objects only occurs on the ATI Radeon and only with Visual Pinball 9.1.2 (not in previous versions). I tried the table with both the ATI-setting turned on and off, but this doesn't make any difference.

What is the problem you have with the "Ice Cold Beer" machine? I guess it is the lever by which the ball is brought to the top? If so, how do the controls work? I guess the left control is to pull the lever up at the left side and the same holds for the right side. If this is correct, I'll take a look on how to do it with just 3 wall objects The holes can be made with kicker cups I guess.

ok, if you get that to work please let me know how. As for the part-invisible walls I don't have a radeon to look at anymore so maybe one of the other dev team members and test to repro/fix it.

[Themer]

The wall-problem can be reproduced by simply starting up my "Buster Ball" table which can be downloaded from here. I'm thinking of temporarely solving the problem by changing the heights of the objects instead of giving them the property "Can drop".

[Themer]

I've looked into controlling "Ice Cold Beer". The options you have within VP are extremely limited. However, there is a component called "ComControl" which has nowhere been documented well. Maybe this component could prove useful? I didn't have the time to investigate further on the component, but maybe you know directly what it is for.

If this component turns out to be useless, I think a change in the VP core will help us. With this change, we could become able of changing the X and Y positions of the Control Points of a Wall. Such a change would be useful for other tables as well, like the train in Cactus Canyon. I guess performance issues have prevented the implementation of such functionality in the past.

Edited by Themer, 06 October 2011 - 09:45 AM.

[destruk]

You really think that would help, the ability to move a wall's control points during runtime in the script? Because I was thinking something entirely different. I think if we had support of 3-d animated models, that would be what we would need to get this working better, but if you think moving control points is the way to go then we should probably start working in that direction. Thanks!

[Themer]

I think both functionalities are useful for the community. Supporting animated 3D models would be useful for the toys in VPinMame machines. However, a 3D animation is a sequence of frames which can be started and stopped. If you like, you can skip frames and such, but that's about it. This means that you have to add every single position at every single location to the sequence to be able to emulate the "Ice Cold Beer", which again would require huge amounts of resources. The reason for this, 3D animations aren't meant to change the position of an object. If, however, we could change the positions of the control points at runtime, we are able to make the lever go up 1 pixel at the right when the right flipper button is pushed and the same holds for the left button. This would also be much easier to implement, as you only have to expand the "Wall"-component instead of writing an entirely new script to support 3D animations.

[Tomcat Leader]

I've played Gold Wings. Prefer F-14 Tomcat over it anytime. I still would love to see Rock! Encore come to life. I know it's just Rock! with a different sound ROM set.

[destruk]

I've played Gold Wings. Prefer F-14 Tomcat over it anytime. I still would love to see Rock! Encore come to life. I know it's just Rock! with a different sound ROM set.

For that, change the romset name from rock to rock_enc
Your wish is realized.

I think both functionalities are useful for the community. Supporting animated 3D models would be useful for the toys in VPinMame machines. However, a 3D animation is a sequence of frames which can be started and stopped. If you like, you can skip frames and such, but that's about it. This means that you have to add every single position at every single location to the sequence to be able to emulate the "Ice Cold Beer", which again would require huge amounts of resources. The reason for this, 3D animations aren't meant to change the position of an object. If, however, we could change the positions of the control points at runtime, we are able to make the lever go up 1 pixel at the right when the right flipper button is pushed and the same holds for the left button. This would also be much easier to implement, as you only have to expand the "Wall"-component instead of writing an entirely new script to support 3D animations.

Future Pinball can do this - so maybe Ice Cold Beer should be made for Future Pinball with their custom model editor. I don't think the physics would have that much impact on Ice Cold Beer since it simply needs to deal with contact for the holes and contact for the single bar.

[Themer]

Well my idea was to have a "Wall"-component which we can move up- and downward using the two flipper buttons (for that we have to be able to change the control points at runtime). The ball will move up- and downward since the wall is a collidable component. Next you place a wall in between the table and the wall moving up. In this wall you create the holes using control points which are smoothened. This overlap is hidden by a texture. Behind these holes you place invisible kicker cups (to catch the ball immediately) or triggers (which make the ball roll down for a realistic experience) to find out which hole has been triggered. That's about it I guess

[destruk]

Yes, and without the ability for walls to move, you need 800,000 of them so every position is possible for smooth animation without the ball falling between them when they change position.

[Themer]

Indeed, that's why I advised to make control points moveable during runtime. It's the easiest way with the current version of the script I guess.

[MRCMRC]

I had started a redraw of 'Trailer' and contacted JP about doing the build.

Hi there.

Trailer is now supported on VPinMAME, isn't it? Is there any plans to going on with this 'project'?

Thanks!

Edited by MRCMRC, 09 November 2012 - 11:01 PM.

[Joe]

What about Verne's World??