1394 replies to this topic

[TedB]

Sent from my ZX Spectrum

 

I think Fuzzel had one too many....  

[Mara32767]

 

Sent from my ZX Spectrum

 

I think Fuzzel had one too many....  

 

 

he's been addicted to Legend of the Amazon Women for 25 years

[fuzzel]

[petercobra666]

Everything looks cool but when I lose ball there are some glitches. I can see part of the ball on table (Star Wars FS v6.55). Anyone else got something like this? v628 works well.

[PilzTom]

Yes, I saw this on MM also, when ball is lost in center drain the ball image will remain on curtain.

[htamas]

Sent from my ZX Spectrum

 

I have one of those in perfect working condition. Even have a 3.5" floppy drive for it!

 

Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf and Wizard's Lair forever!

[Arcade4]

Yes, I saw this on MM also, when ball is lost in center drain the ball image will remain on curtain.

I had this happen on an EM I was playing. Can't remember which one.

When the ball went down the left drain I noticed I could still see it moving under the apron.

I really just thought I was seeing things and did not give it much attention until now.

[ClarkKent]

In Congo, when the ball is moving over the 2nd playfield underneath, the shadow became distorted.

[fuzzel]

Yes this is one reason why the reflection option can be disabled for each table. Because of the render engine and DX7 it can create strange effects if the ball moves over an alpha ramp. At the moment there is no way to prevent this...

[sleepy]

Several pages ago someone asked about Collections, and Collections behaving as a single Object.

The Collections feature is just your basic Array (a multi-Dim) that can hold more than one value, or a set of Objects.

Arrays can be created and manipulated in the script, to turn all of the Lights on or off or one at a time with a Timer or a For/Next Loop. You can also use an Array to move several Primitives in unison, or change their graphics on the fly.

Arrays are explained in the Windows Script Host documentation, though the explanations are hard to follow, which is why the Collections feature is an easy convenience.

 

Yep. The ball staying visible on the screen after draining. That also happens on a standard New Table when the Ball Reflection feature is enabled and the Drain or Kicker is too close to an obstruction, a Wall, etc. Moving the Drain away from the Outer Wall cures this. Apparently, the X or Y Position of the Ball in the Drain is not the same position as the Drain's X or Y when firing the CreateBall command. Else the Ball has a different area or is producing an offset error with the Reflection enabled.

This bug does not occur with the Reflection feature disabled.

 

What I'm seeing is, the Ball hits the Drain and its visual image then stays onscreen while the Plunger.CreateBall command is fired.

Again, if I move the Drain upward slightly, the Ball vanishes correctly as the Plunger.CreateBall command is fired.  

[fuzzel]

Yep and its fixed with 656.

[oooPLAYER1ooo]

Yes this is one reason why the reflection option can be disabled for each table. Because of the render engine and DX7 it can create strange effects if the ball moves over an alpha ramp. At the moment there is no way to prevent this...

 

it was an issue that was driving me nuts at first, i thought i was going mad

but i may be going mad cause by changing draw levels there was at one point it was working all great then i stupidly selected another ramp to draw in front and didnt realize it clipped the same area as the ramp i fixed and now its all screwy again.

 

so maybe it has something to do with the way ramps are being drawn.

 

it can get really confusing the way i make tables using the alpha ramps so i am leaning away from using them and am now replacing alot with primitives and they seem to work much better and are not effected as badly with draw level change and can change the texture even easier than ramps in realtime

Edited by oooPLAYER1ooo, 16 September 2013 - 06:11 AM.

[fuzzel]

Yes this drawing order stuff can be complicated I was thinking about to remove the drawing order completely and replace it with a proper depth sort. With that you have just to define the height/depth of the element and everything will be rendered from back to front. What do you think?

[oooPLAYER1ooo]

sounds great !

[jimmyfingers]

Yes this drawing order stuff can be complicated I was thinking about to remove the drawing order completely and replace it with a proper depth sort. With that you have just to define the height/depth of the element and everything will be rendered from back to front. What do you think?

That sounds good if the drawing in front and back stuff could be a thing of the past.  However, I'm wondering how that would play out in some cases where tables with alpha ramps / flasher halos and "tricks" sometimes achieved by manipulating this sorting order.  In general, if this nuance could be removed and not affect existing tables, that would save a lot of time and frustration for most table builders.  Seems to make sense to simply just draw things like you say based on the height / depth...but nothing is simple with VP as we all know she has many mysterious ways

[fuzzel]

Hehe yep. Removing the drawing order will have impact on some tables. The problem of optimizing VP and keeping everything compatible is really hard and sometimes it's not possible. Maybe we should add this to the to-do list for VP10 and leave it as it is for now

[oooPLAYER1ooo]

That's ok , like I said I have been switching a lot of ramps to primitives anyways

[sleepy]

I just noticed that somewhere we've lost the ability to create a Ball with custom colors/tints, and change the color on the fly in script.

 

This was available as:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dim ActiveBall

 

Sub Plunger_Init()

Set ActiveBall = Plunger.CreateBall

ActiveBall.Color = RGB(255, 0, 0)     'creates a red ball

End Sub

 

 

Sub Trigger1_Hit()

ActiveBall.Color = RGB(0, 255, 0)  'changes the ActiveBall to green

End Sub

 

Sub Trigger2_Hit()

Kicker1.CreateBall

ActiveBall.Image = "ShinyBall"

ActiveBall.Color = RGB(0, 0, 255)  'creates a ball using the "ShinyBall" image and adds a blue tint to the Image.

End Sub

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

When used with an Image, the ActiveBall (by any Dim name) .Color method allowed tinting of the Image.

I haven't tested yet whether the ActiveBall.Image method still works from script, but it allowed changing the ball's image on the fly.

 

The .Color method was used for creating balls of different colors, and could also be used to temporarily tint a ball while passing under a color light.

 

Have these methods been discontinued?

[fuzzel]

Hmm don't think so...I think some design changes inside VP are responsible for this.

[Bob5453]

It's getting harder for me to test the last 5 or so revs as VP crashes quite often when I hit PLAY table. I need to save the table now when just changing simple code for B2S.Server and hide DMD so I don't have to do it again after crash. When working on a table and making 2 minor changes, I don't like to save over my other version and I don't want a new save with each play test.

 

I really like the latest revs and thought maybe this would be a good point to stop adding new stuff, get a nice stable optimised version and then release a VP 9.16 or maybe even go to VP10 so we can really differentiate VP8, VP9 from  VP10 as this newest rev is miles away from the first VP9 release. Then proceed from there with new additions and new revs.

 

Just a thought and as always, I really appreciate you guys putting forth the effort to improve VP. Great stuff and great improvements lately.