DBrown67

I've sorted out. It was my fault really. I like to get screenshots just as the table loads, even if it means no lights are lit yet. That way the table loads seamlessly into life. I just wasn't giving the table time to load fully, or for PinballX to be ready. If I waited a few more seconds for the light show to start then it worked fine. There's a point as it loads where there were no lights lit (yet) and I was trying to get that.

Is there any reason why PinballX would single out a table and refuse to take a screenshot of the playfield? I've just done some tweaks to a couple of tables.... Atlantis and Twilight Zone. I needed new screenshots for the playfields and so fired up PinballX after removing the previous table images from the respective folder. Atlantis takes screenshot fine when I press S. But Twilight Zone refuses... no matter how long I wait or how many times I try. Setting for each are the same in Game Manager. I'm confused

I want to edit my PinballX.xml file to change all the <hidebackglass> entries from True to False so that my backglass screenshots remain visible when the table is loading. So when the table loads it's a smooth transition. I know I can do this one by one in Game Manager but would take ages. I also know I can edit the .xml file in a way to search for an entry and change that entry to a different line and it will replace it throughout the file. I know this is possible but I don't know how it's done. Do I need to open the file in a certain piece of software? Of course I will back up the original before trying anything like this in case it goes wrong.

Just as an update I did try adding... <comment> inserted some text here... </comment> line to my PinballX XML file for one title to test. (Stern's 24 as alphabetically it's top entry in the XML file). Then in the Configuration Window I only had "game name" and "comments" boxes ticked. Game name does appear for all games, but for 24 test table no comments text appeared at all. I don't think I'm going to get this to work looking nice anyway. I'll just wait and see what Scutters comes up with regarding an update. I know in Mame there is a "History" section that someone used to keep updated. Similar to the kind of thing I'm wanting to implement here. Would be cool to be able to pull the production figures and notes section from IPDB. That might be frowned up in some quarters though.

THAT is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of! I'd be happy with plain text myself as I can do that easily enough. I don't have the skills to produce a nice image like that though, with multiple colours and fonts.

Oh... I was playing about with Databasemanager last night. I didn't add any comments to my XML file but in the past I did add some alternate.exe lines for a few tables that needed it. Would DatabaseManager get rid of these lines also? I did try adding some stuff in the "comments" box in the Configuration Window but could not get anything to show up when PinballX was running. And I could only type along that single line. I don't think it would have looked neat anyway for the information I want to put in there. I definitely want more than one colour text and not all in CAPS. I'll try editing the XML direct today, as it might be easier that way to get it looking how I want.

Hi Scutters I'm playing around with this plugin because it seems it might be best for what I want to achieve. I want to display some kind of trivia information for each table... interesting notes, production numbers etc. The sort of stuff you see in IPDB. I can use my 3rd DMD monitor for this as it's not currently used in the front end, though I first thought about editing the "Information" page you can bring up when you pause a game. There is a "comment" box within the Configuration Screen. How do I implement "comments" to include the info I want? I know this will be unique for every table and will be a lot of work. But I don't know where the plugin pulls these "comments" from. If I untick all the boxes except Comments then the Stats window is always empty when I launch PinballX (obviously because there are no comments to display). As I say, I want to include production numbers and interesting trivia. Also the plugin is constantly in CAPS mode for the text when some info can be displayed. Is there a setting to make this more reader friendly please?

Thanks for that Mike. I've had a look and it seems that Scutters made a statistics plugin that might be best for my use: Now I've installed it and I can see the default stats coming up in red on my main screen when in PinballX. Obviously I need to set it all up how I like. But I can't find out how to launch that Configuration Screen as seen in the linked thread. Scutters said you did quite a bit of testing for this plugin, so can you help please? When I installed this I placed PBXstatsDisplay.dll and PBXstatsDisplay.ini into the plugins folder. So I don't know how to get that Configuration Screen to appear. EDIT: It's OK... I found how to. I have to launch the PluginManager.exe in previous folder and then select from the list and press "configure". I'll leave this here for others just in case.

I know that if I press "pause" when a table is loaded I can bring up an information page for that table. I think some of that info is a bit superfluous... I don't need to see the high scores or which tables have been played most often. But I would like to add some trivia for that table... like the info contained in the ipdb. Some of that stuff is really interesting. How many units were produced and if that was a prototype model or not. This might be a lot of work on my part for 300 tables. But I don't know how to go about editing this Info page, or even if what I want to do is possible.

