Wildly lost

[dogberry]

Hi all,

 

I appear to have gone down the wrong rabbit hole! I've downloaded PinballX, read the FAQs, downloaded the Word Doc, googled, watched YouTube videos, and am as yet still unable to work out how to actually load a table and play it.

I'm intending to build a full-size table but am falling at the first hurdle.

Is there a simple, step-by-step guide to get up and running? Where to put files, how to configure the keys on a keyboard so that they do what they say they're going to in the Setup etc....?

[scutters]

Is the problem with Pinballx loading a table, or just starting any table (visual pinball, future pinball, FX3 etc) via that emulator?

Doc for Pinballx here, maybe a little dated but the main stuffs covered;

 

[dogberry]

Hi. I simply can't get it to do anything. It comes up with the menu, and if I select "Play Game", then the screen says "Loading", and then it takes me back to the menu again.

That was the doc I found. I followed what was in it, but most of what was in there was obvious. It's the non-obvious stuff that I'm struggling with.

Things like in the Settings app, under Keyboard Input Settings, it says "Plunger - [Keycode-ALT]" - if you press ALT, then the screen pauses. It says "Select/Start - Keycode-ENTER", but pressing ENTER only brings up the menu. I have no idea how to start the game. I have pressed every single key on the keyboard.

 

[scutters]

Have you loaded any tables?, PinballX when installed has sample media for three tables (i think), but would behave in the way that you describe as they are only front end media files - not the actual games.

Have you loaded visual pinball (or whatever game you want to play)?, get that loaded and tables working there first, my advice would be to worry about the front end (pinballx) later.

There's another slightly dated guide here, http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/ba2917_ad2b870882264b7b9372a7a406fe21d3.pdf if you're just starting out and has more info on the bigger picture

[dogberry]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I have Visual Pinball installed, but have not been able to get that working either. If I open any table with it, it says, "This table was saved with version 10.60 and is newer than the supported version 10.40" - I have 10.6 installed. I installed earlier versions as well, and no combination of table/version of Visual Pinball would load without this error. 

Once that error comes up, then I lose the mouse over any Visual Pinball screens.

I saw that document earlier, and headed over to vpuniverse, but their registration screen wasn't working so couldn't sign up - it would just send me round and round in circles with no error, even with the random question answered correctly (I had to google a few of the answers). I emailed them, but have had no response as yet.

It's all getting a little downheartening already - I've seen the videos of people getting this up and running, but I can't see how they did it without superhuman levels of patience.

 

[scutters]

A Visual Pinball 10.6 table should open with the 10.6 executable. Check the version (right click properties, details) of the VPinballX.exe, open that and browse to the table to open it. That should work...

Once you get things up and running it'll be worth all the pain now!

[dogberry]

Thanks, but it says it's version 10.5.0 Final, which it isn't. This is 10.60 - at least that's what I downloaded. I browse to a table and get the error mentioned above.

[scutters]

Here's what i get;

So i guess download again, sorry not much else to suggest.

 

[dogberry]

Thanks. I've downloaded it again. It definitely says "10.5.0 Final".

No matter. It now seems to try and run the table regardless of the error, but now I can't do anything at all. It opens full screen and no matter what key on the keyboard I press, I get no response. I pressed every single key in an attempt to get it to at least move the flipper, but I get zilch.

 

[scutters]

Ok... ignoring that version for now (some tables saved in 10.6 will work in 10.5 anyway)... Open visual pinball, don't open a table. Go to Preferences, under configure keys you should have something like this;

(my keys probably won't make any sense at all as i don't use them) 

Note the keys or change them. Then under file menu open a table (opening this way won't auto launch the table like it will if you open a table with the first dialogue opening visual pinball), then save it (as a different name, for now), as a 10.5 version. Press F5 and it should launch, add coins, then start with whatever keys... does that do anything?

At worst pressing Q twice (exit game) should take you back to the editor. The fullscreen option you can change when checking stuff out in the editor Preferences, video settings

[dogberry]

Hi, yep. I tried to change the flippers to left/right mouse click - still nothing. It still says "L-Shift" and "R-Shift" above it and those don't work either.

I have, however, managed to pull the plunger back with the Enter key - so the focus is there, it's just selectively ignoring the other keys. Q does quit as well, so it clearly recognises some. 

