1630 replies to this topic

[atarian]

I have been using PinballX for years but have been away from the hobby for a while.  I read about PinballY and have given it a try but get a DX11 error as follows:

 I

80004002 is E_NOINTERFACE or "No such interface supported", which means that the version of DirectX that you have installed doesn't include this particular API.  PinballY requires that API to get the video set up, which is why it can't do anything beyond that error box.  I've tried to keep PinballY compatible with Windows 7, but it does require the very last Direct X update for Windows 7 - the original DX that comes with Windows 7 out of the box is too old.
 
The particular API mentioned in the error box has been around since DirectX 10, so it's strange that it's not working in your DX11 setup.  The main possibilities that I'd guess at would be:
 
1. You don't have the final release of DirectX 11 for Windows 7 installed.  You said you just did a fresh install, so I guess the only thing to double-check is that it's really the final Win 7 DX release.  I don't recall when that was.  2010 is ten (!!) years ago now, so that's a pretty old one, but I could believe it's the final one for Win 7 since they stopped updating DX for Win 7 a long time ago.  I'm just not sure if it's really a full decade worth of long ago or more like 6 or 7 years ago.
 
2. You have something corrupted in the DX setup.  Again, that should be unlikely with a fresh install.
 
3. Your video drivers don't support this API.  DirectX farms out some of the work to the video drivers (that's why they call it "direct", actually), so it's possible to have the latest DirectX from Microsoft installed and still have some things missing, due to older video drivers.  So you might check for an update from your video card vendor.  Unfortunately, Windows 7 is so old that the video card vendors aren't always fully supporting it in their updates any more, but it might be worth trying.

In case it helps anyone else I fixed my DX11 error by downloading a small windows update found here for Windows 7. It apparently updates it to DX 11.1.

https://support.micr...sion-of-directx

( Choose Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2).

I will start setting it up with some tables.

Thanks for your help again mjr.

Edited by atarian, 28 December 2019 - 05:51 PM.

[mjr]

atarian - glad to hear you were able to solve it with the DirectX update.  And thanks for posting the Microsoft link - I'll add that to the troubleshooting section in the help as well.

[djlunchbox]

Welp i guess updating would have been key first ‍♂️

Got the underlay sorted

Now if we can get categories going that’d be awesome

[mjr]

Now if we can get categories going that’d be awesome

 

Are you talking about something other than the categories feature that's already there?

 

Operator menu > Game setup > Select game categories

[Thalamus]

I just tried the 17 beta and I was not able to keep the dmd on while I run eg. my Loserman tables. I'll have to re-check you documentation I guess. I might have overseen something. I'm using a Pindmd3 and your 1.71 patched freezy at the moment.

 

Stretch that, I of course managed to tick "DMD" not "Real DMD" - Idiots like me ... geez !

 

Works exactly how I wanted it Mike - Thank you very much. PinballY now has all the features I was hoping to get !!!!

Edited by Thalamus, 29 December 2019 - 08:51 PM.

[mjr]

Stretch that, I of course managed to tick "DMD" not "Real DMD" - Idiots like me ... geez !

 

Works exactly how I wanted it Mike - Thank you very much. PinballY now has all the features I was hoping to get !!!!

 

Great!  I don't have a real DMD to test with (just Freezy's virtual DMD), so it's good to hear it's actually working.

 

"DMD" vs "Real DMD" is definitely a poor choice of terms, now that you point it out.  I learned a new word recently, "retronym", for new words/terms that have to be added to the language because the original word has become more commonly associated with a new use, making it necessary to rename the original thing it referred to.  Usually by adding a qualifier, like "terrestrial radio" or "postal mail".  "Real DMD" is exactly this kind of thing.  But it occurs to me that only people like me who *don't* have a real DMD would think that the plain term "DMD" should mean "the virtual video window kind".  Anyone who has a real DMD would think the opposite.  I'll change the checkboxes to make both terms explicit - "DMD Window" and (as before) "Real DMD".

