1574 replies to this topic

[hlr53]

Good to go and after I asked it I forgot I use a wireless Steam contoller to play pinball on the laptop.

 
I don't have any support for that particular device in there, but as long as it can emulate a keyboard or joystick, it should work.  If you need to assign joystick buttons for it, you can do that from the Buttons settings as well.

It can mimic both. I will also test out any v3 DMD stuff you would like done. Let me know what media.

[mjr]

 I will also test out any v3 DMD stuff you would like done. Let me know what media.

 

v3 DMD would be great to test out.  It looks to me like there's a bug in the VPM d3ddevice.dll with RGB playback, but I expect grayscale will work as that's been well tested with VPM itself.  VPM never calls its own RGB code, since there's no such thing as an RGB DMD in VPM's entire emulation universe, so my guess is that no one has ever tested that code.

 

Any media you put in the "Real DMD Videos" or "Real DMD Images" folders will play back grayscale, and media in the "Real DMD Color X" folders will play back RGB.  I think the RGB problem will be easy to fix, so I can try to apply a fix and post a build for you to try out if it does indeed fail when you try it.  The symptom I expect you'll see is either complete garbage on the display or something like the top 1/3 of the lines getting updated properly and the rest looking frozen or maybe random.

I can at least test the dmddevice.dll interface thanks to the dummy DLL that VPM has for testing purposes, but that kind of thing is never a substitute for actual device testing.

[mjr]

TerryRed - if you have a chance, try out the new update (Alpha 4).  I had a guess about what might be causing the crashes you're seeing.  It's obviously a stab in the dark since we don't have any data on specifically what you're seeing other than that it's coincident with certain UI operations, but it seemed worth a shot since it relates to an area of D3D11 threading where there could definitely be some variation across device drivers - the fact that it happens on your machine so consistently and equally consistently never happens on my machines suggests something related to configuration, and device drivers are definitely in that locus.

 

STV - it occurred to me that you might have something that's limiting multithreading for PinballY.  Whatever else is true about your media, VLC shouldn't ever stall on a load the way you described, since VLC is so highly threaded internally.  UI stalls like you're seeing shouldn't happen.  So... could you have something going on in your config that's throttling VLC's ability to thread the media loads?  Are you by chance running PinAffinity or another CPU affinity or thread priority tool?  If so, try adding PinballY to the high-performance group (e.g., in PinAffinity, add it to the Pinball group).  PinballY tries to be considerate of launched games by lowering its own process priority level whenever a game is running, as well as going to pains to shrink its memory and CPU footprint, so you don't need to be throttling it with separate tools.

[hlr53]

 

 I will also test out any v3 DMD stuff you would like done. Let me know what media.

 
v3 DMD would be great to test out.  It looks to me like there's a bug in the VPM d3ddevice.dll with RGB playback, but I expect grayscale will work as that's been well tested with VPM itself.  VPM never calls its own RGB code, since there's no such thing as an RGB DMD in VPM's entire emulation universe, so my guess is that no one has ever tested that code.
 
Any media you put in the "Real DMD Videos" or "Real DMD Images" folders will play back grayscale, and media in the "Real DMD Color X" folders will play back RGB.  I think the RGB problem will be easy to fix, so I can try to apply a fix and post a build for you to try out if it does indeed fail when you try it.  The symptom I expect you'll see is either complete garbage on the display or something like the top 1/3 of the lines getting updated properly and the rest looking frozen or maybe random.

I can at least test the dmddevice.dll interface thanks to the dummy DLL that VPM has for testing purposes, but that kind of thing is never a substitute for actual device testing.
 

 
Question. Can you code to kill the real DMD while I am playing non DMD tables? When I start an EM table like Airport, can the DMD go blank and stay blank until I play a DMD equipped table? Very annoying to always have present. I can kill by opening options and then closing.
 


