Wanted: Idiots guide to playing pinball games on the PC

[crashwg]

Every time I come across a thread that talks about Visual Pinball, VPinMAME or the like I go on a quest to get it up and running but never can quite figure it all out.

Is there a step by step out there somewhere that any idiot could follow if they just wanted to play a game like Whitewater? <-My fav.

Let me just make it clear that I'm not asking for any files that some would consider illegal.  Just tell me the files I need and where to put them.
Oh and don't point me to any compilation discs that you can buy at walmart, that's not what I'm after.

[mvsfan]

i dont really think this is what your talking about, it seems like you want some sort of virtual pinball emulator that emulates GNR pinball, for example.

i never heard of anything like that.

but their are a few really good video pinball games you can try. my favorite is pinball action.

[Flake]

http://vpforums.org/index.php?automodule=downloads&req=idx&cmd=viewdetail&f_id=24

This tutorial worked for me. 

The tables are available for free download from this site as well.

[Tiger-Heli]

I just got back into Video Pinball.

Definitely use the VP Install Pack from the tutorial. (Basic setup info here as well)

First thing I would try is installing a non-VPMame game - DisArm_a_geddon is likely one of the best ones.  Get it here.

You will want to copy it to the tables folder, open it in VP and under Video Preferences set desired resolution, Full Screen, and disable table caching.

For Whitewater, you need the table, and the rom. Should be ww_l5, I think.  Roms are also available on VPF.org, but you have to register, I believe.

Put the rom in the ROMS folder and the Table in the Tables folder.  The table should open and play.

If you only see the DMD (Dot-Matrix Display) and no table, see this thread.

That should get you up and running, but there is some additional fine-tuning if you want.

Press F6 with the table running to see the table/dip switch options.

Enter the settings menu - I think for WW, it is Coin Door Open (End Key) and then 9 to raise the background volume, then 7 will select or escape menus, 8 and 9 to go forward and 0 to select an option - this will allow you to set 5 balls per game, 1 credit per game, etc.  The guides here and here are for setting Replay Levels, but the same keys get you to most any of the setup menus.

You might want to move and resize the DMD to fit the backdrop - see this thread for that - I usually take a screen shot, find the area with the Crop function in Gimp, and set it in the registry, but eye-balling it works also.

That should take care of WW - this gets addictive, so when you want to add more stuff, you'll want a front-end - I like VP-Man, but for a cabinet, MAMEwah/MALA can be adapted well.

You might want to hide the startup and splash screens, and that is explained here.

Finally, you'll want some more tables - VP is a very ego-centric community, so I would never post this on a VP forum, but I find the best playing tables are JP Salas available here and here, the best looking (lighting) are Scapinos available here, PacDude here does a nice job with the aspect ratio and playability, and I also like Jamin and Lander (RIP) work on VPF.

FWIW, I tried Future Pinball, and much preferred VP, and there is much more released for VP8 than VP9 (and you need to run the table with the correct VP version, but VP-Man can handle launching VP9 tables with VP9 (but you have to tell it to for each VP9 table that you run).

Hope This Helps!!!

[1UP]

Thanks for posting that Tiger Heli, I lost track of VP years ago, and all the old links are either dead or outdated.  Scapino's tables look really nice.  Lighting is so integral to the character of a pinball game, and that's what's sorely lacking on the Multipin and Ultrapin machines, both of which I tried this weekend at CAX.  Flipper vibration and interactive tilt features don't really mean much when the image of the table is almost unrecognizable.

Now I just need to find an Attack from Mars table...

[Tiger-Heli]

Hey 1UP - glad to see you're still around.

The thing I don't like about SOME of Scapino's table's is they can be really dark.  With a real pin, you can shift your viewpoint to see more what's going on, with VP, you can't.

Scapino also does some of the Pinball Legends (??) tables and posted a bit about the differences (straight sides, full top down view, no perspective).

The difference with MAME and VP is everything is customizable.  With MAME, basically, you play PacMan, and if you don't like it you have to wait for the DevTeam to fix it.  With VP, there might be five versions of the same table, and you can change the backdrops and flipper behaviour, etc. etc.

For AFM - opinions are subjective, but PacDude above has a version of AFM, but it's a bit outdated now, IMHO (it's somewhat a darker table, though).  JP Salas above has both VP8 and VP9 versions.  I'm a bit mixed on which I like better ....

VP9 - Has a larger DMD on the backglass where it belongs, has several view options to support 4:3 or 16:9 monitors as shown on JP's site.  I think the flashing when the saucer is destroyed is better - it flashes in VP8 - it seems to strobe left to right in VP9.  I don't like the Barstool background, but I adapted JP's VP8 background to the table.  Lacks the saucer LED's, though.

VP8 - better background and saucer LED's, no backglass to position the DMD on.

Overall, I slightly prefer the VP9 table.

If you're an AFM fan, you should also check out Attack/Revenge from Mars on JP's site - it's essentially the RFM playfield graphics with the AFM romset.

[1UP]

Yeah, I played Revenge from Mars this weekend, and I still really like the AFM playfield and gameplay.  The video screen in the middle of the playfield on RFM just felt like a cheap gimmick, the animated saucer and aliens are really cool on AFM IMO.

