2585 replies to this topic

[freneticamnesic]

Sindbad bringing the FIRE 

I wouldn't be so harsh on everyone, half the VP9 tables are conversions too...it's just bound to happen. That being said I really agree

VP10 lighting is amazing, when doing a conversion, get rid of all the lighting you had previously and do it in VP10 - this is a huge visual improvement

Primitives, of course these aren't new, but these combined with new materials give you such amazing control of how your table looks. Plus they can move so fluidly if you need them to!

Rubbers - these are also great. I think I used walls on Sharkey's for collision because I had not yet found a good balance for physics

WALL FRICTION

Kickers! It's been a struggle adapting but they're great once you get them working.

The plunger is also amazing. Not much else can be said about it

 

more lights:

don't forget you can change the color of the lights on the fly

you can change intensity on the fly

mess with modulation! I found some cool lighting effects working on Sharkey's by messing with modulation and intensity. I think higher modulation and more intensity can look great, just depends on the effect you desire.

 

 

Folks,

 

I was wondering very long whether I should post my thoughts or not. But this is a communication platform, so I'll do.

 

First of all: I don't want to make stress, and I don't want to play the moralizer. I downloaded yesterday some of the VP10 test tables, and I was very surprised to find a lot of tables that don't make use of all the VP10 features or capabilities. I found tables still using walls as rubbers, still making use of the absolutely no longer necessary b2b routine with all the timer stuff, not making use of the new plunger capabilities or the kicker capabilities, not using the new controller selection script, misusing whatever can be misused even VP10 is providing perfect solutions. Please understand me right: Everybody can build tables as she / he wants, but does this really help here in this thread? If I was a VP dev, and nobody would use demanded enhancements, for me this would be a slap in the face. Why don't we use all the new features and capabilities in our so called "VP10 test tables"?

 

UW did a lot of work in providing templates with a primitives for a lot of objects. Why don't we use them? I still saw for example targets built with walls (no singular instance). There's a layout guideline giving recommendations on how to get good results with the backdrop settings. It's totally ignored on many tables. I'll go a step further: Some tables were converted by simply modifying the lights handling - that's all. Please understand me right: I'm full of respect for the effort and the enthusiasm of all involved. But does this really help us now and here? 

 

For me it seems we are going to turn into a prize competition in speed conversion or mass conversion. Having only 20 tables which make full use of VP10 is a better choice than having 50 tables which don't. Maybe I'm wrong - yes, maybe ... Maybe you'll hate me now for this statement, but we always should keep in mind the original intend of this thread. A good base for being named "VP10 test table" is making use of VP10 features and capabilities.

[Sindbad]

... but that's not what I want. I don't want to light a fire. And I'm not saying everybody is doing wrong. Maybe some (or all) of you are reading this, but then it's because of my bad English.

 

I try to explain my message better in two sentences: "Guys, please check when building VP10 test tables, whether you are making use of all new VP10 features and capabilities. Sometimes I'm unsure if I'm doing right on my tables, so I'd like to look at other tables and see how it's solved there." 

Edited by Sindbad, 16 June 2015 - 05:26 PM.

[ClarkKent]

Just a quick report: after using textures 2048 max in the video prefs I never had no performance problems anymore in Kingpin, even not with highperformance=1.

Two things I noticed on watching a video playing the real machine: Only the mission insert "Kingpin" is red, PayOff Panic and Double Cross is orange. And the moving ramp is moving much quicker in real, almost snapping in.

[gtxjoe]

Lots of new features, not enough time.  I do want to use them but it takes time to learn and tinker with it.  

 

I still need to add the following to my tables or experiment further with

 

1) Global controller settings   http://www.vpforums....showtopic=30210   <---- No excuse here, I wrote it

2) Light transmission with transparent plastics to light them  <--- Anyone experimented with this yet?

3) Table scaling from fuzzel   <---- Where is that post anyways, I lost it

4) New kicker behavior

5) New ball trough and saucer scripts

6) Update to new primitive plunger

7) Updated ball collision/rolling routines <-- starting to use it

8) Rubbers <--- Question on this is the collision support on this enough to eliminate the use of invisible walls or am I safe to set the rubbers for cosmetics only (not collidable)

Edited by gtxjoe, 16 June 2015 - 05:47 PM.

[fuzzel]

5) check the layoutGuidline.txt in the VPX archive

8) it should be save to use the rubbers as is. That means no need for using a invisible wall for collision, just the rubber itself and activate the hit event.

[freneticamnesic]

Lots of new features, not enough time.  I do want to use them but it takes time to learn and tinker with it.  

 

I still need to add the following to my tables or experiment further with

 

1) Global controller settings   http://www.vpforums....showtopic=30210   <---- No excuse here, I wrote it

2) Light transmission with transparent plastics to light them  <--- Anyone experimented with this yet?

3) Table scaling from fuzzel   <---- Where is that post anyways, I lost it

4) New kicker behavior

5) New ball trough and saucer scripts

6) Update to new primitive plunger

7) Updated ball collision/rolling routines <-- starting to use it

8) Rubbers <--- Question on this is the collision support on this enough to eliminate the use of invisible walls or am I safe to set the rubbers for cosmetics only (not collidable)

 

Regarding #2, yes, on Fast Draw

Regarding #8, it works great, again on Fast Draw!