 
Here is an example DMD video: I snapped 2 images while it was running. File inside PBX real DMD color videos folder. I also ran them with VLC outside PBY and they are definitely worse inside PBY.
 


 

 
I am having issues loading Future Pinball tables but still looking at.... Visual Pinball has been loading fine.

Edited by hlr53, 02 August 2018 - 10:24 PM.

[STV]

Hi Thanks.   I'm not running a pinAffinity on this new build.  It's kinda like a level of detail thing...  screen loads blank white for a few seconds.. certain PF lights pop up and are blinking first then other objects show up then BAM the whole video pops into vision and is playing at normal speed just fine.   It's just the hitch and giddyup when loading.   Both on the PF and BG videos. 

 

I'll grab the alpha4 and enable the videos and take a capture if its still doing the same thing.

Hi Thanks.   I'm not running a pinAffinity on this new build.  It's kinda like a level of detail thing...  screen loads blank white for a few seconds.. certain PF lights pop up and are blinking first then other objects show up then BAM the whole video pops into vision and is playing at normal speed just fine.   It's just the hitch and giddyup when loading.   Both on the PF and BG videos. 

 

I'll grab the alpha4 and enable the videos and take a capture if its still doing the same thing.

[mjr]

Can you code to kill the real DMD while I am playing non DMD tables? 

 

Good point - I'll do that.

 

 

File inside PBX real DMD color videos folder. I also ran them with VLC outside PBY and they are definitely worse inside PBY.

 

If you could send me the video, I'll take a look.  The real DMD videos I've looked seem to be captured from the video DMD window, so they reproduce the "fake" dot layout of the video DMD, meaning that you have to take out all of those empty pixels to display them properly on the real DMD.  I have an interpolation scheme that works nicely for some formats, but I'm sure people capture these in all sorts of different formats, so you probably have one that doesn't interact well with the current dot interpolation.  I'll take a look at its format and see if I can adjust the scheme to accommodate it better.

 

The ideal way to capture these videos would be for VPinMAME to output the 128x32 frames directly, in a format that you could feed into FFMPEG and convert to video at 128x32.  That would get rid of the need for the interpolation and everything would look perfect.  But I don't think VPM has that capability currently.  Maybe I'll look into adding it at some point, but for now it's probably easier to try to accommodate more existing videos.

It's kinda like a level of detail thing...  screen loads blank white for a few seconds.. certain PF lights pop up and are blinking first then other objects show up then BAM the whole video pops into vision and is playing at normal speed just fine.   It's just the hitch and giddyup when loading.   Both on the PF and BG videos. 

 

Ah, okay, that does sound like a plain old frame rate issue, then.  VLC does that weird gray screen thing when it drops a key-frame - it seems to start with a gray buffer when it misses a key-frame, so you get several seconds of that "lost satellite signal" effect.

 

Just for the sake of experimentation, you might see if closing all of the windows except the playfield makes it capable of decoding fast enough.  And for reference, what are your CPU stats?

 

I'd also be curious to try the media you're using to see how they fare on my machine, if you could send me a pointer.

[Brer Frog]

I tried this on my DT computer with a keyboard & am having a problem.

I downloaded the ZIP file & unzipped it into C:\PinballY. Looked at the files & read through the text ones. Clicked on Pinbally.exe and it loaded & ran. Then minimized or closed some windows (Backlass, DMD & Topper).

The instructions say “forget everything you know about PinballX and HyperPin”. That’s easy because I never used any of these or similar front ends.

The instructions mention:
New Table Setup > Step two: find the new file in the PinballY wheel.

However the wheel finds nothing. All I get is the Nudge Test & Calibration.

I figured it must be a path issue so went into Options > Systems > Visual Pinball X and changed the path to my VPX tables. PinballY now opens with “Nitro Ground Shaker”. That's some progress.

