12 replies to this topic

[Bob5453]

Flipper Tester Demo



Version: 2011
Category: VP 9.x Originals

Author(s): Bob5453

Description:
Flipper Options Demo
This Demo includes 5 different sets of flippers that you can pop up by pressing a key and try out to get an idea of where the ball is going when you flip them. These flipper settings vary greatly between each other, but the results are interesting.

Flipper set 1 is from my BoBsBOP table

Flipper set 2 is from Gorgar

Flipper Set 3 is from LOTR

Flipper set 4 is from Sinbad

Flipper set 5 is from the Default table.

All Flipper option settings are visible while using them and you can easily modify them in the editor or create a new one with the Default flipper to test.

I made it somewhat of a game, but it really just shoots out balls for you to try to aim at the 82 kicker cups surrounding the table.

Game 1 drops the balls alternating onto each flipper and Game 2 shoots the ball alternating to each flipper.

I made this to see how the different speeds and flipper settings effected the shots. I thought I might find a nice combination of settings, but without any objects on the playfield, you will soon see that VP flippers don't compare to real flippers much at any settings. I was going to make the flippers flip automatically with a trigger and adjust the flip time with each flip, but after getting this far, I didn't think I needed to do that to come to my own conclusions about the settings.

Authors do a great job of making tables and the flippers have to be set to either hit shots, making tables easy or set to not make shots, making it more random, but it doesn't seem possible to do both.

The results that you will see are actually quite interesting.

I will try any settings posted.



View File

Submitted by Bob5453, on Dec 29 2011, 04:47 PM

Attached Files

•  FlipperTesterSS_FS.jpg   351.81KB   25 downloads
•  FlipperTester_FS.zip   1.42MB   19 downloads

Edited by Bob5453, 30 December 2011 - 01:25 AM.

[Arcade4]

Cool idea.

[settingsons]

That's a fantastic idea Bob being able to switch between flippers quickly within a table- looking forward to play with this. Cheers

[maceman]

...an excellent idea...and worth adding to as different things are created.....

Maceman

[analog999]

Bob, can you make a full screen version?

[Bob5453]

Bob, can you make a full screen version?

I Added a FS version to the first post. I was thinking FS when I made this as you can see by the keys I used. The ctrl keys are the Magna Save keys, but a person could change the keycodes in the script.

The demo is really just a way to see the shots that are possible or can be made with flippers and their settings. You will quickly see that you can't use the same settings on all tables.

[JAM0]

Thanks for this important work, Bob.

[hassanchop]

fantastic idea!

[Bob5453]

The results that you will see are actually quite interesting.

Maybe only interesting to me.

You quickly see that the flippers have only so many possible angles, so you can't shoot at some points on the table. You can hit more shots with the ball being trapped, but on Game 2, with a moving ball coming from the same angle and speed every time, your shots are really limited. Sweet shots are few and far between, way less that I thought would be possible. You can change any of the settings you want, but the sweet shots still are limited to a select few angles, it's just that the angle itself is changed.

I don't know how many actual positions Randy programmed to be possible on a flipper shot, but it seems like we could double or triple that number in the source code and have flippers that could actually hit many more shots and thus become more realistic.

[maceman]

Thanx for the FS Bob! Very Interesting!! Some shots are very hard (impossible) without ,say, tilting.......so this tells us alot. You need multiball and collision to get the other holes perhaps

Excellent test table!!

[JAM0]

The results that you will see are actually quite interesting.

Maybe only interesting to me.

You quickly see that the flippers have only so many possible angles, so you can't shoot at some points on the table. You can hit more shots with the ball being trapped, but on Game 2, with a moving ball coming from the same angle and speed every time, your shots are really limited. Sweet shots are few and far between, way less that I thought would be possible. You can change any of the settings you want, but the sweet shots still are limited to a select few angles, it's just that the angle itself is changed.

I don't know how many actual positions Randy programmed to be possible on a flipper shot, but it seems like we could double or triple that number in the source code and have flippers that could actually hit many more shots and thus become more realistic.

I haven't checked it out yet -- so how many "sweet shots" are there from each flipper, 3 or 4? If so it sounds like it would be prudent for authors (or us individually) to set the flippers so that the main shots are "sweet". I know there has been a philosophy discussed of not doing that in the interest of keeping things "real". I can see the dilemma -- either a table is seen as "easy" or "impossible". My preference is for "easy" at this point until the flippers are capable of executing more numbers of shots.

Edited by JAM0, 31 December 2011 - 06:19 PM.

[unclewilly]

Is anyone still working on the source?
Id love to see more angles implemented but when i look at the source my head starts to hurt

nice idea bob. Thanks for this.

I would imagine that table slope, gravity, d friction and d speed effect this as well

I usually set a range for my min and max slope and when i change the global difficulty, it changes the slope and effects the flipper shot angles

[Rawd]

This is an awesome idea Bob.