PinballX Enhancements/Features Requests

[vogliadicane]

^^ there were requests for a new button for menu e.g., which is also a good idea. But this would interfere with the way long time users are used to PinballX.

My proposal would just add a new option and everybody could continue using it like before, if prefered.

 

And I think (correct me, if I'm wrong), it would be rather simple to implement tis option.

cheers,

Alex

[RustyCardores]

Thought Bubble / Feature Request:  Have PinballX open an extra window for the display of Topper images or videos. 

Application: Partially sink a third "topper" screen into our topboxes (sitting behind our backglass screens) or simply low mount the screen on top.

It's an "out there" idea I know.

EDIT: Thanks to PcTeknic I have it working.  

EDIT 2: Feature request reinstated - Duplicate the DMD Images feature, so that Topper Images is an "extra" option in settings. This would allow both /DMD Images to display on the DMD and /Topper Images to display on the topper. 

[PcTeknic]

To show imagen or vídeos in 3rd screen, you can use the folders and options of DMD.

[Koplings]

Feature request  maybe make an option to remove the "Infromation" option from the PinballX menu options.  All I want is Play Game, Flyer and Return.  I'd like to remove this fourth option (the one that opens up the grey box that says how many times the game has been played etc.)  sometime when my friends are trying my cab they stumble on this and don't know what it is.

[fuzgi]

20 hours ago, Koplings said:

Feature request  maybe make an option to remove the "Infromation" option from the PinballX menu options.  All I want is Play Game, Flyer and Return.  I'd like to remove this fourth option (the one that opens up the grey box that says how many times the game has been played etc.)  sometime when my friends are trying my cab they stumble on this and don't know what it is.

I do not like that. Instead of removing the "Information" option alltogether it may be better to be able to toggle it (with a respective option in the PinballX settings).

[Draco1962]

41 minutes ago, fuzgi said:

I do not like that. Instead of removing the "Information" option alltogether it may be better to be able to toggle it (with a respective option in the PinballX settings).

I think that is what was meant.

[vogliadicane]

Feature request:

"Ignore prefix 'the ' at sorting"

as an option.

 

Same problem as in audio players. The Beatles are "The Beatles" and not "Beatles", so you don't wanna change this tag, but on the other hand it is annoying to have them all clustered at "T".

Most audio players have this option, so PBX should have it, too.

Today I changed (with a heavy heart) all The-Tables to the name without 'the'. For 'The Machine - Pride of Pinbot' I thout this is bs and changing 'The Rolling Stones' was not better either, so I didn't.

(As a result, I had to make (or rename) all the media files, but that's not the hard deal.)

For pinball tables, it would be simple, because there are only English name tables out there... so only the "the " sould be truncated at sorting.

[vogliadicane]

I have some other request, which I think would be really helpful.

Add some "comment" tag, which can be displayed in the table description, so we can add personal infos about that table.

A standard example would be: "PhysMod5 by Dozer" (now with the beautiful alternateexe the system version is not shown anymore) or "difficult" or or or

You can always argue against this with "Why don't you just add it to the table name?"... because it is truncated by ellipsis and something like "The Machine - Bride Of Pinbot; VPX by wrd1972" is truncated for sure.

So an alternative maybe easier to implement would be 2 lines for table names as a default and the third line is truncated by ellipsis (line breaks accepted of course).

[vogliadicane]

Not really a feature request, just something to think about: now, we can make the time waiting to load a table more attractive by using loading images or videos, which is very good.

Why not have this for the time a table closes and PinballX comes back to the stage? Something like "unloading" images or videos. Just a thought...

And now, I want to point to some former ideas of mine (forgive me), because I think this really would be helpful (so like it, if you like it..., what did I write here? ):

Option to show menu only, when enter ist pressed longer

 

[Stexe]

I'm looking for a way to customize or disable the automatic keypresses that occur when loading a game like Pinball Arcade or Pinball FX2.

Having keypresses is problematic because it makes it impossible to select a specific side in "Star Wars: Starfighter Assault " and similar titles. Any ability to do that (or any information on if there is already one that I don't know about) would be great. Thanks.

Also, see the attached thread.

 

[PcTeknic]

Use joy2key to create especific profiles for PFX2, TPA, PinballX, Visual...

In PinballX exit button press Q

In PFX2 exit button press ESC and you can view the guide, leaderboards, etc.

When you exit PinballFX2 from the game, turn at PinballX.

[nightgaunt98]

On 5/9/2016 at 9:33 PM, neohusky said:

I would also love a separate backglass loading screen. I've got some cabinet theme art for the playfield portrait 1080x1920 and backglass landscape 1920x1080 and would love to show these off as loading screens.

Thanks for your consideration Tom

I know it's been awhile, but I figured out how to achieve this.

In Game List Manager, import your art file as the Backglass.

Pinballx will display the image on your backglass monitor while the table loads

as well as when you exit back to pinballx.

It's much easier than I thought!

[djrobx]

If we are changing the loading screens, can we get transparency support for the main loading screen also? 

I still haven't gotten used to PinballX's black loading screen.  In hyperpin it just puts a nice small "Please wait ... " over top of the table image, which just becomes the table when it's ready.   It flows much nicer that way. 

Thanks for considering!  

[Thalamus]

Hi !

Sorry if this has been requested before. But, I wonder if it would be possible to add a new tag to the xml named "info" or something in that direction that would be configurable to work more or less like description is today.

The reason for asking is that I don't keep my table descriptions like eg. "name ( year, manufacturer)". My scheme is more in the direction of VPX__long_name__TECH__YEAR__MANUFACTORER - I separate with double underlines. Reason ? Well, I'm mainly a linux guy and manipulating meta-data is often done by sending those xml files over to my linux server. I hate whitespaces,  parenthesis etc. I try to keep descriptions within [a-zA-Z0-9] if possible.