Also, the pop-out screens should close when hitting the "corner X" but they don't - they stay on the screen.

I'm running Windows 10, i7-8700K with 12 CPUs and 32GB ram, with an NVidia Quadro P1000, so it should be "man enough" to run this, yes?

[dogberry]

To be honest, from a newbie's point of view, it looks very much like this software isn't even close to being finished. I appreciate the work that goes into it, but it should be versioned at something like 0.01Beta or similar - it certainly doesn't seem ready for the general public yet.

Contents don't scale when sized, the windows don't close when the close button is clicked, the keyboard doesn't have much affect and certainly isn't reflected in the setup etc... it all seems like it's a very early Alpha release.

I'm not trying to get anyone's back up, it's just an honest first impression.

[Carny_Priest]

Well, you are correct. Visual Pinball as a software program has been under development since 2000. And it keeps getting better and it will likely not be finished because there is always new technology to incorporate and improvements to be made. To be clear, Visual Pinball is hobbyist software. It is mainly an editor that allows authors to build their own virtual pinball tables. Users being able to play reproductions is simply a happy by-product. This does require some background knowledge/modest PC skills to properly configure. The software is full featured and endlessly tweakable (i.e., having so many options means it is not relatively easy to use). But, thousands of users have done it. Keep researching.

PinballX is merely a front-end to centralize the launching of tables and making it look attractive. If the underlying emulation software is not configured correctly and is not fully working, PinballX absolutely will not fix it for you. 

You can certainly build a full size table with commercial emulator options. This may be the initial track for you as it is built for a consumer experience.

Steam + Pinball FX3 + The Pinball Arcade 

 

[Mike_da_Spike]

If you have any technical skills and knows how computers/software/files/folders/registry etc is working, then you should definitely read about visual pinball and how it works.

If you don't have a clue what I mean, you should follows @Carny_Priest his advice.

 

In both ways: start with the emulator itself and tries to launch tables from the commandline. If you get this to work, you can start adding the commands to pbx and get it automated and have a nice interface

I will love to help you with all of that, but you need to be open for it

[Draco1962]

The imperative thing is to make sure that that your pin emulator/simulator is working well outside of PinballX first!

As frontends go, PinballX is very user friendly, but not without some gotchas, but that is with any frontend really.

[dogberry]

Hi. Thanks for the replies. I was getting a little frustrated yesterday, as was evident in my post.

 

I'm a huge fan of open-source software, so completely understand.

I'll be persevering and will get some proper time at the weekend to start again from scratch with  Visual Pinball.

[Mike_da_Spike]

This is the guide that helped me a lot. Including the videos.

http://vpuniverse.com/forums/tutorials/article/5-complete-virtual-pinball-guide/

The versions mentioned are a bit outdated. Use latest versions.

Start, if you want, with the visual pinball part. Thats the difficult part of all, but the most tables.

First do the setup correctly:

Map keys/buttons to what you want. Dont bother about exit. Pinballx will take care of that. Twice pressing Q is fine. 

Set your graphics correct of your playfield. This is very important. I use vsync to get a stable 60 fps. Even with 300 fps the tables seems to stutter (took me almost 7 months to fine tune)

Set your backglass correct (one time setup).

Choose a correct folder structure for your tables.

I prefer a vpx folder and a vp9 folder to seperate all. Don't get to enthusiastic to but all tables in different folders. Pbx is difficult to configure. I keep the name of the directb2s file the same as the vpx file. So you always have the correct backglass with your table file. If table file change, just replace it and rename directb2 file again

Setup pinmame correctly and test it.

All in the next document

http://vpuniverse.com/forums/tutorials/article/5-complete-virtual-pinball-guide/

Good luck with your adventure !

[dogberry]

Excellent stuff, thank you! 

I got Visual Pinball working, with nearly every table/rom I tried! I even created a very basic one from scratch!

Sadly, the PC that I dug out for using in a full size table died about 5 minutes after booting it into Win10 last night - it was quite a decent spec'ed machine with decent graphics etc... (albeit a little out of date by today's standards). 

So, I'll be spending more time getting all the software set up on my laptop until I find a replacement.

Thanks for the advice! Truly appreciated.

[Mike_da_Spike]

No problem

Hope you got your power pc up and running soon.