Pinball Arcade Direct Table Launch with Free Camera Mod!

[leggless2001]

hey

yes I had the same issue with pinball arcade and dx11 version not running, to get rid of the issue I already created an autohotkey script to make the steam window active, press A, P, I, N, to select pinball arcade from the steam list, press enter down arrow and select dx11 version, this works without worrying about what farsight are playing at to stop us running the correct versions with their exe and the process being called pinballarcade11.exe

table selection has worked for me since nofx added it, been playing with visual pinball since lol

but every update if you accidently let steam mess your install up creates new problems

 

remember to block steam/tpa outbound in windows firewall once you have set steam to offline mode

you can still add the loginusers.vdf copy to your startup script to stop steam moaning about offline as well

 

 

[Folorin]

In my case dx11 version is runnibg. At least thats what it says on the screen...

[leggless2001]

bet the process in task manager is just pinballarcade.exe since the update, try running from steam right click and run DirectX 11 version see if your tpa injects

 

 

 

[Carny_Priest]

Or since the OP doesn't have anything invested in Farsight and is only testing the free play versions, quit the nonsense now and just use VPX. TPA doesn't offer anything that VPX doesn't already do with better physics and more features.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[leggless2001]

yeah agreed, pinball arcade / farsight has always pushed back on the intergration, its because the direct table launch bypasses the need for purchasing tables..

try it, i have purchased all PA tables bar the odd few crap ones, and with the table direct launch it allows for playing tables i havent purchased.

so this is why farsight are so against the idea, as you said pinball fx and VPX love pinballx  use them, its far easier, i have probably sunk hours and hours into getting PA to do what i want it to do, you gotta give them their dues, PA has some good tables and play fairly well in good spec machines but its been so much pain to get them working via a front end without using the farsight front end.

But i have been very appreciated of the noex table direct launch and now i have it working am happy, i feel for you chaps that havent, the way to fix it all is to macro/script everything, its the only way to go.

[Folorin]

On 09/04/2017 at 2:04 PM, leggless2001 said:

bet the process in task manager is just pinballarcade.exe since the update, try running from steam right click and run DirectX 11 version see if your tpa injects

 

 

 

Nope PinballArcade11.exe (32 bit)

[leggless2001]

doh! more problems then

[noex90]

On 09/04/2017 at 7:58 PM, leggless2001 said:

yeah agreed, pinball arcade / farsight has always pushed back on the intergration, its because the direct table launch bypasses the need for purchasing tables..

try it, i have purchased all PA tables bar the odd few crap ones, and with the table direct launch it allows for playing tables i havent purchased.

so this is why farsight are so against the idea, as you said pinball fx and VPX love pinballx  use them, its far easier, i have probably sunk hours and hours into getting PA to do what i want it to do, you gotta give them their dues, PA has some good tables and play fairly well in good spec machines but its been so much pain to get them working via a front end without using the farsight front end.

But i have been very appreciated of the noex table direct launch and now i have it working am happy, i feel for you chaps that havent, the way to fix it all is to macro/script everything, its the only way to go.

Even without the table direct launch feature you can already launch any table you haven't purchased.

The only reason which prevent FarSight from doing a proper cab integration into their game is legal, licensing issues and stuffs..

[Draco1962]

My major beef with Farsight is that they have dangled the "Cabinet support is coming" carrot for several years now, with no intention of ever doing so. Don't lie so people, like me, will spend money on a false promise of support.

[jaquintd]

I finally have everything working with direct launching pretty well. My main problem is that using the AHK with backglass videos etc, doesn't save any high scores with the exit routine. Is there a cleaner way to exit that would save the high scores?

[leggless2001]

managed to get all mine working too, going to start working on my wooden cabinet now, got a new PC ordered to run the tables a bit smoother and quicker, PC was always under spec, also fixed the issue with some backglasses missing, dunno how i missed those, but heres my setup, enjoy

VP, MAME,Pinball FX2 and Pinball Arcade all in the same cab, been a labour of love but it makes flawlessly now, am happy.

 

 

 

[Draco1962]

Pretty cool! Would you mind a more detailed post about your project here?

 

 

[cyberpunkfan]

On 3/31/2017 at 11:30 PM, Tom Speirs said:

Hi, just to let folks know that I will try to add some integrated support for this for the next release of PinballX.

Hi Tom,

   Are there any updates on this?  I have never been able to get PBA tables to launch directly from PinballX.  I know VP or FP has all the tables but I already own the first six season of PBA in steam and enjoy playing those.  I love PinballX for FX2 but would love to add my PBA tables as well.

Thanks

Aaron

 

 

[Draco1962]

None announced yet.

[cyberpunkfan]

11 minutes ago, Draco1962 said:

None announced yet.

