[PLUGIN] Visual Pinball Plugin

[Adultery]

Visual Pinball Plugin 1.0.2

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What is it?

If you use Visual Pinball/PinMAME, I don't have to tell you what a bummer it is when you fire up the rig for some hot Street Fighter pinball action and your guests stare at the table editor like deer in the headlights. Maybe it was a pain in the ass for you to set up too? I know it was for me! After I finally figured out how to load the tables, I couldn't exit them without a mouse. Yeah, I hear ya saying "well gee Adultery, there's an AutoIT loader for that". Sure there is, but I'd rather not get complicated with it. I just wanna set it up and play pinball.

Enter the plugin. Basically you set up a couple things and let the plugin handle your "light work" for ya. Launch the table, a nice, pretty, and customizable form comes up and covers up the table editor, then goes away so you can play your game. Simple as that. I juiced it up some too... You can press [ESC] to get out of the emulator quickly and get back to picking new games to play! I won't get too technical on ya, but basically when you press [ESC], GetAsyncKeyState picks it up and sends the "Q" that quits to the editor. Then before ya know it, the process is stopped automagically and you're all set! No need for mapping anything! Well, except your play keys! LOL!

I even took it a step farther and built in a nice pinball-ish LED font. Yay for fashion!!!

That's it! Nothing to it, right?

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How do I use it?

Three minutes or less and you're all set.

• Select your Visual Pinball emulator from the drop down list.
  
• Browse to the Visual Pinball EXE.
  
• Set your snap path that you'd like to show on the "cover" screen. (Yes! Animated GIFs are supported too!)
  
• Set a default snap for that rare occasion you don't have a snap to show off.
  
• Choose the background image you'd like to use.
  
• Select the color you want the text to be.
  
• Click "SAVE" or "PREVIEW"
  
• Go play, hassle free!
  

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Wow that's super easy! What if I find a bug?

Report it here!

Any questions? Ask away. Feel free to offer suggestions on how I can make it better. If some cool thing occurs to me or is suggested I'll happily post a beta here for you to try. I spent all day yesterday and all night last night testing and tweaking this (it's almost 10 AM and I've had it for the night). It's working perfectly now. Goodnight my friends!

Download it here:

Beta Version:

There is currently no beta available for this plugin.

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NOTES:

Special thanks to Tempest for his Visual Pinball wrapper... It served me well over the years. This plugin is sort of a tribute to that.

I also want to recommend howardc's Visual Pinball Launcher. It really is sweet! If you haven't tried it... You should! Update 1.0.1 ensures compatibility with his awesome work.

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1.0.2

• More colors added for the font and a box showing the selected color
  
• Added a preview form so you can see what it's gonna look like and tweak it as needed
  
• Better support for visual pinball wrappers
  
• Add your own custom message
  
• Plugin now detects full screen shift, no delay needed
  
• Various other code improvements
  

1.0.1

• Fixed XML writer/reader to support multiple emulators (Draco1962 pointed out that some folks keep PinMAME and Visual Pinball separate, this makes that possible)
  Unfortunately you'll have to go back in and set it up if you have already. Sorry about that.
  
• Tweaked the plugin a little to better mesh with howardc's Visual Pinball Wrapper (see notes above).
  
  • Use of his wrapper with this one enables some great features, such as disclaimer skipping and in-game menus much like MAME has.
    

  [*]Fine tuned the hot key detection, working much better now.

  [*]If you leave the snap path option blank in the plugin configuration, the plugin will check your Snap Path you set up in in GameEx for an image before displaying the not found image.

1.0.0

• Initial Release
  

[hansolo77]

[Krakerman]

+1 for this one Adultery!!

[u-man]

"automagically".... that make my day

and the big PLUS+ goes to Adultery. will test it tonight.

[Bigby]

Thanks for this Adultery, I'm sure it will come in handy when I get around to setting up Pinball in GameEX.

[Adultery]

Updated to 1.0.1, please reconfigure the plugin with this new version (the old one didn't support multiple emulators). Also did a little tweaking to make this plugin meld well with howardc's Visual Pinball Wrapper (see notes above).

