I get all the frustration. I still like PBA and plan to continue to play it on my cab.
With all the difficulties testing PinballX built-in integration, I decided to play around will autohotkey to see if I could get that to work. After hours playing changing up key combinations and timings, I threw in the towel. The interface is designed for touch, not keyboard manipulation.
Given some more time to noodle on it, it dawned on me to try mouse input to simulate touch. After a couple hours of scripting, I have a solution that's working reliably. My setup is included below for anyone interested in giving it a try.
Pinball Arcade it setup under Other Systems. I call my table selection script from startpba.bat which rotates the screen, runs my autohotkey script, and then starts the PBA Free Cam Mod. [TABLEFILE] is used to pass the table name to the script.
[System_4]
Name=Pinball Arcade
SystemType=0
WorkingPath=C:\Pinball\Steam
TablePath=
Executable=steam.exe
Parameters=-applaunch 238260
LaunchBeforeWorkingPath=C:\Pinball\PBACamMod
LaunchBeforeExecutable=startpba.bat
LaunchBeforeParameters="[TABLEFILE]"
LaunchAfterWorkingPath=C:\Pinball\PBACamMod
LaunchAfterExecutable=endpba.bat
LaunchAfterParameters=
Enabled=True
WaitForProcess=PinballArcade11.exe
LaunchBeforeEnabled=True
LaunchBeforeWaitForExit=False
LaunchBeforeHideWindow=True
LaunchAfterEnabled=True
LaunchAfterWaitForExit=True
LaunchAfterHideWindow=True
You will need AutoHotKey installed for the pba.ahk to run. Make sure to set the AutoHotKey.exe to run as administrator.
endpba.bat
pba.ahk
Pinball Arcade.xml
PinballX.ini
startpba.bat