1488 replies to this topic

[Shockman]

Thanks. This must be very new. Never used the solid view in my life. Probably always will now. Thanks again.

[Mandolin]

To me one thing I wish was there is to allow the ball to bounce in Z axis when colliding things in various angles/velocities...
Like when hitting drop targets and posts the ball would bounce and a nice thing would be the ability to play sounds correspondingly as well.

 

 

Yes it is something I had never seen before in VPX or noticed, but I found 3rdaxis did it in his table:

 

 

 

I never had a real pinball, I played Totan when I was a kid in a restaurant every Sunday. I guess it was a deteriorated pinball, but I remember the ball jumping and the sound hitting the floor and for me this is absolute part of the thing, I think people making tables are slowly adding this as well as mechanical sounds.

 

 

 

 

BAM with VP11

 

It would be so cool, but I noticed Kinect is not available for sale anymore, I believe there are alternatives by Intel and similar.

[Shockman]

Generally on real tables people adjust elements that cause unintentional jumps, like bending the stand-up targets to be vertical again or tightening up posts and rubbers, and such. But you are right. You can set up a target at an angle like a ramp and VPX would not notice that, but I don't see a reason to change that. It would take a lot of programming and examination at the point of the hit that it would probably not work in real time. If someone wants to recreate an element that could cause this effect they can do it by using ramps, or scripting it but it would not look right unless velocity and angle are taken into account, randomness is added, and the goal is to create a machine that needs an attendant. 

Edited by Shockman, 11 April 2019 - 08:11 PM.

[Shockman]

As for the show image in editor being for only in the solid view now. Why? Do you think the option should be ghosted in frame mode, or the selection of that invoke solid mode? I think it should warn you that is is going to change the mode and give you an option to do it right there. A ghosted item could cause confusion as to why with no hint. I think it should at least warn you can do that another way instead of the button setting there taking input and doing nothing. I of course think it would be best of all the way it was before.

Edited by Shockman, 12 April 2019 - 08:49 PM.

[BorgDog]

It's perfectly fine the way it is now and works well.

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[jpsalas]

I agree with BorgDog, the outline view works perfectly like it is, and it is very useful when I adjust the lights to the playfield, or when I adjust the plastics to its image. I also use it when adding the pegs to the playfield as I can place them more precisely.

Edited by jpsalas, 13 April 2019 - 02:14 AM.

[Shockman]

I use outline view too. Show in editor should be grayed in a mode it doesn't work in though. I know we know how to do this stuff is usually the answer, but it's silly to not make that as straight forward and logical, and friendly as possible when it as simple as this.

 

How do you adjust the plastics to their image in outline mode JP? Do you temporarily use the plastics image on the playfield?

 

I don't like solid view because it is outlined too when selected. A thicker one too I think, and it's outside the size of the object. If the edge of the outline, (no outline and a color for selected solids would be tons better (you could have pixel perfect placement first time every time)) was lined up with the edge of the object (inside it), or simi-transparent It would be OK I guess. But I know, we are only blind a few pixels and trial and error works. What would really be nice is if the outline was there only when left button was not held, try that and see if people really don't care.

 

If it's taboo for some reason then say so and I won't point out these things anymore. It used to be called polish, and was a good thing.

Edited by Shockman, 13 April 2019 - 04:48 AM.

[jpsalas]

I use outline view too. Show in editor should be grayed in a mode it doesn't work in though. I know we know how to do this stuff is usually the answer, but it's silly to not make that as straight forward and logical, and friendly as possible when it as simple as this.

 

How do you adjust the plastics to their image in outline mode JP? Do you temporarily use the plastics image on the playfield?

 

I don't like solid view because it is outlined too when selected. A thicker one too I think, and it's outside the size of the object. If the edge of the outline, (no outline and a color for selected solids would be tons better (you could have pixel perfect placement first time every time)) was lined up with the edge of the object (inside it), or simi-transparent It would be OK I guess. But I know, we are only blind a few pixels and trial and error works. What would really be nice is if the outline was there only when left button was not held, try that and see if people really don't care.