Thanks

[GzStation]

On 04/02/2017 at 10:50 AM, leggless2001 said:

I have tried getting this working but my pinball arcade wont run dx11 using any of the .exe files and i can only run the dx11 version by right clicking pinball arcade in steam and running dx11 version from there and also when i run the tbafreecammod.exe and set it to auto launch i get some sort of annoying steam allow message.

so its still an issue for me  not wasting anymore time with it unless someone gets a bullet proof way of doing it ? and also let me know if anyone has had issues with steam allow dialogue box and running the dx11 version straight off ? argh! lol

 

If so, try this. First, in Steam, go to the launch options (Right Click Pinball Arcade -> Properties -> General -> Set Launch Options)

Under the command line, enter "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\PinballArcade\PinballArcade11.exe" %command%
Change the path if Steam is installed elsewhere, make sure to include the quotes. That defaults Pinball Arcade to the DX11 version instead of the DX9 version. Then you can just create a shortcut through Steam for Pinball Arcade and click on that.

[Pablo Smiraglia]

Does anyone have an office.tpa file for FCM version 1.85? The author does not keep them and I'ma having no luck finding it... I cannot update TPA, and FCM likes to stay on the latest version and there is no way to get an offline file for an older one (nor to use an older version of FCM if a new one is available).

[captaincroutons]

Has anyone put together a tutorial for getting PBA launching tables from PBX properly using these AHK scripts? I've been fiddling for a while now, tried other users' solutions, and I can't seem to get them launching properly. Any help would be greatly appreciated! My cab is so close, just need to get the software running smoothly. Thanks!

 

EDIT: Following bduncan's process, I now have PinballX launching PBA tables perfectly! There's a small snag. PBA shows the "what's new" message on launch and that is interfering right now. Anyone know how to disable that message from showing on startup? Thanks!

[bduncan]

On 9/13/2017 at 10:13 AM, captaincroutons said:

Has anyone put together a tutorial for getting PBA launching tables from PBX properly using these AHK scripts? I've been fiddling for a while now, tried other users' solutions, and I can't seem to get them launching properly. Any help would be greatly appreciated! My cab is so close, just need to get the software running smoothly. Thanks!

 

EDIT: Following bduncan's process, I now have PinballX launching PBA tables perfectly! There's a small snag. PBA shows the "what's new" message on launch and that is interfering right now. Anyone know how to disable that message from showing on startup? Thanks!

I believe it was skipwhatsnew passed to the application like - pinballarcade11.exe skipwhatsnew

 

[captaincroutons]

On 9/21/2017 at 9:37 PM, bduncan said:

I believe it was skipwhatsnew passed to the application like - pinballarcade11.exe skipwhatsnew

 

Awesome, thanks! Will try it ASAP!

[captaincroutons]

On 9/21/2017 at 9:37 PM, bduncan said:

I believe it was skipwhatsnew passed to the application like - pinballarcade11.exe skipwhatsnew

 

So adding a parameter to an existing .exe is done simply by adding the parameter, in this case "skipwhatsnew," to the target? So it would change the .exe name to "pinballarcade11 -skipwhatsnew.exe"? Probably a dumb question, but never done this before and can't find anything from Googling, other than editing stuff in like C# etc.

[bduncan]

On 9/24/2017 at 6:27 PM, captaincroutons said:

So adding a parameter to an existing .exe is done simply by adding the parameter, in this case "skipwhatsnew," to the target? So it would change the .exe name to "pinballarcade11 -skipwhatsnew.exe"? Probably a dumb question, but never done this before and can't find anything from Googling, other than editing stuff in like C# etc.

If you had a shortcut for pinballarcade11.exe created, you could right click on the properties for the shortcut, and in the target field you would change it from:

Target: c:\games\pba\pinballarcade11.exe

to:

Target: c:\games\pba\pinballarcade11.exe skipwhatsnew

I thought that worked at one point.  I don't know, maybe once you run it once that way it always skips whatsnew moving forward??  I know that on my cab I don't ever get whatsnew, and I had an old shortcut with the skipwhatsnew in it, but don't launch it that way from pinballx, I only use that shortcut when testing outside of pinballx.

[Tom Speirs]

Just wanted to update the topic and say official Pinball Arcade support is working again in PinballX including direct table launch.

See here:

 

[captaincroutons]

3 hours ago, Tom Speirs said:

Just wanted to update the topic and say official Pinball Arcade support is working again in PinballX including direct table launch.

See here:

 

I was afraid updating would require more setup work or something else would stop working, as this is my first pincab and first time using PinballX. But that did the trick! Thanks for all your work, Tom. You're a gentleman and a scholar.

[Tom Speirs]

Most welcome.