813 replies to this topic

[poolay]

Ho it happens to me too

[BilboX]

Hi Guys. A loooong time since I came on VPF.

 

Well, first of all, I have to admit that you did an incredible job here. All screens and videos are awesome.

I have not read the entire thread right now, but i am amazed by what I saw.

 

As a matter of fact, I have to tell you that I resurected Unit3D Pinball a couple of month ago. I started developping UP2.

In UP2, the concept is different: as Unity is now "free", no need for outside editor. So I developped a bunch of specific editor for ramps, bumpers, surfaces, etc...

It can still import FP tables (while some elements are missing) but I have time and it is improving. For example, I have a Metaklica Pro almost playable... It also uses HDRP (but less impressive than your flasher video).

 

That said, I aknowledge that both projects are really close. UP2 was meant to be open sourced, and I think that maybe a fusion VPE/UP2 would be great.

 

UP2 uses the "dll" branch I did for VPM. Indeed, the goal is to extract all the "windows" problems, thoughit is a secondary goal. For example, it exports the sound fragments and I did a Unity component to read it. I will post a video if you are interested.

 

Also UP2 is still constrained by PhysX unity physics. I achieved good results but not as good as I want.

 

So in short, great job, maybe work together and fuse VPE/UP2.

 

Screens/videos  coming soon (I need to deactivate PinMAME sound as metallica musics are automatically censored).

http://bilbox.net/Pi...aUP2Capture.JPG

Edited by BilboX, 20 May 2021 - 03:28 AM.

[TerryRed]

You may want to see if ravarcade (creator of BAM) has done anything along the lines of a FP table Importing tool, considering he probably knows FP better than anyone and has been adding many modern features to it (through BAM) over the last several years. He's also a contributor to VPE.

 

"New" BAM based FP tables (like what I'm doing with RetroFlair 2) are very different than the old standard FP tables. These tables use many of BAM's modern features throughout the table script (and things like GIFs, shadowmaps or FBX models imported through the texture manager).

 

Unless you understand what they do or how they are being used (such as my excessive use of Mini Playfields, animated FBX models, dynamic spotlights, GIFs, shadowmaps, etc)... then a newer BAM based FP table will be much more difficult to import / convert for someone who doesn't know anything about those features.

Edited by TerryRed, 20 May 2021 - 02:08 AM.

[BilboX]

@Freezy: I tried to PM you but it was not working.

 

Just as I told you before, here is a very first demo player of UP2:

https://youtu.be/s7O9w4IaBuk

 

As you will notice, there are PhysX problems, sounds bugs, etc... but you get the idea of where we are regarding the "Player" part. I will post a video somewhere of a bunch of editor tools in Unity.

[Ben Logan]

Great to see you, BilboX. Certainly enjoyed Unit3D. Very talented gathering of individuals here. Wish I had something more to contribute than enthusiasm…

[freezy]

Oh, look who's there. Welcome back!

Awesome! Pity that you spent months on editor tooling while we did the same thing for the last year... but better late than never I guess

We're also using your PinMAME DLL, but it has evolved a little since. We're closely working with @toxie and @Gaston and have write access to the PinMAME repo, so this allows us to progress rapidly. In short, we have changed the API, it uses callbacks now instead of polling, we've added segment display support, and you can query all supported games, which is great for tooling. And by "we" I mean mainly @jsm174.

There's also a .NET wrapper that works on all platforms called pinmame-dotnet. And then there's our PinMAME Unity package. It's still all WIP but it's proper, fast, and cross-platform. And it's built and published automatically by CI.

It would be awesome to have an FP import function. We could even map most of the props to VPX props and add missing mechanisms, to facilitate table conversions.

As you've noticed yourself, tooling is key here, that's why we want to get tooling right first. Work with a few authors, make sure they're comfortable with it, and then focus on game play. It would be awesome to have you onboard, I've freed my inbox so you should be able to PM me again. Also, we have a Discord channel if that's your thing

 

A+

 

    -freezy.

[blindpeser]

To put best from both world together sounds awesome! Hope you guys stick together from now on. Some of the most genius guys in the hobby are working together then.

