165 replies to this topic

[knightrdrx]

I don't know what i have done, all of a sudden some tables launch with pinup as minimized and i see the taskbar showing on my desktop screen and pinvol icon is underlined and vpx icon flashing as if pinvol caused the play field to minimize and i only see the desktop.

i did mess up the global volume and messed with the windows volume..ugh that messed it all up.  

 

i just deleted the table from the .ini settings file and loaded it up again and no problem...then i adjusted the table volume...maybe a vol setting went out of range or something..i wish i knew why.

 

i'm having a hard time finding a vol. balance because if i set windows too high some sound clips in these media packs are too loud. such as the i am now loading your table please wait. not every sound can be lowered. a new loud sound or low sound keeps coming along that requires an adjustment.

Edited by knightrdrx, 22 June 2019 - 04:55 AM.

[Thalamus]

I don't think PinVol is making problems for you. But, you could just easily rename the ini file that is inside the pinvol folder and reboot to make sure it is not related. If you don't know what happened, we surely don't.

[knightrdrx]

youareright it isn't pinvol i think it was the launch timing in pinup...i changed 2 of the 3 numbers in the launch script and it may have solved the problem.

 

 

....

 vpx emulator setup and modify a line in the launch script. You will see a line like 'vpxstarter.exe 10 10 60' you want to change that to 'vpxstarter 10 15 60'… you can even try 20 instead of 15 if focus issues still happen.

[Thalamus]

 

I don't run exclusive fullscreen on a daily basis so I can't really tell. I have however experienced almost 100% crashes on double clicking a vpx table. 

 

Thanks.  You mean just double-clicking the .vpx file in Windows Explorer to launch the game in play mode, right?

 

And crashing here means that you get the Windows dialog saying "Visual Pinball has stopped working and must be closed"?  Or something else?

 

 

Hi mjr !

 

I know from somewhere you talked about you might be willing to look at the at91jit problem. I just didn't find the actual post. We discussed this around post 50 in this thread.

I know, you are probably on holiday or busy with something else. But, I've made a archive with a table, the rom uses, nvram, registry, crash dump and a bit of info. The exact combination I've packed together seems to give a 100% crash if I double click the vpx file. Table loads, no special crash info except dump files. Open it via file -> open at it works time and time again. I can even start and stop the game a few times without issues. Please PM me for a url if you feel up for it.

 

So, is it a at91jit problem when I can double click the vpx file - but, if I have turned off "use external dmd" and it loads ok ? @Freezy / @MJR / @Toxie / @DjRobX ??

Edited by Thalamus, 14 July 2019 - 11:30 AM.

[mjr]

Thalamus - excellent, that's just the kind of "crashes every time" test case I've been looking for.  I'll drop you a PM and get the file.

 

> So, is it a at91jit problem when I can double click the vpx file - but, if

> I have turned off "use external dmd" and it loads ok ?

 

Yeah, it could still be a jit problem even though the DMD mode affects it.  Or it could just as well be a problem in the freezy code.  If it's something like a stray pointer write, which it probably is, it can depend on the specific arrangement of what's in memory, so something seemingly unrelated (such as loading an "innocent bystander" DLL) can change the behavior.  It's not that the bug isn't happening in the non-crash case, it's that the bug occurs but trashes some area of memory that just happens to be benign in the non-crashy case, because the critical thing getting hit in the crashy case is located somewhere else in memory.  This is also what makes it fiendishly hard to get these things to reproduce on different machines - if it depends on the exact memory configuration on your machine, it might not reproduce on my machine even with the identical test case, because Windows might not arrange memory in exactly the same way on our two machines even with identical program code.  So you might still have to ship me your machine to get this to reproduce for me.   But let's give it a try and see if we can make it work without resorting to that.

[Thalamus]

LOL !! Thanks for at least giving it a go Mike.

[flstclasic]

I’m having the exact same issue as @boslaw was having starting at post #35 in this thread. Was any fix ever figured out on this issue?

Below is the last post on the issue from mjr. I also contacted Zebs on this issue. He did not have any answer as to why it doesn’t work.

 

 

DIView sees only one of the buttons (the same button that is recognized by PinVol)

 

Ah, that's probably the whole issue, then, since PinVol uses DirectInput.  If DirectInput can't see the other buttons, PinVol won't see them either.  The best bet might be to run it by Zeb and see if he knows what's going on - it might just be a matter of configuration settings on the device.

 

As for Visual Studio, yes, you can download the free Community Edition from Microsoft:  

 

https://visualstudio...m/vs/community/

 

If you haven't used it before there can be a bit of a learning curve, so you might want to hold off on that until checking with Zeb about device configuration.  I don't think you're going to find anything with Visual Studio other than confirming what we already know, now that we know DI itself can't see the button.

 

The original post.

