[37"/24"/15"] - '77 Bally Power Play "Donor" Visual Pinball Build

[mwong168]

check your hyperpin ini file for the key settings
its called settings.ini

I found it but what I find really odd is when I am playing a table in Visual Pinball the right flipper aka Right Shift key works just fine but in HyperPin it is acting funny.  I will do some more fiddling around before I create a new thread on the forums over there otherwise Xpadder works great so far.

[ivwshane]

HOLY DOCUMENTATION!!!!!!!

I love it! I can't wait to see it finished!

 

[bleargh]

WOW  That's one seriously wickedly detailed thread.

w00t!

 

[drventure]

Fantastic thread! And a great build.

Making me REALLY want to build a pin cab now, as if all the other build threads here haven't 

[mwong168]

Thanks for all the compliments and hope my write up will help some of you down the road.  Honestly I've haven't been this excited over emulation since I first discovered MAME years ago.  I think the biggest challenge I had was getting Visual Pinball and VPinMAME working.  See this thread for reference (http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7546) and I can't tell you how many week nights in a row where I found myself doing a fresh install of XP or Win7 at 1:30am.  But thanks to the great members on the hyperspin/pin forums I got everything all worked out after a week.  This is why I took the time to make all the screen shots in my initial posts to help you avoid the mistakes I made.

Now aside from software the cost of making one of these is a lot more then a standard 2 player MAME cabinet.  Most of the cost lies in the screens depending how many you go with.  Personally I would recommend going 3 for the best authentic experience. 

You could get away with 2 and go with a 24" LCD and flip it sideways to have it display the back glass image and DMD.  The problem in my eyes is the back glass image doesn't look right and stretched in the wrong way.  Also by doing this you have a lot of extra space around the back glass image and will have to fill in that space with other artwork. 



Another alternative should you use only 2 screens is not flip the back glass and just have the DMD overlap the back glass image.  But again it won't look right or proper since it will overlap some important parts of the back glass image or they have some back glass images where it is shrunk vertically and a speaker grill gets put underneath it like this for you to place the DMD on.





Now for a 3 screen setup there is not only the additional cost of another screen but you will need another video card too.  Now this second video card doesn't have to be the latest and greatest.  I am personally running my old gaming BFG Nvidia 8800GT which is pure overkill but I couldn't be bothered to sell it on craigslist only to be low balled.  Besides it works perfectly with my XFX Nvidia 250GTS card and same version of drivers.  Now this is the next area of high cost are video card(s) and for the processor people have been using Intel or having the same success with X3 or X4 AMD's. 

The rest of build is pretty easy especially if you get an old donor cab like mine which not only saved me time but money too.  Before you start building your cab from scratch go price out some parts on www.pinballlife.com.  Check you local craigslist to see if someone is selling an older non functioning cab for under $200 complete with legs, stainless steel lockdown and side rails, playfield tempered glass and wood cabinet.  The next challenge will be finding the right sized LCD to fit inside the cab and I really lucked out on mine so do some research on various sized and brands of LCDs de-cased on the Hyperpin or Visual Pinball forums.

If anyone has any questions about my build or the software feel free to post here or send me a message.  Good luck and thanks for looking guys.

[HanoiBoi]

Mike, fantastic write up!  

I feel the need to jump in and say 'thanks' as I've started going through your guide and have downloaded the needed files.  I also picked up an old machine for $200.  It's actually in functioning form at the moment, which is nice because it's playable and entertaining while it sits in wait.  I just hope the sadness doesn't come when the time comes to tear it down.

(It was an old machine that had been changed to a custom theme, so please, no one worry about gutting a classic pin)

Being mostly new to virtual pinball, I'm still trying to determine whether VP or Future Pinball are the ways to go.  My minimal understanding is that VP emulates existing pins but isn't as strong graphically and that Future Pinball is fantastic on graphics but is mostly homegrown tables.  Does that basically sum it up??  So, why did you go with VP?  Could both be loaded??

