[RESOLVED] Pinballx version 1.95 on win 8.1 not closing VP tables

[registerme]

I could use some help. I rarely post as I can find almost everything I need by researching the forums but this one has me stumped. I have been a Hyperpin and Visual Pinball user. Everything is working fine there. I run 22 different full screen tables all with directb2s backglass. I have a real DMD and am running this all under windows 8.1 with no problems (took some tweaking but got there).

I heard about Pinballx and wanted to try it. I was very impressed and have moved all my tables and media over to it. Very easy to install and setup and looks great. I really want to use it in my cabinet now and replace Hyperpin.

Unfortunately everything is working except Pinballx will not close my VP tables and return to the Pinballx front end no matter what I do. At first I had forgotten to change the settings in Pinballx to not to use the esc key. I fixed this and I am now using the E key. The E key works fine when inside the pinball front end but pressing E will not close my VP tables once a table is launched. The only way I can get out is to press the escape key which pops up the VP option menu, press quit to editor and close VP. Once I do this Pinballx takes back over and I am back in the front end. I can then exit the Pinballx front end just fine. For some reason Pinballx is not killing the VP processes.

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated. Here are my log and ini files (attached). In looking at the log file it appears everything is fine but it isn't really. It doesn't capture the steps I have to go through to close the VP tables to return to the front end.

Thanks in advance for your help.

log.txt

PinballX.ini

[allknowing2012]

Is this just the backglass (directb2s) thats not exiting? If so there might be a fix for that .. you add the exit code in the scripts. Many tables forgot to do that.

[Carny_Priest]

You have Quit (PinballX) and Exit emulator mapped to the same key, E. If you want to use E to get out of VP and back into PinballX then map Quit to some other key. You could use Esc or Q or something else.

[registerme]

Thanks for the replies. It's not just the backglass. It's the full table and backglass both. When I press the key to exit the emulator nothing happens at all. No indication what so ever I pressed a key. The game just keeps going. I then have to press the escape key to quit VP, manually close it and then Pinballx takes over again.

I changed the key mapping per the suggestion from Carny_Priest and unfortunately that didn't help. Same thing. I changed the Quit button to the letter "L" and left the Exit Emulator button mapped to the letter "E".

Any other ideas or suggestions? It is really acting like Pinballx is in the background but doesn't have focus to accept the key strokes. Just a thought. Thanks.

[Carny_Priest]

I recall having trouble retaining the same set of key bindings when switching from HyperPin/FPLaunch to PinballX because of such conflicts. I'd just start over setting up key inputs again. You can just delete the ini and start completely over with the Settings wizard. Or if you don't want to go that far, you can find the default keycodes in the Keyboard input section of Setup Wizard.xml. Set the VP keys to default. It should work from there. Then you can experiment with changes one by one to get to your desired key bindings.

[registerme]

Thanks. I'll be happy to try that. The only keys I did change though were the exit emulator and the quit keys as I referenced above but I am game for trying any advice as I appreciate the help. On the VP side, how do you reset the keys to their default? I don't actually recall ever changing any of the VP key mappings so I am unsure how to do this. I certainly changed the key mappings in Hyperpin and know how to do that but don't recall doing it anywhere in VP. Thank you.

[Carny_Priest]

My mistake. I thought there was any easy reset to default button with VP.

Here's the way I have it:

VP -

Overwrite Default Layout is checked

Disable ESC key is not checked

Exit Game is set to Q

PinballX -

Exit Emulator is set to Q

Quit is set to Escape

When you want to exit out of VP and bring PinballX, press Q. Do not press Esc.

When you want to exit out of PinballX, press Esc

Hope that helps.

[registerme]

Thanks. I'll try this tomorrow when I get back in town to my machine and I'll let you know how it goes. One last question, where in VP are the values you reference above located? Are these in an ini file, for each table or where can I find them to set them up as you describe. Thanks again for all the guidance.

[registerme]

Hello, well I was hopeful but unfortunately I still could not get it to work. I am using the Lord of the Rings FS table as my test table for this running Directb2s Backglass with the VPinMame DLL downloaded from the PinDMD site - to get my real DMD working. I am also using VP 9.2.1 - I can't get 9.9.1 to work for me yet.

I went into the keyboard settings as you describe above and my exit key was already set to Q and I checked the override box and recompiled the script and saved the table. I went into the settings for Pinballx and set the quit and exit keys up as you described above (Quit to escape and Exit to Q) but no luck.

The table recognizes the quit key has been pressed but it brings up the VP options menu to resume, quit to editor, etc. versus closing the game and returning to Pinballx. I read in the forums that I could add "quitplayer 2" to my table script and have it recognize a key to close the table but I can't get that to work either. I tried to add the following "If keycode = 81 Then quitplayer 2" to the Keys subroutine in the table and I can't get the table to recognize this either. I also tried having it look for keycode 76 (the letter L) to make sure there wasn't a conflict. It looks like you can also add this quitplayer code to one of the VB scripts so it works for all tables but I didn't try that yet as I was unsure what VB script to add it to and to what subroutine. Happy to try that if someone can point me in the right direction.

Any other thoughts on what I might be doing wrong? Thank you for your patience and help. I really like Pinballx and would like to get it working.

[Tom Speirs]

Try running PinballX as administrator.

[Carny_Priest]

VP settings are in a menu item on the editor - Preferences and then Keys. They set global options for VP. You shouldn't need to change this by table. If you are just using a keyboard at this point, you should not have to touch VPMkeys.vbs.

Are you using any controllers based on a keyboard, like an X-Arcade Tankstick? They have fixed layouts that may pose an issue.

As you test, close all other applications except for PinballX and VP. After closing all other applications, anything else in your tray that could pose a conflict? Any other processes running that could pose a conflict? If you are still figuring out VPM and a real DMD, you probably should back that out of the equation while you are working with this issue. Grab an EM table or original that does not require VPM or a rom.

It's a good habit to run all your pinball programs as administrator and check and make sure all your dll files are not blocked. This is one of the most common issues that hangs people up.

[registerme]

I am just using a keyboard at the moment, the cabinet is under construction I am not using X-arcade or any other controllers at the moment other than the keyboard. The win 8.1 installation I have is a clean one in that I built the PC, installed win 8.1 and haven't loaded anything else other than the files to run the various pinball emulators, front ends, tables and other required files. I have also been careful to make sure I am not running anything when debugging my issue other than pinballx and VP - checked the tray and task manager.

I have not yet backed out the real DMD and replaced the old VPinmame dll yet to see it that helps so I'll try that. I also didn't go in to Pinballx and make sure it was running as administrator. I made an assumption that since it was an install it would not be necessary for me to do this but that looks like it may have been a bad assumption so I'll go back and check the exe's and the DLL's in pinballx and those in VP. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks.

[registerme]

Hats off to you Carny_Priest. IT WORKED...... I had not gone in and set the pinball exe's to run as administrator. I set both the pinball.exe and vpauto.exe files in the Pinballx directory to run as administrator and that fixed it. I tried that before replacing the DLL's - I didn't have to go that far.

I VERY MUCH appreciate your help and patience.

I also have to give a shout out to all those that help us who are having trouble. I see it all the time as I read through the threads here and on vpforums. Take care and thanks again to everyone out there lending a virtual helping hand.

PS - not sure how to mark this resolved but whomever can do that this issue is now closed.

[Carny_Priest]

Glad you got that fixed. Actually, thanks to Tom, author of the fabulous Pinball, for first suggesting running as administrator.