77 replies to this topic

[bodydump]

It seems that some of the older games converted to VP9 FS (Airborne FS, Bad Girls FS, Sharpshooter FS) that work fine in 9.12, crash 9.13 to the desktop for me.

[tipoto]

I investigated a little bit for the EMreels problems and it seems that T2 Chrome has graphic issues because a bug has been fixed in VP 9.1.3! I have to double-check, but it seems that this is the reason.

The bug was that when you create an EM Reel in the VP editor with a texture, VP will shift the texture 1 pixel up in the render! So you have to shift your textures 1 pixel down to compensate this bug. BUT, there is one exception, if the EM Reel touches the up side of the editor (line 0), then in this case the texture is not shifted ('O_o )
If you take a look at my textures, you will see that a lot of them have one white line at the top, it's because I let this line blank after shifting the texture.
This bug removes one line of your textures and you have to create other textures to cover the removed lines... What a waste of time!!! But if it's fixed, it's a good news for the future!

The problem now is that I will have to shift 80% of my textures in the other way... It's a huge work to do because this table is a big animated puzzle and I will have to cover plenty of blank lines that I will get after shifting the textures! (T_T)

By the way, there was another bug that I had to deal with when I did the T2 chrome, but I haven't checked yet if it's been fixed in VP9.1.3.
The bug was: If you don't have any hole in your textures, VP will select the black color for transparency instead of green, so if you have black pixels on your texture, you will see though them!
To fix this problem I had to remove one pixel on each single texture, in order to create a hole. Of course you have to put something behind the texture with the same color as the pixel you removed, otherwise you will see the missing pixel.

[jpsalas]

Thanks! I'll check it out when I come back from my holidays next Saturday.

[toxie]

Oh, one thing: if you update an exiting installation then please make sure that you update both the visual pinball exe AND the freeimage DLL.. cause free image was updated to the latest release..
As for the slight performance increase mentioned: for some tables with A LOT of alpha and/or lamps, etc (like for me totan night) there could be a slight boost on some systems.. curious to hear about some comparisons there (I.e. is it worse or better?)

[Tweegster]

I assume that in order to run the tables in 3D that you would require a faster system. What would theMin system requirements be to run the games in 3D? Other then a video card and a 3D TV ?

[Mitchell]

I gotta check this out. Been a while since I mess with the VP.

OK I got done check out the Atari Centipede Pinball tables. Atari Centipede Pinball v1.2 (For Cabinet) table is missing on the screen. I guest out of range causes it to vanish. I probably going try to fix this later on unless someone beat me on the fix. Atari Centipede Pinball v1.2 (Widescreen 16.9) is fine.

Edited by Mitchell, 21 October 2012 - 07:18 AM.

[toxie]

I assume that in order to run the tables in 3D that you would require a faster system. What would theMin system requirements be to run the games in 3D? Other then a video card and a 3D TV ?

It's actually not that easy to tell.. For example, my cab is pretty decent, but still i have to run the 3D stuff in 16bit to get a playable framerate..
On my intel hd graphics laptop with not-so-fast CPU it runs perfect in 32bit, too.. (and then again, if i use the nvidia gpu thats also in the laptop, its super slow)

So i fear that the combination of CPU and GPU and the motherboard has to match..

From the codeside i would say that a powerful CPU is a must, but that also the PCI express connection and the bandwidth of the GPU shouldn't suck..

[Liteuser]

Thank you to all for the VP 9.1.3 update.

I will be play testing some tables but I don't have a 3D screen for the 3D stereo settings.

BTW, Can you tell what the rendered 3D Stereo table looks like from a screenshot?

[xio]

But it sounds like primitive thing wouldn't be of much use for that. However I do know that xio is working on updating Twister right now & he actually was just asking for help I think with the spinning disc.
So maybe anybody looking to try this thing out, maybe go & help him with that? I'm sure its over my head but I'd love to see an example of it working.

Actually the spinning disc is working fine on my wip, I made it with the alpha ramp .image feature so I think it shouldn't affect table performance.
However, what I surely need help for is the graphic part

[Pin-Pete]

I've got sound problem.ROM sound is very stuttering and unstable.

