Announcment: New Visual Pinball Wrapper coming....

[Howard_Casto]

I've got a freshly rebuilt mame cab with a hd monitor.  As you might have noticed in a couple of previous threads, I've become rather obsessed with visual pinball lately.  VP still needs a lot of work in regards to making it cabient friendly and I eventually intented to tackle that at the source (In other words submitting source code for vp and pinmame.)  For now though I want to experiment to see what kinds of features would be cool to have for vp/pinmame.

So for now a new wrapper is in development... or rather I should say it has been in development for a couple of weeks now and will be released shortly.  I want to post a list of features in-case anyone wants to add suggestions of things that might be nice. 


Launching Features:

Launch any table via a mame-style command line

Exit any table with the press of esc... no context menu shown

If a dmd window is found, it will be set as the "child" window of the table itself.... because child windows can never be behind their parents... it ensures that the dmd will never go behind the table

Via a temporary registry edit, the vp editor window is placed below the visible screen, this means you will NEVER see the vp editor as the table loads.

Extra Features:

An on-screen menu that appears when you press the left flipper+start.  The on screen menu will let to change table-specific settings.


VP Features:

The ability to set rendering options on a per-game basis.  Accessable via in-game menu.  Changeable options include....

Ball Shadow
Ball Decal
AA-Ball
Ball Stretch Options
Hardware Device Rendering
Check Blit Status
Reorder Playfield
Alpha Ramp Accuracy

PM Features:

The ability to set rendering options on a per-rom basis.  Accessable via in-game menu.  Changeable options include....

Color  (color macros, which are easier than editing the rgb values)
Orientation
Compact Display
Anti-Aliasing


Extra Features:

The ability to do some really cool stuff with the DMD. Accessable via in-game menu. Features include....

DMD Placement (not just absolute pixels, which is tricky... more friendly stuff like "top centered" or "upper left")
DMD Size (in percent of original size)
DMD Translucency
Clear DMD background (the black portion of the dmd is made invisible, so you only see the dots/digits over-top of the table)



Yes a decent amount of this is already done in the HP wrapper, but it's options are focused on dedicated pinball cabinets, while my options are more focused on a mame cab running tables.  Translucent DMDs are especially helpful as on a single monitor cab you normally have the option of making a dmd so tiny that you can't really make it out, or so far away from the playfield that you can't look at it while playing.

[Gray_Area]

Awesome. I could never get the old wrapper quite to work.

[MPTech]

Keep us posted, this sounds great! The VPinball games are some of my favorites to play. 

[Howard_Casto]

Ok WIP time:

I thought some images of what I'm going for might be nice.  

First off is an image of a dmd with a transparent background below... note that it's perfectly clear behind the dots.




And my preferred sizing, transparency and coloring options for star trek tng:



And a few pics of the in-game options menu I'm working on:










Anyway, things are coming along nicely.  I've got all the code to read the registry in place, now it's just a matter of inserting the code to write to the registry and a little bit of code to switch things on the fly.  

Also I've found an incredibly annoying issue.... I didn't realize the pinmame doesn't put the rom name in the title of it's window like regular mame does.  I can work around that though, it'll just take a little more time.  

[gatordad]

Looks really well thought out, looking forward to giving it a whirl.

[Howard_Casto]

Thanks.  I try. 


Well it looks like I have the whole rom issue sorted.  I annoyingly had to print a gamelist from the command-line version of pinmame.  Luckily pinmame is updated about once a century now, so it shouldn't be much of an issue. 

I've got to continue hooking up things to get everything red properly.... then I'll get into the process of actually applying all the settings.  The way the vp/pinmame combo works is annoying.  For me to know for sure which rom is loaded I have to wait for the table to load completely and display the currently running rom.  Then I have to read it's registry settings and see if they match the settings that the user has defined.  If they don't I have to write the new settings to the registry and reload pinmame!  UGH!

It's going to take this weekend probably to get the reading and applying of settings correctly.  After that it'll be trivial to write settings. 

[Howard_Casto]

I'm at the home stretch finally.  Spent most of the spare hours of the day working on this.  I've got everything reading and writing properly except for settings that are applied for pinmame in the registry.  That isn't particularly difficult, but it is time consuming.  After I get that in place it's just a matter of making some nice touches like a DMD preview when you are adjusting the position and scale. 