Thanks for the props everyone, and happy 4th of July + 1.

[Krakerman]

Associate vbt or vpt?

Hmmm must be something wrong as it loads the loading screen then exits back to GameEx? I have VP8 and VP9 tables grouped together if that matters at all.

I removed the grouping and it still doesn't work.

[uPDATE] I got it to work with VP8 tables but now I have to figure out what to do with VP9 tables.

[Krakerman]

Does this cause a conflict if you run VP8 tables and VP9 tables as they both are vpt files? Maybe I need to change it to vp9 instead of vpt

[uPDATE] Ok i renamed all my vp9 tables with the ext of vp9 and assoc it with VP912.exe and still doesn't work it runs the editor but just sits there and waiting.

[Adultery]

I just put up a beta for you to toy with (if anyone would be so kind).

Changes:

• Added Drac's custom made logo to the config form (Thanks buddy! It looks great!)
  
• Added a check to see when Visual Pinball goes full screen (no need for setting the delay anymore)
  
• Better integration with Howardc's Visual Pinball launcher (GetAsyncKeyState was crashing the plugin when his launcher was running)
  
• Other minor optimizations to code
  

I would really appreciate some testing.

[Draco1962]

Anytime, Kimosabe!

[Adultery]

I wanna test it out myself first, but I added a "PREVIEW" button to the config so you can see what your screen will look like, and I added several more colors for the font. I also added a field so you can customize the text on the screen where it says "Preparing table... Please wait!"

Should be a new beta soon.

[Adultery]

1.0.2 Beta 2 is out:

• More colors added for the font and a box showing the selected color.
  
• Added a preview form so you can see what it's gonna look like and tweak it as needed..
  
• Better support for visual pinball wrappers.
  
• Added custom loading text.
  

[celly]

Your a freakin machine! Can't wait to get home and try this! Thanks!

[Krakerman]

Has anyone else had any issues getting VP9 to run with this at all? I got VP8 to work but VP9 tables just loads the editor and just sits there.

[Adultery]

Have you tried howardc's wrapper at all? It really helped me out a lot... Before VP9 wasn't loading the tables, now it works awesome. VP9 is such a PITA.

[ste303]

Thank you for this Adultery... Very nice.

[Adultery]

1.0.2 is out now... Pretty much all the beta features in a full release.

• More colors added for the font and a box showing the selected color
  
• Added a preview form so you can see what it's gonna look like and tweak it as needed
  
• Better support for visual pinball wrappers
  
• Add your own custom message
  
• Plugin now detects full screen shift, no delay needed
  
• Various other code improvements
  

[Krakerman]

I found that your plugin with the latest VP9 seems to work sometimes and sometimes it just returns back to the GameEx menu. When I try running a table your loader screen comes on and flashes a few times then it just goes back to the table list but when you try it the next time it runs ok???

I also tried using the Dragon Kings launcher and it also does the same thing however with his launcher it loses focus and you have to click on the screen.

[Draco1962]

Could it be that you are hitting against the "Are you authorized to use this table?" or whatever the prompt is for first time use? Does it occur ever ytime for the same table or just once, ever?

[Krakerman]

It seems to happen with the black knight 2000 table and it happens everytime I run this for the first time meaning when I startup gameex and goto VP and run that specific table then when I try a second time it runs fine with the exception of my DMD dissapears then I press F3 and then it shows up. No the Auth is not the issue.

[Adultery]

This plugin needs some work. Ive seen bugs here too on certain tables. I've learned some things since I coded this and I can make some changes.

I'll dig around in the code and hopefully fix the bugs over the weekend. Stay tuned!

[Krakerman]

Thanks Adultery!

[Adultery]

Give this one a try... It's working good for me.

[Krakerman]

Must be VP9 that just has issues as the Black Knight 2000 table now won't display the DMD using your updated version even thou I press F3. Also when loading that table it still goes back to gameex sometime and sometimes it doesn't. VP just doesn't play nice with Windows I think.

[Adultery]

Hmm. That's odd... I use vp9 here and it works fine. I'll do some further testing.