1630 replies to this topic

[mjr]

PinballY is scanning my tables dir. How do I disable that and only use my database files? 

 

You can't disable that, since it's pretty central to the whole design.  But if you want to filter what shows up in the UI so that it only includes tables with database entries, open the settings dialog (press letter O), go to the Game Wheel page, and check the box Hide unconfigured games in the main game list.

(You can always bring them back temporarily by going back to the settings and un-checking the box, or by selecting Show Unconfigured Games in the operator menu [press letter O], which filters to show only the tables without database entries.  The latter is useful for scanning for installed tables that you haven't set up yet, so that you can add them to the database, which you can do directly through the Edit Game Details dialog, reachable via Game Setup in the operator menu.  That eliminates the need to edit the XML files by hand or via a separate program.  But of course you can still edit the XML by hand if you prefer doing things the old-fashioned way.)

[Slydog43]

Mjr, thanks for your quick reply, yeah I started reading through your awesome documentation and found the answers there.  Sorry to waste your time, great Front End.

 

I did find an issue with 1 of my cabinets though.  It has a KADE encoder in it and Pinball Y doesn't seem to see the gamepad button presses.  Very strange as PinballY and ever other program seems to work with it.  Not a big deal, I will change out the encoder.   Maybe DirectX vs DirectInput thing?  Obviously windows does see the presses under devices.

 

Only issue left for me is how to have multiple "lists", say favorites 1, favorites 2, etc.  Is there a way to have them (ie multiple xml files but not have PinballY join them together.  Thanks

Edited by Slydog43, 17 June 2020 - 03:56 PM.

[mjr]

Only issue left for me is how to have multiple "lists", say favorites 1, favorites 2, etc.  Is there a way to have them (ie multiple xml files but not have PinballY join them together.

 

Take a look at the help section on Usage Tips and scroll down to Categories.  That's the PinballY way to do custom tags/lists like what I think you have in mind.

[Slydog43]

Thanks for the response, Have the categories going now, but don't know where that info is stored and how.  Is there any chance of ever adding in the ability of having multiple XML files to do almost the same thing.  I have a DBMS system now that I wrote that outputs many different XML files for my different "categories" or lists of tables.  I really like your Frontend and would change over all my cabs to it if I could get this feature.   Something along the lines of every xml file can go into another category or something like that.   I ask since I don't want to manually do this for each of my cabs (I have 7 now and working on my 8th VP station/cabinet  and 3 r vr rigs, so any automation is great).  I just export my xml files from my "main" pincab to all my stations and I'm good to go.  Thanks Mike

Edited by Slydog43, 18 June 2020 - 10:17 AM.

[mjr]

> Have the categories going now, but don't know where that info is

> stored and how.  Is there any chance of ever adding in the ability

> of having multiple XML files to do almost the same thing. 

 

It works like PBX as far as the first category for a given game goes: you'll see the individual XML files with the category names in the database folders.  So wish granted.  For a game that has more than one category tag, the additional categories are stored in the GameStats.csv file that you'll find the in the main PinballY folder.

 

If you want to reproduce one machine's setup on another machine, just copy the whole media and database folder trees, and copy the Settings.txt and GameStats.csv files from the PinballY folder.  (Or just the latter, if you want to customize the settings per machine.)

[djlunchbox]

MJR how can you make a specific window always remain on top of other windows?

So Im using these awesome dmd underlay videos that center the dmd and have an active video around it. Im using them by making them topper videos. However when i launch PBY the dmd window appears under the topper video making me have to click on the playfield and select Show DMD. Sometimes when i exit a game it pops on top but 95% of the time its underneath.

So my query is can you possibly add a new window that will accept video files like a misc window so in case i add a topper screen i can still use it or have some way of making the dmd window always on top?

These are the underlay video files

https://mega.nz/fold...VRrAasH1wK92pZg

[mjr]

> MJR how can you make a specific window always remain on top of other windows?

 

There's no "checkbox option" for that, but you could probably accomplish it with a little Javascript.  These help sections should be relevant:

 

Javascript scripting > System Objects > Window Objects (see: setWindowPos)

Javascript scripting > Events > Event Types > LaunchEvent

[Slydog43]

Thanks for all your recent support.  Any chance that directinput could be added?  I think that is what a few of my encoder boards use ( a Cthulhu multi encoder).  Not sure that is is, but PinballY will not recognize gamepad inputs, yet windows does as does a web gamepad tester.  I think its Xinput vs DirectInput, but I might be wrong.  What protocol does PinballY support?   Thanks

 

Crazy stuff, I have wired up a pinball controller to have both bluetooth capability or wired (although the wired doesn't work with PinballY, but bluetooth does).  I have it this was so I can use it with an Oculus Quest (but having other connectivity issues but thats another story).

