PinballX with B.A.M for Future Pinball

[Guest olivier]

Hi

First thing , thank you very much for your hard work for this great frontend.

It work very nice , but i have a little bug , and i want to know why.

I want to run BAM instead of Future Pinball.exe , in the setup i select FPloader.exe in the Bam directory ...

Pinball x load the Fploader , the fploader.exe do is job and launch Future Pinball and the table ... it's ok

But when i exit the table , the pinball x don't come on the screen , it's stuck in the task bar of windows 7 , and i have to clic on the task bar icon (or alt+tab) to show pinball x on my screen.

I have no problem with visual pinball.

My OS : Windows 7 64 bits, all .exe is with administrator rights.

If anyone as the same bug or the solution ?

Thanks.

[BobaFunk]

First things first, this is an amazing front end. The amount of hard work put into it is truly impressive. It has every feature I've been hoping for and more that I never imagined with each new update. Thank you very much. I am however experiencing similiar issues when launching FP through BAM. VP works as it should, as does FP when launched on it's own, but issues arrise when using BAM. The table will load, but often requires a mouse click to bring into focus, despite having the simulated mouse click enabled in settings. The table will play but none of the PinballX defined buttons will work. I cannot pause or exit the table. The only way to exit is by pressing the esc key, which will close the table and FP editor, leaving PinballX running minimized in the taskbar. All programs are set to run as administrator, running Win7 64 bit. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I would really like to make the switch to this fantastic front end.

Thanks,

Steve

[pocketpal]

I have been running Future Pinball with BAM for awhile now, and found that I have overall better luck running FPLoaderNew.exe instead of regular FPLoader. It was designed to work better with Hyperpin, and that carries over to PinballX as well. That being said, there is still one issue I have: when exiting the table, I press the button I have defined to bring up the PinballX menu, choose "Exit," and sometimes it will shut down the table as it should and return to the PinballX wheel. Other times, however, the table will remain open, the PinballX wheel and playfield will display on my playfield monitor, but the backglass from the table that didn't actually quit will still be showing on my backglass monitor. When this happens, I Alt-Tab back to FP, press Escape, the table quits, and then I once again press Alt-Tab to go back to PinballX. It probably happens this way about 50% of the time.

EDIT: Actually, there is one more mysterious issue: some tables that work fine when running FPLoaderNew.exe outside of PinballX, will crash with error messages that disappear before I get to read them when launched from within PinballX. Checkpoint is one that this happens with everytime, but there are a number of others.

[Guest olivier]

Hi

I solve the problem.

Add for Future Pinball in your pinballx.ini

Parameters=RunWait, /STAYINRAM /open "[TABLEPATH]\[TABLEFILE]" /play /exit /arcaderender,,hide UseErrorLevel

[pocketpal]

Parameters=RunWait, /STAYINRAM /open "[TABLEPATH]\[TABLEFILE]" /play /exit /arcaderender,,hide UseErrorLevel

I recognize this line from the FAQ on Ravarcade's site for getting BAM to work with HyperPin, and you're right: this can also be helpful to get BAM working well (or at least better) with PinballX. The only part you actually need to add, however, is "/STAYINRAM" - this is a switch to tell BAM to say in memory, and this is the part that makes it work better with a frontend. The parts that say "RunWait," and ",,hide UseErrorLevel" are specific to HyperPin, since the entire line is actually an AutoHokey command that would go in FPLaunch, which HyperPin uses and PinballX does not. So, in effect, all you need to do is add the switch /STAYINRAM to the launch parameters for Future Pinball in your PinballX settings. It turns out that stuff I had mentioned earlier about FPLoaderNew was from an older version of BAM where Ravarcade had actually included a separate EXE that would stay in RAM, whereas he has since just made that functionality an optional switch to specify to FPLoader.exe. Also, it seems that specifying the /arcaderender switch is superfluous if you have already ticked the box for arcade render in FP setting. So my FP parameters for PinballX look like this:

Parameters=/STAYINRAM /open "[TABLEPATH]\[TABLEFILE]" /play /exit

And it works well -- I'm still suffering from the problem where certain tables crash only when run from PinballX, however. I haven't been able to figure that one out yet.

[Guest olivier]

Yes i read the new FAQ from ravarcade and try this parameters .

/Stayinram work great

Need Future DMD (3 screen for Future Pinball) a close functionnality and Future Pinball reach the 21 th century

[evilantal]

When I press the key I have defined for the PinballX menu ("I") when running a table with BAM. The desktop shows up with only transparent windows (like when you press ALT+TAB).