 

Hi MJR, I love your pinvol utility but I'm having a little difficulty mapping joystick buttons with it. I am using a zebsboards plunger with key encoder. In the control panel for the encoder I can see that I have mapped joystick 1 and joystick 2 to my volume control buttons. I'm using joystick buttons because those are the only keys remaining avail in my zebs key encoder. However, when I try to map those joystick buttons in pinvol, I'm forced to choose windows modifier keys (e.g. shift, alt, win, ctrl) - pinvol never lets me just map to joystick buttons. I do have the option turned on in pinvol to allow joystick buttons but it doesn't make a difference.

 

Thanks, Bos

 

[mjr]

flstclasic - try continuing to post #75.

[flstclasic]

The conversation picked back up here, unless the solution is to revert back to V1.4?

 

 

 

Here you go:

  Found non-joystick device: Zebsboards PinCab Controller, DirectInput type=Gamepad/257, USB usage=1.5

 

Yep, that explains it.  It's declaring itself to be a gamepad, not a joystick - DirectInput considers them to be two different things.  (As does USB - that's the "usage" bit.)  The DI scan that was asking to find joysticks was happily ignoring because of that.

 

Okay, I just added gamepads to the acceptable types in the scan.  The next question is whether the C# DI joystick class will accept this device type.  I think it will, since they're pretty similar types at the USB level, but we'll see... these things are rarely that easy.  Here's a new test version with that change:

 

http://mjrnet.org/pi...ol-20180907.zip

 

 

Hi MJR, I updated my Zebs plunger from v1 to v3 (new hardware design). PinVol sees this as a gamepad, but the interesting thing now is that pinvol recognizes the button input called by Zeb as Joystick Button 1 but does not recognize the input called Joystick Button 2. I've confirmed that the button is wired correctly and is sending a signal to the computer - just Pinvol can't see it for some reason. Any thoughts?  Thanks as always for reading.

 

[mjr]

The conversation picked back up here, unless the solution is to revert back to V1.4?

 

No, the solution should be to use the latest software.  If you are and it's not working, I'm not sure what's going on.

And you should check the log, to see if the device is being discovered.

[boslaw]

I am also back to problems with pinvol and vp10.6. My pinvol is the latest from this thread.

 

When PinballX loads, I can change volume with my joystick buttons (mapped through Zebs plunger) through Pinvol.

 

As soon as a table loads in VPX 10.6, I lose ability to change volume with my buttons/Pinvol. Happens whether i load a table directly in VPX or load through PinballX. 

 

I checked DIView and confirmed that windows is seeing both joystick buttons. 

[boslaw]

resolved my issue by deleting all text files in the pinvol folder. Settings in the file all looked correct but there must have been some error somewhere

[boslaw]

And the problem is back again - pinvol works in PinballX but not VPX for any tables. No idea how to fix. I've deleted the settings file, re-installed, remapped my joystick buttons, checked them both with DI.

[mjr]

boslaw - wish I had a guess at what was wrong.  It looks like the solution last time *appeared* to be "deleted all text files in the pinvol folder", but evidently that was just a coincidence and not what actually what fixed it.  (Which doesn't entirely surprise me, since I can't think of any reason that should have fixed anything.  My not understanding it doesn't rule it out, either, but the apparent irreproducibility probably does.)

 

If you can think of anything else you might also have tried last time, you might try that again - since you got it working again last time, there must have been *something* that changed to fix it.

 

Or, if you can think of anything you changed recently around the same time that it broke again, maybe try undoing that.

Edited by mjr, 01 February 2020 - 10:11 PM.

[boslaw]

It’s very strange. It all stopped working when I updated to 10.6. I made a lot of changes around that time so I have no idea what could be causing the problem. It seems to be something with 10.6 since it still works correctly in pinballx. I’ll keep playing around with it.


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[Outhere]

Do you have some programs running as administrator if you do try turning them all off

[boslaw]

Most of my progs are running as admin I think. I thought that was preferred. Why would that affect pinvol. Any specific apps that would create a problem?


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[mjr]

Most of my progs are running as admin I think. I thought that was preferred. 

 

Some people will indeed tell you that, but I feel just the opposite.  My thoughts on this, under "Should I use 'Run as Administrator' for everything?", here: http://mjrnet.org/pi...hp?sid=software

 

In short, Windows walls off elevated (Admin mode) programs so that other programs can't interact with them, because when you "Run as administrator", you're telling Windows that this is a sensitive system task doing sensitive system things that need to be protected.  Windows kind of sets up a Secret Service security cordon around the Admin programs so that the unwashed masses can't get to them.  

 

For example, other programs can't see keyboard input while an Admin program is running.

 

 

Why would that affect pinvol. 

 

See above.

 

 

Any specific apps that would create a problem?

 

All of them.  Ideally, nothing should be running in Admin mode except special system programs from Microsoft, like RegEdit.

Edited by mjr, 02 February 2020 - 02:18 AM.

[boslaw]

Ok I will give this a try tomorrow, thanks very much for taking the time to reply


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[Outhere]

@mjr would be more a expert on this, I do not run any programs as administrator and I have no problems

I run by UAC  setting 2nd one from the top (User account control)

https://www.vpforums...=42803&p=434713