[APP] NukeLauncher - NukeFX for (Pinball FX2)

[time299]

Also this version adds support for GameEx rom detection, so just point the XMLFile = variable to the path of your fake roms or your table images and it will parse the file structure and extract your table names from the file name instead on parsing the XML to get them.

This one extracts your table names from the Pinball FX2.xml database.XMLFile = C:\PinballX\Databases\Pinball FX2\Pinball FX2.xmlorThis one extracts your table names from the file names in the folder specified.XMLFile = C:\PinballX\Media\Pinball FX2\Wheel ImagesEnd result gets all of your table names and tries to match them up, both work the same.

[cfx]

I'm having a weird problem with the new version. At every launch after the initial detection launch, I get a small "good news" window. It's also killing my backglass prior to game launch, where the previous version didn't.

I've had very little sleep (computer tech on 24/7 oncall shift this week) so I may have screwed something up myself. Anyone else seeing this behaivor?

c..

[jaharr01]

no not had that problem. The backglasses are controlled by pinballx did u check hide back glass in gamemanger. if u did it will disappear. Not sure about the "good news" issue. Try a restart

[cfx]

no not had that problem. The backglasses are controlled by pinballx did u check hide back glass in gamemanger. if u did it will disappear. Not sure about the "good news" issue. Try a restart

Great call on the backglass. Come to find out, I'd copied a backup copy of my .xml over the working one I was editting and the backup still had hide backglass checked. Duh!

Still have the "good news" window popup atfer selecting table. It's just like the detection window, only smaller. I've got to click it to get past it. I'll try reinstalling from scratch again later.

Thanks for your help!

C..

[time299]

Hey Cfx

The good news message should only show the first time you run it. it should detect your table names and then write them to the ini. so if you are getting it over and over it sounds like it is having problems writing back to the ini and recording the table names. so check you ini and see if your PinballTables = values are present as well as your FootballTables = values. Both need to be populated. It may be a permissions issue try running nukelauncher.exe as a administrator and see if that lets it write the values.

Please report back your finding, also let me know if the "good news" message you are reciving is saying it found both your PinballTables and FootballTables?

Thanks,

Jeff

[cfx]

Hey Cfx

The good news message should only show the first time you run it. it should detect your table names and then write them to the ini. so if you are getting it over and over it sounds like it is having problems writing back to the ini and recording the table names. so check you ini and see if your PinballTables = values are present as well as your FootballTables = values. Both need to be populated. It may be a permissions issue try running nukelauncher.exe as a administrator and see if that lets it write the values.

Please report back your finding, also let me know if the "good news" message you are reciving is saying it found both your PinballTables and FootballTables?

Thanks,

Jeff

Jeff,

Thanks for the response. I've got all my tables showing properly in both my pinball fx2.xml and pinballx. The first large "all good .. detected tables" message populates all the tables except the football tables in the nukelauncher.ini.

I was thinking nukelauncher might be having an issue detecting the football games and thus the constant small "good news" window everytime a table is launched from PinballX.

I made sure I opened pinball fx2 and launched/exited a football table prior to running nukelauncher the first time for detection, but to no avail. I've tried deleting nukelauncher.ini and replacing it with the stock one numerous times as well. I'm rather lost now as how to proceed.

Regards,

C..

[time299]

You should just manually add your fottball table to the ini the same way, here is the proper order. That will fix it for you ASAP,
But use the names from your XML file of course. These are my table names.

FootballTables = Football - Zen,Football - Arsenal,Football - Liverpool,Football - Barcelona,Football - RealMadrid,Football - Milan,Football - Roma,Football - Juventus,

Also send me your Pinball FX2.XML and your NukeLauncher.INI so I can see why it's not working automatically for you.

Thanks,

[Draco1962]

@CFX, did you set Nukelauncher to run as administrator as was requested?

[cfx]

@CFX, did you set Nukelauncher to run as administrator as was requested?

Yessir, first thing I tried after I experienced the problem; even before reporting it here. I'm a systems administrator, so that's second nature for me when encountering an issue with a piece of software not working quite as it should. Thanks for asking tho, I'd forgotten to mention that in my response to Jeff. I'm 24/7 oncall this week and my brain is a bit foggy!

P.S. How're things in good ole Jax? I moved from there back in '91!

You should just manually add your fottball table to the ini the same way, here is the proper order. That will fix it for you ASAP,

But use the names from your XML file of course. These are my table names.

FootballTables = Football - Zen,Football - Arsenal,Football - Liverpool,Football - Barcelona,Football - RealMadrid,Football - Milan,Football - Roma,Football - Juventus,

Also send me your Pinball FX2.XML and your NukeLauncher.INI so I can see why it's not working automatically for you.

