333 replies to this topic

[gigalula]

4. The only kind of new modification features from the last official release of FP is mainly physic tweak and that's why BAM is useful to keep the official release intact and only apply patch in memory of "specific underground modified version of FP". BAM offer a good menu to allow the selection of many view and the ability of 3d perspective from camera, Kinect, etc.... Really nice when it's all properly set.

[chepas]

Download VP10. http://www.vpforums....ic=30418&page=1

 

When you open a new or the default table go to FIle > Export OBJ Mesh. This will export the whole thing.

 

 

Anyone know the exact dimensions of the Fish Tales playfield board?

 

VP10 > Table > Dimensions manager

Edited by chepas, 07 October 2015 - 02:16 AM.

[tmek]

VP10 Has some neat features and editor performance seems much better.  Kudos to the dev guys on the many improvements.  The real time ball reflections really caught my eye and the new default map is very helpful to beginners.

 

I'm a stickler for accuracy and having trouble reconciling some dimensions on this Fish Tales VPT.   It's very possible I'm just misinformed on something, so looking for confirmation or corrections.

1. From what I can gather, Fish Tales is a WPC (1997 on) table, 
2. This would mean it's playfield dimensions are 20.50 x 46.00 inches.
3. According to the Dimensions Manager that would be 964 x 2162 VP Units. 
4. The Fish Tales Night Mod 2.0 VPT shows 1024 for table width and 2160 for table height.
5. The image used for the playing field chops off a few inches of the bottom end but covers the full width of the playfield board.
6. Which would mean at the very least the width is off by 1024-964=60 VP units or 1.275 inches, which is not insignificant (6.2%)

(VP unit size seems to result from a decision that the 1 & 1/16th inch diameter of a pinball is exactly 50 VP units.  So 1 VP Unit = 0.02125 inches.)

 

Anything incorrect about the above?  If everything is correct, does that mean this VPT just happen to be off by that much for whatever reason?

 

Edited by tmek, 07 October 2015 - 04:55 AM.

[tmek]

4. The only kind of new modification features from the last official release of FP is mainly physic tweak and that's why BAM is useful to keep the official release intact and only apply patch in memory of "specific underground modified version of FP". BAM offer a good menu to allow the selection of many view and the ability of 3d perspective from camera, Kinect, etc.... Really nice when it's all properly set.

 

Impressive.  BAM does make some pretty interesting additions to FP .  I bet eye tracking combined with a 3D TV and glasses is amazing. 

[fuzzel]

Just some answers of your Future Pinball questions:

1. no FP uses QT for the editor where VP uses the old MFC.
2. Yes FP is closed source and unfortunately will stay as that.
3. Not that I know of. The only drama is sometimes the comparison between FP and VP and the quality how tables play and look.

[jpsalas]

VP10 Has some neat features and editor performance seems much better.  Kudos to the dev guys on the many improvements.  The real time ball reflections really caught my eye and the new default map is very helpful to beginners.

 

I'm a stickler for accuracy and having trouble reconciling some dimensions on this Fish Tales VPT.   It's very possible I'm just misinformed on something, so looking for confirmation or corrections.

1. From what I can gather, Fish Tales is a WPC (1997 on) table, 
2. This would mean it's playfield dimensions are 20.50 x 46.00 inches.
3. According to the Dimensions Manager that would be 964 x 2162 VP Units. 
4. The Fish Tales Night Mod 2.0 VPT shows 1024 for table width and 2160 for table height.
5. The image used for the playing field chops off a few inches of the bottom end but covers the full width of the playfield board.
6. Which would mean at the very least the width is off by 1024-964=60 VP units or 1.275 inches, which is not insignificant (6.2%)

(VP unit size seems to result from a decision that the 1 & 1/16th inch diameter of a pinball is exactly 50 VP units.  So 1 VP Unit = 0.02125 inches.)

 

Anything incorrect about the above?  If everything is correct, does that mean this VPT just happen to be off by that much for whatever reason?

 

 

 

The dimensions 964x2162 are the right ones. It was me who started with the 1024 width and I also cropped the lower part of the playfield. Mostly because I started to build tables with VP6 and I was tired of tables with a very big apron which used to fill halv the screen. VP didn't have a zoom function, that function came with VP9. I started to play with the table sizes to get the tables as big as possible on the screen and with as little as less apron as possible. When VP9 came I already had made over 100 tables, and I converted many tables to VP9 but I kept those sizes, mostly because I didn't feel to rebuild all the tables from scratch and because VP9 had zoom functions. Many people started to build tables the way I did, that's why you'll find that odd width of 1024. I build many tables for VP9 with the right sizes, and my other authors did that too.

