DBrown67

I've been collecting a number of these files over the last few months. My cabinet has 300 tables and I have just copied over 120 animated wheels to the Wheels folder. Is there a way to get PinballX to make .anpg files priority, so only load simple .png if an animated wheel isn't available? I've just updated to latest 5.31. Of course I can delete/rename those 120 duplicate .png files, but that's very time consuming.

I'm adding the polished touches to my cabinet and VPX setup, so this issue is not a major problem really. Just something within the learning process I'd like to resolve if possible. When I'm browsing tables I've noticed that my undercab lighting and RGB flipper buttons light up as they do when the table is loaded, which is a really neat touch. But a few tables do not do this, even though they have undercab lighting in operation when loaded. Most of these happen to be Original titles using romsets from other tables such as Willy's Wonderland, Magnificent 7 etc. Others don't have a DOFconfig made for them in the list such as Drop-A-Card. I use Smart undercab lighting in my config and have no MX or Complex selected at all. I prefer the single colour glow although some tables use a split sequence which does change the colour. Within the PinballX entry of DOFConfig I have @all RGB@ selected for Smart undercab lighting, but I don't really know what that means. So my question is... is there a config or XML file anywhere I can edit to make these tables display undercab lighting while browsing in the frontend? EDIT: I have noticed that ACDC (Stern) shows incorrect flipper button colour within PinballX (yellow) but in game they are always red. Why is this? Slowly going through tables and so far all tables except this one do exhibit correct colours except instances where there is no DOF entry (then of course no colour at all). A very minor point, but I'd like to smooth this stuff out if possible. I'm on 5.02 by the way.

For now I've just disabled both RGB Undercab Complex and RGB Undercab Smart. That's stopped the strobes flashing but ofc I have no undercab LEDS while in PinballX. It's half a fix I suppose, but not a proper one. And I don't believe it's a PinballX problem, it's a DOF problem.

LOL yes I do mean those white flashers. And they should NOT flash if the strobe entry is empty in DOF Config. You are confirming that the strobes do flash then in PinballX? Because that's wrong. I've just checked all my PacLED64 outputs and they all work fine. Everything as it should. All RGB colours on all RGB ports. Tables work fine, getting full colours in Undercab Complex. PinballX entry in DOFconfig is the culprit (for both Smart and Complex) as I only ever get red colour undercab and strobes. My strobes and RGB undercab are next to each other in my ports..... 49 = Start Button 50 = Strobe 51 = Strobe and then 52, 53, 54 = RGB Undercab Complex. You cannot get any RGB positioned wrongly as you know, because the Config tool only allows RGB entries to be in a single block of three ports next to each other on the PacLED board. You cannot straddle across blocks. But the config generated for Smart and Complex undercab is straddling them. They can't be numerically matched when generated. (I know you may question my two ports for strobes when I only need one. That's because I added a much brighter strobe on top of the cab later on, and it was just easier and neater to create a second entry on port 51 rather than splicing into the existing wiring.) And I do appreciate your help with this. Thank you

I'm a bit confused now though. You say you don't have any strobes flashing but in your screenshot you do have an entry for your strobes. I'm just using the default PinballX config which is just the left side copied over, so the strobes box is empty. Yet they still flash. I'll try copying your setup and see what happens. EDIT: Just copied your entry and the strobes are firing just as before. When installing a new config I just copy those four files extracted from the zip and put them in DirectOutput/Config folder, overwriting the old ones. It's what I've always done. But there is a 5th file in there called DirectOutputTesterSettings.xml that never gets overwritten. Is this all correct? EDIT2: I decided to blank out the entire entry for PinballX on the right hand side. This worked in that nothing fires off, as expected. Not even strobes. Then I added the single line for the RGB fire button as that was the last update to PinballX config. That's working fine on it's own (pulsing red) with no strobes activating. So this may be a painstaking process to find what line is causing the issue. EDIT3: I found the entry that activates strobes for me. As soon as I introduce @all RGB@ to the Undercab Smart then the strobes fire. And I can only get red on the undercab lighting. This is with Undercab Complex and all MX entries blank (I don't have any addressable LEDs). If I have Undercab Complex set to @all RGB@ with Undercab Smart blank then the strobes stop but I get zero undercab lighting. If I wasn't getting full undercab lighting in tables (all colours) I'd be thinking my PacLED64 was wired wrong somehow. But it all works fine in tables and strobes fire when they should. So for now I just have to put up with no undercab lighting while in PinballX to stop the strobes firing. A weird one.