Do you know if it's easy to change the default camera angle on existing tables?  I'd like to look into making a pin machine with a rotated flatscreen ala Multipin where the playfield fills the whole monitor.  LCD TVs are really getting cheap for decent sizes.

[Tiger-Heli]

I haven't really messed with it, but I don't think it is easy to do.

Future Pinball uses a 3-D model and could probably handle it if anyone has built a table for it.

The Hyperspin forum is probably your best bet for asking this, and some conversions have been done for it.

I know you can pretty easily display the playfield on one flat LCD and the backglass and DMD on a vertical one.

Rotating and maybe even stretching the playfield is probably workable, but I think getting the sides parallel (no perspective), would probably involve moving and adjusting the position and physics or all the ramps, targets, lights, habitrails, etc. - not easy.

[1UP]

Hey, got everything working nicely thanks to your recommendations.  I think I like JP's AFM better, looks more like the real thing, and the playfield is bigger too which helps.  Having just played the real machine a few days ago, this really feels pretty close.

Following your links, I just went to IPMD and looked at their list of top 10 pins, then downloaded those tables from the various sites.  Then grabbed anything off Scapino's that looked interesting.  A dozen tables or so will be plenty for me since I never played pins that much in arcades, just a few extra options to add to my game list.  I like some of the older games like Strikes And Spares and Eight Ball.  I think Scapino and PacDude's tables are really beautiful.  They have everything down to reflections and glows off the side walls of the playfield.

Of course nothing compares to a real table, but I think this will hold me over until I get a house with a basement and $4000 or so to spend on a nice pinball like AFM or Addams Family or Theater Of Magic.

[Tiger-Heli]

Glad you got it set up - I'll have to try PD's AFM, I think I only set up JPG's versions.

There's a Poll here that you might be interested in - hard to say which I'd want, $4000 and a lot of upkeep, and then you can ONLY play AFM to TAF or TOM, or about the same money and you can play virtually anything you want, but it's not a REAL pin ....

[1UP]

Whoops, I meant JP's AFM...   anyway, it's a tough call--a dedicated real table or a Multipin type setup.  To be honest, while the Ultrapin/Multipin cabs are a great concept, I really wasn't impressed with them at the show.  Both my wife and I tried them both at CAX, and went right back to the real machines.  No comparison at all.

Now that may have just been because we were surrounded by dozens of easily accessible pinball tables which doesn't happen every day, but I think it's mostly to do with the lighting and the angle of the screens on the video pins.  The screens were too bright and flat-lit, and seemed like they should have been higher and angled a little more toward the player, like the level of the top glass on a real pin.  They felt a little low to me.

On the other hand, while I didn't really get into the Multipin tables, I'm having a blast with VPinMame.  I'll say it again, the lighting is sooo important.  Most pins are going to be in a darkened environment like a bar or game center, most of the light comes from the playfield and scoreboard. 

I find that the VP tables that have the flat-lit playfields are much less engrossing than say Scapino's tables that have more realistic lighting.  It seems like most folks are making tables straight from photos of the playfield which were taken using a flash, and only a few bother to mess with the graphics in photoshop to get the light levels right, and add the proper glows etc, which is why there are certain well-known artists that really stand out.  I like flashy lights.   

Back to your point though--I guess the ideal situation for me would be to have a few real pins in good shape, and a pro to come out and service them when they're down.  I'd still have a few tables on my Mame cab just for variety, but I just don't see video pinball as a real substitute, unless we get 3D screens that work in a rotated configuration, and force feedback for every bumper and plunger action and ball impact.  Well, I might settle for a DIY version made to my specs, but not a $4000 pre-made one with the current drawbacks.

[Tiger-Heli]

You know this as well as anyone (so I hopefully won't offend you).

I'd no more pay $4000 for a Ultrapin/Multipin/Hyperpin (not sure who all makes them, then I would spend $4500 for a Hanaho ArcadePC or SlikStik Quadcab.  If I had the space, though I would convert my own MAME cab for maybe $500 total - and I would have paid more than the above for your cab design when it was available (err ... not likely, WAF concerns, but it was worth it).

Same thing with a VP cab.  Full blown cab, no ..., but maybe $1500 for a couple of 37-inch monitors, and $500 for a computer and some kind of force-feedback control.

I agree it's not like a real pin without force-feedback, but it is a lot closer to it than I would expect.

Also - I can talk about it here, but being involved in VP really makes you appreciate MAME and the job Nicola and Aaron have done holding it together.

Ideally, VP could form teams, and one guy could work out the physics, and someone else could do the lighting, and someone with Photoshop skills could do the tables and backgrounds - but it's never been that way.

Five years ago the basic tables looked a good bit like JP's VP9 tables (somewhat) - here's one based on high speed:

A bit later, someone named Nicky Special started doing this:



Those tables look really crude by modern VP standards, but at the time most people thought they were great.  (Except the table authors ...  And he typically did those mods without asking permission and would post them in the same thread that the author had released the table in ....)