[Thalamus]

Hi again Mike !

 

Though I love this new feature of using my "real DMD", there seems to be a bug that is kind of important to fix. Play a game once that has the setting set, and no other games where none of the options are ticked ends up with no dmd active at all. Exiting PBY and just opening the VPX loading the recent table and it is on again so it kind of proves that it is now become a sticky "off" setting within PBY.

 

Looking at my xml's - it doesn't seem to be saved there ? I'm sure I find out where - but, would be nice to be sure where those settings are saved. Maybe I can make a temporary fix on my side.

 

Temporary fix : Using beta16 exe so there is no rush

Edited by Thalamus, 30 December 2019 - 07:39 PM.

[djlunchbox]

 

Now if we can get categories going that’d be awesome

 

Are you talking about something other than the categories feature that's already there?

 

Operator menu > Game setup > Select game categories

 

Yes. Instead of going into that menu, making the first thing that loads a system wheel, then the tables are in a submenu.

 

similar to how it is in hyperspin or attract mode, when you launch it you get the systems wheels like MAME, Nintendo, Sega Genesis,etc then you select the system and you get your games. then when you exit a game it kicks you back to the games sub menu of that category, then you would back out again to go to the systems/home. 

Edited by djlunchbox, 30 December 2019 - 09:24 PM.

[licwip]

MJR, I started building my first virtual pinball machine a month ago, and I'm glad I decided to use PinballY. It's great! Apart from the occasional struggle to get the DMD to always appear in front of the backglass, I have no real issues. Thank you so much! This community is great. Maybe someday I can contribute more than praise.

[mjr]

Though I love this new feature of using my "real DMD", there seems to be a bug that is kind of important to fix. Play a game once that has the setting set, and no other games where none of the options are ticked ends up with no dmd active at all. Exiting PBY and just opening the VPX loading the recent table and it is on again so it kind of proves that it is now become a sticky "off" setting within PBY.

 

Looking at my xml's - it doesn't seem to be saved there ? I'm sure I find out where - but, would be nice to be sure where those settings are saved. Maybe I can make a temporary fix on my side.

 

I'll take a look and see if I can make it happen with the virtual DMD.  So the basic problem seems to be that VPinMAME can no longer access the DMD after that first launch?

 

As for the XML, it's not there, as I've been trying to make sure the XML files stay compatible with PBX, for those who want to share configurations, by avoiding adding anything that's not part of the PBX schema.  So extra things like this go in PinballY\GameStats.csv.  If you look there, you'll see a column headed "Show When Running" that has this information.

[mjr]

Yes. Instead of going into that menu, making the first thing that loads a system wheel, then the tables are in a submenu.

 

similar to how it is in hyperspin or attract mode, when you launch it you get the systems wheels like MAME, Nintendo, Sega Genesis,etc then you select the system and you get your games. then when you exit a game it kicks you back to the games sub menu of that category, then you would back out again to go to the systems/home. 

 

Okay, I think I get it.  I don't think that's something I'm going to want to add as a standard feature, but if you're up for a little DIY work, I think you could build it with a little Javascript.  Here's a sketch of the idea:

 

1. Create a fake "system" to represent your new top-level wheel menu.  Call it "Top Level Menu" or whatever. It's a fake system, so it's not going to be tied to VP or FP or anything like that; it's just there to hold fake games representing the top-level menu items.  The important thing is to give it a game file folder and default filename extension, so that PinballY will search for its fake games.  You can make the file extension something like ".menu" to suggest what's going on, but it doesn't matter what you use, as long as you pick something.

 

2. Now create the fake files for the fake "games" in the fake "system" folder.  Each one of these is going to represent a slot on the wheel menu you want to create.  Per your example, you'd create a fake game called MAME.menu, one called Nintendo.menu, one called Sega Genesis.menu, etc.  These can just be empty text files you create with Notepad or from the Windows desktop (Create New Item > Text File, say).  