Done a bit of digging myself since my OP. I had some older versions of directoutputconfig lying about. So I reinstalled the oldest I still had which is version 3716. And the strobes are not active at all. RGB flashers flash white left/right or right/left as before. (Although those flashers do tend to take about 20 seconds or so to wake up when first browsing tables in PinballX). When I look at the DOF config history there has been an amendment to PinballX in version 3748 by "ffarges" titled "RGB Lockbar config for PinballX". Could this be the issue? Something changed there to make strobes active? Anyone else have their strobes active in PinballX with the current version of DOFConfig? (If someone tests this ensure to backup your current DOFconfig files first in case you don't like it)

When I'm browsing tables in PinballX (version 5.02) my strobes are lighting up sometimes with the RGB flashers. I don't want the strobes to be active in the frontend. I've checked the PinballX entry on DOF Configtool site and the strobes box is empty, indicating they shouldn't be working in the front end. Tables launch fine and when I play a table all the DOF and toys work as they should. I've attached the log file from my PinballX directory. DirectOutput.log

Aha... my C:\ drive was nearing maximum. I only had 5 Gb left and there was an unused E:\ partition of only about 450Mb. Dunno why that partition was there but Windows was saying it was 70% full when checking it's properties. But on double clicking the drive for files there was nothing on it at all. So I deleted that partition and expanded C:\ into the unallocated space. There's loads of Gb space on there now. Is there anything else I might need to do regarding clean up or allocating virtual memory? (System had 8Gb ram anyway) I had a SSD crash recently and my original C:\ drive was only 120 Gb in size. So I restored my back up C:\ image to a brand new 256Gb SSD. Hence why I could expand.

Another strange issue that just popped up very recently. And it's done it a handful of times now, but again intermittent. When exiting a table and returning to the main menu, none of the wheel images show up. All the games are there in the wheel but in text format only. The screenshots of table and backglass are present and the table audio is playing as I move through the menu. Just the wheels have disappeared. On one occasion exiting altogether and restarting PinballX did not resolve it.

I use a sky blue/cyan colour myself. I also change the font to one called Cooper (already in Windows). I like it because it has a certain retro feel to it without looking silly.

It needs more testing, but so far so good. Only about 3 or 4 quick tests this morning and they all exited GotG to PinballX just fine. I'm not seeing anything much different ofc which is why it needs more testing to be sure. Before it was rather hit and miss. Sometimes it exited fine, other times not which is a really annoying trend. Thanks guys anyway.

Thanks for the help guys. I don't know if I've installed this correctly though. I took the unzipped PuPCloser.exe and dropped it into my PinballX directory. Then within Settings.exe for "Launch After" section I have the following: Enable Launch After: YES Launch After Working Path: F:\PinballX Launch After Executable: PuPCloser.exe Launch After Parameters: WINTIT "Visual Pinball" 10 1 (I just copied this line. I don't know what it means or if it might be different on someone else's cab) Launch After Wait For exit: YES Launch After Hide Window: NO

Thanks for the input. You say it's not a clean fix, but it sounds clean enough to me. Whatever "kills" the process rather than allowing it to remain suspended is good enough for me. So do I just make a .txt file and rename it .bat? I'm sure I've done something similar to that with another application not pinball related. Then point to it in the PinballX settings?