I would like to be able to use the info/overlay screen with the 'rating' stars - but, with my table name scheme the filenames becomes way to long and outright ugly. Description isn't really only description in pinballx IMO. So, in short, a tag that is kind of free-text that is configurable to be shown instead of description would be very nice.

Currently, and that is my fault because I use my description in this way, the search for online resources isn't really working. It would be nice if the new tag would be used in searching for eg. instruction cards or maybe there could be added a option to input manually what to search for ?

Just a suggestion, Thank you for this wonderful frontend.

[MrKnister]

Hey Guys,

this is so basic, i dont even dare to ask this question  ... if i might have overlooked something please excuse my ignorance :)....

back to the request .. would it be possible to implement mouse wheel scrolling in the game manager ?

 

thx in advance and have a nice christmas holiday y'all

[odie]

I am sure it was asked but hotseat ability for FX2 and also an ability to disable auto keys.

But hotseat in Fx2 would be huge!

[Stexe]

17 minutes ago, odie said:

I am sure it was asked but hotseat ability for FX2 and also an ability to disable auto keys.

But hotseat in Fx2 would be huge!

 

 

That would be neat. Also, it seems on some of the boards allow you to put initials in and others save the last input initials and force you to use them. Any idea why this happens and if it is due to something in PinballX maybe a way to change it?

[Draco1962]

12 minutes ago, Stexe said:

 

That would be neat. Also, it seems on some of the boards allow you to put initials in and others save the last input initials and force you to use them. Any idea why this happens and if it is due to something in PinballX maybe a way to change it?

You could test this yourself by loading Pinball FX2 outside of PinballX and see if the behavior is the same as you describe. If so, then PinballX would not be able to change this as it would be in Pinball FX2's code.

[PcTeknic]

Define 1 button as Del key With Joy2Key

[bfriedt]

I would like PinballX settings to be able to turn off DMD per system. For example, I Have PBFX2 showing DMDs on the backglass (2 Monitor Setup), and for the few I do not have a DMD for, PinballX displays it's default DMD (which I really like). However, when I choose a Future Pinball table (Which I have no DMD videos for as I am using Backglass videos with the DMD recorded in them) the default PinballX DMD is displayed and does not line up with the backglass video. I would like to set the DMD display options per system. Thank you for considering this request.

[Draco1962]

19 hours ago, bfriedt said:

I would like PinballX settings to be able to turn off DMD per system. For example, I Have PBFX2 showing DMDs on the backglass (2 Monitor Setup), and for the few I do not have a DMD for, PinballX displays it's default DMD (which I really like). However, when I choose a Future Pinball table (Which I have no DMD videos for as I am using Backglass videos with the DMD recorded in them) the default PinballX DMD is displayed and does not line up with the backglass video. I would like to set the DMD display options per system. Thank you for considering this request.

Have you tried changing the DMD setting for those tables via the Game List wizard or manually editing the .xml file entry <hidedmd>False</hidedmd> to <hidedmd>True</hidedmd> for each table that you do not want DMD to be displayed?

[Tom Speirs]

6 hours ago, Draco1962 said:

Have you tried changing the DMD setting for those tables via the Game List wizard or manually editing the .xml file entry <hidedmd>False</hidedmd> to <hidedmd>True</hidedmd> for each table that you do not want DMD to be displayed?

Those settings are for after a table is launched, not within PinballX.

Cheers.

Tom.

[Kellogs]

Feature Request(s)

Favorites List

It is about a year ago, I allready asked for this: Can you implement an Option to which enables the player to vort for the best tables, from within the PinballX menu. I am thinking about an option like in Hyperspin for arcade cabs: L=add to favorite or remove from the favorite list. The list might be dsiplayed in the main menue as an item called favorits or something like that. Maybe one could use the credit button for that.

Juts push the credit button in the pinball X menue, displays add or remove from the favorite menu, chose with enter (in my case the plunger button) and rewrite a favirite xml or some other list to the systems database menue.

Score- and rules cards to be displayed

The second thing I am thinking about is a feature, I have been reading arround here, to display the score cards and rules.

Do the codegods arround here see a possibillity to enhance the wheel with the rule cards and the score cards?

Maybe in a way that the wheel image of the selected table is still as big as it is now, the wheel images of the previous and next table are displayed smaller and, if there are score- or rulecards, these cards are displayed in the left and right corner of the wheel. Something like shown in the picture.

Would be nice, to download real or custom cards into an extra folder of the media menue of the different systems. That would enable to store different tables (VP, VP99 Night Mods and so on) with diffrent custom cards. If there is no card, nothing is displayed. I known, these cards are allready in the mediapack, but maybe the Visual Pinball section could be enhanced with to new subdirs like Like score cards and rule cards, or  maybe better with wheel cards left and wheel cards right.

And the other benefit would be, that one does not have to switch to the pinball X menu, to read the rules and come back again. It would be just like the real machine. You chose, read the rules, play.

[polomaniac]

it would be nice if i can move the wheel images to another screen and position it where i want. i'm using my 3th screen for futuredmd, but while browsing the tables (so the dmd is dissabled) i want to see the wheel images in that spot.

[humor4fun]

What if the Media Search Engine could look for a Folder instead of a file, and randomly (or cyclically) pick media from a folder with the table name. Where the folder name matches the defined [TableName] variable from the Database file.

For example Sorcerer's Lair and Secrets of the Deep in FX2 format:

• /Media
  • /Pinball FX2
    • /Backglass Images
      • /Citadel
        • 1.png
        • 2.png
        • 3.png
        • ...
        • n.png
        • bg image.png
        • whatever else.jpg
      • /Atlantis
        • image.png
        • Secrets of the Deep.png
        • Backglass Atlantis.png