333 replies to this topic

[Ben Logan]

I loaded up the new cab version of Pinball Labs. Works great.
 
These settings worked best for my 22 inch playfield monitor:
 
 cab settings.JPG   51.16KB   21 downloads
 
Ball physics are really good for an alpha version. Having watched all the videos of physics development over the past few weeks, I'm simply astounded by the speed with which you've developed the physics engine, tmek. Would you mind sharing a little about your process for physics simulation? A few months ago during VP10 development (or maybe it was physmod 5 physics development, I don't remember) toxie or fuzzel or someone requested some videos of a real pinball with "ball tattoos" (marks on the ball) rolling around on a table in effort to study backspin. I wonder if someone could provide links to those videos for tmek if he were interested (?)
 
A couple of notes:
 
* Flipper physics - The flippers aim really well for an alpha version. I know you're a fan of Fish Tales (me too!). In Melon's VP9 version of Fish Tales, the flippers "give" a little bit when they're struck by a ball traveling from up toward the top of the playfield, down toward the bottom, at high velocity. It's fairly subtle, but adds a real degree of realism to flipper simulation. Melon's table does just about the best job with this feature that I've come across in VP9. I wonder if you might consider building this behavior into Pinball Labs' flipper mechanics?
 
* Ball collision - I love that your alpha version of Pinball Labs keeps track of the number of balls you add to the playfield for testing. Great fun playing permanent "multiball!" Some feedback: Many players like to trap three or four balls with the flippers during a multiball session. Picture a ball captured by the left flipper. The left flipper is cradling that ball while the player watches the others bouncing around the playfield. When a second ball is captured by the left flipper (in our example), the first ball should bounce a little in response to the heaviness and inertia of the second ball. In Pinball Labs, this behavior could use a little polishing. Captures / cradled ball number one doesn't seem to respond much to incoming captured and cradled ball number two. It remains static and mostly imperturbable - standing its ground, so to speak.
 
* Xpadder - The flippers respond well to both left and right shift buttons when I use my keyboard for control. When I try to use my pinball controller, which I map to the keyboard using Xpadder, the left flipper button responds normally, but the right does not. The right flipper moves just a fraction, and then snaps back immediately - looks "glitchy," like it's struggling to move but can't.
 
*Graphics - Lighting and table rendering is really inspiring. The"recessed" lights are particularly beautiful. I do get just the slightest ball tearing (maybe that's too strong a verb) on my core i5 gtx750ti. I'm sure you're still optimizing. That said, it's totally playable as is!

AMAZING work, tmek. I'm so impressed and thankful that you blasted out a "cab version" for testing mere HOURS after some of us requested one. What fun! 
 

Edited by Ben Logan, 05 October 2015 - 12:53 AM.

[tmek]

Thanks didn't know about 'v' for cabinet view.  Need a way to change x & y of camera, etc.   Incredible job so far.   The physics are really blowing me away in how good they are.

 

here a screen shot rotated on my cab, as you can see very cut off by the flippers

 

 

Thanks! 

 

For now, you have to manually type in x & y offsets of the camera with the Height and Depth text inputs.  There are four text boxes you can adjust the camera with.  

 

"Height" moves the camera up or down.

"Depth"  moves the camera forward or backwards.

"Pitch" tilts/rotates the camera up or down

"FOV" adjust how much the camera is zoomed in or out.

 

Don't forget to pick your playfield monitor's native resolution from the drop down to go full screen.

 

Edited by tmek, 05 October 2015 - 01:13 AM.

[tmek]

 the flippers "give" a little bit when they're struck by a ball...  I wonder if you might consider building this behavior into Pinball Labs' flipper mechanics?

 

Right now my flippers exert a constant force when activated.  In real pinball machines I've read they're often setup to surge a burst of power to the flipper solenoid when you first push the button drop the charge to a lower power level as you hold the flipper at the extent of it's swing.  From what I've read this saves power and lengthens the life of the solenoid.  The operator's manual for Fish Tales I noticed has switches for left and right "Flipper End of Stroke".  I believe that switch is what tells the real machine to lessen the power to it's solenoid. When this happens, the logical side-effect is that the flipper has a bit of give to it since it's not being pushed with much force.  I definitely want to replicate that mechanic but it may come during a "fine tuning" period.