I seem to be having various issues with this one particular table when exiting it back to PinballX. On Googling this problem it seems I'm not totally alone. It seems PinballX sometimes struggles closing this particular table. I've recently been getting sporadic PinUpDisplay.exe errors regarding a "memory address cannot be read" problem. Doesn't happen every time. I did find where someone else on these forums had the same issue, where they replaced the GotG PupPack files and that seemed to fix their issue. So I've just done the same but now I'm finding that PinballX is not killing PinUpDisplay.exe properly. That program is staying as "suspended" in Task Manager, so any subsequent table selected in PinballX that uses a PupPack does not have the PupPack played. I need to kill PinUpDisplay.exe manually in Task Manager to get PupPacks playing again. I've attached my .ini and .txt files for someone to look and see if they can find the issue. log.txt PinballX.ini

The backup image worked! I use AOMEI backup software and at first it didn;t work. That was because I restored the backup on my desktop and you need the paid version for that to work. Doing it again on the cabinet itself worked. And PinballX fired right up with no errors. So I'm stull confused as to what might have caused this with it being sat dormant, no power and no internet connection. Someone suggested a possible weak CMOS battery making Win10 think something had changed so it tried to contact MS to check licence. OR... a power surge coming through even though socket was switched off (but plug was still in wall). Or a surge when I first switched on? Just never had that happen before in all my years of messing with PCs. Had plenty stuff go wrong but not like that. :p

Can't. It won't even boot now. I noticed there was a constant 30% CPU usage at idle so I investigated and found a process that was using 30% constantly. So I disabled it (Device Setup Manager) and then the PC put me into an temporary Windows account and I couldn't get back into the original account. (It wasn't password protected as it was never on internet and only I used it). That 30% process was still running in the temp.account so I disabled it again. After that the PC just will not boot at all. It's completely borked. God knows what's happened in the month it's been switched off. The only saving grace is I have a backup disc image I made just a day or so before the cab was last used. So today I'm going to attempt to restore that to a new SSD. I'm just hoping that whatever caused the crash doesn't copy over. If it does but still boots then I can supply the .txt and .ini files you require. EDIT: Device Setup Manager process is stopped on my desktop. So I don't know what it does exactly or why it was using 30% of CPU at idle in the cab. Never seen it before.

Just gone to start my cab up for first time in a month... and I'm getting a strange runtime error I've never had before. Please be aware this cab is NEVER on the internet, so no Win10 updates have ever been done since it was built. PinballX is set to start when the PC boots. But I'm getting a runtime error box on my back glass screen: Function: GetObject Error In: GetObjectEx Error: Unknown Runtime Error Code: 80041001 Aource: Application The PinballX logo appears on the playfield but that's it. Just freezes and I have to Ctrl Alt Delete to get out of it. I can start VPX directly but all my LEDs, beacons, RGB flashers are not functioning properly. Something has messed up and I cannot understand it. It's been switched off for a month and nothing else. No software additions, no updates, nothing.

Yes of course. I have to delete the old ones first or I don't get new ones.

Just tried both those ideas guys. But both still resulted in the DMD being stretched up/down as before ignoring the pup pack surround. Regarding the latter idea by Tom, I only temporarily removed that file. I didn't try to edit it as I wouldn't know what to change in there, sorry. But thanks again for trying guys

I changed a reg.entry for a table so it took full screen size. PinballX took the image exactly as displayed. Of course this is no different to the image before, but now PinballX is not stretching it any further, it's already "stretched" in the registry. and now covering my PupPack overlay. So I think this confirms that PinballX is taking screenshots of rom based DMDs based on registry settings, then stretching to 1024 x 600 as that's the size I set the DMD window to be for that monitor in PinballX srttings.

Thanks for that video file! In the mean time, regarding the taking of screenshots (keeping to thread topic)... It works perfectly well for tables that use Flex DMD. I only have a handful of those though: Jaws, JP's GB Slimer etc. Of course Flex DMD keeps its global settings somewhere differently to all rom based tables. ROM based are kept in a different registry folder. I don't know if PinballX is using the settings in registry to record the DMD registry window (small 4:1 ratio size) then stretching it to the full DMD window size I gave for the that monitor (1024 x 600). Following on from all your help (much appreciated) I've decided I'm happy with screenshots only in the frontend and I now have a small animated gif that plays over the image when table loading (following your help on making one). Now, when table loads it's like the screenshot popped into life. The effect is quite nice. If I could get DMD screenshots fixed I'd be happy.