... but that's not what I want. I don't want to light a fire. And I'm not saying everybody is doing wrong. Maybe some (or all) of you are reading this, but then it's because of my bad English.

 

I try to explain my message better in two sentences: "Guys, please check when building VP10 test tables, whether you are making use of all new VP10 features and capabilities. Sometimes I'm unsure if I'm doing right on my tables, so I'd like to look at other tables and see how it's solved there." 

 

No man, don't worry about it! I didn't mean you're starting a fire, it's an idiom ..... like " fire = knowledge" - it's dumb, sorry lol

Edited by freneticamnesic, 16 June 2015 - 06:17 PM.

[hmueck]

"Guys, please check when building VP10 test tables, whether you are making use of all new VP10 features and capabilities. Sometimes I'm unsure if I'm doing right on my tables, so I'd like to look at other tables and see how it's solved there."

What are all the new features? Can we make a list of things to test? Like QA in a game company is doing?
What kinds of things are really new in VP10 and how are they working?

Materials are a wide field (little secrets like e.g. to be able to change an image on a ramp, the ramp material must have opacity enabled).
Lights (modulate and transmit. image and passthrough. bulb or no bulb. bulb height and the light disc shining downwards. reflections on the ball miles away).
Flashers (what does the imageB and the different modes do?)
Kickers (work in progress?!)
Elasticity and friction - leave at default? If not, how do you know what you're doing?
VPDMD
New Rolling ball sound and ball collision routines from JPSalas' tables.
New ball trough and saucer in core.vbs
.
.
.

Primitives for everything aren't new, but much more widely available thanks to the template table by unclewilly and the primitives collection from gtxjoe http://www.vpforums....=4#entry270936)

1) Global controller settings

forgot about that. will put it in my tables one by one.

 

2) Light transmission with transparent plastics to light them  <--- Anyone experimented with this yet?

Yes, in varying degrees on my tables (all but fastbreak and robot - those are just a quick conversions).

 

8) Rubbers <--- Question on this is the collision support on this enough to eliminate the use of invisible walls or am I safe to set the rubbers for cosmetics only (not collidable)

I don't use walls around my rubbers. No cosmetics, real action for my rubbers.

Edited by hmueck, 16 June 2015 - 06:40 PM.

[Slydog43]

randr, really loving the Mopar Madness table.  Great sounds, vids and just fun to play!

 

Humpty Dumpty is playing very slow for me, around 146FPS which I can only see when I hit ESC, otherwise its just a completely flickering (worse than normal).  Any ideas?

Edited by Slydog43, 16 June 2015 - 07:58 PM.

[randr]

Hmmm... Not sure. I'll look tonight. Plays fine on my system except I think collision on balls in trough case low fps? Thank you for testing it

[hauntfreaks]

speaking of the new plunger I personally love it, it's genius in my eyes....

here are the spring colors I made for the custom plunger in white and black tip, now i can just go to my resource folder and pick what color i want for each table

 

Custom Spring Colors

 

[goesta]

Hello Fren,

i really had a blast testing my slowdowns with Kingpin. A blast? - yes indeed, because i always had to play till the fight for Kingpin and the table did excacly what a great table should do...... i was nerved, excited, had some mental breakdowns, cursed alot, jumped from the chair - yes we can say fun!! I played half a day, because of my obviously lack ofplaying skills ;-)

 

I come to the conclusion that the stutter might not be just table related. I can have 320 frames, with flashing playfield 280 and get stutter. But with Phys5 tables i can have 600 frames and stutter too. So i have to investigate in a different direction. Maybe DOF, or the Backglass server makes trouble, or i have settings with the GTX iam not aware of.

I will search the forum more.

 

Its such a fun table!

Thx for the moment

Edited by goesta, 17 June 2015 - 02:30 AM.

[Pinhead45]

With all these recent tables like the latest fastdraw, truck stop, kingpin or buck rogers when it loads it gives me an error "could not uncompress primitive vertex data" and refuses to load. Something I missed? I'm running a 750ti sc on windows 8.1

Edited by Pinhead45, 17 June 2015 - 06:06 AM.

[Talantyyr]

Nice spring textures, hauntfreaks!

Maybe they could be added to VP10 with a dropdown menu at the plunger object or something

[toxie]

With all these recent tables like the latest fastdraw, truck stop, kingpin or buck rogers when it loads it gives me an error "could not uncompress primitive vertex data" and refuses to load. Something I missed? I'm running a 750ti sc on windows 8.1

 

did you mix different VP versions at some point?

cause the later VP10s use primitive compression (as a lot of people simply put .vpx for download, i thought this would be a good idea to make the dload faster).

try re-downloading the tables in question and loading them with the very latest VP10 build.

 

if that still fails, please get back to me.

[Pin-Pete]

Six Million Dollar Man won't load. I get an error message. Line 89 object missing "Controller".

[hmueck]

Six Million Dollar Man won't load. I get an error message. Line 89 object missing "Controller".

and which controller do you use? maybe directb2s is pre-configured and you didn't install it?
if you selected controller "vpinmame" and it's missing, you don't have vpinmame installed.........

[Pin-Pete]

I think it's the directb2s controller.

[hmueck]

I think it's the directb2s controller.

so it's okay now?

[Pin-Pete]

Nope. Still the same message.

[hmueck]

replace
Set Controller=CreateObject("B2S.Server")
with
Set Controller=CreateObject("VPinMAME.Controller")