Pressing “Enter” & Shift does nothing; I have to press Enter twice & then can press either Shift key to go up or down. However after the next name comes up I get an error message “PinballY.exe has stopped working”. I then close the program. If I keep tapping the Shift key real fast the Wheel will advance a few table names but then stops & displays the error message.

 

I have a mini-cab that's almost finished & does work with the same DT PC. I thought I'd get a front end up & running in the meantime.

 

Also, when PinballY launches it displays a large DMD looking "PinballY" in the middle of the screen. The Enter & Shift keys do not function until I close that "DMD PinballY" window.

 

What step(s) am I missing?

Edited by Brer Frog, 03 August 2018 - 09:43 AM.

[mjr]

Pressing “Enter” & Shift does nothing; I have to press Enter twice & then can press either Shift key to go up or down. 

 

The first thing you might want to do is go to the Buttons page in the options and make sure you have the keyboard set up the way you want.  The default key mappings are all designed to match the standard pin cab buttons, which might not be what you want for regular keyboard use.  In particular, the Enter key is mapped by default to Launch Game.  The "1" key ("Start" button on a pin cab) is the key you want to be using to select menu commands.  So you might want to move some buttons around to be more intuitive if you're going to run it from the keyboard.

 

 

Also, when PinballY launches it displays a large DMD looking "PinballY" in the middle of the screen. 

 

That large DMD-looking window is... the DMD window.   For laptop use you're probably going to want to just close that.  Note that you can move it and resize it if you want to keep it open, but on a laptop you probably don't want to waste the screen space, so closing it is probably better.  (To resize it, just resize it.  I mean: just pretend it's a normal Windows window, grab a corner/edge with the mouse, and drag the edge to resize.  You can do that even though there's no visible sizing border.  And to move it, just grab it with the mouse somewhere in the middle and drag it.)

 

 

However after the next name comes up I get an error message “PinballY.exe has stopped working”. I then close the program. If I keep tapping the Shift key real fast the Wheel will advance a few table names but then stops & displays the error message.

 

That would be a crash.   Are you able to build and run under the debugger?  It would be great to find out where it's crashing so I can fix it.

[dopdahl]

Ok, I crashed it on the first 'left flipper' click after install.  I didn't configure anything... but it appeared to find my tables...  I'm just working on my laptop and had only 2 tables installed.

 

Uh, I have vs 2015 installed... can I build it with that?

 

Actually looks like it crashes when the end of the list is reached going either direction as opposed to looping back to the beginning or end.

Edited by dopdahl, 03 August 2018 - 07:12 PM.

[mjr]

Uh, I have vs 2015 installed... can I build it with that?

 

I think you'll need VS 2017.  I use some C++11 and 17 language features that I'm pretty sure the older compiler doesn't support.  You can install 2017 alongside earlier versions, so you don't have to "upgrade" per se - you can just set up a 2017 installation and keep your existing 2015 setup.  Which you'd probably want to do if you have existing projects you work on in 2015, since there are always some hassles moving a project to a newer VS version.

[dopdahl]

I'll see what I can do.  But the details are that I actually had 4 tables detected...  This is fewer than the 5 which it appears the wheel can display.

 

Perhaps the bug is due to that?  Seems like maybe in PlayfieldView::SwitchToGame().

[Outhere]

However after the next name comes up I get an error message “PinballY.exe has stopped working”. I then close the program. If I keep tapping the Shift key real fast the Wheel will advance a few table names but then stops & displays the error message.

 

I have the same crash but I get no error message - it just crashes

What is this debugging mode

[mjr]

What is this debugging mode

 

There's not exactly a "debugging mode" in the sense of some checkbox you tick.  When I say "run it under the debugger", I mean you run it under the C++ debugger.  Best way to track down crashes, but if you're not sure what a Visual Studio is, you might want to hold off for now.

[Brer Frog]

My desktop displays the Playfield, a large DMD with “PinballY” in red, a smaller yellowish DMD showing “PinballY”, and a white instruction card.

I can Hide & Show the Instruction Card & the smaller yellowish DMD.

