PinMAME and Visual Pinball - Looking for GOOD answers!

[surf]

Just a few questions, but these are the worst programs to get working on a cabinet...

What is the proper version of PinMAME and Visual Pinball to use for a cabinet?

Howard's VP-launch 4 or 2? (I've tried both, with different versions of PinMAME/VP and I just can't get everything working)

I have many games that work fine, but many of my favorites, such as Theatre of Magic will hide the display.  Does anyone have a list of tables that work great with a particular version of PinMAME/VP/Wrapper? 

Using MAMEwah as a front end as well...

I'm sure MANY people would benefit from this info!

Thanks in advance...

Surf

http://www.freewebs.com/homepubarcade
(if you want to see what I'm working with...)

[deadmoney5]

good luck....

it seems hit or miss

I've missed

[nickbuol]

I'm not trying to draw too much attention to a particular person's site, but there is a guy who claims to have figured out how to get it all working and has 3 pages of instructions to do it.  You need to get his PinMame ROM set to get them though.  I did, but I haven't had time to even look at it yet as I am focusing on gearing up for next week (cabinet build week).  My wife is going out of town with the kids starting tomorrow, so I've got my "shopping list" ready of the cabinet parts I need, and I am going to get everything but the CP done by Friday (I've done it before, so I can do it again)...

Anyway, hit google ans search for TiptonWare 
The first hit should be his.  I would just share, but I don't want to give away the work he has done for his "clients."

[deadmoney5]

I think the real problem isn't getting Visual Pinball to work...it's getting Visual Pinball to launch from mamewah that is confusing and hit or miss..

[Howard_Casto]

I would like to point out... for the record that I've never ever had any problems getting visual pinball or pinmame setup and running from a fe, regardless of table, os, or table type (pinmame or regular vp). 

With that being said, I've never actually used mamewah on a cabinet (I only use Dk, 3darcade and occasionally gamelauncher) so your statment that getting it to work in mamewah might be the problem might have some truth to it.

[surf]

What version of PinMAME should be used to have the most compatibility with the VP-4 wrapper?

The same question applies to Visual Pinball as well...

STILL looking for answers...

Surf

Oh, the tables launch fine from MAMEwah, it's just some work right and most don't! (Just the display part)

[Howard_Casto]

The latest.

Ditto.


I wasn't referring to launching problems, I was referring to getting the tables displayed properly with the proper focus set to them.  Not to insult your intelligence or anything, but you do know that about 70% of the vp tables don't have pinmame displays right?

The only thing I can think of is you are monkeying around while the table is loading.  It's important not to press any keys durning the loading process. 

You should see:

The splash screen. 

Followed by the table loading prgress bar from vp (depending upon your system this may be corrupted visually, but it doesn't effect the loading process.)

Then you should see the visual pinball table and a second or two later you should see the visual pinmame display screen. 

If it's the first time you've ever launched that table the "do you own this rom" dialog box will pop up.  Wait and it will be checked for you.  Then wait for another second and the pimame window will be re-initalized (80% of the tables aren't playable on the first boot).

NOW  you can press a key. 

Also it should be noted that if mamewah or the emulator you are using has code to set teh focus to whatever it launches (in this case the vp wrapper, NOT vpmame or vpinball)  it'll totally screw up how the wrapper works. 

On top of that, I haven't tested the wrapper in 98 in quite some time, mostly because I haven't ran 98 on anything, even mame cabinets, in years.  Although there is nothing stopping it from running in 98 (notice I didn't say 95) I can almost guarantee you'll get better results in xp. 


Now..... if you are getting a rendering error or something like that, then it's different.  You'll need to either post a pic here or email me a pic.

[surf]

Hmmm,

I guess it has something to do with the way MAMEwah launches the program...

The main problem has to be a focus issue, because alt-tab brings things right. I need to try more of the non-pinmame tables!

Thanks for all the help...

[deadmoney5]

hmmm...Ive followed instructions thrice...still no tables load...I get stuck on the splash screen........maybe my .ini is wrong?

Can anybody give me an example of their .ini's for pinball?

[Rook3]

How are you running pinmame? Are you using mamewah, VPL (Visual Pinball launcher) or something else?

On my PC I use VPL which auto scans and loads your tables in a windoze format.

To run Visual Pinmame, you need to first install Visual Pinball. Then create a directory inside of the main VP folder called "vpinmame."

Then install Visual Pinmame inside that directory.

Install your tables in the "vpinmame" tables directory (Unzipped) and install your table roms in the "roms" directory (leave them zipped). Move any .NV files to the "nvram" folder in "vpinmame."

And it should work just fine.

As far as Mamewah... that's a bit harder to set up. I have a friend who's done so, but on a 25" standard res arcadce monitor the tables are a bit... fuzzy.

The expensive thing to do would be to run them on a VGA compatible arcade monitor. Slightly less expensive would be to run them on a large size PC monitor.

It really depends on the cabinet you're installing it into. If you're building a standard arcade cabinet, you have lots of options for monitors. If you're perhaps building a pinball cabinet mockup, you're limited on what kind of monitor you can use due to space limitations.  In that situation you'd almost want to use a flat panel monitor that you could lay on the "playfield" of the cabinet.

Rook

[surf]

Well,

I reinstalled VpinMAME with the latest version, put the vp4 wrapper in again and started over...

Now, 80% of the tables are working great!  Still most Williams tables (some of my favorites) won't come up right without alt-tabbing...

As help for others, moving the score window/restoring it/stopping emulation has worked for quite a few tables to launch right through MAMEwah...

I guess if everything worked right all the time, this wouldn't be a "hobby"!

[Howard_Casto]

A few of the williams tables are coded badly..... my wrapper tries to override, but when the stupid table author manually sets focus to the wrong window on three seperate occasions during bootup, it's hard to do anything about it.  Actually though, many will work on the next bootup.



(that wasn't meant to offend any pinmame table authors out there, i'm just saying)