I'm also going to write a very simple future pinball wrapper as well.  I see that after all these years Randy hasn't learned from his mistakes.  In FP you can sometimes see the editor window when a table is loading.  Form.visible = false Randy, Form.visible = false   It's so trivial to fix on his end and yet it's a total nightmare to do it externally.   

[Howard_Casto]

Hey if anyone wants to help out I've got a job for you guys:


I need some new loading screens.  The old "idiot police" screen is showing it's age and considering vp has been around for years now without legal incident, I'm not as concerned about the "stealing roms" message. 

Something simple and clean would be nice..... no need to make a "vp launch" logo or anything, just a simple "loading" message. 


I whipped something up, but it's rather plain.  If anyone's interested just whip me up a sample and if it's any good we'll go with it!

[Circo]

This looks amazing, great work!

[drventure]

Nice work!

For the loading message, can you support an animated GIF, or just static images?

I was going to play around with making some large animated "loading" bits ala winphone 7 or the iphone...

[Howard_Casto]

No animated gifs, but I can "flipbook" a collection of static images if you have an animation in mind.

[Loafmeister]

I'm at the home stretch finally.  Spent most of the spare hours of the day working on this.  I've got everything reading and writing properly except for settings that are applied for pinmame in the registry.  That isn't particularly difficult, but it is time consuming.  After I get that in place it's just a matter of making some nice touches like a DMD preview when you are adjusting the position and scale. 

I'm also going to write a very simple future pinball wrapper as well.  I see that after all these years Randy hasn't learned from his mistakes.  In FP you can sometimes see the editor window when a table is loading.  Form.visible = false Randy, Form.visible = false   It's so trivial to fix on his end and yet it's a total nightmare to do it externally.   

Juussttt an FYI, Randy has nothing to do with FP Howard, that was Chris's (Black) baby.  Hmmm a wrapper eh? 

[Howard_Casto]

My bad... In my mind at least Randy and Black and interchangeable. 

Sorry guys... I was aiming to release this today, but I needed to clean the bathtub and now I'm all hopped up on cleaners.  There are still some things to work out with the dmd manipulation and thus it will probably be later this week before I release it. 

[Xiaou2]

Personally, I dont think its a good idea to further destroy the already poor visibility of the top portion the field.

 I think better options, are something like making the display smaller, and popping it on the Apron (nearest the player.  The place there the instruction cards are held. 

[Howard_Casto]

Personally, I dont think its a good idea to further destroy the already poor visibility of the top portion the field.

 I think better options, are something like making the display smaller, and popping it on the Apron (nearest the player.  The place there the instruction cards are held. 

Well it's a good thing that I've always had that option in there, even since the last version of my wrapper then. 

Nice try, thanks for playing.

[spoot]

I'll have to check this out later this week.  I hated the "old" method of pinmame I've not run it in ages.

[Howard_Casto]

Ran into a bit of a snag this morning. 

I've been running vp in 16 bit mode because I have an ati card and tables just don't render properly otherwise.  What I noticed form futher testing this morning is that both my in-game menu and the dmd don't render their translucency properly in 32 bit mode.  Worst case scenario this isn't the end of the world.... vp pre-renders tables prior to launching, so there is virutally no difference visually between 16 bit and 32 (you still get all your nice alpha blending and ect....)  that being said I want to figure out what the issue is, because it seems to be at the windows api level. 

I'll look into it further.....

[headkaze]

What are you using to alpha blend?

[Gray_Area]

Sorry guys... I was aiming to release this today, but I needed to clean the bathtub and now I'm all hopped up on cleaners.  

Some Ajax, a blue scrubby, and some elbow grease....oh, and a large-ass cup (I have an old Del Taco 64oz'er). Takes several minutes.

Oh, neat idea. I had no idea what you were describing. However, I don't want all my tables to look like Pinball 2000 tables.

[Howard_Casto]

What are you using to alpha blend?

Well SetLayeredWindowAttributes is what I've been using... it seems to be the only thing that'll work on the pinmame window.  I could try some of vistas/7s aero features, but that would limit functionality to exclude xp and a lot of people still use xp on their cabs. 

