Instruction Cards - FTP

[Carny_Priest]

Hi, as part of the effort of generating media for my miniDMD and flash player project I went through my collection and recaptured many of the factory stock instruction cards. The sources are primarily Inkochnito's reproductions and Stern Pinball. Some I pulled from the VP table images. Some are photos that I did my best to correct. They are not perfect because I don't have the proper Adobe tools to vectorize and publish to flash, but they still are nice improvements to what I had collected from various HP media packs at VPF and elsewhere.

Where we were missing a card I added ones to to the Media\Instruction Cards folder on the FTP. Where we already had a card, I did not want to overwrite what was there so I have put the rest in an Instruction Cards folder in my Other Uploads\Carny folder. If an admin wants to take a look and move them under the Media folder then that would be good. But otherwise, they are there in my folder.

I'll add some more periodically as I add more tables to my cab.

[stigzler]

I always love an Asset contributor.

[tthurman]

Good deal Carny_Priest, thanks for your hard work

[Carny_Priest]

Bonus - I found the archives at SternPinball.com. I grabbed several flyers.

1. xpdf -

pdfimages is a command line tool that extracts bitmap images straight from the pdf

2. ImageMagick

convert is a command line tool that will convert any image format to any other image format. Here, I converted the raw bitmap to png for lossless compression

The result is a flyer image ready for use in PBX or as a resource. It is a 1:1 pixel perfect representation of what is in the document published straight from the manufacturer. Granted, the quality is still only as good as what the manufacturer chose to include when they created the pdf. Some of the ones for machines from ten years ago, well, it would probably be better to find somebody's scan of the hardcopy. The ones for more recent tables are print ready IMO.

I've been copying up to the FTP 300dpi scans of flyers for a while. Ones that are freely available at flyers.cdyn.com. I've uploaded some of the Stern scans in that folder. Enjoy!

[Carny_Priest]

As usual, I took a lot of time working and generating media using one approach. Then when I get to the end of the project, I find a better way. This is about producing high quality instruction cards for front ends.

I found some links to an old version of Adobe Creative Suite. This a bit of legal grey area here. It is Adobe that made these links available when they did away with their authentication servers for this product, but they did it to provide support to the existing base that still relies on the suite. On the one hand, this was meant to be for license holders. But on the other hand, there is no access restriction either. Anybody on the Internet can access these links straight from the manufacturer. It's old software, but what we need to do is not complicated. It will do the job.

Here's a set of direct links. I downloaded Acrobat Pro and Illustrator. Also the WWE Extras file in case I found that I was missing some fonts on my system when working with source files in Illustrator. I might get lucky and find what I need among the extras.

http://www.xyclopsoft.com/blog/2013/01/07/get-free-adobe-cs2/

I had my eye on a promising solution using Inkscape and some open source conversion tools that could possibly be automated or semi-automated, but the results coming from Adobe products is simply higher quality. Bad part is that it's definitely a manual process, and I don't have a lot of time right now. I'll post some updates as I find time on the FTP in Other Uploads\Carny\Vector. I'm publishing this tutorial mostly so that I don't forget how I did it, but if anyone else wants to pick this up and run with it then that's fine too. Order of the workflow is as written, just work through the sections. I'm using Windows. Don't know if the Mac version is any different:

Inkochnito's cards

http://www.pinballrebel.com/pinball/cards/

Acrobat Pro

File > Open - source PDF

Tools > Advanced Editing > Crop Tool - draw a box around the card - click Enter

Crop Pages dialog - Pull down CropBox

Units: Inches

Margin Controls - fine tune by adjusting Top, Bottom, Left, and Right margins - Cropped page size should be the precise size of the card

Now make note of cropped page dimensions - you will need this to setup the next part

OK

Need to clean printer marks?

Tools > Advanced Editing > Select Object Tool - select printer marks one by one and delete

File > Save As - a PDF with a new name

Illustrator

File > New, Artboard Setup - use page dimensions noted earlier

OK

File > Place

Select new PDF, Link is checked

Crop to: Bounding Box

OK

Need Yellow background for a modern Stern card?