 

3. Now PinballY will start seeing those fake game files and think they're games, so they'll show up in the wheel.  That's how you get the wheel entries you're after.  You can set each one up with media (wheel icon, background image) using the normal drag-and-drop method to set up a game.  For example, to set a wheel icon, drag a PNG file onto the main window and drop it onto the "Drop wheel icon here" box that lights up when you drag the file.

 

At this point, you'll have all of these new fake games mixed into your regular wheel list.  To create the hierarchical menu system you're after, you need to do a little Javascript coding to slice and dice the filters the way you want.  This is where you'll have to work out the details according to the exact UI flow you're after.  But the basics should be:

 

4. Create a metafilter to show the fake games when you're in "Menu" mode, and hide them when you're not in "Menu" mode.  See the following help sections:

 

   Javascript scripting > Metafilters

   Javascript scripting > Worked Examples > Family Filter

 

The Family Filter will give you a concrete example of how to use a metafilter, but you don't want to follow it exactly - treat it as an analogy that needs to be adapted for this new situation.  In particular, you won't need any of the "Tag" stuff as filter criteria.  It's much easier than that - since the fake games are all part of the fake "Top Level Menu" system, you can just filter on that system.  When you're in menu mode, filter so that ONLY "Top Level Menu" games appear.  When you're NOT in menu mode, filter so that NONE of the "Top Level Menu" games appear.

 

5. You'll need a global variable that tells you whether you're in menu mode or not, so that the filter can decide what to do.  You can follow the example of how the Family Filter does that.

 

6. Finally, you'll need to tweak the system menus to get the UI flow you want, in and out of the new Top Level Menu filter.  When you're in menu mode, you'll want to remove all of the normal game-related menu items (Play, Info, Flyer, Rate this game, etc), and add a custom menu command for "Open this category" or whatever you want to call it.  That command just has to switch out of menu mode and select the appropriate game filter.  When you're NOT in menu mode, you'll want to intercept the Exit command and make it switch back into menu mode.

 

There are undoubtedly more details, but hopefully that'll give you a starting point if you want to explore it.  If you get it working, it'd be great if you want to write it up as a "worked example" that I could add to the help.

[Seraph74]

Hi, Thanks so much for all your work. 

 

Have started trying to use the javascript features (Great having such detailed help and worked examples)

When Using the Worked examples (copy/pasted): I am getting these errors

Seamless Launching:

Launch Overlay Show event: CallMethod Error: JsErrorScriptException
[Javascript]: Uncaught exception:
TypeError: Object doesn't support property or method 'setOverlay'

 

 

Move Progress Text to (Video)DMD:

[Javascript] Uncaught exception: Expected '}'

Source code: font: "12px";

if I comment out the above line it works

-----------------------
And using the 3Star+Table Filter as a template
is this ?close for creating a table list of all Original Tables

gameList.createFilter({
id: "OGTables",
title: "Original Tables",
menuTitle: "Original Tables",
group: "[tableType]",
select: function(game) { return game.tableType = "OG"; }
}

 

OS: Win 10.1903  //  Beta 17 Build 9108 x64

Is it possible I have removed a required dependency in windows?

 

Thanks again, it is a joy using any of your programs

 

Edited by Seraph74, 01 January 2020 - 02:46 AM.

[mjr]

 

When Using the Worked examples (copy/pasted): I am getting these errors

Seamless Launching:

Launch Overlay Show event: CallMethod Error: JsErrorScriptException
[Javascript]: Uncaught exception:
TypeError: Object doesn't support property or method 'setOverlay'
 

 

Looks like there were a couple of errors/old code in that example.  For that one, the 'setOverlay' line should have been:

 

mainWindow.setUnderlay("");

 

 

 

 

Move Progress Text to (Video)DMD:

[Javascript] Uncaught exception: Expected '}'

Source code: font: "12px";

 

And for that one, the semicolon at the end of that line just needs to be deleted.