 

 

Mean time I guess I will use Joy2Key to emulate a keyboard for when I'm in PinballY, VPX seems to recognize the encoder without issue.

[mjr]

Slydog43 - I'm afraid I'm not interested in adding DirectInput, as it's been deprecated by Microsoft for a long time.  The reason they no longer recommend it is that DI is layered on top of Raw Input, which is what PBY uses.  So anything that DI can access can also be reached by PBY.  I'm not sure why your game pad isn't being recognized - the only thing I can recommend for that sort of compatibility issue is that you're going to have to look at it in the Visual Studio debugger.  I can't do that on my end since I don't have your device to test it with.

[Onevox]

I'm just now getting into the details and nuance of setting up PinballY and understanding its possibilities, and have a couple of questions;
 
1. I'm not finding instructions on removing a game from the system. I had two LOTR versions, but I now only want one. So I removed one from the Tables folder in Visual Pinball, and set up the correct one in pinbally. When I try to delete game details on the the other in pinbally, the correct one reverts back to not setup (wheel logo goes away). When I reselect the IPBD entry for the correct one, I get both in my wheel. Is this an edit the XML file thing, or am I missing something?
2. Is there a way to suppress the wheel on launch? I updated to the new version and my wheel and logos persist on screen while a larger game logo appears on screen and overlapping the same game wheel logo during launch.
3. Can I move the placement of status text like "loading" and "exiting" to a fixed position on screen? Its location seems to be dependent on the dimensions of the game logo, sometimes inside the info box, sometimes not. I'd like for it to be in a fixed position the bottom of the screen near the lockdown bar.
4. Can the info box go away on game loading?
 
Thanks as always. Apologies for redundant questions.

So I think I figured out #1 by deleting game details for all like named games from the system. Then removing unwanted games from VPX
table folder, and re-reading the game as unconfigured, and setting it up.

Edited by Onevox, 09 July 2020 - 08:25 PM.

[Vercingetorix]

Here's a strange issue. I just started test driving the VPX 10.7 beta, and when I'm using it with PinballY, tables that use pup packs and/or UltraDMD no longer exit cleanly. Sometimes they just leave the pup player and/or UltraDMD running; sometimes I get a bunch of "invalid pointer operation" popups behind the main PinballY window. If I add a .bat file to kill pup player on exit then it still gives me pointer errors. If I swap back to the 10.6 exe then this behavior completely goes away.

 

This does not happen when I launch tables directly from the 10.7 editor or from PinballX. Only with the combination of the 10.7 exe and PinballY.

 

Obviously this is not really a current problem as I can just use 10.6, but it might be an issue down the line if 10.7 continues not to play nicely with PinballY.

 

Thanks!

[Thalamus]

Believe there where some talk about the process off vpx didn't present itself with the same process name as before. But, I believe that it was fixed ?! I'm still not using 10.7 often, it is more for editing tables at the moment. I recommend that you do the same, but, yeah - nice feedback as it obviously might need some extra eyes.

[mjr]

Believe there where some talk about the process off vpx didn't present itself with the same process name as before.

 

Process name doesn't come into it at all, if you're using the normal "close window" method for exiting the game, since PBY just sends an SC_CLOSE to the child process's window.  More likely, VP has multiple windows open, and the one that happens to be in the foreground when PBY sends the SC_CLOSE can't cope with an SC_CLOSE, as suggested by...

 

sometimes I get a bunch of "invalid pointer operation" popups behind the main PinballY window

 

Probably some internal bookkeeping in VP gets confused when the windows are closed in an order it doesn't expect and makes VP crash.  I haven't been following the VP repos closely, but I get the impression they've been revamping their window manager, so it's probably a little shaking out they need to do there.

[Thalamus]

Ok. Well, from 10.7 beta I just picked up some chatter about the what I believe is a different solution to know when the game is exited. I'm not a programmer, and since I don't run that frontend for anything else than pup enabled stuff, then I don't know. But, I have a feeling that there is some polling of process names going on on pupper. And maybe that is why there are are some issues running pby with pup packs on pby yet ?

