25 replies to this topic

[PinballGizzard]

Cabinet build is plugging along ... very pleased with the quality parts and printing from Paul at VirtuaPin.

 

 Futurama Cab Complete.JPG   275.48KB   30 downloads

 

Anyway, its a brand new computer built from scratch with Windows 7.  Since it's 2015 and I'm starting from scratch, which front end should I use?  Pinball X or Hyperpin ? 

[freneticamnesic]

pinballx

[Umpa]

Agree pinball X

[Outhere]

Pinball X

[PinballGizzard]

Excellent.... Hyperpin it is.  (JK)  

 

I'll start studying up on Pinball X.  Hopefully it'll go smoothly...

 

THanks for the 411.

Edited by PinballGizzard, 24 June 2015 - 12:01 AM.

[Slydog43]

much less troubles with PinballX (actually no troubles at all, great piece of software and free!)

[PinballGizzard]

much less troubles with PinballX (actually no troubles at all, great piece of software and free!)

 

Slydog, you weren't kidding.  Holy crap it's beautiful.  After the VP install headaches, I was expecting a big fight from Pinball X.  Super super easy to the point that I'm getting paranoid because it went so well.  

 

I have six great tables loaded and that's enough for me to get the PC off my work bench and drop it into the cabinet.  I'll start buttoning things up and testing it more and adding more tables as I get more familiar with everything.  Being a Mac guy since 1999 has spoiled me in some areas.

 

THanks everyone.  I hope you all are having a great evening.

[PinballGizzard]

Has anyone installed two separate sound systems in their cabinet?  The idea behind it being that the computerized game sounds and ROM sounds come through the main speakers in the back box, and the flipper, bumper, and other "natural" table sounds come from speakers inside the cab?  I haven't monkeyed with the VP sound preferences yet, I just noticed that the ROM sounds were much quieter than the bumper sounds on my small plug in speakers when the PC was on my work bench.  Do I need to be thinking about two separate sound cards?  Or are both music and sound coming out of the left and right channel in mono form?  

 

Hope that made some sort of sense...

[N3roflint]

Not sure about being able to differentiate having different sounds come out of different speakers but if the ROM sounds are low you can increase the volume by pressing the end key while the table is running which should open the coin door. While the coin door is open you can use the 8 and 9 keys to increase or decrease the ROM volume. Good tutorial is here:

 

http://www.vpforums....?showtopic=5220

 

EDIT: Spelling

Edited by N3roflint, 26 June 2015 - 01:45 AM.

[mjr]

Has anyone installed two separate sound systems in their cabinet?  The idea behind it being that the computerized game sounds and ROM sounds come through the main speakers in the back box, and the flipper, bumper, and other "natural" table sounds come from speakers inside the cab?  I haven't monkeyed with the VP sound preferences yet, I just noticed that the ROM sounds were much quieter than the bumper sounds on my small plug in speakers when the PC was on my work bench.  Do I need to be thinking about two separate sound cards?

 

VP does support separating the table sound effects from the ROM audio and playing the two through separate devices (i.e., separate sound cards).  See the Preferences | Audio Options dialog.  I have my cabinet set up this way.  It does noticeably improve the placement of sound effects, especially for older EM tables that don't have continuous background music.  There are a couple of downsides, though.  One is that if you have a subwoofer on the table effects channel (I use a tactile feedback device similar to a Buttkicker for this), the collision sound effects for some tables are way too strong.  This is easily fixed by editing the tables, but it takes time.  The other is that the spatial localization sometimes gets too precise for its own good.  The playfield sounds will start coming from the playfield, which is good, but when the ball is far away from the speaker you'll sometimes notice the mismatch.  But on the whole I think it's a nice feature.

[arngrim]

Has anyone installed two separate sound systems in their cabinet?  The idea behind it being that the computerized game sounds and ROM sounds come through the main speakers in the back box, and the flipper, bumper, and other "natural" table sounds come from speakers inside the cab?  I haven't monkeyed with the VP sound preferences yet, I just noticed that the ROM sounds were much quieter than the bumper sounds on my small plug in speakers when the PC was on my work bench.  Do I need to be thinking about two separate sound cards?  Or are both music and sound coming out of the left and right channel in mono form?  
 
Hope that made some sort of sense...

of course we do, you can even say 3 systems, 1 for music, 2 for mech sounds by force feedback with toys and DOF and 3 for the mech sounds that are not handled by force feedback

[gtxjoe]

As for sound cards, yes you need a second one, or you can use the audio channel of the HDMI output as the second audio path

I have an amp and speakers connected to the headphone out jack of my playfield TV for the playfield sounds

[allknowing2012]

Q: "See the Preferences | Audio Options dialog" - but wont both effects and rom still use the "sounds" preference? Or are you saying music is perhaps the rom sounds and everything else is just "sounds"?

[mjr]

Q: "See the Preferences | Audio Options dialog" - but wont both effects and rom still use the "sounds" preference? Or are you saying music is perhaps the rom sounds and everything else is just "sounds"?

 

The dialog is pretty confusing - it uses inconsistent terminology and is laid out with the items on the left in the opposite order from the items on the right.  Here's what it all means:

 

On the left side, the top set of "Music" controls - "Play Music" / "Music Volume" - is referring to the ROM audio.  "Play Sounds" / "Sound Volume" is referring to the table sound effects generated by the Visual Basic script.

 

On the right side, the top list - "Output Sound Device" - is referring to the table sound effects from the VB script.  The bottom set - "Backglass Sound Device" - is referring to the VPinMAME/ROM audio.

 

So "Backglass" == "Music" == ROM audio, and "Output Sound" == "Sounds" == table effects.

 

If you want to separate the audio, you just have to select different sound cards for the "Output Sound Device" and the "Backglass Sound Device".  You'll of course have to physically install two sound cards before you can select different ones.  Once you do, select the card that's hooked up to the backglass speakers for "Backglass Sound Device" and select the one that's wired to the cabinet speakers for "Output Sound Device".  

 

* * * 

 

There's one more bit of trivia to this that you might want to know about.  You can choose to route *individual* table sound effects in individual tables to the backglass speakers.  This is intended for old ROM-less EM machines that have chimes for scoring.  If a table doesn't have ROMs, VPinMAME isn't involved, so *everything* that table plays will come from the cabinet speakers.  That sounds weird for the scoring chimes.  Fortunately you can fix this for individual sound effects.   Open the table in the VP editor and go to the Table | Sound Manager... dialog.  Find a sound effect that you want to route to the backbox speakers.  Click on its name in the list, then click the "To BG Out" button ("BG" == backglass).  Repeat for each appropriate sound.  Click OK.  Those sounds will now come from the backglass.

[LarsDav]

Hey guys, first off, thank you very much for the information you all offer in this community!  As a newbie V-pin builder, I find myself reading a lot of these forums for build advice.  However some of the information is dated!  I am just reaching out to see if the best frontend is still PBX?  I noticed Terryred and others are running the new Pin-Up Popper now.  So what would be the best front end now, in 2018?

[gtxjoe]

Pinballx of course

[STV]

PInballY of course. 

[bord]

A few good options. I prefer PinballY, personally.

[Thalamus]

They are all good. PinballY has a bug I've forgotten to report (re-using pinballX xml and media ), Pin-Up doesn't currently support DMD the way I want so at the moment I'm running PinballX. Then again. I don't use the front end very often :\

[nickbuol]

There are tables out there that only work with PINup System, so that is what I did.  Seems a bit more complex to set up, but it seems to be the most cutting edge front end out there for options.  If you are OK without being bale to play a couple of tables to their full capacity, then Pinball X or Y seem to be a little easier to get going.