17 replies to this topic

[SunWizard]

I made this thread to share the different tips I have learned from converting tables to run properly on VP9. Its worth converting tables since the new physics and many other features are great! Thanks to all who worked on it. Post other tips you have learned and I will add them to this 1st post so we have a list in one thread instead of buried deep in many threads.

1. Flippers need rubber offset height and rubber width added, try 8 and 30 and adjust from there.
2. Ramps, wire rails, and narrow lanes or passages may need widened or raised, since the ball is now larger, 50 units wide.
3. Overlapping transparent EMreels don't work yet (coming soon.)
4. If you make a table for VP9, some things aren't backward compatible, you can add this to warn people who try to run it on VP8.1:
add to script under LoadVPM():
If vpbuildversion >9000 Then MsgBox "Warning! VP version 9 or higher required,"& vbNewLine & "this table may not work properly."
5. New kicker type invisible looks better than kicker hidden or hole.
6. Draw in front and draw behind order makes more difference than before.
7. Something is strange with captive ball stacks, they don't work the same, don't know why yet.
8. Put as many of your decals as possible on the playfield, so that when people use the new features for scaling and rotating the display for 16:9 or cabinets, it doesn't require a full remake of the table to move all the decals (the backdrop doesn't scale/rotate the same as playfield.)
9. VP9 has top-down transparency - you can have it transparent on walls and ramps on the top side now, this can make some graphics show whats below when it didn't before, so you may need to change some transparency settings.
10. Sometimes ramps dropping to the inlanes the ball will get stuck and buzz. Caused when the drop uses 2 kickers, and you need to make the bottom one (its not enabled) table height instead of up in the air (choose surface "none" or playfield.) To see the bottom kicker, sometimes you need to right click and choose "draw in back" on the top kicker.
11. If a table uses table.slope it will cause a script error, fixed by using table.slopemin and table.slopemax, usually set to the same value.
12. VUKs behave different in VP9. Some I get working by trial and error with different angles and/or increased power. Some I had to put an invisible small ramp at an angle above the VUK, so the ball hits it on the way up and bounces off sideways onto the wire rails. Download my Tommy VP9 version here to see an example of that.

General tips to run VP9:
1. If you have rendering errors like missing flippers or table parts, try both check and uncheck hardware graphic rendering, make sure you have directX 9 (Start-Run dxdiag) and a graphic card compatible with DX9. You can also experiment with your settings under Control panel- Display- Settings-Advanced-Troubleshooting, to adjust your amount of hardware acceleration.
2. Unplug most joysticks, they make the table slope wacky. Or uncheck the box on the table options panel for PBW accelerometer and save the table.

Here are tips to make a 16:9 rotated table from a 4:3 normal one.
First solve the issues I list above.
To rotate, Click on the backdrop and put:
Inclination 45
FOV 0
Rotation 270

Use Table-Image Manager-Export for the backdrop decals and reels and rotate them in a graphics program like photoshop. Then use Image manager-ReImport From to bring them back in, then position them where you like them on the screen. Its a slow process of hitting play, see where they appear, make adjustments, repeat.
Export the playfield to photoshop and enlarge the canvas by 2x, with the old playfield image on the right half of the screen. On the left half you can put backbox images you want, or you can use decals on the backdrop screen left side. On the physics section of the table, make the table width double what it was. Then use a window selection of all the objects on the playfield and right click, translate by x of 1024 or whatever the playfield width was to move them all onto the right half of the screen.

Adjust the x and y offet and scale on the backrop screen by trial and error for exact positioning.

To rotate and position the DMD
Add these lines to the script and adjust the x, y and sizes to what you prefer. To find where to put them, hit Script, ctrl-F and find .gamename, then below that add:

.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_pos_x")=5
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_pos_y")=870
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_width")=600
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_height")=150
use:
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("rol")=1
for rotated left, "ror" for rotated right, or:
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("rol")=0
for non rotated screens.

Replace "tablename" with whatever is after .gamename=
If the line says controller.gamename=, and there isn't a "with controller" line above it, then add "controller" to each of the lines, like:

controller.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_pos_x")=5

Edited by SunWizard, 06 April 2009 - 02:10 AM.

[destruk]

Transparent EMReels DO work. They've always worked. However, you are unable to have EMReels overlay other EMReels if they are transparent. That is the issue. EMReels work as they did in VP7.