It's odd, it seems like the api has a glitch in it.  Alpha blend seems to work ok (yet unreliably) in 32 bit color, but color key is having issues.  A color key of 0,0,0 in 16 bit mode makes the dmd background clear, but in 32 bit mode it just seems to make the dmd glitch out.  There are also other oddities... I'm making  a "transparent form" to overlay the in game menu.  The form has a color value of 0,16,0 set via a rgb macro, which is the way msdn suggests you set the color.  In 16 bit mode this makes the form clear as it should, but in 32 bit is doesn't.  I have to set the color key value and the form value to 0,17,0 in 32 bit mode for it to work.   

You know, come to think of it areo is disabled in 16 bit mode..... could areo and layered attributes be fighting each other? 

I could do an os check and incorporate functions from both.

[Howard_Casto]

Sorry guys... I was aiming to release this today, but I needed to clean the bathtub and now I'm all hopped up on cleaners.  

Some Ajax, a blue scrubby, and some elbow grease....oh, and a large-ass cup (I have an old Del Taco 64oz'er). Takes several minutes.

Oh, neat idea. I had no idea what you were describing. However, I don't want all my tables to look like Pinball 2000 tables.

Nah man it was bad.... waaaaay over-due.... Between this and the slight cold I'm getting I was in bed until just a couple of hours ago.    (Sorry I didn't see this post before... still dizzy.)  I had to use stright bleach in a few places.... bleach fumes.... fun!

Yeah it's not for everyone, but it's useful for other reasons as well. 
Examples: 

You can put the dmd in the drain/apron area as X2 suggested

I don't have a dedicated pm cab so I don't know if it handles every issue but I've noticed how pm cab users constnatly complain about the dmd being the wrong orientation.... you can change that via settings.  I'm looking into the "cabinet" tables as well so that I can add placement options specific for them.

It hides the editor and makes the dmd a child of the table so it can't go behind the table.

You can change the render settings on a per-game basis.  I know on my own setup the recent star trek table won't display properly without some tweaks to the video options in vp.... options that make all the other tables look like garbage.  It was what inspired me to do a new wrapper. 

**Update**

HK:  You always seem to save my butt even without realizing it.  I wouldn't have thought about aero's interference without you asking about the method I used.  Turns out that aero totally screws up layered attributes.  Far worse than simply making it not work, it makes it "half work" causing buggy, unreliable results.  I changed to a "basic" theme and everythign worked properly.

You know there were a few more experimental apps that I abandoned because of glitchiness..... they used layered attributes as well.  I'll have to re-visit them.


Now the fun really begins.... I'll have to find a way to programatically disable aero.  What I found in my testing is that even when you turn it off for a specific exe via compatability settings, it doesn't stop the glitchiness because aero is still running on other windows (or the desktop, for that matter).  You have to disable aero period... not just for the specific app, or even all the apps used (in this case vp, pm and the wrapper).  

[Loafmeister]

At the moment, I zero idea which app it was, but there's one I ran where on loading it stated "must turn off Aero" which it did, then when the app was exited, aero was re-enabled.  Shoot!  If I can remember, this may assist you in how they did it.

edit:  http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/easily-disable-vistas-aero-before-running-an-application-such-as-a-video-game/

I'm assuming that's what you are referring that you tried, which didn't work, shoot. "Disabling the desktop composition" seems to be what that app I was referring to was using but... it sure seems to turn off the THEME itself which you'd figure works.  Too bad.

[Howard_Casto]

No... actually that works!  But when I do that via calling the dll that does the very same fuction (in other words programatically) it doesn't?  I guess I didn't see the forest for the trees on that one... I disabled themes, thinking that would turn off aero as well.... didn't specifically check the "disable composition" box.  

I wonder if I distribute the exe if my preferences for compatability mode will be checked or if I'll have to instruct users to change them?

[Loafmeister]

Glad it worked!!!  Dunno, but at least it's something you can put in the documentation for the user to do as part of its installation process.

[RetroBorg]

This looks great!

[Howard_Casto]

Thanks for all the help guys.... I would have been pulling my hair out for a week trying to figure out the oddball aero issues and fix.