 

Would you mind sharing a little about your process for physics simulation?

 

I think I just dove headfirst into it all, I did a ton of online research.  Watched hours of papa.org youtube play sessions and other youtube videos of real pinball.  Went and played and took videos of live pinball machines locally.  The CAD files at PinballMakers.com helped me out a lot in getting accurate dimensions for playfields and parts.  I've tried to keep to real world sizes and physical attributes.   If we take your flipper "give" for example, I wouldn't want to create a custom physics behavior for just that particular instance in that game.  But I would want to research and understand exactly why it behaves like that and implement the more generalized and realistic physical behavior that causes it.  

 

I think toxie and fuzzle have the right idea.  I had also been thinking a lot lately about using high speed video capture of repeatable real world pinball experiments as a reference to fine tune the physics.  If you're going after accuracy, you need a scientific basis for all the physics decisions made during development.   

 

Captures / cradled ball number one doesn't seem to respond much to incoming captured and cradled ball number two. It remains static and mostly imperturbable - standing its ground, so to speak.

 

This should be something that's fixable, my guess is that the "rubber" physical properties on the flipper has too much friction and is overly gripping ball number one.

 

 Xpadder - The flippers respond well to both left and right shift buttons when I use my keyboard for control. When I try to use my pinball controller, which I map to the keyboard using Xpadder, the left flipper button responds normally, but the right does not. The right flipper moves just a fraction, and then snaps back immediately - looks "glitchy," like it's struggling to move but can't.

 

I also have the left/right ALT, Ctrl and mouse buttons assigned to flippers.  I certainly want to find out what the cause is but in the meantime I wonder if you try to map to one of those alternative keys if it fixes it?

Edited by tmek, 05 October 2015 - 04:47 AM.

[arngrim]

ah i found back the program to check the switches and lamps in a stand alone program

 

Visual Rom Runner : http://patatrox.free.fr/

[zany]

I guess you will be able to adjust the layback aswell later on. Now it is like you are fixed right above the flippers.

[tmek]

I guess you will be able to adjust the layback aswell later on. Now it is like you are fixed right above the flippers.

 

The "Depth" textbox allows you to enter numbers that will move the camera forward or back.  You can use negative numbers to move further behind the flippers.

Edited by tmek, 05 October 2015 - 11:01 AM.

[tmek]

Anyone know the exact dimensions of the Fish Tales playfield board?  Given it's williams made after 1990 I'm guessing it's  20.50" x 46.00" based on http://pinballmakers...Playfield_Sizes

 

Also, is there fish tales playfield art handy?  Or anyone good at straightening the skewed perspective in this image?  

 

http://www.planetary...L2/SAM_1158.JPG

[jpsalas]

I installed an old version of Flight 2000 in VP (JPSalas) and tested it and didn't get speech either - I made sure samples were off. Quite strange as speech is emulated in most other tables - maybe someone else can try or JP might remember if the speech worked when he built the table in 2010.

 

In older vpinmame you needed the samples (which can still be downloaded from http://www.vpinmame.com/). But in newer vpinmame you don't need those samples anymore.

But to get the speech you need to activate the right DIP swicth. In the vp table you do that by pressing F6 while playing and a menu comes up, then you can choose "Talking Sound", press F3 to reset the table/rom and then you have the speech.

Inkochnito used to make all those Dip Switch routines, and the dip 17 is the one which enables the speech.

Edited by jpsalas, 05 October 2015 - 11:02 AM.

[atarian]

Ah that explains it -Many thanks JP for the info. Great table by the way

[atarian]

 
Also, is there fish tales playfield art handy?  Or anyone good at straightening the skewed perspective in this image?  
 
http://www.planetary...L2/SAM_1158.JPG

There is Melon's table so extractable resources exist there:

http://www.vpforums....&showfile=10720
(this is LoadedWeapons night mod of Melons)

http://www.vpforums....s&showfile=3536
(Melons)


Melon gave permission to mod his tables (which I believe extends to using his resources as long as a credit is giving). The useful Permission to Mod thread mentions this:
http://www.vpforums....=28168&p=293633

Other than that someone else might know if there are play field scans, etc.