[Aurich]

The problem now is that I will have to shift 80% of my textures in the other way... It's a huge work to do because this table is a big animated puzzle and I will have to cover plenty of blank lines that I will get after shifting the textures! (T_T)

It's really a pity that getting the T2 table to look so lovely required such a hack. I'm not ready to give it up, so I'm going to hold off upgrading for now and hope that you feel motivated to navigate the puzzle.

[The Loafer]

If you download the exe only of 9.13, there is nothing preventing you from running both versions on your system. Even Hyperpin allows a way to have two versions of vp.exe's

[Dazz]

So.. when are we going to see some kind of enhancements to nudging in vp9?

[tipoto]

It's really a pity that getting the T2 table to look so lovely required such a hack. I'm not ready to give it up, so I'm going to hold off upgrading for now and hope that you feel motivated to navigate the puzzle.

I worked on it yesterday and part of the night and the update is almost done, fortunately I kept all the working files organized .
Finally the bug with the EMreels is not completely fixed since I still have textures with 1 pixel shifted (maybe 30% of them)!
In vp9.1.2 I knew the rule, but in this version I didn't find any logical explanation for the issue.

[Aurich]

I worked on it yesterday and part of the night and the update is almost done

Excellent, thanks!

[rob046]

So.. when are we going to see some kind of enhancements to nudging in vp9?

Nudging is OK for me because I use the special core.vbs that blur created & that I modified a bit. Even for tables that have the good nudge code in their script, this still helps in a couple ways, such as adding counterforce. But yes, it would still be great & likely better if VP itself were improved, at least to how it was in VP8. I'm confused as to why this still hasn't been done, though I'm of course not a dev.

[Slydog43]

Great new tipoto as I show your table to any new person seeing my PinCab for the first time. Thanks. Going to try a 3D TV tomorrow, Can't wait.

Edited by Slydog43, 21 October 2012 - 10:10 PM.

[jimmyfingers]

Oh, one thing: if you update an exiting installation then please make sure that you update both the visual pinball exe AND the freeimage DLL.. cause free image was updated to the latest release..
As for the slight performance increase mentioned: for some tables with A LOT of alpha and/or lamps, etc (like for me totan night) there could be a slight boost on some systems.. curious to hear about some comparisons there (I.e. is it worse or better?)

I noticed a performance decrease between this official release and the vp913_rev321 build. I've compared and confirmed this on several tables that I typically use to assess performance and based it on FPS only. I ran each table several times and being the first run after closing and re-launching VP. It's too bad as there had been a slight boost in performance increase from vp912 to vp913_rev321 and I had been using that to play as it also qualitatively looked smoother (not just basing on the few FPS difference). Not sure if the "smoothess" was in my head between the rev321 and previous or this official one but the FPS is definitely back down by about 2% (I was getting about 2-3% from vp912 to rev321 and is now almost a wash).

Thanks though for all the work and am just reporting it here as you requested not really complaining but I do like any increase in performance / fluidity I can squeeze out of VP. One thing that has improved between the rev321 and the official release is that the 3D mode no longer crashes on my development system that only has a 9600GT 512MB video card. I also did update the drivers from Nvidia to the latest 603.97 which may or may not have played a role (they seem no different for VP in any other regard from the 603.23 - performance, FXAA not working for Windows 7, etc..).

Edited by jimmyfingers, 22 October 2012 - 06:22 PM.

[toxie]

the rev321 build, was it also provided by destruk? cause otherwise there might have been different compiler options involved maybe?
(i myself compile with more optimizations enabled, for example, but less compatibilty with older CPUs, which brings a few percent on some tables)
cause all the changes that happened since rev321 are exclusively within the stereo 3D code, plus the minor updates of freeimage (only triggered during load) and xaudio (=VP sound module)..

[koadic]

Actually, I compiled it for him previously, and I more than likely used the 'fast + SSE' build instead of just the 'fast', just like I did with my preview build (w/ SSE).

Edited by koadic, 23 October 2012 - 03:41 AM.