Thanks,

Jeff,

I'm walking out the door at the moment to head into the office for the day. Once I'm back this evening (CST) I'll get you a copy of both.

Thanks,

C..

[Draco1962]

On call will do that! Thanks for filling in the blank.

[Cscroble]

Thanks for this. I've been hesitant to setup ahk scripts to get this working and my patience (or hesitation?) payed off. I knew that a launcher like this would come along sometime... This made things super easy and probably saved me hours of frustration (something that always seems to happen to me)! Appreciate the work! Now I just need to wait for Zen to have another sale so I can buy all the tables. I have about 1/2 of them currently.

[wvstarship]

Ok, thought I'd give a little progress reoprt:

First of all, I have the steam version of Pinball FX2, all tables purchased and no hacks/alternate settings. Nukelauncher detected all of the tables, my xml file has all of the tables and my tables are places in the 'standard' locations on the grid.

When I select a Pinball FX2 table from PinballX the game software loads up--every time.

When I want to close (I use the 'kill' setting) the software closes and I go back to the PinballX frontend--every time.

However, when it come to actually going to a specific table, it almost always fails: About half of the time it goes to the football box and stops there, not opening any table. About 40% of the time it will go the football table no matter what table I choose in Pinballx. The other 10% it will load a different table, almost always the wrong one, and I can find no reason why it does this. Changing the position setting from 12 to 1 in the ini files does nothing at all-it still goes to the football table. On rare occasion, the correct table actually loads, but never twice in a row, and I think now it was probably dumb luck. I have started the ini from scratch several times and have tried to re-sync manually but that also doesn't help. The only thing I can think of trying that I haven't tried is changing the table names in the ini and xml files to match the pinball table names exactly as they appear in the Pinball FX2" data_stream" folder--has anyone tried this?

Anyway, I think that this is a valuable tool since it DOES allow you to navigate from PinballX to the main table grid and back, but right now it doesn't seem as though it can be depended upon to navigate to your selected table. Any comments and suggestions are welcome.

[jaharr01]

I had a few of tables that would go to walking dead instead of the table I chose. I double checked them and there was a slight misspelling with them. If you have a table that won't load and it goes to your #1 table.Double check the spelling or spacing that may be the culprit. All mine load perfectly. The exiting pinballx and steam still loaded is a steam problem not a nuke launcher problem

[jaharr01]

update...

I tried a taskkill exe. I made from a bat file. It kills the running steam process outside of pinballx. When i run it after pinballfx it shuts down pinballx. There may be a parameter or something I might be able to add to give it a few seconds delay, then maybe it will work. The present workaround I have is to manually exit from pinballfx, that seems to work.

[Outhere]

Did you try this

StartDelay =
ScreenDelay =
MovementDelay =
At first don't change any of the delay settings, only do this to speed things up after everything else is working correctly.

If the timing is off nothing will work correctly so to help with timing issues I have made all of the timing adjustable and set them high for maximum compatibility. "StartDelay" adjusted how much time passes un-till the flaming Pinball FX logo displays at start up. Default: 15000
"ScreenDelay" adjusted how much time passes between screen changes. Default: 1000
"MovementDelay" adjusted how much time passes between keystrokes that move the selection box around the screen. Default: 20
Notes:
This is why allot of other launchers fail they hard code this into the launcher. If someone has a slower PC then some keystrokes are missed all together and the wrong table is selected or no table at all. If you have a fast system you may want to set you StartDelay = 12000 and your ScreenDelay = 500 and your MovementDelay = 10 those are my values.

[cfx]

Well, as I was sending time299 the files he requested, I noticed something with my .xml that was outta whack. All my football tables were named zen - football but all had the proper descriptions. He confirmed and sent back a corrected .xml and I renamed all my media to match. I put a clean nukelauncher.ini in place and it successfully detected all tables I own, including footballs.

Everything shows properly now in PinBallX and launching a table doesn't give me the second smaller "good news" window; however, I've got a new problem where only table 1 opens regardless of whats selected. I've changed the nukelauncher.ini to reflect my football tables location and tried starting at 1,10,11,12, etc and only table one opens.

I need more sleep!

Jeff, thanks for your help and patience, it's appreciated!

C..

[time299]

It's hard to say, but I think both wvstarship and CFX are having timing issues.

Please check out the Support page.

http://www.nukelauncher.com/item.asp?iid=13#timing

Another issue that I saw allot in my development was the mouse, let me explain.

Pinball FX2 is meant to be mouse driven, so the developers made it so anything that is under the mouse pointer is automatically Highlighted/Selected.