Also, any chance you can post LCD model numbers and your de-cased measurements?

Thanks again Mike, I'll be sure to use this thread as a reference as I work on my build!

-HanoiBoi

Oh....one minor difference I see in the files I downloaded...your vpfonts.zip shows 6731kb, the one I dl'd is 6713kb.  Am I cool?

[mwong168]

Being mostly new to virtual pinball, I'm still trying to determine whether VP or Future Pinball are the ways to go.  My minimal understanding is that VP emulates existing pins but isn't as strong graphically and that Future Pinball is fantastic on graphics but is mostly homegrown tables.  Does that basically sum it up??  So, why did you go with VP?  Could both be loaded??

Also, any chance you can post LCD model numbers and your de-cased measurements?

You can run both but I believe Future Pinball development has come to a halt.  The graphics for FP look nice but too bad the physics don't match in my opinion.  I have might add it to my cab as there are a few good tables for it but VP is nice cause it is open source now and there are new table recreations coming out every week by amazing authors such as unclewilly, oooPlayer1ooo and the legendary jpsalas.  Also VP officially supports 3 screens as well as a DMD for the table roms.  Also I haven't found an easy way to setup FP tables for full screen, right now it is a very tedious process of loading the table and hitting scroll lock and then slowing adjusting the dimensions using the arrow keys. 

The model # of my Vizio 37" 1080p LCD is E370VA and de-cased it was 20 1/4" which was perfect cause I only had 20 3/4" clearance anyways.  I didn't measure in advance before I bought the LCD or cabinet but crossed my fingers the whole time it would work.  What is the width in between the sides on the cab you picked up?

I think you should be fine with the fonts, I downloaded mine back in April from the vpforums link.

[HanoiBoi]

The model # of my Vizio 37" 1080p LCD is E370VA and de-cased it was 20 1/4" which was perfect cause I only had 20 3/4" clearance anyways.  I didn't measure in advance before I bought the LCD or cabinet but crossed my fingers the whole time it would work.  What is the width in between the sides on the cab you picked up?

Just measured, looks like I'm at 20 1/4"  - 20 5/16" wide at it's narrowest.  Are there any brackets or the like that you may not have accounted for, or would you suggest I'd be able to easily fit that same Vizio in there?  

BTW, I've got 3 Vizios hanging in the basement, so I'm cool with them!

[mwong168]

Just measured, looks like I'm at 20 1/4"  - 20 5/16" wide at it's narrowest.  Are there any brackets or the like that you may not have accounted for, or would you suggest I'd be able to easily fit that same Vizio in there?  

BTW, I've got 3 Vizios hanging in the basement, so I'm cool with them!

Nope there are no brackets so as long as you have a bit more then 20 1/4" the 37" model it won't fit.  I've never de-cased an LCD before and this Vizio was so easy and like I mentioned before no seals had to be broken so if anything goes wrong (knock on wood) I can just put it all back and they would never know.



My pinball cabinet just got a new friend this weekend





It belonged to a good friend of mine who just finished his Dynamo "Z" HS5 cabinet with 25" screen.  Gave me such a good price and I've always wanted this exact same machine as this is what I remember kickin' ass with in the arcades back in the peak of the SFII days.  It's a Dynamo HS2 with 19" screen and full restored by my friend and all the artwork is minty fresh from Scott at Game on Grafix aka mamemarquees.com

I got a JPAC on order and a nice gift from another member on the hyperspin forums in the mail for helping him out on his pincab so hopefully I will get everything by the end of the week and MAME this cab.

[RayB]

WOW.
This pin project should be stickied.
 

[rchadd]

this is awesome guide. pretty much covers everything i need to know!

only thing is i will probably go for a 2 monitor setup.

is there anything i need to consider when choosing the gfx card and monitors?

i wonder do all NVIDEA 9800 support 2 monitors?

what resolutions are you using for the tv/monitors?

how are you connecting to the screens? VGA/DBI or HDMI?

is VP/FP running the game in 1080p?

