pocketpal

Last night I installed the newest versions of PinballX (1.48) and BAM (v0.9-40) to check out these latest attempts at getting them to play nicely together. I experienced inconsistent behavior with the in-game/pause menu which I couldn't figure out a way to fix on my end. While testing, I noticed it seemed that when the game first launched, I always had to wait a short while before the in-game/pause button would register, but that may be according to design, and wouldn't usually be an issue. What happened after that, though, could be one of four things: a.) the menu shows up and operates as it should b.) the menu shows up for a second or two with my previous selection highlighted (if I've already been using the menu) and doesn't respond to buttons, disappears for a second or two, then reappears with the top option highlighted and responds to buttons as normal c.) the menu does not appear, I still see the playfield, but can operate the invisible menu as normal d.) the menu does not appear, I see nothing but black playfield and backglass and my mouse cursor, but can operate the invisible menu as normal Whichever behavior it is exhibiting is consistent the entire time a game is running, but may be different on subsequent runs of the same or different game. I tried everything I could think of that might affect it, including renaming "FPLoader.exe" to "Future Pinball.exe", changing the key for "in-game/pause" to something different than what I have for "Quit," and probably some other things I can't remember now. Is anyone else experiencing this?

I finally got to try it out last night, and I ran into a problem for those of us using BAM with Future Pinball. Since we have to specify the BAM subfolder of the Future Pinball folder as our working directory, and PinballX apparently looks in the working directory for the the fpRAM subfolder, the high scores don't display. I changed the working directory to the Future Pinball folder to test and it worked fine, but then, of course, I don't get BAM, I think the best solution would be to allow us to specify the location of the fpRAM folder for FP the same as we do for the nvRAM for VP.

Looks like a really sweet display, and I think that would be a more true aspect ratio for standard-size pinball tables, but yeeeaaah... the price would be a bit hard to swallow.

I have always had the same key (E) bring up the in-game menu and the exit menu in the frontend; it worked swimmingly and kept the number of buttons on my cab build to a minimum. Now with this new added behavior, pressing E does nothing obvious but play the sound effect for the exit menu. It took me awhile to figure out what was happening, but it turns out that it's trying to display the instructions for the currently selected game and display the exit menu at the same time, which just clears the instructions before I even see them, and puts me right back where I started. There no longer appears to be any way for me to get the behavior I want, since I would have to either change the in-game menu key or the exit menu key to something else, and therefore add an extra button for one of them to my cab. I'm all for having a hotkey to jump straight to the instructions for those who want it, although I would not use it myself since I want fewer buttons and they're accessed easily enough from the game menu, but can't it be a separate entry in the config from the in-game pause menu key? That way, if someone WANTED them to be the same, they could specify the same key for both fields, but those of us who don't could set it to something else or nothing. Thank you for your consideration!

I like it fine myself, although I think a drop shadow would be cooler.

Yeah, you da man, Tom! I'm glad you were able to get it figured out. I had mine running in attract mode all night and through lunchtime today without issue, fwiw. After you made this change, it seemed to me like the playfield took longer to appear. If so, and if that attempt at a fix is no longer necessary, I wonder if you could put it back to the way it was. As it is now, my backglass often shows up (relatively) long before the playfield.

I've noticed this, and it is even more obvious in the smaller wheel images off to either side of the currently selected table. I think it's been this way since the beginning, and I always just assumed it was done on purpose as a way to make the wheel image stand out a bit from the playfield.

I have finally figured something out regarding this FP/BAM crashing problem: it only happens if I have the option in PinballX set to simulate a click to bring focus to the table. Like I said, this only causes a crash on certain tables, although it is quite a few. My sorta-theory is that it has something to do with the BAM program being what is actually run from PinballX, which then runs the actual FP program (while staying in memory itself due to BAM's /STAYINRAM flag being set). So is it due to PinballX "clicking" on the wrong program (BAM rather than FP), or is it due to the longer load time (due to BAM loading in addition to FP), that causes those tables to not be loaded sufficiently when the "click" takes place, or what? I can only guess, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Yeah, I think this must surely just be due to a fuzzy-logic-type matching algorithm that is a little too overly zealous to pair up files that would best be left separate. So there's probably only so much we can do as users until Tom gets a chance to tweak the code. I, too, have the Knight Rider video playing for Night Rider, along with some other nonsense, some of which I've been able to handle myself and some not, but I'm sure he'll be able to find a happy medium in there somewhere once he's able to look at it more closely.

I'm not sure how to answer that, but here is a screenshot of my keyboard settings for PinballX -- maybe they can help shed some light on things for you. I have defined the <E> key to bring up the PinballX menu regardless of whether I'm choosing a game or playing one. When I choose to exit a game from the PinballX menu, I have it defined to send the <Esc> key to either FP or VP. Also, I have renamed my FPLoader.exe to "Future Pinball.exe" for maximum compatibility, so maybe that helps?

Personally, I like the bottom bar, so if removing it is in the cards, then it should be a user option. Also, I would like the background color of the bottom bar and menu highlights.to be user-configurable (I would like mine red ).

