185 replies to this topic

[Iceman5000]

Does VP 9.07 really work can someone tell me for sure before I download it?

Yes it works, I'm getting about a 2-3% boost in performance using it.

[KEG]

Does VP 9.07 really work can someone tell me for sure before I download it?

Well I have not tried it yet but I don't think Destruk would put it out there if it did not work.

*** EDIT ****
Just tried it works great.

Edited by KEG, 25 February 2010 - 12:56 AM.

[rossicomputers]

Where can i download VP 9.07?

[lonnie]

Fantastic news. Thanks Randy.

Lonnie

[Rawd]

Does this mean that it would also be easier to implement an online scoring database directly into VP? Maybe even online play with VpPlus integrated into VP. Is anyone interested in looking into that? Just curious.

[Mitchell]

Where can i download VP 9.07?

http://sourceforge.n...ects/vp8/files/ in the files area.

=================================================================

"VP Ultimate Black Edition"

The real name would be "Future Pinball"

How about Future Visual Pinball or Future Virtual Pinball? Since it still not real.

[Liteuser]

Thank you very much Randy.

Long Live Visual Pinball !!!

[bjjb]

YEE-HAW!!!! GREAT HORNY TOADS!!!

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! (Guns blaring in salute...)

This is great news! I always wanted to know how VP worked "under the hood", so now I'll get my chance when I get some free time - well, free time is hard to get also.

From one programmer to others - thank you Randy, and thank you Destruk for all of your hard work.

BJJB

[wtiger]

A big THANK YOU to Randy for coming to this decision. Also, a big THANK YOU to Destruk for your involvement in this as well! THANKS GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ynneBBenny]

One thought, though I'm happy to be proven wrong.
We are all jumping with excitement as though all sorts of changes are going to now suddenly appear.
How many here can program, and if so, why did they wait for the source to be released? Why didn't they just do a new version themselves.
Unless Randy's source has loads of notes, I suspect it will only be a few who will make sense of it, and it will only be minor tweaks made for quite a while, until its layout is understood.
Just out of interest (Not asking for any volunteers yet) , who here would feel confident editing the current software?
I know I'll be downloading it just for a peek, but that will be the extent of it for me.

[Gravy]

man of few words is that Randy.... although he certainly makes those words count. Well done and thankyou.

I also second the idea of always including a nice little tribute to Randy in the opening credits or "about" pages.

Will be interesting to see where it all goes from here.

If there is one feature I would like to see, its an anamorphic projection rendering mode or at least a way to adjust the perpective angle of full screen tables..

Edited by Gravy, 25 February 2010 - 03:38 AM.

[panootz]

This sounds real great and everything, will the S.A.M. games benefit this someday when Gary Stern decieds to let us Emulate his S.A.M. pinball games some day way down the road. Or when he decieds to release a new code maybe S.A.M.2 the Stern sequel.

[Gravy]

Looks to be quite well commented from what I can see.

Particulary interesting is all the options that are set to "false" in https://vp8.svn.sour...VP9/display.cpp

Including stuff to do with edge antialiasing and alpha.

[KloggMonkey]

Including stuff to do with edge antialiasing and alpha.

True clear ramps FTW!

[ta2686]

Thanks to all involved for this coming to pass!

We are all indebted to Randy for developing this and let's hope for continued improvements in the future!

[ynneBBenny]

Looks to be quite well commented from what I can see.

An extract from HERE

CODE

// WTF?  As soon as I do DrawPrimitive, the ball disappears.  Everything else works (ie saving and restoring states)... it's just the draw!

I guess this gives an insight to Randy's style of notes.

Edited by WWW, 25 February 2010 - 05:09 AM.

[destruk]

One thought, though I'm happy to be proven wrong.
We are all jumping with excitement as though all sorts of changes are going to now suddenly appear.
How many here can program, and if so, why did they wait for the source to be released? Why didn't they just do a new version themselves.
Unless Randy's source has loads of notes, I suspect it will only be a few who will make sense of it, and it will only be minor tweaks made for quite a while, until its layout is understood.
Just out of interest (Not asking for any volunteers yet) , who here would feel confident editing the current software?
I know I'll be downloading it just for a peek, but that will be the extent of it for me.

