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Hi Tom, thank you for providing PinballX over the years. This is still my favourite frontend! But now my question: I like to use also other programs to manage my database-xml-files. E.g. PinballX Database Manager because it provides additional properties like <IPDBnr> or <dateadded>. But when I am in PinballX to rate a table, PinballX will delete the additional properties of that table. When using Games Manager, the additional properties of all games will be lost after save. It would be greate, if PinballX would only change e.g. the rating-property and leave the others unchanged. Thanks and have a greate day, Stefan PS: I am using PinballX Version 5.31, the attached file shows the lost properties of the first game Attack from Mars 3.02. VPX 7.0 - Kopie.xml

Hello everybody, As suggested by DazzleHP, I am creating now a specific thread for hi2txt utility. I started back in 2014 from the hashes of HiToText brilliant utility, providing full flexibility to describe how to extract hiscores without hard-coding anything in the program itself. Everything is here: http://greatstone.fr...txt/hi2txt.html Feedback is welcome as well as game support request or help Last release: v1.11 (2020-04-12) [Overview][Command-Line usage][XML format][All supported games] Cheers! GreatStone

Anyone know the game names for ... SAFE CRACKER THEATRE OF MAGIC THE CHAMPION PUB I just purchased them and would like to add them to my xml. Thanks.

Greetings! I bought my first Vpin Cabinet from Brad at VPCabs over the summer. I subscribed to GameX annual service and it's been great! I've been loving the experience and have spent more hours on it than any game console in years. As I had Brad build a custom HORROR themed cabinet for me, I'd like to make some custom lists so that I can easily get to specific types of tables that I'd group together....in this case "Horror/Scary" themed tables. Marvel or SuperHero tables would be another useful way to group games including tables from FX2/3. Anyways: I know I can create a group and lists for each of the systems that have horror tables and then use that as a means to what I'm after. My question is, can you guys add a simple feature to game manager that would do the following: For any game (regardless of the system) you'd see a drop down or pop-out that shows the list of available custom game lists. Each has a checkbox. By checking the box, your newly added game (or existing game) xml data is copied to the associated custom lists so that you can EASILY and QUICKLY manage games and lists at the same time? As an alternative, maybe allow the custom list manager to update or sync with the system game list so that adds and deletes are available to bring into the group manager feature. Thanks for any info....this would be a HUGE help to those of us with a ton of tables. Thanks guys, Dave VPCabs loaded Wizard pics below

I edited my database XML files by hand for Future Pinball, VP993, VPPM5, and VPX. I needed to change many occurrences of a couple of tags and figured doing it by hand would be faster than using Game Manager. After editing PinballX would just bounce me back into Windows once started. So I tried loading each database in the Game Manager. All of them loaded fine except for the VPX file. This database gives me an error about an illegal character in the file. Is there a quick way to locate a typo/illegal character, or am I stuck eyeballing the entire XML?

Can someone do me a solid and send over your Pinball Arcade XML file to save me from building out the grids. I will be forever grateful. Thanks!

I've been working on a MAME.xml that contains every vertical game (Parent only) for my PinballX setup. Only games with the Driver marked good (Green status) have made it in thus far. In the coming days, I'll continue on adding imperfect games/drivers Feedback is welcomed and Enjoy! http://imgur.com/TFMYi1s http://imgur.com/9yhXFOq MAME.zip