[BilboX]

@Freezy:

 

Yes Discord would be great. However, I live in GMT -10 now, maybe hard to find adequate timing.

 

So if I understand correctly, you did another pinmame repo? I was not really aware about that. Pity because I also worked (tiny) on Callbacks instead of polling.

However, I wonder how you did because as a matter of fact, due to multithreading, I need to postpone information relaying in unity loop so, no gain here reagarding polling.

Yes, segments were missing and so was RGB leds. Amongst others. So you also use my code for sound?

I did not put my c# dynamic wrapper on the SVN repo but can if you are interested.

 

More to come on Discord then. I think I should present more what I came at for UP2 proto, editors and so on. Can't wait.

Cheers!

Edited by BilboX, 20 May 2021 - 07:58 AM.

[freezy]

The official pinmame repo has moved from Sourceforge to GitHub. We have pinmame-dotnet in the same org. When pinmame gets updates, pinmame-dotnet automatically rebuilds the binaries and publishes them.

 

Yes, most of the stuff needs to be executed on the main thread, so we have a queue that does that once per frame. This is still more efficient than polling. Other things like coil or light changes just update a matrix that is later queried by the renderer, so we don't need to queue.

 

Sound is working but not yet merged.

[BilboX]

I don't really see how queuing is faster as everything ends up being updated on frames. Anyway, really sad to have missed this repo. But I also worked on far more that this. Tomorrow I will read all docs and try what I can on VPE, this will avoid asking too much questions and give me a deeper picture of where you are. Though I am not very familiar with vpx...

Good night!

[freezy]

Well, with callbacks, when there's no update, nothing gets executed. But you always poll. Thus, polling is less efficient.

 

Anyway, take your time, nobody is in a hurry. I'll PM you the Discord invite.

[fripounet]

@bilbox la première des priorités,  importation directe des .fpt     (3d et textures) dans vpe (plus rapide que de passer par fpx importer) , car rav n'a pas le temps pour se consacrer à ceci.

 

Pourrais-tu l' implanter sur Wicked Engine Net – Game Engine Development (open source) beaucoup moins gourmand que unity3d ?

Edited by fripounet, 20 May 2021 - 02:24 PM.

[chepas]

@Freezy: I tried to PM you but it was not working.

 

Just as I told you before, here is a very first demo player of UP2:

https://youtu.be/s7O9w4IaBuk

 

As you will notice, there are PhysX problems, sounds bugs, etc... but you get the idea of where we are regarding the "Player" part. I will post a video somewhere of a bunch of editor tools in Unity.

 

Looks like it's on 2x speed. Had to check the YT settings generally as I watch stuff on 2x.

 

I would say welcome back but the old vapor ware, taking peoples money and all that, doing a runner, won't be forgotten.

[BilboX]

@chepas: Where did you see a vaporware? UP Beta was a full time 1.5 year dev, providing a Game player, with cab functionnalities, editor functionnalities and FPT support. I don't see vaporware here. As for "taking peoples money", this is REALLY hard man because remember that back at this time, Unity (4 and 5 to come) was not free. If you wan't to know, we were so desperate when Unity annouced releasing free scheme! We cried for refund from Unity but they would not know a thing. I am very sad that you take all the effort we put in this this way, moreover that we considered you the most implicated one for table ports. Sorry if this was not up to your expectations, but such words are so discouraging!

 

@fripounet: If I ever work on VPE, yes, maybe I will port FPT importer, with of course the authorization of Louizou. But not, if this ever happen, this will be in Unity.

 

@freezy: So much to talk about, not only multithread/callback polling . I catched up this thread so far. I think this one is more general so I will not bother people with technical discussions here, though I think you are not a good direction for DMD/segments implementation . Let's talk about this and A LOT of other things on discord (or ask for a complete section in these forums as we had for UP). Cheers!

Edited by BilboX, 20 May 2021 - 06:40 PM.

[freezy]

Gotcha, let's take this over to more real time.