 

So the reason of that odd width of 1024 is my fault, and it has historical reasons

[tmek]

Thank you for your thorough and informative answer, jpsalas!

[Shoopity]

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.)

 

Take my answers with a grain of salt, but I wanted to share my take on things:

1. Fuzzel already gave the official technical answer, but the way I understand, VP came first, FP mimicked many design elements, but also innovated.  Then VP mimicked too... I think.  For example I believe it was FP that used layers that VP added later.  Is it "copying" to include a ruler in a text editor; is it "copying" to lay out the buttons a media player starting with reverse on the left, then pause, the forward on the right?  Sometimes the line between implementing obvious design layouts and copying something truly innovative can be blurry.

 

3. Remember, VP only became open source in 2010.  (again this is just how I understand it and I am no authority on things) Things were getting somewhat stale with both programs (not keeping up with newer technology and graphical abilities) and people were chomping at the bit, begging the original Devs to allow them to work on it.  They understood Mr. Davis or Mr. Leathley may not have the time/desire to work on their programs, but begged to make them open source.  The difference is Mr. Davis released the code and Mr. Leathley hasn't/won't.  I don't think there's been much "drama", especially since they're both free.

 

4. People have written mods for FP (different dlls) to make its physics better.  Some feel this is bad/illegal since it's not open source.  People still use it though because it's the only piece of free software that does something like BAM ( that's an example; it's head tracking to allow the player to "see around objects".  Personally I think it looks mind blowing on camera, but just sort of cool in person).  It's also much easier to design tables with currently, partially because of ornaments and lighting (but VP version 10 is getting pretty close), among other things.

 

5. They're not actually ROMs or PinMAME.  FP has a built in DMD that an author can program their own stuff in to; so if you see a recreation table, that's because someone wrote the game logic into the table and imported the sounds and dots, as opposed to just hooked up the switches and lights like you do in VP.  So they're not 100% emulated perfectly, but pretty darn close.  It's pretty impressive to me that people have reverse engineered the game logic.

 

6. I believe the intention was to marry the physics and ROM emulation of VP and the graphics of FP effectively (of course, using the most recent graphical abilities that Unity can do).  There's always been the belief that if you want accurate physics, you play VP (this is especially true for the PhysMod version of VP and VPX (version 10)), if you want eye candy, you play FP.

 

7. If you get an Apple II or Commodore 64 emulator, you can get play Pinball Construction Set ;-).

[JMG]

the performance of the simulation is very impressive. runs almost perfectly smooth on my 650Ti & 3.1GHz i5. VR is also a very very cool idea, but stereoscopic 3d on supported 3d tv screens (like BAM) would also be incredibly cool.

Proof: 

best regards from germany

[lodger]

One question that I had (excuse me if this was asked elsewhere) has to do with what language game logic is coded in for new tables on your vr platform. If visual basic were supported, I'm certain the learning curve for the new software would be minimal...im not sure if this is possible. if compatible with vbs, that would make scripting for the new platform much easier...not to mention maybe being able to more directly port existing tables from fp or vp.

[tmek]

the performance of the simulation is very impressive. runs almost perfectly smooth on my 650Ti & 3.1GHz i5. VR is also a very very cool idea, but stereoscopic 3d on supported 3d tv screens (like BAM) would also be incredibly cool.

Proof: 

best regards from germany

 

 

You guys are really making me want to build a pinball cab!    I will probably have to wait untill Chrismas.

[blashyrk]

the performance of the simulation is very impressive. runs almost perfectly smooth on my 650Ti & 3.1GHz i5. VR is also a very very cool idea, but stereoscopic 3d on supported 3d tv screens (like BAM) would also be incredibly cool.
Proof: 
best regards from germany

 
 
You guys are really making me want to build a pinball cab!    I will probably have to wait untill Chrismas.

[tmek]

One question that I had (excuse me if this was asked elsewhere) has to do with what language game logic is coded in for new tables on your vr platform. If visual basic were supported, I'm certain the learning curve for the new software would be minimal...im not sure if this is possible. if compatible with vbs, that would make scripting for the new platform much easier...not to mention maybe being able to more directly port existing tables from fp or vp.

