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Wanted: Idiots guide to playing pinball games on the PC

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1UP:

Whoops, I meant JP's AFM... :P  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?

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