I've been at this hours over a few days now, Here's a timeline of what I've done/tried and where I am now.... I recently updated my PinballX to the latest 5.01. I was having issues recording DMD images while using a PupPack overlay, which I've temporarily put on the back burner by just using a black screen for DMD as a "no DMD" file in PinballX. So I decided to try recording playfield videos. And here's where the frustration REALLY kicks in. I downloaded and installed the recommended codecs, but left them exactly as they were, I changed nothing from default. Then I downloaded the latest 1.6 version of PBX recorder. I decided to just record playfield only to start with. But PBX recorder just records a video (correctly positioned and decent quality) at a very slow fps rate. Far too slow to be of use. So I decided to use the recording function within Game Manager for a single table. This again resulted in a far too slow video for the playfield. Then I decided to look at the LAV codec settings. There are a plethora of settings in there, and I have no idea what they do. The only thing I noticed was hardware acceleration was set to "none", which didn't look right to me. So I set it to Nvidia as I have a GTX1070 in my cab. Tried to record a playfield video... and this time it was too fast! Like it was running 5x the speed of the table. At least I was getting somewhere... or so I thought. I have vsync on when in VPX, perhaps it's not on when recorder is working? Vsync was indeed turned off in Nvidia controller, so I set that to on and tried again. Now Game Manager refuses to record anything from the playfield. Even if I choose "overwrite existing" the tables video folder remains empty. It will still record DMD and backglass videos, just not table videos any more. I checked the playfield file location in PinballX settings and it is correct. I know it's correct because going back to PBX recorder DOES put a new video in that folder... but at like 4 fps as before. So why has Game Manager suddenly decided to stop recording any playfield videos? The only thing I did notice that looks odd is that my DMD monitor seems to be running at 30 fps. I noticed this because I had Fraps in the background at one point, and the fps counter switched from playfield to DMD monitor and I saw it changed from 60 to 30. But all monitors are running at 60 Hz according to Windows settings.. I don't know if this has any influence on playfield recording though. (I understand using GPU acceleration only works for playfield). Another anomaly is that when I tried to record a few videos of all three monitors using Game Manager, it would record the DMD only for the Stern table "24" stretching the DMD top bottom and not recording the PupPack overlay. But when it came to table "AC/DC" it DID record the DMD screen correctly, including overlay. My Screenres.txt is fine as the positioning of the videos (when created) is OK. I'd be happy to just get some playfield videos recorded for now. I can leave the back glass and DMDs for later. One step at a time....

I'm going to make a new thread for this video recording lark. PinballX is simply REFUSING to play ball when it comes to recording. DMD image capture is not solved. I've decided to just have a black 1024 x 600 image displayed as a "no DMD" file for now while in the front end. Remaking that PinballX logo in that software you mentioned just looks far too complicated for me.

I had another go this morning at recording videos. I had installed the recommended codecs but I just left them as is. There were a plethora of options I don't understand, but I did notice that hardware acceleration was set to "none". I switched that to Nvidia but the PBX recorder is still making videos way too slow. So I tried the recorder in PinballX game manager... and that recorded videos that were way too fast! LOL!!! So in conclusion, there are some settings somewhere I'm not just not getting right. My system can record videos no problem, I just need them at the right speed. I Googled and tried removing hardgrab.exe (someone said that fixed their issue) but that just resulted in a video way too slow again.

Oh dear.... that was a complete waste of time. Spent the last 4 hours trying to get PBX recorder to work. Didn't even get 1 video of anything. Then tried to use the recording feature in game manager. Got one video of a playfield... upside down. PBX recorder wouldn't shut down the pup videos on the dmd monitor. I use seaparate .res files for my back glasses as I like to keep the aspect ratio correct. I hate seeing them stretched. That meant my screenres.txt is basically redundant so I could set it perfectly for my three monitors. Yet it recorded nothing. And what's screenrescheck supposed to do? When I use it my tables folder opens up and only the screenres.txt file is selectable. But when I click on it just Funhouse shows every time... and incorrectly at that. Is it supposed to do that? So back to using screenshots... I found I can use the screenshots I've taken as loading images. But a huge great gif spoils the look. Can I remove that gif altogether... or at least make it subtle and small? It's taking up three quarters of the screen and there's just no need. No point in using the screenshot when it's that big.