Visual Pinball 8 - More 'cabinet friendly'?

[farmecologist]

Hi all,

I was poking around the vpforums site and saw that a Visual Pinball 8 beta has been released:

    http://www.vpforums.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41062

To quote the message:

Additionally, I have improved the 'play only' scenario (/play -tablename) so that when you double-click a table file, the editor does not display at all, and when you exit the player, it exits to windows, not the editor. One question: For those people who write front-ends to VP, is there any desired behavior from this mode than to just be able to pass a close-window message to the VP player and have the process exit?

It seems like this might make life easier for cabinet use.   I'll try it out soon and report back.

[ChadTower]

There have been front ends that could mostly do that for a while.  I almost never enter the editor.

[farmecologist]

I know..However, I was never able to get the 'wrappers' to work reliably with mamewah.   I know quite a few others have had the same problem.   In my opinion it is always better to have the program exit cleanly rather than have a 'wrapper' program running.

 

[ChadTower]

It definitely wasn't purely cab friendly.  OTOH, they may not want it to be... no one wants to get legally slapped around the way MAME has been.

[FrizzleFried]

Oh how I wish SOMEONE would write a VERTICAL pinball emulator...it only sounds NATURAL that this would be done,  but evidently not.

[shardian]

Oh how I wish SOMEONE would write a VERTICAL pinball emulator...it only sounds NATURAL that this would be done,  but evidently not.

Seconded!

[farmecologist]

Well, according to the post, he made the changes for the new ultracade pinball box...so I assume they do want it to be cabinet friendly.  

Pic of it here:

http://www.pinballnews.com/shows/atei2006/index.html

Scroll down to the bottom of the page.   Interesting..I had no idea Ultracade is producing a visual pinball box.  I thought Ultracade folded?

[ChadTower]

Most computer monitors aren't widescreen... at least not yet.  It would definitely be cool to be able to rotate the image for a widescreen.

I wonder if it could be used at a custom resolution with an independent video driver.  Weren't there some that some people were using for vertical MAME installations?

[shardian]

Well, according to the post, he made the changes for the new ultracade pinball box...so I assume they do want it to be cabinet friendly.   

Pic of it here:

http://www.pinballnews.com/shows/atei2006/index.html

Scroll down to the bottom of the page.   Interesting..I had no idea Ultracade is producing a visual pinball box.  I thought Ultracade folded?

Refer to this thread:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=62370.msg618967#msg618967

[shock_]

Sorry to dredge up a quiet thread - but has anyone actually taken (the most recent) VP 8 beta for a spin?  Is it stable, and does it improve the struggle with wrappers?  I am planning to give it a shot shortly since I've come up against a bunch of almost-showstopper bugs and behaviours with VP7 and both wrappers - but I thought I'd ask first.

[Green Giant]

I was having lots of trouble with vp7 so I gave 8 a try.  It does work pretty good, I just have had trouble with exit.  The closest I can get it is when you hit to exit, you need the trackball/mouse to click a confirm exit button from pinmame, and then I think I had to close vp8 with the mouse.

Maybe someone else using a keyboard emulator instead of a gamepad has had more trouble.  But the games seemed to be working correctly.

[Malacus]

I love VP8, I dont have it running in a cab or anything, but it fixed my biggest problem with the old versions not displaying transparencies correctly.

-Mal