PinballX Enhancements/Features Requests

[stefanaustria]

in add. to Gilbert, also the local Time ...

[TerryRed]

I would love to see the built-in Pinball Arcade auto-rotate playfield feature become an "option" with a checkbox, just like you have in PBFX2. The auto rotate in Pinball X causes problems for me. I have my own method of monitor layout and rotation via multimonitor tool that works in all situations. The newest Pinball X forced rotation for Pinball Arcade messes up my DMD and backlglass videos. They freeze up and get corrupted until I return to Pinball X, even if I try to use multimonitor tool as well.

This would make the Pinball Arcade support work perfect for me.

Thanks.

[Carny_Priest]

As somebody helping out with problems, I request that the Settings Wizard write a backup of pinballx.ini if any changes are made and that there would be included a way to revert to a backup if there is a problem. Even better if there were some extended version control for those situations where a user may say, "Hey! Everything was working perfectly last Sunday before I added System X and now nothing works!"

Thanks!

[Gribnif]

I'd love for the Game Manager to show a preview of the media being imported. Right now it's pretty much trial and error, because you can only see the name. You have to select something and relaunch the frontend in order to see what it really looks like.

Also, I'd like the Game Manager to have an actual File menu with an option to Save. Right now it's never clear which actions will cause it to save the settings. Certain actions even prompt you to save first.

[OzStick]

I have two enhancement suggestions:

FIRST

I'd like to have the option of storing media files in a user defined location, instead of PinballX generating a new "subset" of directories for each system added.

For example, I'm running 4 different versions of Visual Pinball, therefore I have 4 separate media directory structure for all of them:

C:\PinballX\Media\Visual Pinball

C:\PinballX\Media\VP990

C:\PinballX\Media\VP_PM5

C:\PinballX\Media\VPX

With the ever changing landscape of Visual Pinball in particular, it then becomes messy when updating to a new version of a table which runs in a different version of VP. Switching the table from one XML to another is one thing, but then having to do the same thing with media files seems like an unnecessary hassle.

In short I reckon it's far easier to manage them all under the one directory.

**UPDATE** - apologies - I just scanned back a few pages and noticed that apparently the slow exiting when using the <alternateexe> tag has been fixed in 2.12 which I have not yet updated to! I will test to confirm for myself and if it has indeed been resolved then this enhancement wouldn't be necessary!

SECOND

In PinballX\Media\Videos if the generic No DMD and No REAL DMD videos are present they override game specific DMD Images. It would be nice if the hierarchy could be changed so that if you have DMD Images, they show up instead of the generic video.

As a further possible enhancement, include the ability to add a DEFAULT image and video file to the relevant DMD Media directories for each individual system so that they show up instead of the aforementioned generic videos.

[Sir Cheddar]

Thank you for fixing alternateExe

There are a few more things I'd like to request:

1) Flyers - it would be nice if there was an option to keep the aspect ratio.

2) I'm pretty fond of the "One click launch table" option - I'm using it but it really disables several features that are quite useful.

Would it be possible to have an "Quick Launch" key/button in Input Settings instead?

To avoid confusion "Quick Launch" could have no default assignment while the current "Select" stays as it is.

This way one could put the Launch Ball button on "Quick Launch" and still access the Menu with the Genre button.

[hocuslocus]

I wanted to add a different kind of video in attract mode like to one or all of the screens. I'm thinking of ultracade how they play like 4 videos of games then they go back to the same video logo. something like that  but adding more then just one, I was thinking adding a flipper trick video or people actually playing a live game or a video of stern factory. quick 20 or 30 second ones. Also to possibly have options similar to what you already have in attract mode settings. like, how long do you want to attract mode to go on before playing a random video. or x amount of time from file A and x amount of time from file B. it would be nice with Game EX also.

thank you,

[fuzgi]

Just got myself Pinballx with a Lifetime Licence. I like this piece of software. Well done! Thank you very much.

