arnobarno

Well, it is certainly resolved from my point of view. Now then, there are still two underlying issues that will undoubtedly trip up someone else - one is the crash I reported at the beginning which is "hidden" now and the other is the way PinballX gobbles up keystrokes. The keystroke issue may just be my lack of understanding of how things with AHK type behavior nest (so call this a dumb user issue). But the crash (without any reasonable error message in the log) if steam is already running seems like something that should probably be looked at. Thanks!

Carny_Priest That script worked well though not at first - very strange. But now working well. Again, thanks for all your help.

Carny_Priest - again, thanks for the reply. I tried what you suggested but the problem seems to be that PinballX is the one gobbling up the escape key somehow and throwing me out of the game. I figured out a workaround (finally) which was to change the Keyboard input settings in PinballX so that "quit" and "exit emulator" no longer respond to the escape key but some other sequence I mapped in my iPac. So, now escape works as it should everywhere and I can go in and out of games at will. Not sure why PinballX was gobbling up those keys but I guess this is just how it works. Last thing I was trying to do was to grab your "remove borders" code to get the DMD window to look a little better on top of the backglass. Unfortunately, my copy/paste didn't work - I probably need to put in some loop to keep checking for the DMD window to appear - it looks like your code handles this because the DMD window is already up by the time it is executing. Time to learn a little AHK I guess. Again, thanks for your help.

Carny_Priest - thanks for your reply. Your script worked perfectly for Pinball FX2 and I can go in and out of PinballX without any problems. Now though, I'm getting further along with Nuke Launcher on Pinball Arcade and it seemed as if hitting escape within a game (to pause and view the PA menus) is bringing me all the way back to PinballX (ie PinballX must somehow have the keyboard focus instead of PA - or at least the escape key is somehow getting through). Which, of course puts everything in a bad state. As I write this it seems weird since other keys are going properly to Pinball Arcade - just the escape key is magically getting gobbled by PinballX. So, I switched to using your script for Pinball Arcade (with appropriate changes) but it to is having the same focus problem. Not sure why Pinball FX2 is getting the focus for all keys (including escape) but Pinball Arcade isn't. In both cases, my escape button should bring me back to the menu in the app (and escape is set in PinballX to quit PinballX) Any thoughts? I feel like I'm on the 1 yard line now... Thanks for all your help so far. [by the way, the reason I don't want to use Nuke Launcher is that I'm still trying to figure out which games to demo/play in FX2 so I don't have any games bought yet. In PA, I have the first three seasons so I know what I like. Still, I'm finding Nuke Launcher is doing more than I want - makes it a little harder to switch on the fly between modes. I like getting the backglass from PinballX and the DMD animations]

Carny_Priest - Thanks for the reply. My .ini has been set the way you said and Pinball X has been set to run as admin. I've always been able to access the main menu from FX2 startup. I've made some progress though. The problem seems to be steam running or not. If steam isn't running then the backglass stays up, control transitions to Pinball FX2 and all is good. Until I go to exit - then it hangs and doesn't return to PinballX. Now then, I've connected via VNC at that time and if I kill the "steam client helper" task, then control transitions back to PinballX and all is good. So, it seems like I have to make sure that somehow steam isn't running at the start and deletes itself at the end. Seems strange that I could be the only one with this problem. Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, those were the first two things I did before posting. The documentation didn't show any differences from my installation. But the thread had some things that were different that shouldn't have mattered. I tested a number of them (with no difference). But I'll review the thread again. PinballX shouldn't crash out though? Right? The error message doesn't lead one to understand why it crashed after I started to load Pinball FX2 - I see the "Loading" screen and then just before Pinball FX2 actually starts, the backglass on screen 2 disappears (I assume this is when PinballX crashed and cleaned itself up). Then Pinball FX2 splash screen appears. I'm running Windows 8.1 (if that is important). Thanks.

Hello, Noob here. I have Pinball X configured and running with Pinball Arcade using Nuke Launcher. That is all working well. I don't want to use Nuke Launcher for Pinball FX2 for a variety of reasons and just want Pinball X to display the backglass and then launch Pinball FX2 for me. I'll then select the actual game I want to use. So, I've configured all the media files using the excellent Nuke Launcher media pack and I can browse all the tables, backglass, etc. When it comes time to launch Pinball FX2, I get an error in the Pinball X log file: 19:04:58.4 1/17/2015: PinballX - Version 1.93 19:04:58.4 1/17/2015: Windows 8.1 64-bit (15.9GB) 19:04:58.4 1/17/2015: Loading Settings 19:04:58.4 1/17/2015: Initialize Component 19:04:58.4 1/17/2015: Initialize Display 19:04:59.5 1/17/2015: Loading PlugIns 19:04:59.6 1/17/2015: Created DirectX BackGlass Window 19:04:59.6 1/17/2015: Created DirectX DMD Window 19:04:59.7 1/17/2015: Hiding Cursor 19:04:59.7 1/17/2015: Hiding Taskbar 19:04:59.7 1/17/2015: CPU: Intel® Core i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz 19:04:59.7 1/17/2015: GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 645 19:04:59.7 1/17/2015: Displays: 2 19:04:59.8 1/17/2015: Load Game List 19:04:59.8 1/17/2015: Loading Database: Pinball FX2 19:04:59.8 1/17/2015: Loading Database: Pinball Arcade 19:04:59.8 1/17/2015: Finding and matching artwork and videos 19:05:00.0 1/17/2015: Loading Game Statistics and Scores 19:05:00.7 1/17/2015: Loading Surfaces 19:05:00.9 1/17/2015: Finished Loading Surfaces 19:05:00.9 1/17/2015: Initialize Audio 19:05:00.9 1/17/2015: Set Keyboard Controls 19:05:00.9 1/17/2015: Initialize Joystick 19:05:00.9 1/17/2015: No Joysticks Attached 19:05:00.9 1/17/2015: Started 19:05:11.1 1/17/2015: Launch System 19:05:11.1 1/17/2015: Waiting for threads 19:05:11.2 1/17/2015: Disposing display 19:05:12.1 1/17/2015: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe -applaunch 226980 19:05:13.3 1/17/2015: Error. Exiting 19:05:13.3 1/17/2015: Error in the application. 19:05:13.3 1/17/2015: at PinballX.Main.b(Boolean A_0, Boolean A_1, Boolean A_2) 19:05:13.3 1/17/2015: at PinballX.Main.ak() 19:05:13.3 1/17/2015: at PinballX.Main..ctor() 19:05:13.3 1/17/2015: Disposing Plugins 19:05:13.3 1/17/2015: Showing Taskbar 19:05:13.3 1/17/2015: Unhiding Mouse Cursor 19:05:13.4 1/17/2015: Bye Pinball FX2 launches fine, but PinballX crashes (with the error above) and takes down the backglass display (on monitor 2 in my cabinet) - which was the entire reason I wanted to use PinballX. Thoughts? I'm not sure what other configuration information would be relevant here - 2 displays; I am running the Steam version of Pinball FX2; latest version of Pinball X (1.93) Any help would be appreciated. I've been tracking this down for hours and am at wit's end. I'm thinking I must be doing something silly here to generate this error/crash but really not sure what. thanks,Arn