11 replies to this topic

[Kristi]

Ever heard of "Emilia"? It's a pinball simulator developed for Linux. Actually, it's pretty much the ONLY pinball simulator developed for Linux.

It has since been ported "cross platform" to 32-bit Windows (98/ME/2K/XP), Mac OS X, and BSD. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that make it the ONLY cross-platform pinball sim? I'm not sure about this, but it may also be the only one under a GPL license as well. (VP is "freeware" but not GPL right? And FP definitely isn't GPL'd.)

As for the title of this post - well, the Emilia project seems to have been abandoned since 2004! It was originally developed by Henrik Enqvist and coded by Pedro Ferreira, then ported to Windows by Philippe Coval, and the BSD port by Thomas Thierry. But Henrik Enqvist got a paying gig and had no more time nor interest in developing it further, and it appears minor fixes ARE being done on the BSD version (http://www.freshport.../games/pinball/) but the files on Source Forge are still stamped 2004.

And that's where the problem begins - it's getting to the point that nobody can even build it from source on Linux anymore as it can't deal with newer versions of Qt, and if there is a 64-bit binary of the table editor out there I haven't found it yet (and had zero success trying to build it from source myself). I guess one aspect of this post is me BEGGING someone with programming skills to do something with this program!!

* It has already been ported cross-platform
* It already has an editor for making tables <-- It comes with 2 demo tables, but there is no archive with more!
* It has a pretty decent physics engine
* It is both SDL and OpenGL compatible
* The source code is readily available
* It is under a GPL license

That last point means if it's been so long major changes are needed it can just be "forked" into a new project. If I had the programming skills to do it myself I would, but I'm more on the "design" end of things.

I think it would be a real shame to let "Emilia" die a cold, cybernetic death when it has so much potential to be the ultimate, open-source, community-driven, cross-platform pinball simulator!

LINKS
-------
Homepage: http://pinball.sourceforge.net/
Source & Binaries: http://sourceforge.n.../pinball/files/
Win32 Port: http://rzr.online.fr/game.htm

[Greywolf]

I agree, especially since I was one of the people to contact the previous developer; however, my actual programming knowledge to make such a thing happen is very slim. I, too, am a designer more than a programmer when it comes to this sort of thing, or else I'd be working on this (it's a bit beyond my scope, I'm afraid...)

[LvR]

Hi

I'll had a look at emilia pinball just after finishing my current project (FPRelease next site).
I think it's a good start for a cross-platform simulation, but such a project could only be successful if a lot of table are available ...

In fact i've already some work in progress, I've recently dived into my C++ knowledge for some pinball related things.
Yes I know it looks mysterious, but I just don't want to talk about it yet since nothing would be public in the near future.

My current (hobbyist) planning :

- Finishing our next pinball site project (with TheNalex), which is a bit delayed as I've just have had my second baby.
- Working on this other pinball project, and emilia could be the main point. As a former demomaker, I think I've good knowledges in C/C++/OpenGL, and I'm also a linux supporter ....

But as time is always the rarest resource for my hobbies, others can also start working on Emilia or similar projects.

[kruge99]

I think for this to be accepted by the community it would have to have VPinMAME support added in. There is already FuturePinball which, quite recently, it appears that the developer has left the scene without a public explaination. A "nice to have feature" would be the ability to load VisualPinball and FuturePinball tables and a "convert" or "blueprint" feature that would allow table designers to port their table to Emilia's editor for easy conversions. Sorry, I'm walking into "wish list" territory there. Good luck getting this off the ground - I do hope it happens!! :-)


Best Regards,
Todd.

[Steve Paradis]

If you tackle this project..please try to improve the Render which is awful..it actually remind me "Alone ine the dark" from 1993..
As for table making..you can count on me to try anything

Steve

[destruk]

As far as I know, it died 4 or 5 years ago. If the main programmers don't show any interest in their own program, why would anyone else? If there was windows source code available for it, then yeah it'd have a chance. But I never saw windows source code, just a windows 'player' binary. Very difficult to improve, if not impossible, with simply an exe.

[Kristi]

Well I'd be happy to TRY contacting all of the developers as a courtesy, and especially if the BSD people have actually been updating the code, just not posting the files back to Source Forge. I also notice the guy who ported it to Windows for his "Rob Zombie" table has a developer page regarding source and compiling for W32. I'm not sure what to make of it since I've never written software for Windows.

But anyone could probably just take the existing code and run with it - either under the same name or fork it as a new project (especially if new features are added and backwards compatibility is lost). That would also be a good opportunity to rename it something better than "Emilia" which does nothing to indicate what kind of a program it is (in fact the existing source and binary files are not named "emilia," they are named "pinball," but that's probably a bit TOO simple).

It also sounds like we have a "chicken and the egg" problem here - nobody's interested in the program because it doesn't have any tables, and nobody makes tables because nobody's interested in the program. I'm going to see if I can get the table editor up and running on my 32-bit Linux system and try to start solving that conundrum. I'll need to check with my web hosting company and see what their policy is on hosting files, because I certainly have enough storage space for an archive.

As for why the original developers lost interest? Well, the lead guy apparently took a job with a software game company and no longer had time nor interest - and I'd wager had to sign a non-compete contract. As is often the case with projects, the lead person was the one with the drive and passion, and without him the others moved on to their own pet projects. But, like I said, I can try e-mailing them. If the e-mail addresses are no longer valid and/or they don't reply - well, then it's probably time to "fork" it.

Edited by Kristi, 17 February 2010 - 09:55 PM.

