[ATTN TOM] Pinball Arcade GUI Change

**mace** · July 18, 2016

On a slightly different it may be my PC set ups but after finishing a game I can enter a high score but after that its impossible to start a new game on the table without the mouse i.e. the buttons all lose focus. no great issue but it does mean closing and reopening the table.

I've passed the info to FarSight as it affects non cab versions too.

**rothbauerw** · July 18, 2016

6 hours ago, mace said:

On a slightly different it may be my PC set ups but after finishing a game I can enter a high score but after that its impossible to start a new game on the table without the mouse i.e. the buttons all lose focus. no great issue but it does mean closing and reopening the table.

I've passed the info to FarSight as it affects non cab versions too.

Are you using the TPA Free Cam Mod? I've seen this issue using the Mod but not without. It's due to the Mod resizing the screen.

**mace** · July 18, 2016

IO

48 minutes ago, rothbauerw said:

Are you using the TPA Free Cam Mod? I've seen this issue using the Mod but not without. It's due to the Mod resizing the screen.

Cheers, I am but I'm also running it stat on the cab and the same issue affect each unfortunately

**Tom Speirs** · July 27, 2016

Hi,

Sorry for delay. Here is an update to try but I have still have not tested the cam mod with it yet.

With this update the key delay is implemented. Short is the same as the current release build. Anything higher will extend it.

Thanks.

Tom.

PinballX.zip

**Draco1962** · July 27, 2016

Hi Tom - I tested this update on all delay settings and just getting no joy. Very long just hangs with no attempt to load and the log file ends at

18:20:31.4 7/27/2016: Found Pinball Arcade Process
18:20:31.4 7/27/2016: Using interface version 2

I am about to the point of uninstalling TPA from the pincab and running it only from the gaming rig until such time as there is true cab support. It has been several years since they teased the community with that promise. It's a shame as they did a good job on the tables overall.

Most if not all of the tables are recreated via VP so will probably select my favorites from the community and call it a day or maybe a few months depending on how long it takes me to get them configured for my setup.

log.txt

PinballX.ini

**Drybonz** · July 28, 2016

7 hours ago, Draco1962 said:

I am about to the point of uninstalling TPA from the pincab and running it only from the gaming rig until such time as there is true cab support.

I asked one of the Farsight tech guys about additional camera views (meaning cab support, etc) over at Pinball Arcade Fans, a few weeks ago, and when they plan to add those features and he straight told me "we currently have no plans to add those features".

Cab support is not happening. They have been stringing us along all this time so that we keep buying tables. So, if you are waiting for cab support, don't buy any more of their stuff.

**mace** · July 28, 2016

4 hours ago, Drybonz said:

I asked one of the Farsight tech guys about additional camera views (meaning cab support, etc) over at Pinball Arcade Fans, a few weeks ago, and when they plan to add those features and he straight told me "we currently have no plans to add those features".

Cab support is not happening. They have been stringing us along all this time so that we keep buying tables. So, if you are waiting for cab support, don't buy any more of their stuff.

I've been repairing real pinball machines for years, sadly in that time I've received threatening legal letters for running an FTP site with repair tips (copyright theft for quoting manuals), making and importing no flickering LED's (use of trademarks in a website) and making replacement plastics. I've even been moaned at for making a WindowsPhone App (yes well, we all go for the wrong platform some times). From the moment I saw TPA I knew that their licences would balk at pincabs, FX2 gets around this as they own the IP of the tables. Once Farsight signed with Stern that was the final nail in the coffin, I can well remember discussing the need for home software with Gary Stern at the Brighton Slam some years ago and he basically said that he could never allow user access to their code or any mods as they could get sued in turn if the modder then released the code. I was also trying to point out the home market needed deeper rulesets, now we have pro, LE and premium table I'd like to think that maybe he did listen to that audience. I love my pinbcab and I'm keeping TPA because it's an accurate model and that's very handy if you repair these things, it runs fine with PinballX, LEDblinky and DMDext even though the new menu is awful, and poorly coded to boot - see next post.

Gary would probably have a fit if he could see the LE AC/DC machine in my workshop at the moment, it's been modded out to the max by the owner. Ironic as the v1.68 code is still bugged and unfinished.....

**mace** · July 28, 2016

On 27 July 2016 at 2:21 AM, Tom Speirs said:

Hi,

Sorry for delay. Here is an update to try but I have still have not tested the cam mod with it yet.

With this update the key delay is implemented. Short is the same as the current release build. Anything higher will extend it.

Thanks.

Tom.

PinballX.zip

Hey Tom,

like Draco I've tested this on all settings and with/without the TPAFreeCamMod, everything works but the table selection is still screwed. The most common fall down is the up/down selection going one step too far or the Addams table gets randomly picked . I'm no coder but I do have access to some tools and by my best guess PinballX is blameless, it seems to be the V2 interface in TPA is stupidly sensitive to key press length timing, for example even simple down presses on my keyboard can send the selection skipping. My best suggestions would be to either shorten the time of the PinballX key stroke rather than the time between keystrokes, or if that's not feasible just wait until Farsight decide to sort the whole thing out........