 

 

Hi lodger, 

 

The plan is to have Pinball Labs consist of three main parts:

 

1.) Runtime (Simulator)

2.) Editor

3.) API (Plugins)

 

From a purely technical point scripting won't be a direct part of Pinball Labs, but will be implemented as a plugin.   Version 1.0 of Pinball Labs will ship with at least one scripting plugin but any programming language could be added by someone developing a scripting plugin for it.  I was initially leaning towards JavaScript as the built in scripting plugin because of it's popularity in the world overall and the huge amount of quality tools and libraries written for it, but I can see the merits of VBscript given it's history with table builders.  I could easily imagine that multiple options would crop up (VBScript, JavaScript, C# and so on) whether written by me or the community.

 

EDIT: Something else to consider is performance.  JavaScript and C# have modern, highly tuned virtual machines that can execute blocks of code extremely quickly.  VBScript on the other hand hasn't received the same kind of attention over the years.  When you're wiring together multiple pieces of the puzzle via scripting (controllers, emulators, simulators and so on) you need your scripts to run fast to prevent any perceptible lag to the player.

Edited by tmek, 07 October 2015 - 07:03 PM.

[tmek]

Just some answers of your Future Pinball questions:

1. no FP uses QT for the editor where VP uses the old MFC.
2. Yes FP is closed source and unfortunately will stay as that.
3. Not that I know of. The only drama is sometimes the comparison between FP and VP and the quality how tables play and look.

 

Thanks fuzzel!

[lodger]

 

One question that I had (excuse me if this was asked elsewhere) has to do with what language game logic is coded in for new tables on your vr platform. If visual basic were supported, I'm certain the learning curve for the new software would be minimal...im not sure if this is possible. if compatible with vbs, that would make scripting for the new platform much easier...not to mention maybe being able to more directly port existing tables from fp or vp.

 

 

Hi lodger, 

 

The plan is to have Pinball Labs consist of three main parts:

 

1.) Runtime (Simulator)

2.) Editor

3.) API (Plugins)

 

From a purely technical point scripting won't be a direct part of Pinball Labs, but will be implemented as a plugin.   Version 1.0 of Pinball Labs will ship with at least one scripting plugin but any programming language could be added by someone developing a scripting plugin for it.  I was initially leaning towards JavaScript as the built in scripting plugin because of it's popularity in the world overall and the huge amount of quality tools and libraries written for it, but I can see the merits of VBscript given it's history with table builders.  I could easily imagine that multiple options would crop up (VBScript, JavaScript, C# and so on) whether written by me or the community.

 

EDIT: Something else to consider is performance.  JavaScript and C# have modern, highly tuned virtual machines that can execute blocks of code extremely quickly.  VBScript on the other hand hasn't received the same kind of attention over the years.  When you're wiring together multiple pieces of the puzzle via scripting (controllers, emulators, simulators and so on) you need your scripts to run fast to prevent any perceptible lag to the player.

 

This is likely to be really important to the platform being adopted...if the script editor weren't so integrated into vp or fp, I really don't think they would have thrived the way that they had. Thanks for taking notice of all our concerns!

[tmek]

I'm working on a Fish Tales table based on JPSalas' and Melon's VP tables.  Keep in mind it's VERY early progress (lots of pieces missing, untextured, floating mid air, etc.)  But I like to make these short videos to document progress along the way.  I'm hopeful that within a week or two I have it completed and hooked up to VPinMame

 

Also, while you can't really see it in this video (especially since I keep whiffing shots and sending the ball places where there's no collision) I feel I've made some decent improvements to the physics.

 

Edited by tmek, 09 October 2015 - 02:47 PM.

[Ben Logan]

Wow. Awesome start. I like the way the ball travels through the ramp -- how it seems to bounce in vertical space just a bit when it navigates the corner - that seemed real to me, like something I see in real pinball, but not captured so well in any emulation I've tried so far.

Keep up the great work, tmek. Exciting stuff.

[Kaan]

Man, this is going to make Unit3d obsolete before it even had a chance.  I'd be happier, unity has awful performance on many games compared to unreal.

[Ben Logan]

With due respect, Kaan, why be so hard on Unit3d? Those guys have a great WIP platform. I'm not criticizing you personally. I've just seen so many creative people offer something up for free, only to bail out after receiving what they perceive as too much negativity. If Unit3d hangs in there, they'll develop into a really strong offering.

[hauntfreaks]

heres my 2cents... FP has been abandoned for a while, it still being considered closed source is just silly... just like shoopity said... its already been altered physics wise and expanded graphically with bam... also unit3d and so on... if someone really took FP to the next level, in my opinion it would be the best looking pin-sim of them all... and if the physics were properly adjusted... and of course rom support...  

 

examples of FP tables i've worked on...    I love VPX so dont get me wrong...  again this is just my opinion...