I'm still fighting off a bit of a head cold, but in my pre-medicated stupor I managed to get some real progress.  

Because of vp's oddball setup there isn't a 100% sure method to determine the rom being used.  Since three of the registry entires I need to set apply to the dmd, which uses the romname, this causes a bit of a headache.  I wrote a system that I think will eliminate having to reset pinmame 99% of the time (pinmame only reads the registry at startup, so whenever I change things I have to reset it.)

Step 1.  Prior to launching a table the wrapper checks to see if the last rom used for the table is recorded in tableroms.ini

Step 2a.  If that fails then I run the same function that I wrote for my rom retrival tool to try and parse the most likey rom from the table's script.
              We go ahead and write those settings to the registry assuming this rom name is correct.

Step 2b.  If it was found then we are 100% certain that this is the correct rom... go ahead and write the preferred settings to the registry.

Step 3.  After launching the table, we grab the caption of the actual rom running... get the rom name by looking up said caption and compare it to the romname used in step 2.  Regardless, we record the rom currently running in tableroms.ini so save us from all this searching the next time the table is launched.


Step 4a.  If they are the same then good!  No reset required.

Step 4b.  If they aren't the same, we go ahead and write the proper registry values to the current rom running.  Using code the table gets reset.  You'll have to wait up to 5 seconds for the dmd to reappear, but hey, this will only happen once.



I want to add even more troubleshooting code, to make things as painless as possible as well as a check to verify that we are actually changing any of the registry values  (no need to reset if there is nothing to change.)

After that it's a simple matter of hooking up the in-game menu to all of these functions so that it actually changes the settings.  I'll want to do some other little touches as well, like a message box detector, so you can navigate through any annoying pop-ups.

[Howard_Casto]

Not much to report tonight I'm afraid.  I'm not really in the mood to program.  I'm still churning along though. 


Because there is a slim chance that the wrapper might grab the wrong dmd romname, thus making the wrapper have to write the settings after the table is loaded and requiring a reset of the dmd, I've added some code to avoid that if at all possible. 

I figure 90% of the time your dmd registry settings are going to be your default settings.  I wrote a function to read the current values of the dmd prior to writing the new ones.  If they are the same, the dmd won't reset.  Likewise, if this is the first time the rom has been loaded (blank values) It checks to see if the settings we are writing (which remove the "ok" prompt btw...) are different form pinmame's default settings. 

In lamens terms all this code means that the dmd isn't going to reset unless there is something worth resetting for. 


I also hooked up the code to delete entries via the in-game menu last night.  I also added code to block the option to delete your default settings as there's no point in ever doing that.... just change em and save. 

So I've still got to hook up the "save" functions for the in-game menu.  They are already working in the wrappers pre-launch gui, I just have to hook them up. 

I'll also need to hook up the apply function... which resets the table and/or dmd if necessary. 

So it's those two things and a little bit of cleanup. 




Oh btw....

I would like suggestions on what key combinations to use to open the in-game menu.  Right now it's start+left flipper but I found that this combo activates league play in some tables.  A lot of people don't use the magna-save buttons so those are probably out.  I could allow the use of a dedicated button or make it a three button combo. (Like start+left flipper+right flipper) 

Suggestions?

[Howard_Casto]

Ugh.... those two hours just flew by... (NOT)


DMD options are hooked up.... you can now change them in-game.  I manged to make the restart fairly quick as well.... it's quick enough to where you can keep trying different settings over and over until you get what you like... which was the whole point of in-game adjustments.

I'll see if I can tackle the table options tomorrow.  After that it's just cleanup and testing.

[Howard_Casto]

We're on the home stretch now!

I added in the code to change the vp rendering settings via the in-game menu.  I also added in the code to completely unload and restart a table.... something that is necessary when you want to apply new render settings.


In other words, everything is working now.

I want to do some more testing and the graphics are in need of a cleanup, but that's about it.  This will definately be released by this weekend, probably sooner!

[TopJimmyCooks]

Cool stuff Howard - now that I've got my cab sorted, I'm going to look into VP (and FP) on a faster machine.  I look forward to giving your work a spin. Thanks for doing it. 

