control panel decision and pinball help ??

[hyiu]

Hi All:

I'm now working on a new control panel for another cab... (yes.... another cab....     I'm very excited...    )
This one, I'll do from scratch.... and I'm planning to do a sit down upright cab.... (kind of like those Japanese ones....)ok.... before I get too carried away... back to my question...

Chirs has gave me great help in another thread and I'm now able to load and run VisualPinball.....
I also installed VPinMame, but I did not find/load any roms yet, so, don't know exactly how VPinMame looks...
(for now, I can play Visual Pinball...)

I'm planning to cut 5 more holes on the sides for pinball playing... (2 on each side, 1 for flipper and 1 for shaking) and 1 on the front side for shooting the ball....

I'm using sidewinder gameport hack, and would like to know how can I reconfig the buttons from keyboard to gamepad ?? Is it the same way in VisualPinball and VPinMame ?? or cannot ?? (currently, I can only run Visual Pinball, but not VPinMame, cos I have no roms...)

It is because I would like to start putting the control panel box together this wkend... and I would like to cut the holes before I put it together....

any comments/advises are appreciated....

sorry... this might should have been in software forum ?? if so, plz move it for me.... (since I think most ppl will check the main forum.. I'll have quicker response here...  )

also.... when I run visual pinball.... somehow, it does not go full screen... its running a window "almost" full screen, but I cannot get it to go full screen.... can someone tell me if its possible to get full screen ??

Is VPinMame the same as Visual Pinball ?? just another front end ??....

Thx for all the help and sorry for the long post...    

[MrBond]

I can help you with a few things:  vpinmame isn't a front end for visual pinball.  It's another program.  Visual pinball "emulates" the actual playing field, while vpinmame emulates the actual game rom (the scoreboard at the back of pinball machine, the sounds, the missions...)

To get Visual Pinball in Fullscreen, go to "Preferences", "Video Options" and click "Fullscreen".  Also you should select your screen resolution.

Some visual pinball tables (the ones people made up) can run without vpinmame.  However, if you want to run actual historic pinball games, you need the vpinmame roms.

A few links that will help ya out:

1)Vpinmame official:        http://www.pinmame.com/

2)Visual Pinball official:    http://www.randydavis.com/vp/

3)You can download Tables (Put these in Visual Pinball "table" folder) and Roms (Put these in the Vpinmame "roms" folder) (although some of it is in Polish!) Here:       http://emu.makii.pl/vp/listafliperow.php3

4)The visual pinball forums:   http://www.vpforums.com/

5)A great Front End:              http://vplauncher.rolandscholz.de/

6)You may find that some table have errors like you don't have the WPC.VBS file or something like that.  These can be downloaded from:
http://www.shivasite.com       under "VP Core" on the left side, then download the VBS files and unzip to the "Tables" folder of Visual pinball.

AHH!  Hope I didn't confuse you!  Ask if you want me to clarify anything!  I'll try!  Good luck with the panel!  Sounds like a great idea!  My MAME panel has the coin buttons on the sides, so I use those for pinball!

[MrBond]

Oops, the VBS files are under the VPM core, not VP core:

http://www.shivasite.com/dirindex.php?subdir=pin%2FVP-VPM%2FCore_Files_VPinMAME&sortby=name

[hyiu]

thank you very much... MrBond....

I'll try things out this wkend and post back results here....
thx....

       

[hyiu]

After the explanations, I now understand why you'll need Visual Pinball and VPinMame....
I've tried it a bit... and now, I got both running....

I ran it by clicking on the VPT file and it will automatically starts....  but I don't see the menus for going full screen...
(did not use the front end yet.... I was thinking 1 thing at a time...)

also... how can I reconfigure keys for the tasks ??
(cos I'm using sidewinder hack.... this is important for me !!)


Thank you for all the help !!

[MrBond]

There should be a VPinball.exe file in your virtual pinball folder.  Launch this.  It's actually an editor for making your own tables.  This is where you do the Preferences, Video Options, Full Screen.

You can reconfigure the keys by the Preferences, Keys menu.  I'm not sure if you can use the sidewinder hack...I don't have any experience with it- I reprogrammed my I-PAC to the default keys 'cause it was easier.  (I tried changing my coin keys, which are on the side of my panel, to the flippers, but there were configeration problems- the '5' key puts coins in in VP)  You can reconfigure these keys in the VPMKeys.vbs files, but I don't know if it works for game controllers.

Anybody else using a sidewinder on Visual Pinball?  Maybe there's a wrapper or something that allows input other than the keyboard.

Hope this helps!  

[Tiger-Heli]

One quick comment: A FEW pinball tables have upper and lower flippers on each side.  You might want to allow for this when you plan out the buttons.

[Dave_K.]

Another good reason for upper and lower buttons on each side can be for "bumping the table" in that direction.  Has anyone else made buttons for these? (and a button on the front that I guess you press with your waist by bumping into it?   ).

-Dave

[Howard_Casto]

Most people that are that hardcore go for shock detectors for the tilting.  You can get the little switches for a couple of bucks at radio shack... The tick is to mount htem in such a way that bumping on the left side triggers the left switch and ect.

Also there are 0 visual pinball tables that support dual flippers.  The dual flipper inputs are assigned to the primary flipper inputs as there isn't a "flipper left/right 2"  input option on visual pinball.  There are some pinball pc games that use dual flippers but all of them allow you to assign two flippers to the same button.  

[MrBond]

I was actually thinking about going with an actual tilt detection mechanism from a real pinball machine.  My uncle offered to get one for me from his arcade/pinball/jukebox buisness.  A wired triangular plumb-bob hangs down and makes contact with the sides when nudged, completing the circuit.  Thought this would be fairly easy to wire up.  
Shock detectors sound just as good though, but think of the authenticity of a real tilt component!

[hyiu]

Hi there:

I just read on some other topic mentioning a pgrm called "Joytokey"....  and I was thinking... YEAH !!...
this could work !!...

but then, I downloaded and tried... joytokey using Visual Pinball.... no good.... it shows up on notepad fine... but visual pinball still doesn't recognize it....

is there anything I need to change in config ??
to use gameport sidewinder for visual pinball ?? or simply its not possible ??...

*** sigh ***