 

If it's taboo for some reason then say so and I won't point out these things anymore. It used to be called polish, and was a good thing.

 

Yes, I use the plastics image on the playfield while adjusting the plastics.

 

I use the solid view mostly when aligning objects against other objects, like rubbers around pegs, or walls around rubbers. And yes, I use walls as rubbers, and the rubber object only for looks, mostly because I can make different sounds when hitting the post vs when hitting the long rubber. Also because I can adjust differently the elasticity from the post vs the long rubber.

 

Selecting objects is more like a nightmare in VPX. I have learnt to live with it. Right clicking to select an object under other objects works fine, But selecting with the mouse different objects and then right clicking on one of the to to something like move them or scale them, usually what it does is to deselect all the objects and select just the one under the mouse. This works ok on walls and primitives, but with lights it doesn't work, as the rest of the lights gets deselected, with holding down SHIT or without SHIFT.

 

And please keep pointing out your observations. But this time I felt the outline view works very well and I didn't want it to change But I agree that it could use a different color when selecting an object. Sometimes it is difficult to find a selected object from the menu. I know the editor could use some polish, but compared to what we had before in the older VPs it is a great improvement

Edited by jpsalas, 13 April 2019 - 08:24 AM.

[fuzzel]

New ideas are always welcome. The editor is a nightmare for sure but fixing it would mean to rewrite big parts of VP totally. The biggest problem of the editor is the outdated GDI that is used for drawing and displaying the images.
I would love to switch over to Qt but again that has a so massive impact on nearly everything in VP that is not feasible.
So let's see if I can improve the select thing of elements and the way how elements are drawn when selected...

[toxie]

..or we need some volunteer to tackle this.. 

[toxie]

 

I don't know if it has already been reported, if I delete the last image (Image Manager),

the Alpha Mask of the previous image is set by itself to 1,

I noticed this because I had a value of 254 placed to mask the junction with the playfield and VUK.

 

Yes I have noticed that sometimes the alpha mask reverts to 1, but I never remember what I did before it changed to 1.

 

 

i just tried to repro this with the default table (Ctrl+N). If i delete the last image, then the 'new' last image still has an alpha mask of 128.

Do you have a repro table, please?

[jpsalas]

 

 

I don't know if it has already been reported, if I delete the last image (Image Manager),

the Alpha Mask of the previous image is set by itself to 1,

I noticed this because I had a value of 254 placed to mask the junction with the playfield and VUK.

 

Yes I have noticed that sometimes the alpha mask reverts to 1, but I never remember what I did before it changed to 1.

 

 

i just tried to repro this with the default table (Ctrl+N). If i delete the last image, then the 'new' last image still has an alpha mask of 128.

Do you have a repro table, please?

 

 

Maybe Kiwi can reproduce it, I can't, as each time it has happened I have been deleting/loading/replacing some images, so I don't know what triggered the bug.

[toxie]

 

 

Hey there,  with any version of 10.6 the monster faces on the playfield, on tom towers monsterbash, never light up,  tried different versions of 10.5,  still did not work.

 

I then tried the final 10.4 version and it worked fine.  also, this is with all the scripts, bass, ect with the 10.6 beta, the only thing i changed was the vpinballx.exe program,  so there is something definitely in there that causing this.

 

also, the light inserts are of different shade too, comparing 10.4 to 10.6 betas.  very possibly related...

 

I have version 1.3 of that monsterbash table, the one with Tom Tower & ninuzzu from July 2917, and the lights work fine.

 

 

 

I vaguely remember that turning off playfield reflections had the side effect of causing the monster face lights to not turn on.  

 

 

The actual problem is that the table itself has a wrong alpha image channel for its insert lights. And by implicitly exploiting a sideeffect of the table reflections, it works when these are enabled (i.e. by accident).. 

Find attached a hacky replacement for that table insert image, that you can simply reimport in the image manager and then the faces and instruments will light up..

Attached Files

•  MB insertslow.zip   17.31MB   6 downloads

[kiwi]

 

 

I don't know if it has already been reported, if I delete the last image (Image Manager),

the Alpha Mask of the previous image is set by itself to 1,

I noticed this because I had a value of 254 placed to mask the junction with the playfield and VUK.