If the mouse happens to be anywhere that a menu or table show up the focus goes there. My launcher is unaware of the change of focus and continues sending keystrokes to get the selector from the starting table position to the one that you want. But it will not land in the correct place. So just take a look at where the mouse pointer is, if it's in the top right then that's not the issue, but if its in the center or you happen to move it inadvertently, that could be causing the random issue wvstarship was having.

If none of this helps, send the files I request in my signature and I will take a look.

[time299]

Oh, and not to play the guilt card, but I am starting to get sad that I have received a grand total of $0.00 in paypal donations.

[jaharr01]

Ok, thought I'd give a little progress reoprt:

First of all, I have the steam version of Pinball FX2, all tables purchased and no hacks/alternate settings. Nukelauncher detected all of the tables, my xml file has all of the tables and my tables are places in the 'standard' locations on the grid.

When I select a Pinball FX2 table from PinballX the game software loads up--every time.

When I want to close (I use the 'kill' setting) the software closes and I go back to the PinballX frontend--every time.

However, when it come to actually going to a specific table, it almost always fails: About half of the time it goes to the football box and stops there, not opening any table. About 40% of the time it will go the football table no matter what table I choose in Pinballx. The other 10% it will load a different table, almost always the wrong one, and I can find no reason why it does this. Changing the position setting from 12 to 1 in the ini files does nothing at all-it still goes to the football table. On rare occasion, the correct table actually loads, but never twice in a row, and I think now it was probably dumb luck. I have started the ini from scratch several times and have tried to re-sync manually but that also doesn't help. The only thing I can think of trying that I haven't tried is changing the table names in the ini and xml files to match the pinball table names exactly as they appear in the Pinball FX2" data_stream" folder--has anyone tried this?

Anyway, I think that this is a valuable tool since it DOES allow you to navigate from PinballX to the main table grid and back, but right now it doesn't seem as though it can be depended upon to navigate to your selected table. Any comments and suggestions are welcome.

Post your nuke ini file and your pinballx xml flle

[cfx]

Oh, and not to play the guilt card, but I am starting to get sad that I have received a grand total of $0.00 in paypal donations.

Jeff,

On your site, I don't see the paypall link on the top right per the If you can afford it, please make a donation using the Paypal link in the top right.

Regards,

C..

[cfx]

It's hard to say, but I think both wvstarship and CFX are having timing issues.

Please check out the Support page.

http://www.nukelauncher.com/item.asp?iid=13#timing

Another issue that I saw allot in my development was the mouse, let me explain.

Pinball FX2 is meant to be mouse driven, so the developers made it so anything that is under the mouse pointer is automatically Highlighted/Selected.

I'll try playing with the timings when I get back home this evening and see if that clears things up. I'm going to disconnect the mouse as well and see what happens.

Agian, I appreciate your work and all the help and support!

C..

[wvstarship]

The timing was my problem and has been fixed! I had been using the 'fast computer' suggested settings. The key here was the "StartDelay = " setting. I raised that from 12000 to 12500 and everything began working properly, with the correct table being found. (15000 was too fast). To be honest I never would have guessed that this setting would have such a dramatic effect on the performance. Thank you, time299, for your hard work.

And on the paypal thing: My Firefox browser is completely blocking out the top part of your web page and I can't figure out how to donate. Even putting my browser in full screen mode doesn't work, as the donation icon just scrolls up the page and out of sight before I can click on it.

[cfx]

The timing was my problem and has been fixed! I had been using the 'fast computer' suggested settings. The key here was the "StartDelay = " setting. I raised that from 12000 to 12500 and everything began working properly, with the correct table being found. (15000 was too fast). To be honest I never would have guessed that this setting would have such a dramatic effect on the performance. Thank you, time299, for your hard work.

No luck for me yet, it always picks the first table, but I'm still playing with it.

And on the paypal thing: My Firefox browser is completely blocking out the top part of your web page and I can't figure out how to donate. Even putting my browser in full screen mode doesn't work, as the donation icon just scrolls up the page and out of sight before I can click on it.

Same for me in Firefox or IE.

C..

[time299]

They wvstarship

I'm glad you got it working, I have pinned the PayPal link to the top of the NukeLauncher site, so anyone can get to it regardless of browser and it's at the top of the INI file as well, Thanks for pointing that out.

I am puzzled by your timing adjustment, because those numbers are the time to wait before sending the first keystroke and you reduced them.
Meaning what you changed was that the keystrokes sequence is now just started sooner rather than later. But I guess it dose't matter as long as it's working.

15000 Slow default, 12500 faster, 12000 faster still

[time299]

CFX

Post the stuff requested in my sig, so we can help you out.