I used to be able to Minimize the larger red DMD but not sure what I just did as it doesn’t display like it used to. It does shows up in the taskbar where it can be Maximized & then Minimized, or Closed, the only options that work. I cannot move or resize it. So it’s either real big or not there. Why are there two DMDs?

Here’s a screenshot with it maximized.. It also shows the other DMD & instruction card, both of which can be hidden by clicking on them.

Previously I was pressing the Enter key instead of the “1” start key. But today it’s acting different. I can use the Shift keys without pressing Enter or “1”, but I still get the error message. I can keep clicking & scrolling but when I stop the “PinballY.exe has stopped working” message comes up.

 

I should add -

When I first started working with this today I got a Firewall Alert from Norton when the program stopped scrolling. It said “PinballY does not have a valid digital signature”. After I closed that message up came the “PinballY.exe has stopped working” message.

However after I played around with hiding and closing the DMDs the Norton message stopped popping up.

Attached Files

•  PinballY.jpg   155.05KB   8 downloads

Edited by Brer Frog, 03 August 2018 - 10:50 PM.

[dopdahl]

This is odd...  almost as though it's not able to find the standard libs?

 

1>------ Rebuild All started: Project: Utilities, Configuration: Debug x64 ------

1>stdafx.cpp

1>d:\pinball\downloads\pinbally-master\pinbally-master\utilities\stringutil.h(112): error C3861: 'length': identifier not found

1>d:\pinball\downloads\pinbally-master\pinbally-master\utilities\stringutil.h(146): note: see reference to class template instantiation 'StringEx<S>' being compiled

1>d:\pinball\downloads\pinbally-master\pinbally-master\utilities\stringutil.h(113): error C3861: 'c_str': identifier not found

1>Done building project "Utilities.vcxproj" -- FAILED.

========== Rebuild All: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 skipped ==========

[mjr]

Why are there two DMDs?

 

Do you have a copy of dmddevice.dll in your VPM folder?  If so, try renaming it something else - that might be the mystery second window.

 

If that's not it, bring up Spy++ from Visual Studio and see where that second window is coming from.

 

(The "second window" is the one at the top in your screen shot.  The smaller one at the bottom is the PinballY DMD window.)

Edited by mjr, 04 August 2018 - 12:19 AM.

[coreduo0099]

Quick feedback...

 

I tried alpha 4.

 

had same issues as Terry at first (using virtual dmd) so I set DMD to off.

 

That enabled the menu to not crash.  Most of my media does not work but works fine in PBX and PUP.

 

I'm 1080P all around for backglass and playfield.

 

have not tinkered with game management but I noticed my game count is much different from PBX (tried both options but have not analyzed).

[dopdahl]

I get the 2nd dmd as well...

 

 https://www.screencast.com/t/22p4VDsM

Renaming dmdDevice and dmdDevice64 in VPM suppresses the 2nd DMD.

Without the 2nd DMD running, navigating my wheel no longer crashes PinballY.  If I rename dmddevice back and get the 2nd dmd again, PinballY crashes when I wheel around.

[mjr]

Without the 2nd DMD running, navigating my wheel no longer crashes PinballY.  If I rename dmddevice back and get the 2nd dmd again, PinballY crashes when I wheel around.

 

Interesting.  Might be the DLL that's crashing, then.  Any idea why you have that DLL there?  I assume you don't have a real DMD device - if it's showing a window on the monitor, you have one of the testing versions of the DLL.

[dopdahl]

No idea.  I followed the Virtual Pinball Junkies FAQ to the letter and did a clean install of everything.

 

Including Pinup Popper...  maybe it got stuffed in at that point?

 

For now, I've just got all of the running on a laptop... one screen, no real dmd.

 

Yes indeed.  I just verified that the PinupPopper installer puts those files into VPM.

Edited by dopdahl, 04 August 2018 - 01:30 AM.