ContributorFile Name: Simpsons Pinball Party (Stern 2003) Primitive Homer mod
File Submitter: dark
File Submitted: 23 Feb 2015
File Category: VP 9.x Cabinet Tables (FULL SCREEN)
Author(s): Groni,UncleWilly,Sheltemke,LoadedWeapon,DarkManufacturer: Stern
Year: 2003
ROM: Link to ROM
Media Pack: Link to Media Pack
Permission to MOD?: Yes, without approval
Simpsons Pinball Party 3D Primitive Homer Mod!
Thank you Groni, Unclewilly, Jp for the fantastic table / existing mods.
Thank you Thewool for the plastic images.
HUGE thanks to UncleWilly who did an awesome job at bringing this Homer head to life through his scripting prowess!
Thanks LoadedWeapon for allowing this mod of your mod.
Credits:
Groni - Original Table
Sheltemke - graphic updates
Zany - Flasher Domes
Dark - Primitive screws bolts and washers ***New Homer head***
LoadedWeapon - Images adjustments and new object lighting and reshaped and reworked all the insert lights.
Javier1515: Implementing FP models and general help.
GLXB: Future pinball 3D model resources.
This Homer head mod is actually quite special and I'd like to take a moment to explain why. As many of you already know VP does not have real lighting and it's lighting is all simulated typically with texture/image swapping and or flasher objects. Typically when a 3D mesh is made for VP we 'texture bake' a texture for it that 'bakes' the lighting,shadow,color,ambiance etc from the 3D software but once in VP it becomes static and will not 'react' to its environment. This mod is the first time a 3D object has received such attention to actually simulate real 3D dynamic lighting through texture swapping.
How it works is, the Homer head rotates clockwise 45 degrees from his start position, that is his range of movement and for every 5 degrees of movement I rendered out or 'texture baked' a different texture so that the lighting would be correct on the model regardless of it's rotation position (9 texture maps for 45 degrees of rotation). It gets complicated through, there are a number of near by flashers that can go off individually, in sequence or at the same time. So what we did was texture bake textures for every 5 degrees of movement for each flasher as well as a number of combinations - this is why the file size on this table has swelled up by about 50mgb. There is also a combination of flasher object and texture swapping for the head glow effect which I tried to match the look of youtube videos for an authentic look. The texture map sequences don't allow for every combination of flasher but mainly the ones that would be most noticeable, all in all I feel the (rather large) extra effort that was put into this was well worth it since - to be frank - it looks fantastic!
I pitched this idea to UncleWilly expecting it to either be too difficult or simply not plausible for some reason or another but I was thrilled to see that UW really managed to come through on this one! So again big thanks to UncleWilly who made this possible!
A day mod version of this may become available at some point as well.
Special note: If you're looking to make a desktop conversion of this you should note that the Homer head has been titled back to 116 degrees on the X axis (as opposed to the usual 90) to compensate for the FS view being too much of a bird's eye view of the model, so if you decide to make this into a desktop version be sure to restore the Homer head to around 90 degrees and he should look good.
Also be aware that while I make this available to be modded without approval be sure to check the permission of other authors and credit them.
Enjoy!
Updates further explanation:
1.0:
-Primitive Homer head added with dynamic lighting effects.
1.1:
-Primitive Cooling tower pop bumpers added
- Itchy & Scratchy models added from FP version. These look better than the image based ones.
There's more FP models that could be added like comic book guy, Bart, Apu etc but I have some issues with each of these. The most important being the Comic book guy and Bart, while both FP models look decent, they aren't that great either, personally I think the image based versions look better. The FP Bart model is actually pretty good but my issue with him is that the model doesn't match the one on the real table, he's not wearing the dare devil Bart outfit. I figured I would try and have a go at modeling Comic Book guy and or Bart and if worse comes to worse I'll just add the FP models to this table in a future update but I figured this way they could be kept separate for now so people can make that choice on their own.
1.2:
-New primitive 3D mesh (transparent) plastic ramps (Can see the ball coming now for Otto shot and upper PF shot!)
-Big thanks to Javier1515 for providing FP ramp guides and help implementing new primitives.
-New primitive couch.
-New primitive ramp gates + switches/spinner wires
-New primitive ramp metal wall guards.
-New (previously missing) primitive ramp helpers added.
-Moe Sign and mount now a primitive.
-New primitive plastic flasher mounts.
-Various odds and ends like ramp assembly pieces, caps etc.
-Captive ball bug fixed
1.3:
-Couch lock ball stuck should be fixed.
-Upper PF is a bit harder now.
-Captive ball bug fixed
1.4: What to expect in the next update:
-Captive ball fixed (again)
-Upper PF adjustments
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