[Loafmeister]

Same here, well done!

[Howard_Casto]

Just a heads up.  I'm having internet problems atm.  I'm trying to get the cable guy to come look at it, but that's like trying to get a cow to stand on one leg.  I can connect, but my speed is only slightly faster than dial-up.  Took like 5 min for the forum to load!

Anyway, all software is on hold until this gets sorted.  Even assuming I could manage to work on it without downloading more tables to test things out, I couldn't possibly get it uploaded to the site.... so just site tight... I'll be a lurker at best until my cable gets fixed. 

Now hopefully this will post.......

[Howard_Casto]

I guess I reverese jinxed myself.    I got fed up a pulled out  a spare modem (don't ask) at midnight.... the midnight tech support guys are always better and this guy just setup this different modem for me and thus far I'm good!

I'm wore out though and didn't get any of the stuff done I wanted tech-wise.  So I guess it's another delay. 

But on the bright side you can get in contact with me if you have issues with my other stuff. 

[Howard_Casto]

Ok I got a little more done this weekend.

I reworked all the menu images so now they look good regardless of the bit depth.  I had to make them gifs (BLEH!) but the images only contain a few colors and no gradiation anyway.

I've also squashed all the remaining bugs I could find.  What's left is to add a few more nice features that people might find helpful as well as some tweakable settings in case the wrapper behaves strangely on your system.

[dna disturber]

Ok I got a little more done this weekend.

I reworked all the menu images so now they look good regardless of the bit depth.  I had to make them gifs (BLEH!) but the images only contain a few colors and no gradiation anyway.

I've also squashed all the remaining bugs I could find.  What's left is to add a few more nice features that people might find helpful as well as some tweakable settings in case the wrapper behaves strangely on your system.

Hi Howard,

How about showing the hiscores.
I've got a commandlinereader program that reads out the hiscores from the .nv file.
It can read out all the hiscores , loop champion , buyin hiscore table etc.
Maybe you can use it as you have found a way to extract the romname from the tables and this program works with the romname.

You can download it at www.pinemhi.com and maybe try it out to see if it's something worthwhile.

I've also built a flashfile that shows an output example (reads-out a txt-file written by the pinemhi program)
Here is a youtube video of it.


Dna Disturber

[Howard_Casto]

I'm not opposed to it at all, but I think you are going to have to explain what the point would be.

If you are reading the hi-scores from the nv file then aren't they already going to be displayed in the DMD? 

[dna disturber]

I'm not opposed to it at all, but I think you are going to have to explain what the point would be.

If you are reading the hi-scores from the nv file then aren't they already going to be displayed in the DMD?  

For the most part that is true but....
It takes a while before they get displayed (especially the special ones , such as loop champion and such)
If you don't pay attention , you have to wait until it comes around again....
And they can go by pretty fast...
With this you can see , even before you start the game what your target(s)   is/are....
And did I mention the bragging rights even when you just cycle through the tables among friends.....

It could work similar to HitoText in hyperspin (showing the hiscores in the frontend instead of ingame and waiting on it to show the hiscore table)
I liked that feature but I'm biased of course as I worked on the project in the past  

 

[Howard_Casto]

Well it's just mho, but it sounds a bit redundant then.  In a front-end it totally makes sense.... you can check high scores without having to load up a table!  But once the table is already loaded, I dunno, I perfer to see them on the real DMD myself. 

See I thought that the tool did some kind of online database thingy, I didn't realize it only worked on your own local scores.  You should work on that!  Have vpforums host it....  it'd be awesome.

I was thinking of adding rules viewing though.  It seems odd to me that vpinball has the option to put a full set of rules in the info section but no universal way to view them. 

[dna disturber]

No problem....
The online database thingy is already there and working. 
It's hosted on the same website.
The program is called pinemhi leaderboard.
Has also challenges and a 5 minute mode and of course all the normal hiscores.
I,ve got a thread on vpforums about the program.

No experience with rules unfortunately..

 

[Howard_Casto]

Well I am interested in adding support for that.  Loading/Saving nv ram to a database should be done at the launching level afterall.  I think this would better be discussed in PM, so shoot me a line when you are ready.