[toxie]

Shouldn't that be

If vpbuildversion <9000 Then MsgBox "Warning! VP version 9 or higher required,"& vbNewLine & "this table may not work properly"

?

apart from that many many thanks for the useful tips!!!

[SunWizard]

Shouldn't that be

If vpbuildversion <9000 Then MsgBox "Warning! VP version 9 or higher required,"& vbNewLine & "this table may not work properly"

No, the buildversion# are wacked:
VP9 here is build 2000. Randy's vp8.1 is 9506. Our beta 9.1 so far -- unreleased, is 616.

[Bob5453]

Isn't VP 9000, like 8991 versions into the future?

Edited by Bob5453, 03 February 2009 - 10:09 PM.

[SunWizard]

Here are tips to make a 16:9 rotated table from a 4:3 normal one. First solve the issues I list in the 1st post.
To rotate, Click on the backdrop and put:
Inclination 45
FOV 0
Rotation 270

Use Table-Image Manager-Export for the backdrop decals and reels and rotate them in a graphics program like photoshop. Then use Image manager-ReImport From to bring them back in, then position them where you like them on the screen. Its a slow process of hitting play, see where they appear, make adjustments, repeat.
Export the playfield to photoshop and enlarge the canvas by 2x, with the old playfield image on the right half of the screen. On the left half you can put backbox images you want, or you can use decals on the backdrop screen left side. On the physics section of the table, make the table width double what it was. Then use a window selection of all the objects on the playfield and right click, translate by x of 1024 or whatever the playfield width was to move them all onto the right half of the screen.

Adjust the x and y offet and scale on the backrop screen by trial and error for exact positioning.

Edited by SunWizard, 15 February 2009 - 05:16 PM.

[wtiger]

Thanks SunWizard. Those instructions will be very helpful.

[xzotic]

Noah - Can you make this a sticky please? Or copy in tutorials... Had to dig around to find it. Great instructions.

[SunWizard]

Sometimes tables with ramps dropping to the inlanes the ball will get stuck and buzz. Most of the ones that buzz for me are because the ramp drop uses 2 kickers, and you need to make the bottom one (its not enabled) table height instead of up in the air (choose surface "none" or playfield.) To see the bottom kicker, sometimes you need to right click and choose "draw in back" on the top kicker.

When the bottom kicker is up in the air, the ball gets stuck and bounces quickly between the 2 kickers since they are too close together vertically to handle the bigger ball diameter of VP9.

[TheMcD]

Temporary sticky until I get confirmation that it's a good topic to sticky.

The McD

[chas]

I made this thread to share the different tips I have learned from converting tables to run properly on VP9. Its worth converting tables since the new physics and many other features are great! Thanks to all who worked on it. Post other tips you have learned and I will add them to this 1st post so we have a list in one thread instead of buried deep in many threads.

1. Flippers need rubber offset height and rubber width added, try 8 and 30 and adjust from there.
2. Ramps, wire rails, and narrow lanes or passages may need widened or raised, since the ball is now larger, 50 units wide.
3. Overlapping transparent EMreels don't work yet (coming soon.)
4. If you make a table for VP9, some things aren't backward compatible, you can add this to warn people who try to run it on VP8.1:
add to script under LoadVPM():
If vpbuildversion >9000 Then MsgBox "Warning! VP version 9 or higher required,"& vbNewLine & "this table may not work properly."
5. New kicker type invisible looks better than kicker hidden or hole.
6. Draw in front and draw behind order makes more difference than before.
7. Something is strange with captive ball stacks, they don't work the same, don't know why yet.
8. Put as many of your decals as possible on the playfield, so that when people use the new features for scaling and rotating the display for 16:9 or cabinets, it doesn't require a full remake of the table to move all the decals (the backdrop doesn't scale/rotate the same as playfield.)
9. VP9 has top-down transparency - you can have it transparent on walls and ramps on the top side now, this can make some graphics show whats below when it didn't before, so you may need to change some transparency settings.
10. Sometimes ramps dropping to the inlanes the ball will get stuck and buzz. Caused when the drop uses 2 kickers, and you need to make the bottom one (its not enabled) table height instead of up in the air (choose surface "none" or playfield.) To see the bottom kicker, sometimes you need to right click and choose "draw in back" on the top kicker.
11. If a table uses table.slope it will cause a script error, fixed by using table.slopemin and table.slopemax, usually set to the same value.
12. VUKs behave different in VP9. Some I get working by trial and error with different angles and/or increased power. Some I had to put an invisible small ramp at an angle above the VUK, so the ball hits it on the way up and bounces off sideways onto the wire rails. Download my Tommy VP9 version here to see an example of that.