[tmek]

 

 
Also, is there fish tales playfield art handy?  Or anyone good at straightening the skewed perspective in this image?  
 
http://www.planetary...L2/SAM_1158.JPG

There is Melon's table so extractable resources exist there:

http://www.vpforums....&showfile=10720
(this is LoadedWeapons night mod of Melons)

http://www.vpforums....s&showfile=3536
(Melons)


Melon gave permission to mod his tables (which I believe extends to using his resources as long as a credit is giving). The useful Permission to Mod thread mentions this:
http://www.vpforums....=28168&p=293633

Other than that someone else might know if there are play field scans, etc.

 

 

Thanks atarian.   I was able to extract the playfield image from the vpt file.

 

Last night I was reviewing the inserts listed in the Fish Tales parts list on ipdb.org and noticed the "insert-round s/b 1 inch trp-red" had a quantity of three.  The only place I saw these used on the playfield were the two outlane "Special" lights.  So I was confused why the parts list had an extra.  Then I started seeing the board reproductions and noticed the third is used way down off the play area, under where the instructions would go on the apron.  I'm guessing this is some kind of maintenance warning light that comes on for arcade operators?

 

Edited by tmek, 05 October 2015 - 10:33 PM.

[Ben Logan]

Nice Easter egg warning light find, Tmek. Bonus points!

The idea of a Pinball Labs Fish Tales is exciting. Melon's table was actually the first one I downloaded after initially installing VP. I was blown away (and still am). Also one of my favorite real life pins.

Quite interesting to learn that the flipper "give" that I like so much on this table is a "side effect" of an electromechanical scheme for lengthening solenoid life. Great factoid -- and I never would have guessed it wasn't wholly intentional.

[gStAv]

Holy potatoes isn't this thread exciting!

Get that tingle inside every time is see new posts *lol* looks super promising and as previously stated, amazing dev. speed

Cheers

[tmek]

I've been looking at the Fish Tales Virtual Pinball table that atarian linked.  While I've been able to extract images and sounds I'm not familiar with the game item file format. 

 

I'm still new to how most of virtual pinball works.  Are things like ramps, habitrails and lane guides modeled directly in the Virtual Pinball editor or are they created in external 3D modeling programs like 3DSMAX/Maya/Blender and imported into Virtual Pinball?

 

If they are 3D models that can be exported to FBX or OBJ or similar format I think it would be very worth while to hammer out a Fish Tales table for testing physics, visuals and integration with VPinMAME in Pinball Labs.  

 

If that's true, is there a Virtual Pinball wizard available that could lend a hand extracting the 3D models for Fish Tails?  (including collision meshes, if any).

Edited by tmek, 06 October 2015 - 12:29 PM.

[Ben Logan]

If the excellent YouTube video series by Richard Bousquet is any indication, lots of plastic (ramps, etc.) are done in blender.

His tutorial series is called "Converting Future Pinball Tables to VP10" It might be really helpful to you, as it documents the process of reworking lots of FP elements in Blender for use in VP. All done with permission from the original FP table author, of course. And, it's worth mentioning that most VP tables are not FP derivatives. These videos were made to show a relatively quick way to create tables for testing VP10 (if I understand correctly). Still - highly educational toward using and converting existing resources for use in another platform.

I bet you'd enjoy these vids, tmek. This guy is awesome:

Edited by Ben Logan, 06 October 2015 - 01:15 PM.

[gtxjoe]

You can export the 3D primitive as a obj file. Select it and in the options window click on Export

Most tables use the 3D primitive ramps etc for visual effect only. You should find a vp ramp object that follows the path of the ramp that the ball actually travels on

Most of the post, targets etc are done the same way. You can export the obj file. In the image manager you can extract the image used by that 3D primitive

[lodger]

I've been looking at the Fish Tales Virtual Pinball table that atarian linked.  While I've been able to extract images and sounds I'm not familiar with the game item file format. 