If you haven't tried BAM for Future Pinball, you should. It works well in PinballX. Below is what is in my PinballX.ini file. I have BAM installed in C:\GAMES\Future Pinball\BAM. Your top level directory could be different. PinballX works perfectly for this. [FuturePinball] Enabled=True WorkingPath=C:\Games\Future Pinball TablePath=C:\Games\Future Pinball\Tables Executable=BAM\FPLoader.exe Parameters=RunWait, /STAYINRAM /open "[TABLEPATH]\[TABLEFILE]" /play /exit /arcaderender,,hide UseErrorLevel LaunchBeforeEnabled=false LaunchBeforeWorkingPath= LaunchBeforeExecutable= LaunchBeforeHideWindow=False LaunchBeforeWaitForExit=True LaunchAfterEnabled=False LaunchAfterWorkingPath= LaunchAfterExecutable= LaunchAfterHideWindow=False LaunchAfterWaitForExit=True MouseClickFocus=True FPRAMPath=C:\Games\Future Pinball\fpRAM For several months I have had BAM installed in my cabinet and there is no reason why not to and here is why: The physics in any pinball table may not be correct and it doesn't matter what version of FP you are running or even if you are running the correct version. You may install a table and then you notice that the bumpers, slingshots, nudging, gravity, dampening, FPS, ball mass, flippers, plunger, kicker, etc. may not be accurate. Maybe you watched a real pinball game on Youtube and you see how the ball is moving as it strikes objects and it what direction. Now I don't know about you, but I just hate having to go back into the editor on a table and start messing with all the powers that be. I would much rather tweak an XML file and have BAM's fploader inject into the default FP executable and now the game plays entirely different. This is what I call "real" customized control. You could have custom physics for every table and never have to deal with "one size fits all" ever again. Below is a snippet from the flipper settings in one my ZED XML files for FP. Normally, all the settings for the flippers that end in "Xoff" or Zoff", are set to "0". It is this way in every version of FP as well. I have been experimenting by setting these to "2". This makes your flippers slightly less rigid on their pivots and gives them a little bit of "play" which is kind of like holding a baseball bat in your hands loosely instead of tightly. Now test this out yourself and compare. Does it seem like when the ball is in motion that you are able to absorb the ball's energy and direct it in the right direction more times then not? Maybe you notice that when the flipper is slightly loose, it is a little easier to direct the ball far right or left. I was working on a particular table that was giving me very poor right/left shots. I didn't want to mess with changing the angle of the flippers. I changed these settings below, and instantly I was able to aim to extreme right or left without messing with the editor. Test this out and see what you think. Modify Xoff and Zoff. <flipper mass="99999.0" omega="45.0" moeMethod="0" leftXoff="2" leftYoff="1500" leftZoff="2" rightXoff="2" rightYoff="1500" rightZoff="2"></flipper>