[mwong168]

is there anything i need to consider when choosing the gfx card and monitors?

i wonder do all NVIDEA 9800 support 2 monitors?

what resolutions are you using for the tv/monitors?

how are you connecting to the screens? VGA/DBI or HDMI?

is VP/FP running the game in 1080p?

Most Nvidia cards support two monitors, my setup is as follows:

XFX Nvidia 250GTS 1gb PCIe
BFG Nvidia 8800GT 512mb PCIe

37" Vizio 1080p LCD Playfield @ 1920x1200 connected via DVI to HDMI 250GTS
24" Samsung LCD Backglass @ 1920x1200 connected via DVI to DVI 250GTS
15" HP LCD @ 1024x768 connected via DVI to DVI 8800GT

If you don't have the video cards I suggest you go with a 250GTS or 260GTX if you want to future proof.  Also stick with Nvidia and stay away from ATI even though some people have had some success with it I came across tons of threads plagues with problems.  Also you want to make sure you get 1080p for your playfield as well.

[njay]

Yo Mwong, did you solve the key problem yet?

[mwong168]

Yo Mwong, did you solve the key problem yet?

No I haven't figured it out and don't want to give up just yet.  I just put this project on the back burner cause I have been busy converting the Dynamo cab I picked up which is pretty much done now.  Right now VP works 100% including nudging using my mercury switches.  The only issue is the right flipper inside HP is not working so I can only scroll through my tables using the left and occasionally the launch ball button which I have mapped to ENTER acts up and brings up the genres menu.  I know how to get around it without having to use a keyboard so it's alright for the time being.  I think H4CKER mentioned using a program called autohotkey and re-compiling some AHK scripts to get his working along side with Xpadder.  I thought it had to do with the software so I switched my button mapping in Xpadder and switched the left flipper to R-SHIFT and right flipper to L-SHIFT hoping that the left flipper would not act up but the right flipper is still doing the same thing.  I see there is an AHK file in the Hyperpin folder so I suspect it is overriding my Xpadder mappings so I will look into autohotkey and once I figure it out I will post up my script.

Here is what has been consuming my spare time for the past few days.  It is a pretty straight forward conversion and all that is required is an ArcadeVGA, JPAC and IPAC from ultimarc.com.  My friend who sold me this cab had an old computer and AGP version of the ArcadeVGA he gave me but didn't have the drivers CD.  I was so pissed this weekend but luckily after a few emails and a picture of my card Andy gave me the proper drivers.  I was a bit put off by the whole process of waiting for his replies cause he is in a completely different time zone but he explained to me the reason why he wanted to see a picture was because there have been ebay knock offs of that particular model and he wanted to make sure mine wasn't one of them.  Thanks again Andy!








The reason why I am using molex connectors is because I plan on having inter-changeable control panels.  I scored a dynamo panel for this machine that has been done up for MK for $25 and my friend who sold me the cab has the MK marquee and underneath my SFIICE bezel there was a MK one too!  I like the MK series a lot and prefer to play it with the proper button layout.  The funny thing is this panel use to belong to my friend and he sold it to the guy at the local arcade auction and turns out he doesn't need it anymore.



He also has a generic SFII panel which I plan on turning into a dedicated 2 player race driving setup for games like Super Sprint using the Turbo Twist 2 from GGG.

[njay]

Nice work !

how did you adjust all the tables in VP? was sens?

i did manage to get it right most of the times but i get double nudges sometimes so i am looking towards the u hid

[mwong168]

Nice work !

how did you adjust all the tables in VP? was sens?

i did manage to get it right most of the times but i get double nudges sometimes so i am looking towards the u hid

Yeah I have to go one round and adjust in the script but for most of the tables I frequently play it doesn't double nudge except for a few but remember which one now.  I hardly nudge anyways and don't really want to encourage it to my friends cause it does put extra stress on the cab and legs.  Maybe I am just being paranoid but the cab is pretty heavy to lift once all the stuff is in there.  Right now if I can just figure out my HyperPin woes without having to resort to getting an IPAC then I will be a happy camper.  This was my first time using an IPAC in my MAME'd cab and it's great.