 

Yes I have noticed that sometimes the alpha mask reverts to 1, but I never remember what I did before it changed to 1.

 

 

i just tried to repro this with the default table (Ctrl+N). If i delete the last image, then the 'new' last image still has an alpha mask of 128.

Do you have a repro table, please?

 

First change the alpha mask of the penultimate image to 255 (sidewood_h), and then delete the last image (spinner).

 
The alpha mask of the last image appears to be transferred to the penultimate image, which is now the last one (sidewood_h).

Edited by kiwi, 13 April 2019 - 11:13 AM.

[toxie]

Will be fixed in the next version.. That was a very weird one to fix..

[toxie]

Is there a way to display the ball speed while playing?

 

Coming with the next build..

[BorgDog]

I use outline view too. Show in editor should be grayed in a mode it doesn't work in though. I know we know how to do this stuff is usually the answer, but it's silly to not make that as straight forward and logical, and friendly as possible when it as simple as this.
 
How do you adjust the plastics to their image in outline mode JP? Do you temporarily use the plastics image on the playfield?
 
I don't like solid view because it is outlined too when selected. A thicker one too I think, and it's outside the size of the object. If the edge of the outline, (no outline and a color for selected solids would be tons better (you could have pixel perfect placement first time every time)) was lined up with the edge of the object (inside it), or simi-transparent It would be OK I guess. But I know, we are only blind a few pixels and trial and error works. What would really be nice is if the outline was there only when left button was not held, try that and see if people really don't care.
 
If it's taboo for some reason then say so and I won't point out these things anymore. It used to be called polish, and was a good thing.

I mostly use outline mode as well, but simply switch to solid mode to adjust the plastics shapes, I've already checked the show in editor box while I was in outline mode so they then just show when I switch, don't have to run around and toggle it on all of them. It also retains that setting while copying the object. I certainly don't want them to take away the flexibility of checking that object property no matter what mode I am in simply because some people may not understand that when they are in outline mode they only see outlines.

Sent from my moto z3 using Tapatalk

[Shockman]

I was not nor would not argue against any of that BorgDog and personally already know. I encounter the things I bring up. I usually though would not want anything showing in the editor other than the playfield and the one plastic or element I am working on. When I do I know how to do that. My system might handle everything showing in this editor, but if it does it would be the first one. I have the ability, having written software myself to know that it is never best to assume if you create a way to make something work, the users are going to know that way. I would not necessary drop a feature the moment I see it work though.  

[toxie]

Feature/enhancement request:

As I am working on Totan, I came to an issue for porting the Blender visuals to VPX. To explain, first I will mention how I made lighting effects (prerendered in Blender) in Whitewater: flashing effects on for instance the mountains in the back of Whitewater are done by having a second mountain primitive, slightly larger then the original one, which has the flashing texture. By ramping up the opacity amount in the VPX material.(by having multiple materials which are exchanged) the flashing effects becomes visible in a fading way. This approach works nicely, but has one drawback: the flashing texture used cannot have it's own opacity/transparency (it should be completely opaque). Because if it does, changing the opacity amount in the material has no effect.

For Totan this will be a problem, because there are many transparent plastics (which I want to fade with GI and flashers) and of course the ramps. The workaround could be to use for instance 8 textures for all the effects, but the amount of memory used would be huge. And the the textures for totan will be big anyway (4k).

 

So my request is:

can the opacity amount in the material also work when the texture has transparency? Something simple like opacity amount * transparency of the texture.

 

I just looked into that, and it turns out that it is already implemented like that and it's working as Flupper1 verified.. 

 

The twist here was that in the material dialog, either 'Edge Opacity' or 'Thickness' was set to something > 0, which can tone down the effect of 'opacity amount * transparency of the texture' dramatically (which is also the intended behavior)..

[toxie]

What I always forgot to report: If you import a pov, VPX doesn't register this as a file change (asterix in window top filename).

 

Not a big thing, though...

 

Fixed in next build..