I do have a working solution which is to drop the direction keystrokes in favour of the mousemove/ mouseclick command, that does work but needs a screen scroll for the lower icons on my cab, at the moment the code is beyond me so I have knocked up a simple AHK which allows TPA to have it's own entry in PinballX to fire up LEDblinky, TPAFreeCamMod and TPA, it then auto clicks through to the menu and I use the cab buttons to chose and select the table. TPAFreCamMod then takes care of the DMD and backglass. It's not elegant but it works.....

**mace** · July 28, 2016

12 hours ago, Draco1962 said:

Hi Tom - I tested this update on all delay settings and just getting no joy. Very long just hangs with no attempt to load and the log file ends at

18:20:31.4 7/27/2016: Found Pinball Arcade Process
18:20:31.4 7/27/2016: Using interface version 2

I am about to the point of uninstalling TPA from the pincab and running it only from the gaming rig until such time as there is true cab support. It has been several years since they teased the community with that promise. It's a shame as they did a good job on the tables overall.

Most if not all of the tables are recreated via VP so will probably select my favorites from the community and call it a day or maybe a few months depending on how long it takes me to get them configured for my setup.

log.txt

PinballX.ini

Does the DX11 version do the same thing Draco?

Good to see Zaccaria Pinball in there as well, it's a great program can't wait for full cab support :-)

**Draco1962** · July 28, 2016

Using the integrated support only opens the DX9 app for Steam. I do not use the Free Camera Mod.

**hlr53** · July 28, 2016

5 hours ago, mace said:

I've been repairing real pinball machines for years, sadly in that time I've received threatening legal letters for running an FTP site with repair tips (copyright theft for quoting manuals), making and importing no flickering LED's (use of trademarks in a website) and making replacement plastics. I've even been moaned at for making a WindowsPhone App (yes well, we all go for the wrong platform some times). From the moment I saw TPA I knew that their licences would balk at pincabs, FX2 gets around this as they own the IP of the tables. Once Farsight signed with Stern that was the final nail in the coffin, I can well remember discussing the need for home software with Gary Stern at the Brighton Slam some years ago and he basically said that he could never allow user access to their code or any mods as they could get sued in turn if the modder then released the code. I was also trying to point out the home market needed deeper rulesets, now we have pro, LE and premium table I'd like to think that maybe he did listen to that audience. I love my pinbcab and I'm keeping TPA because it's an accurate model and that's very handy if you repair these things, it runs fine with PinballX, LEDblinky and DMDext even though the new menu is awful, and poorly coded to boot - see next post.

Gary would probably have a fit if he could see the LE AC/DC machine in my workshop at the moment, it's been modded out to the max by the owner. Ironic as the v1.68 code is still bugged and unfinished.....

I would agree Stern will not let them make a cabinet mode and I imagine everyone has NDAs so no one will come out and say so, at least not obviously. For all we know Stern may come out with their own virtual pin someday in addition to the real machines. Not as far fetched as it sounds. Or, they can do what FX2 does and eventually charge an arm and a leg to license their tables for commercial cabs.

People are already hacking into their texture file source code to make back glass for cabs.

With or without you PBA/Stern!

**mace** · July 28, 2016

3 hours ago, Draco1962 said:

Using the integrated support only opens the DX9 app for Steam. I do not use the Free Camera Mod.

You could try changing the pinballarcade.exe entry in the .ini to pinballarcade11.exe as it makes a difference to the focus.

**Draco1962** · July 28, 2016

Are you talking about in the pinballx.ini? I am using Steam so that would not work as Steam.exe is the Executable referenced in the integrated support::

[PinballArcade]
Enabled=True
WorkingPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam
Executable=steam.exe
Parameters=-applaunch 238260
WaitFor=12
Process=PinballArcade.exe
WaitForSelect=200

If you are using the integrated support for the Steam version without FreeCameraMod or any hacks, please provide a copy of the PinballArcade section of the .ini for me to take a look. Thanks!

**mace** · July 28, 2016

4 hours ago, Draco1962 said:

Are you talking about in the pinballx.ini? I am using Steam so that would not work as Steam.exe is the Executable referenced in the integrated support::

[PinballArcade]
Enabled=True
WorkingPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam
Executable=steam.exe
Parameters=-applaunch 238260
WaitFor=12
Process=PinballArcade.exe
WaitForSelect=200

If you are using the integrated support for the Steam version without FreeCameraMod or any hacks, please provide a copy of the PinballArcade section of the .ini for me to take a look. Thanks!

I'm calling TPA from an AHK .exe in order to run LedBlinky as well as TPAFreeCameraMod, but to test just using the DX11 version on its own I go into the TPA folder in the SteamApps folder and rename PinballArcade11.exe to PinballArcade.exe. Not the most elegant solution but it does work as long as you also rename PinballArcade.exe to something else first.

**Tom Speirs** · July 28, 2016

Yeah the key timing in the new GUI is very sensitive. I had to do something special to get it to work here so it does not surprise me.

It's kind of hard for me to know if I need to make the keypresses longer or shorter. I did test on a couple of machines here but you know how everyone is different.