 

I'm still new to how most of virtual pinball works.  Are things like ramps, habitrails and lane guides modeled directly in the Virtual Pinball editor or are they created in external 3D modeling programs like 3DSMAX/Maya/Blender and imported into Virtual Pinball?

 

If they are 3D models that can be exported to FBX or OBJ or similar format I think it would be very worth while to hammer out a Fish Tales table for testing physics, visuals and integration with VPinMAME in Pinball Labs.  

 

If that's true, is there a Virtual Pinball wizard available that could lend a hand extracting the 3D models for Fish Tails?  (including collision meshes, if any).

with visual pinball in its current state of the art, one of the strengths and challenges is that there are soo many different approaches to building tables. A lot of times with ramps, these are developed in Future Pinball and are then imported into vp, other people do their physical modeling in other software. With VP 10, as mentioned above, there is also the opportunity to import tables into a 3d editing software to modify and build components.

 

One of the challenges and nuances with VP is that authors have grown from a culture of "workarounds" where there are things that the software does not do natively so the approaches that people developed often involve using things in unintended ways or using external resources to get things done. regarding 3d models, there may already be a fishtales future pinball table (and is a pretty stunning vp version as well) that the assets can be taken from (if that is ok with the original author. )

Edited by lodger, 06 October 2015 - 01:59 PM.

[atarian]

Not sure if the site was mentioned in the video but lots of Future pinball tables are here:
http://www.pinsimdb....1075-fish_tales

[tmek]

I did a quick install of both Visual Pinball and Future Pinball and I've got several questions but they are probably easy for you guys to answer.

 

1. Their editors seem *really* similar.  I would guess Future Pinball used the Visual Pinball source code as starting point at the very least.  Is this true?  
2. Future Pinball does not seem to be open source, true?
3. If #1 and #2 are true, did that cause some drama back in the day?  (gotta love some internet drama)
4. According to it's page on wikipedia the last official Future Pinball update happened in 2010.  Yet people are still using it.  How is it being kept up to date? Or is it?
5. The same Wikipedia page says Future Pinball does not allow "usage of original pinball ROM code".  What does this mean exactly?  I seem to see Future Pinball replications of commercial pinball machines that seem to be using PinMAME.
6. Why reason exactly was UNIT3D created?  It seems to be just a 3D and physics Engine that uses Future Pinball tables, when Future Pinball already has full real-time 3D visuals and physics. (perhaps this is related to question #5, playing ROMs?)
7. Are there any other major pinball simulators besides Visual Pinball, Future Pinball and UNIT3D?  (Excluding play-only software like The Pinball Arcade that has no editing/creation capabilities)
8. I downloaded Future Pinball 1.9.1.20091231 from the official site.  I can create a new table and place objects but I can't modify properties of any objects in the properties panel on the right side of the screen.  All the properties are zero, blank or black.  Any one know what is causing that?  (for example: I click a flipper and click "colour" property.  The color picker dialog pops up, I choose red and click OK but the "colour" property remains black.)

Edited by tmek, 06 October 2015 - 10:52 PM.

[Ben Logan]

6. Unit3d is really worth a look. Interesting physics that are really convincing in most regards. Amazing lighting. Graphically beautiful. Uses FP editor (I think) but has its own set of parameters for user tweaks. I love it. Needs a fast machine to power dual monitors with all the highest settings enabled graphically. And yes - You are correct: FP tables emulate the ROM controlled dmd gameplay elements, whereas Unit3d Incorporates actual ROM files like VP does.

7. VP, FP, and Unit3d are the big three for Indie table builders. Ask Homework has an amazing iOS / android app (have you seen it - man, it's outstanding!) called Zaccaria ME. On the Blahcade podcast they mentioned an upcoming "Pinball Editor" that will be available on tablets and later ported to PC. Haven't heard anything about it since midsummer.

Edited by Ben Logan, 06 October 2015 - 10:58 PM.