General tips to run VP9:
1. If you have rendering errors like missing flippers or table parts, try both check and uncheck hardware graphic rendering, make sure you have directX 9 (Start-Run dxdiag) and a graphic card compatible with DX9. You can also experiment with your settings under Control panel- Display- Settings-Advanced-Troubleshooting, to adjust your amount of hardware acceleration.
2. Unplug most joysticks, they make the table slope wacky. Or uncheck the box on the table options panel for PBW accelerometer and save the table.

Here are tips to make a 16:9 rotated table from a 4:3 normal one.
First solve the issues I list above.
To rotate, Click on the backdrop and put:
Inclination 45
FOV 0
Rotation 270

Use Table-Image Manager-Export for the backdrop decals and reels and rotate them in a graphics program like photoshop. Then use Image manager-ReImport From to bring them back in, then position them where you like them on the screen. Its a slow process of hitting play, see where they appear, make adjustments, repeat.
Export the playfield to photoshop and enlarge the canvas by 2x, with the old playfield image on the right half of the screen. On the left half you can put backbox images you want, or you can use decals on the backdrop screen left side. On the physics section of the table, make the table width double what it was. Then use a window selection of all the objects on the playfield and right click, translate by x of 1024 or whatever the playfield width was to move them all onto the right half of the screen.

Adjust the x and y offet and scale on the backrop screen by trial and error for exact positioning.

To rotate and position the DMD
Add these lines to the script and adjust the x, y and sizes to what you prefer. To find where to put them, hit Script, ctrl-F and find .gamename, then below that add:

.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_pos_x")=5
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_pos_y")=870
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_width")=600
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_height")=150
use:
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("rol")=1
for rotated left, "ror" for rotated right, or:
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("rol")=0
for non rotated screens.

Replace "tablename" with whatever is after .gamename=
If the line says controller.gamename=, and there isn't a "with controller" line above it, then add "controller" to each of the lines, like:

controller.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_pos_x")=5

well
rotated some vp9 tables to FS in 905.
play ok.

getting a 2nd ball image.
when the ball launches out of the plunger through the launch gate there is a ball image left behind at top of the table while the ball plays on.
sometmes another ball image will do the same in rails and ramps. not always.
sometimes the same at the ball drain under the flippers.

after launching ball 2, 3, and so on another ball image will remain at the top of the playfield.
could have as many as 3-5 extra ball images usually at the top, in ramps, rails or in the ball drain in the playfield while the ball plays on.

did not expect this with vp9 tables?
wasup with this?

[chas]

[quote name='SunWizard' date='Feb 2 2009, 07:00 PM' post='1045']
I made this thread to share the different tips I have learned from converting tables to run properly on VP9. Its worth converting tables since the new physics and many other features are great! Thanks to all who worked on it. Post other tips you have learned and I will add them to this 1st post so we have a list in one thread instead of buried deep in many threads.

1. Flippers need rubber offset height and rubber width added, try 8 and 30 and adjust from there.
2. Ramps, wire rails, and narrow lanes or passages may need widened or raised, since the ball is now larger, 50 units wide.
3. Overlapping transparent EMreels don't work yet (coming soon.)
4. If you make a table for VP9, some things aren't backward compatible, you can add this to warn people who try to run it on VP8.1:
add to script under LoadVPM():
If vpbuildversion >9000 Then MsgBox "Warning! VP version 9 or higher required,"& vbNewLine & "this table may not work properly."
5. New kicker type invisible looks better than kicker hidden or hole.
6. Draw in front and draw behind order makes more difference than before.
7. Something is strange with captive ball stacks, they don't work the same, don't know why yet.
8. Put as many of your decals as possible on the playfield, so that when people use the new features for scaling and rotating the display for 16:9 or cabinets, it doesn't require a full remake of the table to move all the decals (the backdrop doesn't scale/rotate the same as playfield.)
9. VP9 has top-down transparency - you can have it transparent on walls and ramps on the top side now, this can make some graphics show whats below when it didn't before, so you may need to change some transparency settings.
10. Sometimes ramps dropping to the inlanes the ball will get stuck and buzz. Caused when the drop uses 2 kickers, and you need to make the bottom one (its not enabled) table height instead of up in the air (choose surface "none" or playfield.) To see the bottom kicker, sometimes you need to right click and choose "draw in back" on the top kicker.
11. If a table uses table.slope it will cause a script error, fixed by using table.slopemin and table.slopemax, usually set to the same value.
12. VUKs behave different in VP9. Some I get working by trial and error with different angles and/or increased power. Some I had to put an invisible small ramp at an angle above the VUK, so the ball hits it on the way up and bounces off sideways onto the wire rails. Download my Tommy VP9 version here to see an example of that.