Sorry Tom... maybe I'm having a dumb moment. But those top two links only go up to summer last year with latest version 5.19. The last link only goes to the main forum page. I cannot see anything relating to changelogs for recent versions after 5.19. I presume a lot has changed between that version and current 5.40.

Where can I find the details of what has been changed as PinballX gets new versions please? I know it's on here somewhere but I just cannot find it. If I press the "changelog" button alongside the 5.40 download it just says "no changelog available".

When I fire up my cab it is set to auto launch PinballX. I can browse nice and smooth. But I notice that the 5x RGB flashers do not light within the first 30 or so seconds. They light white and flash in sequence left to right when pressing right flipper button, and vice versa. It's quite neat and I don't really want anything else too flashy. They also flash all together when moving letter by letter. However, I have recently added two Ford 12V type solenoids for my flippers only. This compounds the delayed lighting when first launching PinballX because now the flipper solenoids are very haphazard in PinballX. Within VPX they seem to fire perfectly all the time. And after about 15 minutes play when going back to the FE they also behave there too. But for that first preiod after booting they only seem to fire around 30% of the time. Friends have noticed it who know nothing about building a cab. And now that I can "feel" the tactile feedback it's quite obvious and more irritating than just the missing flashers for first 30 seconds or so. What could be causing this? I'm not too bothered about the solenoids going off in the FE at all, to be honest. I either want them working 100% or kill them totally while in the FE. Either solution will do. There seems to be a lot of stuff in the plugins folder (which I just noticed from sorting out my last issue). Is there anything in there causing this delay? Do I need all that stuff?

YEEEEEESSSSSS!!! Haha. Success at last. To answer your last question it was only ACDC table that had incorrect coloured flipper button in the FE. The solution was to update te DirectOutput PinballXPlugin.dll file to the latest through the link you provided in your last post. That file is dated 15th Jan.2022, but mine was dated April 2021. Thank you for all your help. Ironing out these final little niggles is taking some time. And the more "trivial" they seem the more difficult they are to pin down. Onto my next one... new post incoming.

Sorry for late reply Mike. And thank you for your in depth response. I've only recently got time to look further into this. But I'm not getting anywhere. Recently i did a full fresh install for a new processor and CPU (no, I didn't do all that for this issue ). So I'm bang up to date with the latest of everything. For this RGB flipper issue (trivial though it may be) I have tried: Renaming the game name in Games List Manager to "ACDC Limited Edition" which is exactly as it is named in DOF Config. Adding the rom "acd_170hc" to the PinballX database XML file. The rom name was previously empty (as all tables seem to be) Removing any unused ACDC roms from my VPinMame\Roms folder (as I only use the altcolor acd_170hc) I got the logging to work this time and I can see every time I get to ACDC in PinballX the log file says "Best match for ACDC is ACDC (acd_170). Match value: 1 As I final attempt I went into the standard ACDC entry in DOF Config (for acd_170 rom which it keeps matching to)... and changed all the flipper entries from yellow to red (including both MX and PBX MX to "ON Red"). And STILL they light yellow in PinballX

Thanks for your detailed description Mike. It's getting a bit complicated now though. I went into that PluginManager.exe and the only plugin ticked for logging was DirectOutput by Swisslizard. The AC/DC table I have is the AC/DC Luci with 170hc coloured rom. The DOF for that table (with that ROM) shows red coloured flippers. The ACDC with yellow flippers is for rom acd_170, as you say. I tried changing the flipper colour from yellow to red for that table entry and copied over the new files, so now I only have two tables with red flippers and one music table with blue flippers.... but PinballX still lights the flippers yellow. In my VisualPinball.xml file all the rom lines for every table are blank. Would it help if I put the rom (acd_170hc) in the rom line for that table?

Thanks for coming back on this Mike. I tried what you suggested. I had to enable DOF logging by swapping the word false to true in that short XML file. I then launched PinballX and navigated a few tables to ACDC. This shows incorrect LED flipper button colours in PinballX. (Trivial I know) But when I quit PinballX and tried to open up the DirectOutputPlugin.log file it just would not respond. I get the swirly icon all the time and it never opens. Windows says it's not responding. And it's 45KB big as well for such a small navigation. I've gone back in and turned DOF logging off for now.