Object > Flatten Transparency

Raster/Vector Balance: 100

Line Art and Text Resolution: Max is 2400 ppi

Gradient and Mesh Resolution: Max is 400 ppi

Check Convert All Text to Outlines

Check Convert All Strokes to Outlines

Check Preserve Alpha Transparency

OK

Object > Ungroup

Select > Deselect

Direct Selection Tool - use to select individual objects

Select Color Swatch Sunshine - that color will work just fine

Repeat with the Direct Selection Tool for any other objects that require color

[UPDATE - Note on simulating print on yellow stock. I checked some photos of cards on IPDB.org. To me, it looks like a fair approximation is the result of running Colorify at the same RGB settings as Sunshine on the pdf within The GIMP. I simply used the Color Picker Tool to find the correct RGB settings and used them on non-white objects in Illustrator. As there are a number of different Stern cards that call for printing on Sunshine stock, it would be a good idea to set up some custom color swatches.

Black - R 29 G 21 B 0

Light Grey (inner border) - R 205 G 153 B 0

Darker Grey ("Super Value") - R 99 G 74 B 0

I had a much harder time with the red credit buttons on the score cards. They are made up of a number of circle segments, and I can't just swap out colors with another swatch either as individual objects or the collective group. Perhaps would not want to anyway because there is a bit of a gradient. I wound up selecting all the objects that make up the shape and running a series of color filters to try to get somewhat close. Rather than guessing, I used AutoIt3 Window Spy, part of AutoHotkey to report the pixel color under the mouse.

Lasso Tool and grab all of the circle segments for the credit button

Filter > Colors > Convert to Grayscale

Filter > Colors > Convert to RGB

Filter > Colors > Adjust Colors

Check Preview

Blue - reduce to -100%

then after some trial and error, wound up with

Red - increase to 5%

Green - decrease to -9%

Blue - reduce to -100%

Check Convert

OK

Stroke lines for each circle segment are transparent, so yellow lines show up through the image. Not much I can do about that, so not perfect but pretty good.]

Any clip art?

Direct Selection Tool - use to select individual objects, select the clip art image

Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options

Tracing Options dialog

Preset: depends on the image - likely ones would be Comic Art, Black and White Logo, or Type

Adjustments Mode: most likely Black and White

Trace Settings: Fills should be checked

Check Preview - Does it look OK?

If not, can play with the settings and see a real-time preview of the result

Trace

Tracing Toolbar opens

Click Expand button

Did the Live Trace on the clip art produce some broken or faint curves?

Direct Selection Tool - use to select individual objects that are within the new traces; select ones that you want to fix

Compound Path Toolbar opens

Stroke: Select Black

Stroke Weight pulldown: 0.25 pt (or higher)

Repeat with the Direct Selection Tool for any other objects that require enhancing the traces, may need to View > Zoom In really close to catch all of the areas that need fixing

Need Yellow background for clip art on a modern Stern card (line drawing)?

Object > Live Paint > Make

Direct Selection Tool - use to select individual objects that are within the new traces; these are the areas that require color

Select Color Swatch Sunshine - that color will work just fine

Repeat with the Direct Selection Tool for any other objects that require color, may need to View > Zoom In really close to catch all of the areas that need color

File > Export as a new file Macromedia Flash (*.SWF)

Export As: AI File to SWF File

Uncheck Generate HTML

Check Clip to Artboard Size

Check Export Text as Outlines

Check Compress File

Method: Preserve Appearance

Curve Quality: 10

Image: Image Format: Lossless

Resolution: Max is 600 ppi

OK

Now, check the result by dragging and dropping the file into your browser.

Can compare to the source pdf and against an original scan.

Inkochnito hosts his original scanned sources as well. Look under the Search button.

[sigma415]

Hi Carny_Priest,

please forgive me: I have added my card for "ACDC (Stern 2012)" to your FTP folder "Other Uploads/Carny/Instruction Cards".

I expected that my upload would be rejected because of missing write access to your folder.

Maybe we should ask Tom about the access regulations in the FTP folders, because I could write to your folder, but I cannot delete the file afterwards.

I even could not delete my own files in my "own" folder ""Other Uploads/sigma415/..."

Somehow crazy .....

[Carny_Priest]

No problem. I can't delete anything either. That's understandable though.

[Carny_Priest]

Hi, I've completed re-processing my collection using Acrobat Pro and Illustrator. Everything is up on the FTP in my folder - Other Uploads\Carny

The latest instruction cards suitable for PinballX is in folder Vector20150908.

For the miniDMD\flash player project - rotated cards are in folder MiniDMDflash20150908

Again, these are factory cards, either from Stern and their associated table properties, Data East or Sega. Or, they are reproductions from Inkochnito. I definitely owe him a donation. I could not have completed this project without his resources.