 

Personally I don't care. I just run pup pack in popper. And the rest in pby. Not even a percent of tables.

Edited by Thalamus, 27 July 2020 - 10:48 PM.

[mjr]

Ok. Well, from 10.7 beta I just picked up some chatter about the what I believe is a different solution to know when the game is exited. I'm not a programmer, and since I don't run that frontend for anything else than pup enabled stuff, then I don't know. But, I have a feeling that there is some polling of process names going on on pupper. And maybe that is why there are are some issues running pby with pup packs on pby yet ?

 

Could be - I was only talking about what PinballY does.  If the problem only occurs when running pinup games with VP, then the problem certainly could be in the interaction between pinup and VP.  Pinup runs as a separate process (actually two processes, I think), so maybe it does have to play some games with process monitoring. It really shouldn't have to; the way it should work is that the VP script should close out the pinup subprocess explicitly via  Controller.Stop call or something like that.  But maybe there's some process monitoring as well as a backup in case the table script fails to do that.  I can only guess since that's opaque closed source.

[Thalamus]

https://www.vpforums...=44135&p=452209 - not saying you should implement it, but, pby in r20 - for the few tables I've tried, often gets stuck on table exit. Personally, I seldom play these tables, but, there is one that is really worth trying out. https://vpinball.com...goblet-of-fire/

It seems to me that pinup player is snooping vpx process in some way. If the backglass video is still playing. Killing off vpx process will often also close the video. It could maybe be a good idea to implement killing of process as a flag in config ?

 

And, by the way. Congratulations on 1.0 release.

Edited by Thalamus, 28 July 2020 - 10:43 AM.

[NailBuster]

There's nothing 'special' done...we just recently discussed this on this thread:  https://www.vpforums...605#entry453290

 

@Thalamus your links was a problem with 10.7 and all/any tables not closing.  They fixed vpx window title in most recent builds to be like before.

 

Just an FYI.  but theres a VPX 'issue' in 10.7 that some are running into that randomly on closing,.,,,vpx is asking "table changes made, would you like to save file" prompt.   That will screw up stuffs with closing messages.

[vogliadicane]

First of all I love PBY. One thing, I'd suggest, though:

 

An option for disabeling "force true fullscreen" when recording VPX table videos .It is easy, VPX exe must only be executed with the argument -DisableTrueFullSreen. Btw, this does NOT change settings in VPX.

 

Why? Many people like me run VPX in disable true full screen mode. But PBY (at least to my experience) can only record playfield videos, if this is turned off. It is frustrating, that you always have to turn off true full screen in VPX video settings before you can record a playfield video.

 

Oh and a second question: Can I replace the rating star imsages with custom ones? I didn't find any star images in the folders to replace, so can I and how?

[mjr]

An option for disabeling "force true fullscreen" when recording VPX table videos .It is easy, VPX exe must only be executed with the argument -DisableTrueFullSreen. Btw, this does NOT change settings in VPX.

 

I wouldn't want to hard-code anything like that into PinballY itself, since it's obviously important to minimize hard-coded dependencies on VP.  But this is why there's Javascript!  You should be able to do that with a tiny bit of scripting.  I think what you'd want to do is listen for the prelaunch event, and inject the extra parameter there, when the game is a VPX game and the launch is happening in capture mode.  For details, see the help under Javascript scripting > Events > Event Types > LaunchEvent.  You might also want to take a look at one or two of the worked examples under Javascript scripting > Worked Examples to get a feel for how these things work in general.  Here's an untested first draft of what it might look like:

mainWindow.on("prelaunch", ev => {
    if (ev.command == command.CaptureGo && ev.game.system.systemClass == "VPX")
        ev.overrides.params = ev.game.system.params + " /DisableTrueFullScreen';
});

[vogliadicane]

^^^very cool @mjr your code worked almost out of the box, only /DisableTrueFullscreen had to be replaced by -DisableTrueFullScreen. And a ' by a " (not sure, if Javascript does discriminate both)

 

So, the working code is:

mainWindow.on("prelaunch", ev => {
    if (ev.command == command.CaptureGo && ev.game.system.systemClass == "VPX")
        ev.overrides.params = ev.game.system.params + " -DisableTrueFullScreen";
});

Thanks a lot. Makes recording soooo much easier.
 

Edited by vogliadicane, 31 August 2020 - 05:27 PM.