Mala and Future Pinball...fixing the "Pinball Meditation Error"

[dudenohair]

Note... this is a SOLUTION, not a question!

I installed Future Pinball on my multi arcade using Mala as the front end.   For a long time, I couldn't get certain pinball tables to work properly in Future Pinball (either within Mala or not).  Googling the solution was no help because it seems that nobody had a fix that works for the dreaded "Pinball Meditation Error".  I discovered the fix.

The tables made by Greywolf are the problem.  The first issue is the "Wolf libraries".  There are two files you need to download and unzip and make sure all the files in the unzipped "Libraries" folder end up in the Future Pinball "Libraries" folder.  If you do this right, you will find that the errors upon loading the table "can't find library EMBally.fpl" and similar go away.

The next problem with these tables is the "Pinball Meditation" error.  The way to fix this is to move the "Scripts" folder that comes with the table to the "Future Pinball" folder... so you should see full folder called "Scripts" in the Future Pinball program directory.  This should help the pinball ?meditate? properly!

I hope this post helps someone out.

[Wade007]

Thanks for this post. I'm configuring Future Pinball right now for MALA and need all the help I can get.

[dudenohair]

Thanks for this post. I'm configuring Future Pinball right now for MALA and need all the help I can get.

Another issue is that you do need a compiled autohotkey script  called "Future Pinball Wrapper" to launch future pinball so it hides the various windows for Future pinball.  If you are like me, you have a low resolution screen for Mala, and the "Future Pinball Wrapper.bmp" the launcher uses is too big to fit the screen.  Just use the graphic of your choice instead of the default graphic provided with the script.   I recommend you use Autohotkey and tweak the script to do what you want and compile it instead of using the wrapper right out of the zip file.

[Wade007]

Thanks for the heads up on the Future Pinball wrapper. I haven't quite gotten to Future Pinball yet as expected. I'm still refining my lists for MAME. Where do I get this "wrapper" and script you talk about?

[dudenohair]

Thanks for the heads up on the Future Pinball wrapper. I haven't quite gotten to Future Pinball yet as expected. I'm still refining my lists for MAME. Where do I get this "wrapper" and script you talk about?

This link still works:  http://www.spacefractal.com/files/App/FuturePinballWrapper.zip

Be warned, it is not perfect.   You might have to learn some AutoHotkey and tweak it.

[Wade007]

OK, I've downloaded the FuturePinballWrapper and unzipped it into the root directory of Future Pinball where FuturePinball.exe sits.
In that same directory is a folder called "Tables" with a single '.fpt' table in it.

When I double click the Wrapper.exe or AHK file it says simply "Tables\.fpt" could not be found.

I've read and re-read the Text file. The broken English makes it a bit hard to understand. Regardless, I still don't know how to set this up or how to integrate into Mala. Can you give me some guidance here?

How to I fix the script or position the elements to work? What do I code into Mala to launch the script (Once I get it to work outside of Mala)?

Thanks.

[EDIT] The FuturePinballWrapper listed above doesn't work. It was initially written for MameWah not Mala. I got some more info from others in these forums and heavily modified it to work with MALA. See my post here for the final solution:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=121125.0

Also, for those reading this later, the two files needed for Greywolf's tables are "fp-EM-Bally.fpl"' and "fp-EM-General".fpl. There may be a few more depending on the table. They can be downloaded directly from http://www.irpinball.org/
Look under any Greywolf table and download WolfLibs v5.0, part 1 and part 2. Good luck.