**mace** · July 29, 2016

2 hours ago, Tom Speirs said:

Yeah the key timing in the new GUI is very sensitive. I had to do something special to get it to work here so it does not surprise me.

It's kind of hard for me to know if I need to make the keypresses longer or shorter. I did test on a couple of machines here but you know how everyone is different.

I've lost count of the timing changes in my AHK's as TPA has expanded and evolved. I'm not too worried about cab support as the TPAFreeCamMod takes care of that but if we could just call the tables directly...

Thanks for what you do Tom, it's appricated.

**Tom Speirs** · July 29, 2016

If you guys want to help please provide your PC and software specs. Like I said I don't know if they are too fast or two slow. All I can do is provide a solution to increase and decrease the delays. Please also be patient waiting for things as with a long delay it will extend everything. I just provided a version to test.

**Tom Speirs** · July 29, 2016

On ‎27‎/‎07‎/‎2016 at 11:29 PM, Draco1962 said:

Hi Tom - I tested this update on all delay settings and just getting no joy. Very long just hangs with no attempt to load and the log file ends at

18:20:31.4 7/27/2016: Found Pinball Arcade Process
18:20:31.4 7/27/2016: Using interface version 2

I am about to the point of uninstalling TPA from the pincab and running it only from the gaming rig until such time as there is true cab support. It has been several years since they teased the community with that promise. It's a shame as they did a good job on the tables overall.

Most if not all of the tables are recreated via VP so will probably select my favorites from the community and call it a day or maybe a few months depending on how long it takes me to get them configured for my setup.

log.txt

PinballX.ini

Please be very patient. The new delays extend everything even wait for load. Its just for testing right now. Test with different delays. That's the point of this.

**Draco1962** · July 29, 2016

It's not you or your responsiveness to trying to put in place a fix. I am just letting out a little butt hurt because of the actions of the developer and the fact that promises made have been dropped. Myself, like many others, have lined their pockets and sung their praises, only to have crap laid on their virtual playfield.

Thanks for all you do for us.

**mace** · July 29, 2016

6 hours ago, Tom Speirs said:

If you guys want to help please provide your PC and software specs. Like I said I don't know if they are too fast or two slow. All I can do is provide a solution to increase and decrease the delays. Please also be patient waiting for things as with a long delay it will extend everything. I just provided a version to test.

Happy to help Tom, here's my spec's:

My cab runs an i5 4570 at 3600Mhz, linked to a 40" main screen running via a GTX670 2G card and the 2nd 32" backglass screen and third 17" DMD screen running off the on board Intel video supplied by the CPU and the ASUS H81-M Plus motherboard. There's also twin SSD's, a good quality modular PSU, additional USB ports and 4G of1600MHz Viper Ram. There more in a post on my cab here: http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=32481&hl

Prior to the change I had the two TPA timings set to '1' in the ini and everything worked every time. After using V2 there seems to be little difference to the results on any of the timings.

**Draco1962** · July 29, 2016

My PC stats (from the log,txt file):

OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz

RAM: 16GB
GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
GPU RAM: 2GB GDDR5
Displays: 3

**BonusMagnus** · July 30, 2016

My PC stats:

OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit on SSD
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz (Boost: 3.90GHz)
RAM: 16GB DDR3
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690
GPU RAM: 2GB GDDR5
Displays: 2 at 1920x1080p

**Tom Speirs** · July 31, 2016

Here is another one to try. Works on fast and medium for me. The other thing I discovered is that PinballX needs to "Run As Administrator".

I tried to check out the cam mod but it appears it needs an update to work with the latest PBA.

Let me know how you get on with this one.

Ensure to Run as admin and mess with the delays before reporting back.

PinballX.zip

**mace** · July 31, 2016

16 hours ago, Tom Speirs said:

Here is another one to try. Works on fast and medium for me. The other thing I discovered is that PinballX needs to "Run As Administrator".

I tried to check out the cam mod but it appears it needs an update to work with the latest PBA.

Let me know how you get on with this one.

Ensure to Run as admin and mess with the delays before reporting back.

PinballX.zip

Hi Tom,

Just ran it for about 50 selections, the results are encouraging:

- Short does not work on my rig, I get the Addams Family selected an awful lot or random overshoots

- Medium, long and very long work consistently, unfortunately they always make the selection below the target i.e. one row down - every time. So selecting the first four table is not possible

- There are some fairly long waits in-between some sections

- Tested direct and with TPAFreeCamMod using TPA v1.5.8

I thought that a video would probably explain the above so the following is with the wait set to very long for clarity and shows Diner being selected (this results in El Dorado playing):

https://1drv.ms/v/s!Ao6k3CIlgOqjm8s8k1VH5v3pkzUnJw

Hope this helps

**Tom Speirs** · August 1, 2016

Thanks. The video helps tremendously. I "think" from that I can nail down where it is overshooting.

Here is another one to try. If it does anything differently another video would really help.

Thanks.

Tom.

PS: If I can get it working for everyone I will try to optimize the long delays.

PinballX.zip

[ATTN TOM] Pinball Arcade GUI Change

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