General tips to run VP9:
1. If you have rendering errors like missing flippers or table parts, try both check and uncheck hardware graphic rendering, make sure you have directX 9 (Start-Run dxdiag) and a graphic card compatible with DX9. You can also experiment with your settings under Control panel- Display- Settings-Advanced-Troubleshooting, to adjust your amount of hardware acceleration.
2. Unplug most joysticks, they make the table slope wacky. Or uncheck the box on the table options panel for PBW accelerometer and save the table.

Here are tips to make a 16:9 rotated table from a 4:3 normal one.
First solve the issues I list above.
To rotate, Click on the backdrop and put:
Inclination 45
FOV 0
Rotation 270

Use Table-Image Manager-Export for the backdrop decals and reels and rotate them in a graphics program like photoshop. Then use Image manager-ReImport From to bring them back in, then position them where you like them on the screen. Its a slow process of hitting play, see where they appear, make adjustments, repeat.
Export the playfield to photoshop and enlarge the canvas by 2x, with the old playfield image on the right half of the screen. On the left half you can put backbox images you want, or you can use decals on the backdrop screen left side. On the physics section of the table, make the table width double what it was. Then use a window selection of all the objects on the playfield and right click, translate by x of 1024 or whatever the playfield width was to move them all onto the right half of the screen.

Adjust the x and y offet and scale on the backrop screen by trial and error for exact positioning.

To rotate and position the DMD
Add these lines to the script and adjust the x, y and sizes to what you prefer. To find where to put them, hit Script, ctrl-F and find .gamename, then below that add:

.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_pos_x")=5
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_pos_y")=870
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_width")=600
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_height")=150
use:
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("rol")=1
for rotated left, "ror" for rotated right, or:
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("rol")=0
for non rotated screens.

Replace "tablename" with whatever is after .gamename=
If the line says controller.gamename=, and there isn't a "with controller" line above it, then add "controller" to each of the lines, like:

controller.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_pos_x")=5
[/quote
nobody has any suggestions to my post on mutiple balls in the playfield with vp9 tables rotated?

[hulkamania]

I made this thread to share the different tips I have learned from converting tables to run properly on VP9. Its worth converting tables since the new physics and many other features are great! Thanks to all who worked on it. Post other tips you have learned and I will add them to this 1st post so we have a list in one thread instead of buried deep in many threads.

1. Flippers need rubber offset height and rubber width added, try 8 and 30 and adjust from there.
2. Ramps, wire rails, and narrow lanes or passages may need widened or raised, since the ball is now larger, 50 units wide.
3. Overlapping transparent EMreels don't work yet (coming soon.)
4. If you make a table for VP9, some things aren't backward compatible, you can add this to warn people who try to run it on VP8.1:
add to script under LoadVPM():
If vpbuildversion >9000 Then MsgBox "Warning! VP version 9 or higher required,"& vbNewLine & "this table may not work properly."
5. New kicker type invisible looks better than kicker hidden or hole.
6. Draw in front and draw behind order makes more difference than before.
7. Something is strange with captive ball stacks, they don't work the same, don't know why yet.
8. Put as many of your decals as possible on the playfield, so that when people use the new features for scaling and rotating the display for 16:9 or cabinets, it doesn't require a full remake of the table to move all the decals (the backdrop doesn't scale/rotate the same as playfield.)
9. VP9 has top-down transparency - you can have it transparent on walls and ramps on the top side now, this can make some graphics show whats below when it didn't before, so you may need to change some transparency settings.
10. Sometimes ramps dropping to the inlanes the ball will get stuck and buzz. Caused when the drop uses 2 kickers, and you need to make the bottom one (its not enabled) table height instead of up in the air (choose surface "none" or playfield.) To see the bottom kicker, sometimes you need to right click and choose "draw in back" on the top kicker.
11. If a table uses table.slope it will cause a script error, fixed by using table.slopemin and table.slopemax, usually set to the same value.
12. VUKs behave different in VP9. Some I get working by trial and error with different angles and/or increased power. Some I had to put an invisible small ramp at an angle above the VUK, so the ball hits it on the way up and bounces off sideways onto the wire rails. Download my Tommy VP9 version here to see an example of that.