PinballX also seems to crash, because I cannot find the process in the taskmanager anymore and cannot ALT+TAB to it.

@pocketpal: You write that you can push the PinballX menu as usual when playing a table with BAM. How did you pull this off?

I'm using Parameters=/STAYINRAM /open "[TABLEPATH]\[TABLEFILE]" /play /exit in the ini.

[pocketpal]

@pocketpal: You write that you can push the PinballX menu as usual when playing a table with BAM. How did you pull this off?

I'm not sure how to answer that, but here is a screenshot of my keyboard settings for PinballX -- maybe they can help shed some light on things for you. I have defined the <E> key to bring up the PinballX menu regardless of whether I'm choosing a game or playing one. When I choose to exit a game from the PinballX menu, I have it defined to send the <Esc> key to either FP or VP.

Also, I have renamed my FPLoader.exe to "Future Pinball.exe" for maximum compatibility, so maybe that helps?

[evilantal]

Thanks for the quick answer pocketpal. I'll try that out when I get back from 2 weeks holiday

[evilantal]

Didn't work @pocketpal. I tried your settings for keys, but still when I press the "E" key when playing FP PinballX crashes and the Desktop pops up with transparent windows.

When playing Visual Pinball everything works fine...

Tried disabling desktop composition for PinballX, but that didn't help. Don't know what else to try

[pocketpal]

some tables that work fine when running FPLoaderNew.exe outside of PinballX, will crash with error messages that disappear before I get to read them when launched from within PinballX. Checkpoint is one that this happens with everytime, but there are a number of others.

I'm still suffering from the problem where certain tables crash only when run from PinballX, however. I haven't been able to figure that one out yet.

I have finally figured something out regarding this FP/BAM crashing problem: it only happens if I have the option in PinballX set to simulate a click to bring focus to the table. Like I said, this only causes a crash on certain tables, although it is quite a few. My sorta-theory is that it has something to do with the BAM program being what is actually run from PinballX, which then runs the actual FP program (while staying in memory itself due to BAM's /STAYINRAM flag being set). So is it due to PinballX "clicking" on the wrong program (BAM rather than FP), or is it due to the longer load time (due to BAM loading in addition to FP), that causes those tables to not be loaded sufficiently when the "click" takes place, or what? I can only guess, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

[MadBit]

I had this issue where the menu button for pinball x would crash FP when using BAM. I had to set my backglass to not be fullscreen and then it would work. This was OK except a few tables would show the title of the window bar on the backglass. Setting my backglass back to full screen would cause the crash again.

[Skinooe]

Do you have asked Rave? The bam maker himself could help you and I think I can it and will it.

[evilantal]

@MadBit: How did you resolve the issue exactly? I'm having the exact same problem...

[MadBit]

OK, just to explain my setup...I have 2 monitors for playfield and backglass. I had to startup future pinball outside of pinballx and BAM. Under the display settings for the second display (backbox) I made sure fullscreen was not checked. I then exited FP then started pinballx. I no longer get the crash when launching a FP table using BAM. The only downside is that on some of my tables I get the titlebar at the top of the backglass. I'm not sure what would happen if you have only 1 monitor. I hope that helps.

Correction: the crash wasn't just with using BAM. It was using the pinballx menu button while in a FP table w/BAM.

[evilantal]

Thanks for the tip MadBit. Unfortunately, this also didn't work.

I still get the desktop with transparent windows and crashing PinballX when I press the menu key...

Is there any way to find out if this is related to Future Pinball or to PinballX?

[MadBit]

I'm sorry that didn't solve your issue. I'll do some more testing but I believe I did not have this problem using Pinselect. I'll try to do some testing today and let you know.

[evilantal]

no problem, I also contacted ravarcade to see if he can find out something...

[evilantal]

Here is my log when playing a FP table and pressing the menu button (using the logger plugin).

Maybe you guys can make something of this?