Many thanks for your help Mike. But this has knocked my confidence with this cabinet. (I don't mean PinballX as such). I cannot understand why installing that Gigabyte software should do this. It must have done this, yes? It was literally, right after the BSOD this happened. I'm wondering if anything else has changed. All seems OK so far.

I was just in the middle of attaching my pinballX.ini file. My backup is 7KB in size but my installed one (attached) is now only 2KB in size. I have swapped over this .ini file and everything "seems" fine now. All screens display as they should and tables launch/exit correctly. It's even gone back to 301 tables. The original Welcome message has returned as well. xxxPinballX.ini

I've had to go into setup.exe and reset all the controls for my flipper buttons. They'd gone to keyboard defaults. I also switched off that online setting for GM. I can open it now without the long wait and message. There's no text scrolling across the bottom. It used to say "PinballX version 5.xx Spesoft etc.etc." Now it just says "PinballX" flashing on/off over and over. There must be a settings file or folder I can bring back from a backup disk. But I don't know what file that would be exactly. I don't mind inputting tables back into GM. At least VPX hasn't been messed with.

This afternoon I decided to try and overclock my CPU. Not knowing too much about this I decided to play it a bit safe and use a Gigabyte utility software to do this. I downloaded the correct programs direct from their site for my specific motherboard. And it didn't work. As soon as I tried to start the utility it gave me a BSOD. So I decided to give this up as a bad job and uninstalled it right away. But for some reason my PinballX setup is now completely borked. It's all bunched up in the top left corner of my playfield screen. And for some reason an extra table has been added. (I had 301 but now 302?). None of my flipper buttons work any more to select tables. All the paths have disappeared in the settings. The monitor settings look fine but they are displaying on top of each other in the top left of playfield. God knows what else has changed. I tried launching Game Manager and got some message about being online to download media. I've never used such an option. I did manage to scroll through the tables in GM but cannot find that spurious 302nd table. Couldn't see anything new. Before I mess anything else up... is it OK to overwrite files from a back up disk I have? It will put me back an edition but I can't remember what all the settings were at exactly. If I launch tables directly through VPX they are fine. All images on the correct monitors and plays nice. Nothing seems to have altered there. I cannot understand why trying that application can have such a terrible effect on something completely unconnected.

Thank you Scutters. Changing that wait to maximum 30 seconds seems to have done the trick. I used to think that made the table longer to load by however many seconds, but it doesn't. Just holds the image or video enough till it loads.

I've attached the files you requested. I did change the photo links as they didn't work for me originally. Work for me now. I can't attach the photos because the file sizes are way too big. These files are just after I loaded Flintstones table and the VPX screens popped up for about a second this time. Sometimes it's as much as 8-10 seconds on other tables. PinballX.ini log.txt

Using latest 5.32. When I go to launch some tables (not all) PinballX closes too early and I can see VPX is still loading the table. It spoils the seamsless entry from the screenshot to table. Like I say, not all tables, but quite a few. I do have a very small gif loading image (about 12 frames). I'd prefer none at all but I cannot seem to get round having some kind of loading screen or animation. This is the least intrusive I've managed. When it works it looks pretty good as if the table has just come to life. I prefer this to videos. https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipOB3jUmqTNHB5szgkhvyT8WU9v3NQ3TRFbuf0Ps https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPelvTHG5WIojXJWEtZ5mAXnnhjkI92yqXvtSHk

Well... that was quick! Many thanks EDIT: Hmmm... do I need to do something else? Unfortunately adding those files has caused PinballX to lose it's former snappiness. It now jerks and stalls here and there as I browse. Not something I'm going to put up with, so unless there's a fix for this then I will have to go back to static .pngs. For reference, my PC is a quad core i7 860 (1st gen.) @ 2.90 GHz with a GTX 1070 using 4K playfield.

Hmmm... I just copied over those 120 files. I have noticed a handful are working where the .apng has a slightly different name to the .png. But if the file names are exactly the same then .png is definitely taking priority. I didn't do anything else though. No "importing" or editing any files etc. Just dumped those 120 files right in the mix. It took me a while to name them because of course, they weren't anything like my file names originally.