General tips to run VP9:
1. If you have rendering errors like missing flippers or table parts, try both check and uncheck hardware graphic rendering, make sure you have directX 9 (Start-Run dxdiag) and a graphic card compatible with DX9. You can also experiment with your settings under Control panel- Display- Settings-Advanced-Troubleshooting, to adjust your amount of hardware acceleration.
2. Unplug most joysticks, they make the table slope wacky. Or uncheck the box on the table options panel for PBW accelerometer and save the table.

Here are tips to make a 16:9 rotated table from a 4:3 normal one.
First solve the issues I list above.
To rotate, Click on the backdrop and put:
Inclination 45
FOV 0
Rotation 270

Use Table-Image Manager-Export for the backdrop decals and reels and rotate them in a graphics program like photoshop. Then use Image manager-ReImport From to bring them back in, then position them where you like them on the screen. Its a slow process of hitting play, see where they appear, make adjustments, repeat.
Export the playfield to photoshop and enlarge the canvas by 2x, with the old playfield image on the right half of the screen. On the left half you can put backbox images you want, or you can use decals on the backdrop screen left side. On the physics section of the table, make the table width double what it was. Then use a window selection of all the objects on the playfield and right click, translate by x of 1024 or whatever the playfield width was to move them all onto the right half of the screen.

Adjust the x and y offet and scale on the backrop screen by trial and error for exact positioning.

To rotate and position the DMD
Add these lines to the script and adjust the x, y and sizes to what you prefer. To find where to put them, hit Script, ctrl-F and find .gamename, then below that add:

.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_pos_x")=5
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_pos_y")=870
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_width")=600
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_height")=150
use:
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("rol")=1
for rotated left, "ror" for rotated right, or:
.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("rol")=0
for non rotated screens.

Replace "tablename" with whatever is after .gamename=
If the line says controller.gamename=, and there isn't a "with controller" line above it, then add "controller" to each of the lines, like:

controller.Games("tablename").Settings.Value("dmd_pos_x")=5

thank you so much for the help!!!!

[blur]

This is great thread. There are still thousands of unconverted great vp8 tables.
Too bad it is two years old and it hasn't been updated, and many people write replies with thousand lines of quotes.
It would be great if this could be updated with comments on newest versions of vp.


I experimented recently with conversions from vp8 to vp9 FS with black hole, time line and pink panther.
All great tables but without vp9 FS version. ok black hole has 16-9 version which could be used as FS, but still a lot can be done on it.


problems i find are:

ball goes into bumper - i usually solve this with another invisible bumper on the same place, or replace the old one with the new with same graphics

kickers are sometimes too weak - for example on black hole kicker from downfield can't get the ball up, i fixed it somewhere in script with bigger strength

another problem i had with black hole - i had two versions 16-9 from destruk and desktop from patatrox
i tried to set incl fov and layback to 0 30 60 as i always do but since this table playfield is not on height 0 but 290-300 because of lower playfield, everything was out of place, all textures and objects
with layback 120 it is ok, but i don't like layback 120
also i had to set incl to 3 because 0 1 2 didn't work
and i had to remove 16-9 backglass animation images and script cause they used too much memory and were not visible anyway

with desktop version it is another funny thing with 0 30 60 and rotation 90 everything looks great, but with rotation 270 all objects are gone, again some problem with height 300 and layback view

Edited by blur, 28 April 2011 - 10:31 AM.

[Itchigo]

Good info, I'm C&P ing to notepad to save it!!

[JayM]

It would be handy if someone would be as kind to write a convertor program from 8 - 9.
It might not work 100% but it should be able to mod the common things and speed up the migration.

Alternatively why not make the next version of 9 (9.2 / 9.3 ??) detect a V8 table and simply play it as a V8 table.

[Greynurse]

The above info helped me solve why the VPX version  of Black hole, running in desktop mode, had a blank lower playfield. All good now.

Who'da thought that 10 year old info would come in so handy!

[joodlow]

Thanks!