[chepas]

@chepas: Where did you see a vaporware? UP Beta was a full time 1.5 year dev, providing a Game player, with cab functionnalities, editor functionnalities and FPT support. I don't see vaporware here. As for "taking peoples money", this is REALLY hard man because remember that back at this time, Unity (4 and 5 to come) was not free. If you wan't to know, we were so desperate when Unity annouced releasing free scheme! We cried for refund from Unity but they would not know a thing. I am very sad that you take all the effort we put in this this way, moreover that we considered you the most implicated one for table ports. Sorry if this was not up to your expectations, but such words are so discouraging!

 

@chepas: So much to talk about, not only multithread/callback polling . I catched up this thread so far. I think this one is more general so I will not bother people with technical discussions here, though I think you are not a good direction for DMD/segments implementation . Let's talk about this and A LOT of other things on discord (or ask for a complete section in these forums as we had for UP). Cheers!

 

7 years down the line, no product which you took money for. Dress it up like a pig with lipstick all you like it doesn't matter to me, it was over 7 years ago.

 

DMD is old tech bruv. I would only really care about it if emulating a machine in a computer, if I was doing DMD on machine PROC has built in and software, so DMD isn't worry ever for me.

 

You can talk till the cows come home on discord then, add another couple years onto it then maybe.

[freezy]

Jeez chepas there were many things that went wrong with Unit3D, but taking money to pay for a product while working for free surely isn't one of them.

 

Chill, it's alright. Let's learn from the mistakes and carry on. And having PROC in there would be awesome.

[chepas]

Jeez chepas there were many things that went wrong with Unit3D, but taking money to pay for a product while working for free surely isn't one of them.

 

Chill, it's alright. Let's learn from the mistakes and carry on. And having PROC in there would be awesome.

 

I'm chill, he's chill, you chill? He hijacked the other guy when he was doing Unity before anyway another thing to note. Should have given the source and not just lurk here and pop up when you're a good stage.

 

You know I'm not interested in this either. I'm not taking anything away from it, it looks good and probably has better physics than Unit3D, but no interest in Unity and no interest in python/proc at the moment.

 

It won't be any different to MPF - https://github.com/m...r_vpcom.py#L351

[BilboX]

@chepas: Seriously? Hijacked? Man it was clear from the begining there was not a lot of chances to be open sourced ok? Then if you give money to help legally release a game, you don't have right to earn ownership on sources. Plus, as amatter of fact, I was lurking nothing jeez. I would not have worked so hard this past month if I knew there was somebody else doing similar job. I think part of my code will move to VPE so, in a sense, that will open. And by the way, I think UP was free, it still is, and if you don't like it then so be it: at the time, it was IMO the best free pinball simulator. Lastly, UP2 is more advanced than VPE on some aspects so  no "lurking". Free time given to community to get such back comments that's, again, very discouraging. If I can help, then that's great. If I can't, then no problem but I don't need your stupid, undeserved resentment.

[chepas]

@chepas: Seriously? Hijacked? Man it was clear from the begining there was not a lot of chances to be open sourced ok? Then if you give money to help legally release a game, you don't have right to earn ownership on sources. Plus, as amatter of fact, I was lurking nothing jeez. I would not have worked so hard this past month if I knew there was somebody else doing similar job. I think part of my code will move to VPE so, in a sense, that will open. And by the way, I think UP was free, it still is, and if you don't like it then so be it: at the time, it was IMO the best free pinball simulator. Lastly, UP2 is more advanced than VPE on some aspects so  no "lurking". Free time given to community to get such back comments that's, again, very discouraging. If I can help, then that's great. If I can't, then no problem but I don't need your stupid, undeserved resentment.

 

You're digging a hole as far as I'm concerned, don't let it discourage you and it shouldn't. Like carry on.

 

I respond now because of the ridiculous comment you've just made. 

 

 

 

 the best free pinball simulator

 

In what universe was that then? Let's be brutally honest here, not in this solar system. As far as I could see I was the only one using it author wise here and it was missing LOADS of everything, like everything to even complete a game hooked up to an emulator, let alone manual making an original. Roller disco was from 1980 couldn't even do that could we.

 

Where's all the Unit3D games? 80% of them sitting on my disk somewhere probably.

Edited by chepas, 20 May 2021 - 07:18 PM.