I recognize this line from the FAQ on Ravarcade's site for getting BAM to work with HyperPin, and you're right: this can also be helpful to get BAM working well (or at least better) with PinballX. The only part you actually need to add, however, is "/STAYINRAM" - this is a switch to tell BAM to say in memory, and this is the part that makes it work better with a frontend. The parts that say "RunWait," and ",,hide UseErrorLevel" are specific to HyperPin, since the entire line is actually an AutoHokey command that would go in FPLaunch, which HyperPin uses and PinballX does not. So, in effect, all you need to do is add the switch /STAYINRAM to the launch parameters for Future Pinball in your PinballX settings. It turns out that stuff I had mentioned earlier about FPLoaderNew was from an older version of BAM where Ravarcade had actually included a separate EXE that would stay in RAM, whereas he has since just made that functionality an optional switch to specify to FPLoader.exe. Also, it seems that specifying the /arcaderender switch is superfluous if you have already ticked the box for arcade render in FP setting. So my FP parameters for PinballX look like this: Parameters=/STAYINRAM /open "[TABLEPATH]\[TABLEFILE]" /play /exit And it works well -- I'm still suffering from the problem where certain tables crash only when run from PinballX, however. I haven't been able to figure that one out yet.

I have been attempting to test this the past couple of days by trying different settings and then leaving it running in attract mode for awhile while I go to work/sleep/etc. I haven't been able to determine if any of the settings make the black screens go away, however, as every time I come back to check on it, PinEx has crashed and closed. This only started happening since I replaced my netvideoplayer.dll a couple days ago, so I assume it is the culprit. Scrolling back and forth like crazy doesn't seem to make the playfield go black, for what it's worth. I have attached my most recent log, which appears to show an out-of-memory error occurring after about an hour and a half, causing PinEx to shut down: log.txt

If I understand correctly what Tom's saying to do (and I think I do), then you should open your Shark007 settings, go to the "SWAP" tab, and choose the option to use the FFDSHOW codec under the divx/xvid/mp4/etc section. I just did this, replaced the dll file Tom provided earlier, and am letting it run in attract mode this afternoon while I'm at work to see what happens.

I have been running Future Pinball with BAM for awhile now, and found that I have overall better luck running FPLoaderNew.exe instead of regular FPLoader. It was designed to work better with Hyperpin, and that carries over to PinballX as well. That being said, there is still one issue I have: when exiting the table, I press the button I have defined to bring up the PinballX menu, choose "Exit," and sometimes it will shut down the table as it should and return to the PinballX wheel. Other times, however, the table will remain open, the PinballX wheel and playfield will display on my playfield monitor, but the backglass from the table that didn't actually quit will still be showing on my backglass monitor. When this happens, I Alt-Tab back to FP, press Escape, the table quits, and then I once again press Alt-Tab to go back to PinballX. It probably happens this way about 50% of the time. EDIT: Actually, there is one more mysterious issue: some tables that work fine when running FPLoaderNew.exe outside of PinballX, will crash with error messages that disappear before I get to read them when launched from within PinballX. Checkpoint is one that this happens with everytime, but there are a number of others.

System specs: Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit, Service Pack 1, AMD Phenom3 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, nVidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB, 2-screen setup I had already been using the Shark recommended settings before, so I tried switching to ffdshow. If I did it right, then it didn't help - I still get black playfields after attract mode has been running for awhile. Here is a screenshot of my Shark settings, so please let me know if I didn't choose the right option(s).

Sorry, but I spoke too soon - it's doing it again.

Actually, I downloaded 1.39 again, and now it doesn't seem to be losing the playfield anymore. I had originally downloaded 1.39 a couple nights ago, not long after it was first posted, so if you have altered it since then, but not changed the version number, than perhaps it IS fixed.

The problem stills exists for me with version 1.39.

I have noticed this same issue, although I've only experienced it personally after attract mode has been running for awhile. Mine is not limited to just videos, though - i get a black screen instead of a video, playfield image, or even the default "no image found" placeholder graphic with the wheel images, bottom bar, and backglass still showing. I also have experienced some odd behavior with the attract mode that may or not be intentional: usually it will spend a few seconds on each table and cycle to the next, but sometimes it stops at one for a long while, for some reason, as if I had hit a button and stopped attract mode. Also in attract mode, it seems that sometimes the voice plugin will say the name of the table and sometimes it won't.

Here's one I made for Ballyhoo:

Thanks a lot for doing this! I'm finding so many that I didn't have!

Here's one I worked up to match the style of the bottom bar and menu:

Me too! I was just starting my own topic when I was alerted of yours. Here is what I was saying: I upgraded from version 1.22, which was working nicely, to 1.30. It also works nicely, except it won't launch any tables. When I choose one, whether it be FP or VP, I get the loading screen for a few seconds, and then I'm dumped back to PinballX. I messed with my settings, and even completely uninstalled PinballX and reinstalled 1.30, but the end result is the same. Here is my log and ini file: log.txt PinballX.ini

Yeah, the new version appears to have done the trick for me! Thanks!