[wtiger]

Kristi,
Thanks for bringing this up. Keep us posted!

[Kristi]

Ok, I got a reply from the original developer:

It is always fun to hear that people like my little pet project from my
university years. As you said code and media is free and I'm just glad
if somebody can make us of it in anyway they like. All source code I
wrote back then should be available at SF.

Having been paid to make games for the last years have made it a little
bit too hard to find time for my spare time projects. But I promise to
keep an eye out for what you guys come up with.

Cheers, H

Thinking about what might become of Emilia, it's pretty obvious that a program that has been stagnant since 2004 is outdated and a lot of stuff will need updating/changing anyway, which means it's will probably change so much it has little to nothing in common with the current program (I'm guessing). Though if developers wanted to code-name some part of it "Emilia" I'm sure Henrik Enqvist would appreciate it.

I'm not a programmer (well, don't know enough to feel comfortable saying I know how), so I'm not sure what might be of use, but based on this thread it seems people would like to see the following:

* Better table rendering
* Import blueprints to editor
* Eventually be able to at least play VP and/or FP tables

I do like that Emilia has the "Player" and the "Editor" as separate applications. Granted, that may be part of the reason there aren't any tables available, but there will be people who just want to play and aren't interested in building tables. The "Player" though is also an integrated front-end for settings and loading tables - it would be better to follow suit on many other emulator type programs and have it so the actual player can be run from the CLI and let other developers come up with front-ends for it.

I've never worked with it, but OGRE sure seems like it would be up to the task of rendering nice tables. Plus, there are exporters for tons of 3D programs to turn their models into OGRE's ".mesh" format, including some open source 3D programs. That would open up replication of machine parts to people using all sorts of modeling software. But then the models only need to be in .mesh inside the program so OGRE can use them. Outside the program some standard format would be needed so people could take a model and improve or add to it - and that could be something as simple as VRML or X3D (again, trying to stick with open-source stuff). Though I suppose someone could also write a .mesh importer for the Pinball Editor too, and that could just BE the format.

OGRE appears to work with both OpenGL and DirectX - which is good since OpenGL can sometimes be sluggish on Windows machines. If the "graphics engine" is handling all that heavy lifting then the Pinball Player app wouldn't need to worry about it.

If the table files the editor created were in an XML format that would make them a lot easier to work with, and technically would mean modifying a table wouldn't require anything more than a text-editor (and a lot of knowing what you're doing). I foresee that tables would be a compressed archive (ZIP - but probably toss a custom extension on it so you know it's a table for this program, kind of like how .CBZ files for comic book readers are really just renamed ZIP files). That archive would then contain the XML table layout and whatever custom sound/graphics resources it uses - and much like MAME, you don't unzip the archives so tables just travel as a single file. Obviously the Player would have some built-in standard sound and graphics elements which could be called on by any table without having to be put into the archives - to keep the table file sizes manageable.

If there were some kind of "plugin" for the player that could interpret VP/FP tables you also wouldn't really need to be able to import blueprints to the editor. In the long-run that might actually be better if it's not competing directly with VP or FP as an editor. Think of it this way, if this new "Emilia" program could PLAY the tables but not EDIT them, that's incentive for the developers of VP and FP to produce their OWN plugin for "Emilia" that increases the audience for tables created with their respective editor applications (and potentially would allow them to be played on platforms VP and FP don't support themselves). I don't think it would be good for the community to toss up something that directly competes, but should augment what's already being done and UNITE efforts while still allowing people to choose for themselves which program in which they'd like to BUILD their tables.

There would also be nothing preventing someone from creating a table with a bunch of custom sounds and graphics copyrighting and selling their table either - just because the PLAYER or the EDITOR is open-source, doesn't mean the game files have to be. Granted your table would probably be more popular if you give it away, but I don't see any reason why the games created with the program have to also be subject to the GPL license. Especially if all that's inside the ZIP files is YOUR artwork, YOUR sound files, YOUR table layout (as an XML file), and obviously YOUR license file. As has been pointed out here, a Pinball Simulator is nothing without tables to play - the table builders should be able to (potentially) reap the rewards of their hard work, right?

Whether forked from Emilia, or a whole new animal, it would probably be so different from Emilia a new name would be a must, but what? "PinbALL", "Pinball4All", "Pinball-X" (for cross-platform), "Open Pinball" (which would be keeping with the naming conventions of Visual Pinball & Future Pinball)?

Ok, I know this is a lot of "spit-balling" on my part - but I'd really love to see a viable open-source, cross-platform pinball program and be a part of making it happen.

--------------------
Not sure if this is of any interest to anyone, but stumbled across these in my searches:
Another pinball project that is being given away
Linball - an open-source cross-platform mobile pinball game
Open Pinball - an even older, abandoned open-source pinball game for Linux/DOS

[skreutzer]

I know it's not much love for Emilia, but as I play it regulary [1] with my uncle who doesn't speak English, I attempted to internationalize the code and provided a German translation for it. It might take quite some time till this appears in package repositories, but anyway. If you want to help to translate Emilia Pinball into other languages, feel free to contribute:

 

https://github.com/r...ter/data/locale

 

In case of questions on how to translate, just contact me. Also, I can provide build instructions for Trisquel GNU/Linux 7.0 (https://trisquel.info).

 

[1] As it seems to be pretty much the only freely licensed pinball simulation out there...

Edited by skreutzer, 01 August 2016 - 11:29 AM.

[mikeeee]

How can I also meet a girl named Emilia?

[onils]

hello

Edited by onils, 13 July 2025 - 10:11 AM.