Still, I'd have the following requests:

Frontend Controlls:
- One button-press Flyer (for example "F")  (working in frontend and during gameplay) automatically pausing the game.
- One button-press Launch game / quick launch (without loosing other features, for example "L")
- One button-press Information (for example "N")
- Ability to switch between Information/Instructions/Flyer with just one button press (I, F, N)
- Ability to launch game directly from Flyer, Information or Instruction screen with the suggested quick launch feature
- Ability to jump only one step back in the menu (along with the current ability to jump back to the table selection, default "ESC" or "Return" (Example: Viewing Instructions and wanting to go back to the main menu OR being in a filter and wanting to go back to main menu)
- Random / suggest game (Wheel of Furtune-style with animation, "R")

 

Settings:
- Tabs or dropdown to quickly jump to the different sections of the settings (Audio, Keys, Emulator setup, etc.) instead of clicking through the whole settings (easier than "custom")

 

Game List Manager, FTP access and other goodies of the Lifetiime Licence to be tested soon.

 

-fuzgi

[TerryRed]

One thing I would like to see which may seem a bit weird....

When browsing games in Pinball X, I would like to have the option for the current selection's wheel art to disappear after a being idle for a specified time. So if I'm browsing through a bunch of games and stop on one, I wan't that big logo / wheel art to go away after a couple of seconds because I want to see what's showing on the playfield... The when I start scrolling through games it will reappear again. (I don't have additional details showing at all)

This would be particularly nice for MAME and PC games that have their action focused toward the center of the screen, but would also be great for pinball tables as well. We have a backglass that shows the title of the game, so no worries about forgetting what game we are looking at...

[leegethas]

Hi,

PinballX already has the option to close a running table, after a certain amount of inactivity and fall back to attrack mode. I wonder if it's possible to let PinballX shutdown itself (honoring all the scripts it's supposed to run at shutdown) and then signal a complete shutdown of the system itself, after a certain amount of inactivity in attract mode?

On my cabinet, everything runs as administrator. So, permissions to signal a shutdown shouldn't be an issue. And my cabinet is a dedicated machine. PinballX can have full controll, without having to worry about other things that might be going on.

It would be a nice feature, because people often forget (or simply don't care... ) to shutdown the cabinet, when they're done playing.

[Draco1962]

Feature Request -

Presently,  PinballX loads a default DMD video if one is missing for a given table. My request is for PinballX to load a default DMD video from each system's media folder first, then the PinballX default video if none present.

For example,  if the table in focus is a Pinball FX2 table, a custom Pinball FX2 DMD video will load from the Media\Pinball FX2\DMD Video folder. Same for Pinball Arcade,  VP,  Future Pinball,  MAME and so forth. 

[axilla]

First off, I love PinballX and your commitment to modifying the software with requests from all us users is admirable.

Would it be possible to have a shorter option for the "Show Game For"?  Right now, the shortest amount is 1 minute.  Sometimes I want to play, but just don't have a table in mind.  I'd rather not have to wait 1 minute after exiting out of a table, or firing it up for the first time, for the random spin to happen.  Maybe this has already been addressed and I missed.  In that case, I am sorry and would appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction.

[Draco1962]

20 minutes ago, axilla said:

First off, I love PinballX and your commitment to modifying the software with requests from all us users is admirable.

Would it be possible to have a shorter option for the "Show Game For"?  Right now, the shortest amount is 1 minute.  Sometimes I want to play, but just don't have a table in mind.  I'd rather not have to wait 1 minute after exiting out of a table, or firing it up for the first time, for the random spin to happen.  Maybe this has already been addressed and I missed.  In that case, I am sorry and would appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction.

You may be confusing the Attract Mode settings with the Show Game For settings.  Available settings for showing the games in Attract Mode are 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds,  1 minute,  90 seconds, 2 minutes. 

[axilla]

Just now, Draco1962 said:

You may be confusing the Attract Mode settings with the Show Game For settings.  Available settings for showing the games in Attract Mode are 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds,  1 minute,  90 seconds, 2 minutes. 

I'm always confused .  The setting you are talking about is how long it stays on the table before rotating to the next selection, correct?  What I'm looking for is how to I get the initial rotation to start quicker than the minute it takes currently.  The lowest the "Timer" value will go is 1 minute.  This is what initiates the first random spin, correct?

 

[Draco1962]

Correct, That is the Attract Mode "timer" setting.as shown here:

The minimum Timer setting is 1 minute. Read more about it here in the Wiki. You had referenced the incorrect setting in your first post.  No worries.