22:10:20.3 10/10/1990: PinballX - Version 1.46

22:10:20.3 10/10/1990: Loading Settings

22:10:20.3 10/10/1990: Initialize Component

22:10:20.3 10/10/1990: Initialize Display

22:10:20.4 10/10/1990: Created DirectX BackGlass Window

22:10:20.5 10/10/1990: Hiding Cursor

22:10:20.5 10/10/1990: Hiding Taskbar

22:10:20.5 10/10/1990: Loading PlugIns

22:10:20.5 10/10/1990: Loaded Plugin:"Function Logger" Version 1.0.0 By Adultery

22:10:20.5 10/10/1990: PlugIn: "Function Logger" Initialized OK

22:10:20.5 10/10/1990: Using Plugin System Version: 1

22:10:20.5 10/10/1990: Loaded Plugin:"Speak Game Names" Version 1 By Tom Speirs

22:10:20.7 10/10/1990: PlugIn: "Speak Game Names" Initialized OK

22:10:20.7 10/10/1990: Using Plugin System Version: 1

22:10:20.7 10/10/1990: Load Game List

22:10:20.7 10/10/1990: Loading Database: Future Pinball

22:10:20.7 10/10/1990: Loading Database: Visual Pinball

22:10:20.7 10/10/1990: Finding and matching artwork and videos

22:10:21.9 10/10/1990: Initialize Audio

22:10:21.9 10/10/1990: Set Keyboard Controls

22:10:21.9 10/10/1990: Initialize Joystick

22:10:21.9 10/10/1990: No Joysticks Attached

22:10:21.9 10/10/1990: Started

22:10:26.2 10/10/1990: PlugIn: "Function Logger" caused an exception and is being disabled.

22:10:26.2 10/10/1990: Method 'PinballX.Plugin.Event_Input' not found.

22:10:26.3 10/10/1990: at System.RuntimeType.InvokeMember(String name, BindingFlags bindingFlags, Binder binder, Object target, Object[] providedArgs, ParameterModifier[] modifiers, CultureInfo culture, String[] namedParams)

22:10:26.3 10/10/1990: at System.Type.InvokeMember(String name, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object target, Object[] args)

22:10:26.3 10/10/1990: at PinballX.PlugIns.InvokeMethod(Object obj, String sProperty, Object oValue, Object oValue2, Object oValue3)

22:10:26.3 10/10/1990: at PinballX.PlugIns.Event_Input(Boolean[] Keys, Boolean[] Buttons, Int32 Status)

22:10:41.0 10/10/1990: Launch System

22:10:41.0 10/10/1990: Waiting for threads

22:10:41.0 10/10/1990: Showing Loading Screen

22:10:41.1 10/10/1990: Disposing display

22:10:41.4 10/10/1990: C:\Program Files (x86)\Future Pinball\BAM\\FPLoader.exe /STAYINRAM /open "C:\Program Files (x86)\Future Pinball\Tables\Black Knight 2000_ill.fpt" /play /exit

22:11:16.3 10/10/1990: Error. Exiting

22:11:16.3 10/10/1990: Error in the application.

22:11:16.3 10/10/1990: at Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3D.Device..ctor(Int32 adapter, DeviceType deviceType, Control renderWindow, CreateFlags behaviorFlags, PresentParameters[] presentationParameters)

22:11:16.3 10/10/1990: at Direct2D.Direct2d.Device..ctor(Form FormHandle, Int32 Width, Int32 Height, Boolean Windowed, Boolean VSync, Boolean Display16Bit, Int32 DisplayNbr, Int32 RefreshRate)

22:11:16.3 10/10/1990: at PinballX.Main.a(Boolean A_0, Boolean A_1)

22:11:16.3 10/10/1990: at PinballX.Main.ac()

22:11:16.3 10/10/1990: at PinballX.Main..ctor()

22:11:16.3 10/10/1990: Disposing Plugins

22:11:16.3 10/10/1990: Showing Taskbar

22:11:16.4 10/10/1990: Unhiding Mouse Cursor

[Tom Speirs]

Just so you know I have been talking with the author of BAM and he is working on a solution. Its sounds like he is looking to implement some enhancements on his end to fix the problem and make BAM act more like a normal windows process so it will work better with PinballX and other front ends.

[evilantal]

Great news, Tom!

I had an email from Rafal stating the same

Just shows how great (and fast) the support in this community is

[Tom Speirs]

Ive given the attached updated exe to Rafal but figured I would post it here too. It should support any Future Pinball loader including those used with BAM. I have not tested with BAM itself though as I am bit behind on getting stuff setup for real use.

If it works I will get a new release out pronto.

EDIT: Ive tested with BAM it works for me.

PinballX.zip

[Tom Speirs]

Fully working in 1.48. Go grab it.

[dboyrecords]

That's awesome, thanks! BAM and PBX, two great tastes that taste great together!

[dboyrecords]

@Tom since you said you're new to this... wanted to make sure you were hep to Slam's physics 2.5? Not always a safe topic but this seems like neutral ground!

Just sayin...