Think about what you are asking there WWW... The kiddie glove answer you are going to get is - after you take a peek at the source code, you'll immediately notice there are thousands and thousands of lines of code involved. I'm guessing this is maybe a fourth of how much code is in Future Pinball - just as a rough guesstimate. Why didn't people just do a new version themselves? Many have tried. Emilia Pinball, Aaron Hightower's pre-alpha test pinball that he didn't finish, etc - it is a whole lot of work to start nearly entirely from scratch. And to top it off, with the current table base selection of thousands of games, without the source code you could never be 100% sure it would be compatible with the VPT table format. It would be a major undertaking to come up with as good or better an interface for an editor, and be able to retain some loose form of compatibility with existing tables, and be forced to remake, yet again, every table that has already been made in order to play it in your all new editor. With source code you can see how everything fits together, the exact specifics of the file format, rendering processes, physics routines, everything... It can take from 6 to 12 months of studying and reading the code to get a grasp of what it is doing and how it is doing it - that is pretty much standard whenever you are introduced to a project of this magnitude. So personally, I don't expect anyone to download the source and instantly have improvements and fixes for it - -- more realistically, I would hope some people would look at it, read through a few sections, and possibly introduce new or better code when they are comfortable with it. I'd rather have decent improvements every few months, than a bunch of bad mistakes up front. You have full source code now to VP 8.1 - and you have full source to VP 9.0.7 - between the two of them, using a program like WinMerge you can compare both versions line by line, for all files and see what changes were made to do what. This is a gigantic, unbelievable stepping stone to have access to - the code in these two vp versions is the culmination of 10 years of pinball programming for VP. Sure it was just a few versions in those 10 years, but it's like getting to the top of the empire state building - however you are taking the elevator to the 30th floor with this code, instead of walking up 30 flights of stairs from the ground floor.

I feel confident editing the software, but I don't know how much more I'm prepared to learn how to do with it. Maddes is probably going to update the project file so all the possible build types work ( I only used 'debug' and 'release min dependency' - the others might not compile as they are now, and AFAIK Randy never used the other types either, at least they were never released in exe form ).

[ynneBBenny]

One thought, though I'm happy to be proven wrong.
We are all jumping with excitement as though all sorts of changes are going to now suddenly appear.
How many here can program, and if so, why did they wait for the source to be released? Why didn't they just do a new version themselves.
Unless Randy's source has loads of notes, I suspect it will only be a few who will make sense of it, and it will only be minor tweaks made for quite a while, until its layout is understood.
Just out of interest (Not asking for any volunteers yet) , who here would feel confident editing the current software?
I know I'll be downloading it just for a peek, but that will be the extent of it for me.

Think about what you are asking there WWW... The kiddie glove answer you are going to get is - after you take a peek at the source code, you'll immediately notice there are thousands and thousands of lines of code involved. I'm guessing this is maybe a fourth of how much code is in Future Pinball - just as a rough guesstimate. Why didn't people just do a new version themselves? Many have tried. Emilia Pinball, Aaron Hightower's pre-alpha test pinball that he didn't finish, etc - it is a whole lot of work to start nearly entirely from scratch. And to top it off, with the current table base selection of thousands of games, without the source code you could never be 100% sure it would be compatible with the VPT table format. It would be a major undertaking to come up with as good or better an interface for an editor, and be able to retain some loose form of compatibility with existing tables, and be forced to remake, yet again, every table that has already been made in order to play it in your all new editor. With source code you can see how everything fits together, the exact specifics of the file format, rendering processes, physics routines, everything... It can take from 6 to 12 months of studying and reading the code to get a grasp of what it is doing and how it is doing it - that is pretty much standard whenever you are introduced to a project of this magnitude. So personally, I don't expect anyone to download the source and instantly have improvements and fixes for it - -- more realistically, I would hope some people would look at it, read through a few sections, and possibly introduce new or better code when they are comfortable with it. I'd rather have decent improvements every few months, than a bunch of bad mistakes up front. You have full source code now to VP 8.1 - and you have full source to VP 9.0.7 - between the two of them, using a program like WinMerge you can compare both versions line by line, for all files and see what changes were made to do what. This is a gigantic, unbelievable stepping stone to have access to - the code in these two vp versions is the culmination of 10 years of pinball programming for VP. Sure it was just a few versions in those 10 years, but it's like getting to the top of the empire state building - however you are taking the elevator to the 30th floor with this code, instead of walking up 30 flights of stairs from the ground floor.

I feel confident editing the software, but I don't know how much more I'm prepared to learn how to do with it. Maddes is probably going to update the project file so all the possible build types work ( I only used 'debug' and 'release min dependency' - the others might not compile as they are now, and AFAIK Randy never used the other types either, at least they were never released in exe form ).

Exactly my point. You are agreeing with what I said. Hence my comments about how we are all so excited, and yet I wonder why? It's not like we are going to see big changes any time soon. I dont need the kiddie gloves, I DO understand the enormity.
Possibly you read my comment quickly without understanding my angle:)

[rossicomputers]

Thanks for the info Brian...


Rossi

Edited by rossicomputers, 25 February 2010 - 05:47 AM.

[Gravy]

Looks to be quite well commented from what I can see.

An extract from HERE

CODE

// WTF?  As soon as I do DrawPrimitive, the ball disappears.  Everything else works (ie saving and restoring states)... it's just the draw!

I guess this gives an insight to Randy's style of notes.

yeah I noticed that one too and had a chuckle to myself.