[Burn4Evr]

I find myself kinda saddened, you killed a pinball machine that had so much blackhawks art on it.....not because I'm a fan of the black hawks, but because the current bhawks fever right now if you sold it, you could probably pay for your entire project =D

[mwong168]

I find myself kinda saddened, you killed a pinball machine that had so much blackhawks art on it.....not because I'm a fan of the black hawks, but because the current bhawks fever right now if you sold it, you could probably pay for your entire project =D

The machine was DOA anyways and the artwork was not is the best of shape.  Also very doubtful anyone would have paid me more then $150 which is what it cost me.  I have heard stories where people have made a pretty decent profit off buying a donor cab.  One person on another forum picked up a Williams Taxi cab for like $75 and ended up selling off the stripped parts he didn't need for over $300 on ebay    Buying this old cab was the best thing I did since not only did it save me money but it allowed me to go at a much more rapid pace in getting to finishing it.  All that is left to do is artwork and messing around with AHK program for Hyperpin otherwise the cab plays like a champ on tables in multi-ball for games like Monster Bash, Guns n' Roses, South Park and The Simpsons Pinball Party.

Also an update on my Dynamo MAME cab shown in previous posts.  All done now and drilled a hole up top by the toggle switch for the computer power button.  Here is a shot of the ebay Lepai amp which is easily accessible behind the coin door.  I got to drive some new Quest car speakers I got free from my friend who sold me this Dynamo cab although I do wish the cab had a bit more "thump" so might add a sub woofer later.  There was a wiring diagram of how some guy wired one in with this sort of amp.





I was so happy when I took this picture but sad cause this brings my game room and arcade obsession close to the end.  I might pick up another Dynamo HS5 Jamma with 25" screen and MAME it as well since this one only took me 5-6 hours worth of work to MAME.  Could have been faster if I just straight up wired my controls to the IPAC and didn't care to re-route some wires and move some existing PCB boards around.  



This weekend should be fine when I tell my friends to line em' up like the good old smokey pool hall days

[mwong168]

I thought I would share a nice and easy way to create Hyperpin instruction cards instead of waiting for someone else to make one or release it as part of their media pack.  I will be using Flight 2000 that was released by jpsalas a few weeks ago as an example.

First thing you need to do is download the Inkochnito Reproduction Score and Instruction Cards from ipdb.org.

http://ipdb.org/search.pl?any=flight+2000&search=Search+Database&searchtype=quick#887

Extract the file after download and there will typically be a Word DOC and Acrobat PDF file.  Open Adobe Photoshop and load or import the PDF.



Some instruction card PDFs will contain multiple pages with revised rules or multiple languages, so you might want to open it up first and see which page contains the one you are looking for.





Here is what it should look like once it is loaded into Photoshop so cut out the card you want and paste it into a new window on its own and should look like the image directly above if done correctly.  Go to File -> Save As and make sure you use PNG and keep the file name simple that follows the old DOS 8.3 format for now and I will explain why later.

Now you could use Adobe Illustrator to convert or export a PNG to SWF but the problem is the program is a huge hog and unless you are into desktop publishing it is pure overkill.  I found a FREE program which seems to work pretty well and fast called SWFTools.  I downloaded the latest version, swftools-0.9.1.exe from the link below.

http://www.swftools.org/download.html

I tested this at work in Windows 7 and complained when I tried to install it in C:\Program Files but probably cause I forgot to select Run as administrator so I put it on the C root under a folder called C:\SWFTools.