Each instruction card and price card is a matched set, so that when you run the flash player script, the pair get displayed together on the apron at the same time. I tend to keep a rom's nvram set to the factory default, so the choice of which price card to use is based on observation of the table's behavior or at least checking to see what card was used on the flyer. Inkochnito has plenty of free play cards if you prefer that. Sorry, everything here is localized to USA. That's where I live. If you have any special requests, let me know.

Note: I don't yet have a price card for Bugs Bunny's Birthday Ball yet. I've installed it but I haven't played it yet, so I don't know how the pricing is set up. Guaranteed that it will just require a copy off of some other Bally table. They are pretty generic cards.

The vast majority of cards are B&W text only, so it is essentially cropping the pdf in Acrobat and then copy and paste to Illustrator in order to retain the embedded fonts and keep output looking pristine in any resolution. I don't know that what I've produced is necessarily better than what is out there in media packs or in the media folder on the FTP. With the workflow it was faster for me to just do it rather than go out and look at every card available and determine if I could improve it or not. Sometimes, especially with the later Stern tables, the cards really do need extra work. The factory calls for printing on Astrobrights Solar Yellow card stock, so just outputting as it comes on the pdf would not be accurate. So, I had to do some coloring, tracing images, or finding and modifying own creating my own equivalent images. Sometimes I just have a photo image of a card, and I've tried to do some perspective corrections with my meager skills. I've included my work in a Source folder within the MiniDMDflash20150908 folder. There is also an updated tutorial.

Have fun!

[Carny_Priest]

I generated a bunch of media last year for the project vectorizing cards from PDF-based sources, cropping to the correct factory size, etc.

Sadly, I found after generating all this media that that much was not viewable in PinballX. Most factory cards are black text on white background. And these display as all black in PinballX. I was fooled because when I was testing, they looked good when opening in a browser or using whatever specific Flash ActiveX component that AutoHotkey taps into.

Granted, if I try to re-open or place any of these files in Adobe Illustrator it tells me that the file is in an unknown format and cannot be opened. The image looks corrupted if I try to extract images using swftools. It's bad since I'm using Illustrator to export into swf format in the first place. And it will not read in what it is writing out. Similar deal with Office Libre. Frustrating.

It does not look like there are free tools to output what I want. So that this would not be a complete waste of time and storage space. I wrote a script that grabs the position and offsets of the PinballX backglass from Windows and PinballX.ini, displays the card image in a flash viewer on the backglass, and finally captures a screenshot to png. Looks good and will be properly scaled. I uploaded the output for all the cards I was having a problem with in the Carny folder on the FTP, folder Z20160528. However, my backglass is 16:9. Because PinballX scales png images, those captures will not look quite right if the user is running something different like 16:10 or 5:4. If your backglass is not 16:9 and you just gotta have some fresh cards, run the script on the bad Flash swf cards. CapCardNEWa displays on a white background and CapCardNEWablack on a black background.

At least, now with some sort of solution in place. I'll continue generating some cards for newer tables I have added to my cab in the last few months.

[Carny_Priest]

Figured out that Illustrator was exporting the background as transparent and not the white canvas/artboard. PinballX and my flash viewer use black backgrounds. So black text on a black background is not going to work. I did not keep any of my work from the earlier efforts unless I actually had to draw or do some substantial tracing. I went back through and re-cropped/re-drew all the problem Flash files from the original sources, and I added a few more cards. Everything is up on the FTP including all my interim work. Other Uploads/Carny/Z20160604. If it isn't there then it was not a problem card and you may find it in one of the earlier folders. That is, if I had the table installed. I don't have even close to all of them. 

Quality is pretty amped up so some may take a few seconds to load. Goldeneye is a good example but I think it is tolerable. Stern Spider-Man is a whole other degree. Takes way too long to load, so I am currently redrawing it. I'm also currently working on Stern Monopoly, and I have a handful of other Stern cards to follow: Harley-Davidson, POTC, and Shrek 

[Carny_Priest]

Ok, completed all of the factory cards for my collection. I celebrated by adding the Zaccaria cards to commemorate the upcoming release of Zaccaria Pinball for Steam. I'm a beta participant but I don't have much time at this point to figure out how to get it working with PinballX. Somebody else will probably beat me to it. I tested and folded in the cards I processed last year that do work. It's all up on Other Uploads/Carny/Z20160604.