Anyway - a lot of table authors were offended and either quit or locked their tables so nobody else could modify them, VP itself had an expiration date so it stopped working, and Nicky eventually got drummed out of the community.

But you can look back and see a lot of his influence in say PacDude's tables (which I really like) in that you have just enough of the backglass to show the DMD, the table itself in wide format, and the backglass image as the background.

And now with VP9, you get almost the best of everything, b/c you can either show the table that way for PC playback, or show the backglass and DMD on a vertical screen and the table rotated on a horizontal one.

FWIW ...

 

[Tiger-Heli]

Thought I'd post an update on where VP cabinets were going.

Ultrapin had the right idea on cabinets and the FS playfield models, their tables are proprietary, but lots of authors are making their own here.

That tiny backglass has to go though - see here for what it should be
http://www.youtube.com/user/FDutchmanBackglasses#play/uploads/12/PY69F3dMGKQ
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/user/FDutchmanBackglasses#play/uploads/12/PY69F3dMGKQ[/youtube]
Embedding didn't seem to work!!!

and here for the next step in the process:
http://vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=2525&hl=cabinet%20dll

[billpa]

There are a bunch of us working on tables over at the HyperPin forums as well. We convert tables to full screen to work with HyperPin, which is different than VP9's dual screen mode which I believe they call 16:9. With 16:9 tables, you need to run your monitors spanned. In HyperPin you run them independently...forget what the term is called.  This was done to make it easier to run both VP and FP tables on the same cab. In fact, HyperPin is set up so you can display just VP, just FP or a combo of favorites as well as genres like only Solid State, only EM, only Williams tables, etc. etc.  The downside to that is you don't get the animated backglass lights with this monitor setup...although Flying Dutchman is making strides with some animated backglass graphics and I am sure there will be something implemented in the future.

You make a good point in that a lot of pins are in dark rooms and the lights really pop. A few table modders are releasing night mods as well. So you can play a table that looks like this



This is in addition to a more flat lit table. So you can play whichever you like.

We have about a half dozen people who are working on different tables. The next version of tables coming out soon will really blow your socks off. The graphics will be a lot cleaner...the lighting will be a lot better. Definitely come check out the forums when you have a minute.

http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=32

[Tiger-Heli]

Billpa - do you know of anyone with an example Pin cabinet like I was mentioning above.

Flying Dutchman has a great horizontal monitor with for the backglasses and DMD (and there was a thread on VPforums.org on using a third monitor for the DMD itself.

And several people have the vertical flat screen playfield but a small vertical screen in the backglass ala Utrapin/HyperPin.

Has anyone combined them all together?

[billpa]

Hmmm..not sure exactly what you are asking. Are you asking about 3 monitors? 1 for playfield, 1 for backglass, and 1 for DMD?

[Tiger-Heli]

Maybe - see this thread and this thread.

There may be technical issues that I am not seeing, but:

• Several users have made Ultrapin style cabs, with a vertically oriented playfield and vertically oriented backglass/DMD with a marquee around the backglass LCD.
• Flying Dutchman has a nice horizontal monitor for the backglass and DMD and images for the speakers, but I think he just uses a horizontal TV for the playfield, if he even has a cabinet
• The linked thread mentioned using a 10.2-inch display for the DMD, which would allow you to have authentic, properly working speakers and a horizontal backglass above it.

Mainly, I'm looking for examples of someone running a veritcal playfield and horizontal backglass - with or without a separate DMD.

Thanks!!!

[billpa]

That's what most people have done actually. Horizontal bg with and then you just drag the DMD from VP on top of it. A good example is brycej's woodrail cab

http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2749

You could get two video cards...say something powerful for the playfield and backglass like a 9800gtx+ and then just get a simple low end card for the DMD. I have not tried it although it has been talked about. I haven't built my cab yet but I have both monitors set up like you mentioned and I am using backglass images similar to Flying Dutchmans that have a space for the DMD which I drag over and resize to fit.

So yes, everything that you have asked is possible

[Tiger-Heli]

Thank you - that's what I was looking for!!!

Most threads I've read either had the backglass monitor vertical with some type of Marquee artwork around it, or the playfield horizontal.

I imagine it would be personal preference and how much you wanted to spend whether you went with speakers in the backbox and the separate DMD monitor or just simulated speakers like Flying Dutchmans's images.  (Seems like a widescreen monitor would work better with the separate DMD, and a 4:3 would do better without it (but might need an overall bigger screen).

And from what I have read, the backglass is just using Irfanview (until they get code to light the backglasses based on the VpinMAME rom codes, so the low-end video could be used for the backglass also (for now).

Thanks again for the helpful info!!!

[billpa]

HyperPin does not use Infranview. It basically launches a separate exe for the backglass that displays a static image. The images are supplied with the artwork package that is released for every table release. fThere is some work going on about adding some light animation support for the backglass. However, it is not the highest of priorities right now. I definitely suggest trying out HyperPin when you get two monitors to play with. The front end is awesome. Not only can you sort games by emulator, manufacturer, etc. but you can also have a favorites list as well as a few other cool features like viewing the original operator flyers for games, and viewing instruction cards for the games.