Now open up a command windows by hitting on Start -> Run and then type cmd to bring up the black DOS box above.  Type in exactly what I have in the DOS box and your SWF will be done in literally a blink of an eye.  For my example the PNG I named as flight2k.png and created a SWF called flight2k.swf.  This is why I mentioned earlier to keep the filename simple since DOS doesn't like longer file names with spaces in it.  It will probably work by putting quotations so it takes the entire string but all that really matters in the end is you get your SWF file.  Once that is generated you can rename it to whatever you like in windows explorer.

Hope this helps and if you got any questions feel free to post them here or shoot me a PM.  Enjoy!

[Silas (son of Silas)]

There was a wiring diagram of how some guy wired one in with this sort of amp.

I have the same amp wired to a Yamaha SWT sub and it really thumps hard. I posted about it a while back.....

[mwong168]

Thanks for the sub diagram SOS.  I think I saw it somewhere but forgot to bookmark or save the image before when I was working on my showcase build.

Anyways a quick update on the issue with my LED+GPWiz.  I was having issues with my LEDWiz+GP, mainly the right flipper button not working inside HyperPin despite all my buttons being mapped fine with Xpadder.  Every works perfectly in Visual Pinball but HyperPin most buttons like left flipper, Flyer, Instruction and Enter (<-- this one sometimes acts up but fixes itself) but the right flipper would never work and call up the Exit menu instead of spin the wheel right.



Here is how I had my buttons wired according to the diagram above and the brackets indicate the key I have it mapped to inside Xpadder:

1 - left flipper (left shift)
2 - start game (1)
3 - exit (esc)
4 - flyer (f)
5 - instruction (i)
6 - tilt (t)
7 - launch ball (enter)
8 - right flipper (right shift)

Now I stumbled on this by fluke the other night but I noticed when I hit the start game button it would spin the wheel right.  Keep in mind I haven't recompiled my FPLaunch or any other autohotkey scripts nor have any DXTweaks set on my system.  So easy solution to this was switch input #2 and #8 like this:

1 - left flipper (left shift)
2 - right flipper (right shift)
3 - exit (esc)
4 - flyer (f)
5 - instruction (i)
6 - tilt (t)
7 - launch ball (enter)
8 - start game (1)

Weird but everything works perfect where as before I was able to get by spinning the wheel inside HP left and if I happen to scroll too fast and missed the table I wanted to play I would have to spin the entire wheel again.  Something to consider when wiring should you decide to use a LED+GPWiz for your cab cause it's nice to have one board that can nail two birds with one stone.

[jmike]

      

With all the documentation/pics and links I think you'll inspire more members to build one of these.


As always great job.

 

[Smeghead]

This is brilliant and makes me want one even more

I want to do a bench set up this weekend but cant seem to get a good answer on how to split the screens up.
Right now im going with a 2 monitor setup (DMD+Backart on one)
How to do you send those to one monitor so that the playfield takes up the whole screen on the main one?

[Rick]

 

Amazing.  That is all.

[mwong168]

I want to do a bench set up this weekend but cant seem to get a good answer on how to split the screens up.
Right now im going with a 2 monitor setup (DMD+Backart on one)
How to do you send those to one monitor so that the playfield takes up the whole screen on the main one?

Just follow my instructions from the first post because it works for a 2 screen setup only.  Just make sure you are using the cabinet version of the VPinMAME.dll file before you install VPinMAME.  Also when setting up VPinMAME make sure you don't forget to change or make sure the display is set to (Default) and not your main monitor.



Also another thing to make sure is set your playfield display as the main monitor inside windows and the second monitor for DMD+Backart as your extended desktop.  The physical orientation inside windows makes a difference too.  Say for example your playfield monitor is #1 and backglass is #2 in the windows display properties it should look like this and this means monitor #1 is on the left and #2 is on the right.

[1][2]

What kind of video card are you running because I know with Nvidia cards it only works with certain version of drivers.  For example, I am using a 460GTX and using the 182.50 drives in Windows XP.  I was running a 250GTS before but just changed it up recently and sold off this card.

If you have any questions or problems feel free to post it, I'm here to help in anyway.

Mike