[axilla]

31 minutes ago, Draco1962 said:

Correct, That is the Attract Mode "timer" setting.as shown here:

The minimum Timer setting is 1 minute. Read more about it here in the Wiki. You had referenced the incorrect setting in your first post.  No worries.

Ok, yep, we're on the same page then.  Sorry for the confusion .  I would love to be able to set that for something less than 1 minute.  I didn't see anything in the Wiki about there being a reason that it couldn't be less than 1 minute.

[Draco1962]

Would likely require a coding change by the author. Most apps that have an attract mode feature generally start at 1 min.

[wrd1972]

In my Pincab that uses PinballX, VP9, VP10, I have dual backbox monitors that span the backbox image or video. This allows me to have a much more truer to actual size backbox image that can not be had on only a single screen. All this works great for playing tables. But not so much for PinballX.

Is it possible for PinballX to span a tables backbox image across two backbox monitors as opposed to just placing it on only one monitor? The resolution I am using for this is about 1768x1440 or so.

[dboyrecords]

I'm repeating myself but I haven't asked in a long time. I'd still REALLY like to see more options in attract mode. PBX shuffle is as bad as my wife's iPod (same songs crop up more than statistically should) I would like to be able to choose from random, alphabetical or by date. The attract mode is one of my favorite parts of my cab (second to actually playing).

 

Thanks!

[Jodannar]

This has likely been suggested. But I'm not going to check every response in this thread.

Setting up of table filters via an actual filter of the xml rather than separate XML files.

Ie, filter for all SS, filter for all manufacturer year >1989 etc. The data is all in the table xml files, it could be parsed and read into a live filter option somehow

[gStAv]

On 2016-04-11 at 10:30 PM, axilla said:

Ok, yep, we're on the same page then.  Sorry for the confusion .  I would love to be able to set that for something less than 1 minute.  I didn't see anything in the Wiki about there being a reason that it couldn't be less than 1 minute.

The files I made have a lenght of 35sec, after that it's silent, although the video might loop the table audio does not.

maybe an option of table audio looping would be cool for some?

[Carny_Priest]

I request pdf support for instruction cards and flyers. 

I went through a process of converting a lot of Stern and Inkochnito repro cards to vectors in order to retain source file quality and then converting to swf using some old Adobe tools. The output was viewable in browsers but wound up being corrupted and unusable in PinballX's flash viewer. To have the best quality, it would be great just to cut to the chase and use a pdf viewer then all we'd have to do is crop the sources and the images would look as good as possible at any resolution.

[Draco1962]

12 minutes ago, Carny_Priest said:

I request pdf support for instruction cards and flyers. 

I went through a process of converting a lot of Stern and Inkochnito repro cards to vectors in order to retain source file quality and then converting to swf using some old Adobe tools. The output was viewable in browsers but wound up being corrupted and unusable in PinballX's flash viewer. To have the best quality, it would be great just to cut to the chase and use a pdf viewer then all we'd have to do is crop the sources and the images would look as good as possible at any resolution.

+1 for this suggestion! Especially given the vulnerability that Flash continues to present and browser support is on the wane.

[Carny_Priest]

Yes, my little flash player project that cycled through instruction cards and score cards on the apron went by the wayside because the viewer no longer works at all when I upgraded to Windows 10. I don't know if it is a flash support thing or AutoHotkey. It's a shame because the single viewer could support vectors, bitmaps, and animation. Could have added some cool table features without having to actually mod any tables. But still it seems that retaining really good quality means larger flash files on the output which takes longer to load, and that's not good either. PDF would probably be better, I think.

[BonusMagnus]

Features Request 

I would like to Add more Flyer Images under the folder: "C:\PinballX\Media\Flyer Images"

If I create a "Inside7" folder there, the pictures doesn't show up in PinballX

My plan is to put all the Table Guides from Pinball FX2 (https://blog.zenstudios.com/?page_id=637)

in the Flyer Images folder, but the average of the Table Guide pages are about 13 to 53 pages long ...

Is there a workaround to display up to 53 .png/.jpg pictures right now in the PinballX menu?

Thanks a lot!

Johannes