The following information resolves two problems in Pinball Cabinet configurations and one of them is caused by the Game Manager that comes with Pinballx and the other is caused by Pinballx not closing out servers upon exit from the game. Problem 1: UltraVPServer and B2SBackglassServerEXE have been observed to be running in the Task Manager even after a VP game is closed and you exit back to the menu in Pinballx. Solution to this is as follows: Create a batch file called “killbackglass.bat” containing two entries. Use your systems DOS task kill command. In XP it is "tskill”. Place entries tskill UltraVPServer and tskill B2SBackglassServerEXE each on their own line. Use a program like Jitbits BatToExe to convert the batch file into an executable. You will then have “killbackglass.exe”. Execute the Pinballx “Settings” manager to call this program in Virtual Pinball to Launch After when a table exits. Problem 2: Why is the UltraVPServer not working in PinballX to display the backglass? Why is the back box black? Why does the server menu pop up when a table runs and not the back glass? Make sure all of your table game files have the same name. UltraVPServer and the home directory folder that you used to store your finalized UVP files must remain in the Hyperpin folder like “C:\Hyperpin\UltraVP” or whatever. Don't try to move any of this over to Pinballx because it won't work. When you install a table using a UVP back glass you can store the original back glass file and the uvp file in the appropriate \Pinballx\Media\Visual Pinball\ sub-folders, but once you execute UltraVPServer and read in the back glass and uvp file, you must save it in its home Hyperpin folder. For example on my installation it is at “C:\Hyperpin\UltraVP” UltraVPServer must see that your newly installed table is present in the database “Visual Pinball.xml”. There is a bug with this that I have discovered. If you executed “Game Manager” that came with Pinballx, made a change and saved the file, you now have created an xml file with additional lines that UltraVPServer does not understand. This will cause your UVP file not to be found and the UltraVPServer menu will pop up instead of the back glass. If you are transitioning from Hyperpin to Pinballx and moved your xml file over, it originally did not have these extra lines so all the uvp's installed prior to the installation will work even if you did execute “Game Manager” and messed up your xml later adding lines with: <hidedmd>, <hidebackglass>, </enabled>, </rating> This is because UltraVPServer only needs to find itself one time but now you start to install more tables with new UVP's and your xml file is all messed up and the server can't find the new table. What can you do? There are only two solutions to this problem. One is to manually change the Visual Pinball.xml file back to the way it was in Hyperpin with extra lines removed. I don't like this idea because for some of my VP tables, I don't even use a back glass server but only the back glass image displayed with the DMD running in the right place. <hidebackglass> as FALSE is a good feature for this and reduces stuttering. Server's can sometimes slow games down on older machines. The other is to temporarily hide the complete Visual Pinball.xml file (move it somewhere else), then create a new file with only the one game you are trying to install and after you run the game one time, UltraVPServer finds the installed UVP and you can put the original Visual Pinball.xml file back to where it was and install the new game inside of it. Once the server finds it in the xml, it doesn't care that the xml that came later has additional lines it because the Game Manager messed with it. VP cabinets running UVP presents a major problem in that everyone has a different back monitor screen size so if you download UVP for a particular table, you may find that the back glass does not have the proper size for your monitor and the UVP overlay that goes over it combined with the back glass being the wrong size too, can't stretch it to your back monitor and you get the black screen. You will have to use an image editor to resize a new back glass to fit your monitor. Create the UVP that originally came with your installation saving it with its original wrong sized back glass. Now open it back up and drag all overlays containing scoring, lighting, digits, away from the edges of the display and place them more towards the center of the screen and remember their original positions and save this UVP somewhere. Now run the UltraVPServer, read in the newly sized back glass, read in the wrong sized original UVP file that you saved earlier, and move the overlayed UVP items to their correct positions. Remember that UVP overlays can't stretch so when you try to transpose them on a newly sized back glass image, much of the data will be lost on the bottom edge so this is the reason you have to create a dummied up UVP and drag the elements away from edges where they can be lost. Then when you run the server, read in the new back glass, and the dummied up UVP, you can then drag elements back into their positions.

Recently I have changed over to Pinballx from Hyperpin utilizing the same database for Hyperpin and installing it into Pinballx. I use a very neat and tidy database everything looks like the below example. There are no special characters to muck things up. Once I read the database into "Game Manager.exe", and made one change to it and saved it, the database was rebuilt with the new fields added like the example below, except 100 tables were omitted. I have 565 tables but "Game Manager.exe" will only read 465 tables into it so any attempt to make a change using this program, leaves a newly written database with 100 tables missing. This of course is dangerous and I am glad I retained a copy of the original so I decided to try an experiment. I created another XML file with the remaining 100 tables, executed "Game Manager.exe" to read in the remaining 100 and all of them read into the program perfectly. I then made a change to a record and saved the XML file. Now I had two separate XML database files so I manually combined both of them into a single "Future Pinball.xml" file and started up Pinballx. All 565 tables were there working perfectly so why does "Game Manager" have this limitation is my question? Is this a known bug? <game name="2001 (Gottlieb 1971)"> <description>2001 (Gottlieb 1971)</description> <manufacturer>Gottlieb</manufacturer> <year>1971</year> <type>EM</type> <hidedmd>True</hidedmd> <hidebackglass>True</hidebackglass> <enabled>True</enabled> <rating>0</rating> </game> <game name="24 (Stern 2009)"> <description>24 (Stern 2009)</description> <manufacturer>Stern</manufacturer> <year>2009</year> <type>SS</type> <hidedmd>True</hidedmd> <hidebackglass>True</hidebackglass> <enabled>True</enabled> <rating>0</rating> </game> <game name="24 MOD (Stern 2009)"> <description>24 MOD (Stern 2009)</description> <manufacturer>Stern</manufacturer> <year>2009</year> <type>SS</type> <hidedmd>True</hidedmd> <hidebackglass>True</hidebackglass> <enabled>True</enabled> <rating>0</rating>