64 replies to this topic

[jpsalas]

At the time FP was released it could have been the end of VP if it had supported vpinmame. But it didn't so many authors kept making vpinmame tables, including me. At that time I was not interested in making original tables, but I was interested in making and playing the rom based tables, and to see what I have missed for about 30 years of pinball history So FP was never an option for me.

 

Now it is different. I have played most of the rom based tables, and I have made all the tables that I wanted to make. And now I enjoy both original tables and rom based tables. So I'm enjoying both VP and FP. Also FP has a lot of EM tables too, perhaps more than VP

 

About physics: I have been in Spain for 6 weeks now, I'm going home tomorrow, and I have played two physical tables a lot: The Walking Dead Pro and The Guardians of the Galaxy. And you can't get more weird physics than on those two tables. They are at least 4 years old, and they are in an open space, at about 100m from the beach. I guess you can imagine the state of the rubbers, solenoids and targets   Rubbers were missing on many posts, the flippers were quite weak, several targets didn't work, like Groot. It was like playing VP or FP in his first years

[bigus1]

With so many variables on real machines, chasing exactness with the physics on any particular table doesn't assure that it will play the same as another example of the same table, I try to aim for a happy medium with physics, rather than trying to exactly emulate a video or a single example of a machine.  For a while, I once had 2 Firepowers side-by-side and they played differently, plus I had 2 others over the years and they were individuals too. 1000 lines of code won't change that reality.  Provided the physics work ok,

players should be flexible and adapt to the table at hand, and if things are difficult and require practice, then that's probably nearer to reality, whatever the platform.

[TerryRed]

At the time FP was released it could have been the end of VP if it had supported vpinmame. But it didn't so many authors kept making vpinmame tables, including me. At that time I was not interested in making original tables, but I was interested in making and playing the rom based tables, and to see what I have missed for about 30 years of pinball history So FP was never an option for me.

 

Now it is different. I have played most of the rom based tables, and I have made all the tables that I wanted to make. And now I enjoy both original tables and rom based tables. So I'm enjoying both VP and FP. Also FP has a lot of EM tables too, perhaps more than VP

 

About physics: I have been in Spain for 6 weeks now, I'm going home tomorrow, and I have played two physical tables a lot: The Walking Dead Pro and The Guardians of the Galaxy. And you can't get more weird physics than on those two tables. They are at least 4 years old, and they are in an open space, at about 100m from the beach. I guess you can imagine the state of the rubbers, solenoids and targets   Rubbers were missing on many posts, the flippers were quite weak, several targets didn't work, like Groot. It was like playing VP or FP in his first years

 

 

Sadly, this is the case with many pins at arcades here in Canada. They are old and wore out, and not maintained. I'm lucky, that I live in Ottawa, and we have a few pinball arcades here with lots of well-maintained old pins and lots of new pins.

 

Popotte has been slowly updating some of his EM tables to FizX physics as well. He's been very happy with the recent BAM / FizX updates.

Edited by TerryRed, 27 March 2024 - 12:55 PM.

[wiesshund]

At the time FP was released it could have been the end of VP if it had supported vpinmame. But it didn't so many authors kept making vpinmame tables, including me. 

 

Technically, FP can use VpinMAME.

I think TerryRed could explain how? i glanced over it once, never tried it.

 

I dont think anyone ever made a table employing it, at least i have never seen one?

 

FP has tons of custom tables though.

[TerryRed]

BAM has an iCOM plug-in that allows for COM objects to be used (DOF, PUP, B2S Server, FlexDMD, VPinMAME, etc).

 

That's how I use DOF and PUP directly in all my releases. (that's why DOFLinx was no longer needed for DOF and PUP on FP).

 

To use VPinMAME someone would need to adapt all the current vpinmame scripts, etc to work with FP. Honestly not worth the work when VPX covers those tables so well. Part of the reason VP has so many tables and more creators today, is because updating / creating a rom based table with vpinmame is a fraction of the work compared to any quality original table or a recreated table using custom code and no rom (tables like BM66, IMLOTB, GOTG are a massive amount of work on VP compared to rom based tables).

 

Myself, I prefer doing original code and mods, so I can do whatever I want for an original table, or to make a recreated table nicer than the original rom (for my preference) such as F-14 Tomcat: Afterburner, etc.

 

FP has 100's of original tables. It would be better to focus on tables you can't get on VPX instead of spending so much time trying to adapt VPinMAME.

Edited by TerryRed, 02 April 2024 - 08:44 AM.