 

 

 

And using the 3Star+Table Filter as a template

is this ?close for creating a table list of all Original Tables

gameList.createFilter({
  id: "OGTables",
  title: "Original Tables",
  menuTitle: "Original Tables",
  group: "[tableType]",
  select: function(game) { return game.tableType = "OG"; }
}

 

That looks pretty close, except that the table type test should use two equals signs - Javascript is like C/C++ where "=" always means "assignment", so you have to write "==" to mean "is equal to".

 

  select: function(game) { return game.tableType == "OG"; }

 

The only other thing is that tableType would normally only be one of the IPDB codes - "ME", "EM", or "SS".  But I'm assuming that you're going to go into the Game Details editor (or directly into the XML) for the tables in question and manually enter "OG" there.  Which should be fine - I don't think there's anywhere in PinballY that forces the table type to match one of the IPDB codes.  Just wanted to make sure that's what you had in mind.

 

 

Sorry about the code typos/errors - I'll fix them in the help files.

[mjr]

Thalamus - I think I figured out what was going on with the Real DMD problem you ran into with the Beta 17.  Give the new Beta 18 a try and see if it helps.

[Thalamus]

Sounds great. On a different timezone so I'll try when I wake up And, thanks again Mike !

[Seraph74]

Excellent - That all worked great.

 

Amazing how powerful the j/script functionality is 

was able to add easily under the filters : by category -- original / em / ss / dmd

 

Thanks MJR !!

 

In case it can help anyone else here is the code :

 

gameList.createFilter({

  id: "EMTables",

  title: "EM Tables",

  menuTitle: "EM Tables",

  group: "[Cat]",

  select: function(game) { return game.tableType == "EM"; }

}

 

This will create a filter for all EM Tables under the "Filter by Category" Menu Option

Edited by Seraph74, 02 January 2020 - 06:02 AM.

[Thalamus]

@mjr : Yes, the "real dmd" problem is now solved. However, b18 doesn't show my backglass videos while browsing any more. I have backglass images for every table as well, but, they didn't show either.

[atarian]

Hi mjr

I have been playing with getting PinballY setup over the Christmas period and was working quite nicely with the 29th Nov 2019 version apart from the text on the main menus NOT being visible.   I was about to post on this issue today, but see that you have uploaded some new versions, so I just downloaded the version from 2020-01-01 (Beta 18).

 

I can see that you added some options to change colours, so I played with these, but I am still unable to see the menu text.

 

Here is a screenshot (from version 2020-01-01 Beta 18).  An additional problem now is I also no longer see wheel images, nor do I see the text of the unconfigured table names (whereas in the version from the 29/11 I did see wheel images and outlined text for the unconfigured tables).

 

I am not sure where you pickup the colour to use for the text in these menus?

 

Thanks for your work on this .

 

Edited by atarian, 02 January 2020 - 04:51 PM.

[mjr]

b18 doesn't show my backglass videos while browsing any more. I have backglass images for every table as well, but, they didn't show either.

 

Huh, it seems to be working fine for me.  Anything in the log suggesting trouble?

 

 

but I am still unable to see the menu text.

 

An additional problem now is I also no longer see wheel images, nor do I see the text of the unconfigured table names

 

I heard from one person a long time ago who had a similar problem with invisible menu text, and that turned out to be because they were running on Windows 7 with Aero turned off.  Any chance that's it?

[atarian]

 

but I am still unable to see the menu text.

 

An additional problem now is I also no longer see wheel images, nor do I see the text of the unconfigured table names

 

I heard from one person a long time ago who had a similar problem with invisible menu text, and that turned out to be because they were running on Windows 7 with Aero turned off.  Any chance that's it?

 

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I just did a thorough check and I have an Aero theme.  I also tried switching to a basic theme and then back to aero but the same issue.  I also checked that desktop composition isn't disabled from the PinballY properties and it isn't.

 

In addition to the menu text not showing, the wheel images have also disappeared whereas they worked with the 29/11 version.

Edited by atarian, 02 January 2020 - 07:36 PM.