[PLUGIN] PinballX Statistics Display

[rtkiii]

Just saw this cool plug-in.  Does it work with Windows 7?  Because I have downloaded two of your plugins(clock is the other but not listed in my screenshot because I took it earlier) and neither show up in my plugins list.  I did have to unblock but no luck.  Restarted PC as well after I enabled the .dll same result.

 

[rtkiii]

Nevermind, updated PinballX to the latest version from July 2021 and now the plugins appear.  Thanks for your work on this!

[scutters]

2 hours ago, rtkiii said:

Nevermind, updated PinballX to the latest version from July 2021 and now the plugins appear.  Thanks for your work on this!

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http://http.online.gameex.com/gamecards/pinballx/rtkiii___pinballcabinet.png

Nice one. Was probably just a .net runtime thing that got updated with the PinballX installer (especially if you had quite an old install before!)

[Bazunga]

Hello,

Thank you for this great work!

After some work and setup, this is my result.

I can share my image if you want.

[scutters]

1 hour ago, Bazunga said:

After some work and setup, this is my result.

Nice job.. yes, please share the background image for others.

(it might also be worth posting the contents of the ini file used by the plugin [in the PinballX\plugins folder] so that can be used as a base configuration with it, and then just adjust for screen resolution differences etc). 

Thanks! 

[Bazunga]

My screen : 1920 * 1080

My configuration : 

Font : Digir___0.ttf

Background :

Enjoy

[scutters]

Awesome. Thanks mate 

[DBrown67]

Hi Scutters 

I'm playing around with this plugin because it seems it might be best for what I want to achieve. I want to display some kind of trivia information for each table... interesting notes, production numbers etc. The sort of stuff you see in IPDB.

I can use my 3rd DMD monitor for this as it's not currently used in the front end, though I first thought about editing the "Information" page you can bring up when you pause a game.

There is a "comment" box within the Configuration Screen. How do I implement "comments" to include the info I want? I know this will be unique for every table and will be a lot of work. But I don't know where the plugin pulls these "comments" from.

If I untick all the boxes except Comments then the Stats window is always empty when I launch PinballX (obviously because there are no comments to display). As I say, I want to include production numbers and interesting trivia.

Also the plugin is constantly in CAPS mode for the text when some info can be displayed. Is there a setting to make this more reader friendly please?

[Mike_da_Spike]

6 hours ago, DBrown67 said:

There is a "comment" box within the Configuration Screen. How do I implement "comments" to include the info I want? I know this will be unique for every table and will be a lot of work. But I don't know where the plugin pulls these "comments" from.

The comments value is used from the system xml database file.

With the program Databasemanager you can easily add the values. Or you can use a program like notepad. If you add comments to your database file, you should not use gamemanager.exe to modify your tablles as it removes the extra values

[scutters]

11 hours ago, DBrown67 said:

Hi Scutters 

I'm playing around with this plugin because it seems it might be best for what I want to achieve. I want to display some kind of trivia information for each table... interesting notes, production numbers etc. The sort of stuff you see in IPDB.

I can use my 3rd DMD monitor for this as it's not currently used in the front end, though I first thought about editing the "Information" page you can bring up when you pause a game.

There is a "comment" box within the Configuration Screen. How do I implement "comments" to include the info I want? I know this will be unique for every table and will be a lot of work. But I don't know where the plugin pulls these "comments" from.

If I untick all the boxes except Comments then the Stats window is always empty when I launch PinballX (obviously because there are no comments to display). As I say, I want to include production numbers and interesting trivia.

Also the plugin is constantly in CAPS mode for the text when some info can be displayed. Is there a setting to make this more reader friendly please?

Mike is right, the 'comment' field can easily be populated in database xml using database manager, or you can add it manually opening the database xml files (e.g. \Databases\Visual Pinball\Visual Pinball.xml) and adding a field for tables like;

<comment>Some text..</comment>

but if you then use Game Manager the field will be lost (not ideal if you've just manually added custom text to a load of tables), so best to use database manager as that will preserve that data.

I'll have a look at adding an option not to display all caps in the next version.

[DBrown67]

6 hours ago, Mike_da_Spike said:

The comments value is used from the system xml database file.

With the program Databasemanager you can easily add the values. Or you can use a program like notepad. If you add comments to your database file, you should not use gamemanager.exe to modify your tablles as it removes the extra values

Oh... I was playing about with Databasemanager last night. I didn't add any comments to my XML file but in the past I did add some alternate.exe lines for a few tables that needed it. Would DatabaseManager get rid of these lines also?

I did try adding some stuff in the "comments" box in the Configuration Window but could not get anything to show up when PinballX was running. And I could only type along that single line. I don't think it would have looked neat anyway for the information I want to put in there. I definitely want more than one colour text and not all in CAPS. I'll try editing the XML direct today, as it might be easier that way to get it looking how I want. 

[scutters]

1 hour ago, DBrown67 said:

Oh... I was playing about with Databasemanager last night. I didn't add any comments to my XML file but in the past I did add some alternate.exe lines for a few tables that needed it. Would DatabaseManager get rid of these lines also?

Database manager works with the alternateexe flag so wouldn't change that

1 hour ago, DBrown67 said:

I did try adding some stuff in the "comments" box in the Configuration Window but could not get anything to show up when PinballX was running. And I could only type along that single line. I don't think it would have looked neat anyway for the information I want to put in there. I definitely want more than one colour text and not all in CAPS. I'll try editing the XML direct today, as it might be easier that way to get it looking how I want. 

Yeah, database manager should probably allow a multiline comment, that's an oversight because that field just hasn't been used like that before. It'll be added in a future update. I'll update stats plugin in the next few weeks, but i suspect it maybe won't be the best way to display the information you want, i'll reply to you main topic thread.

[DBrown67]

Just as an update I did try adding... <comment> inserted some text here... </comment>   line to my PinballX XML file for one title to test. (Stern's 24 as alphabetically it's top entry in the XML file). Then in the Configuration Window I only had "game name" and "comments" boxes ticked. Game name does appear for all games, but for 24 test table no comments text appeared at all.

I don't think I'm going to get this to work looking nice anyway. I'll just wait and see what Scutters comes up with regarding an update. I know in Mame there is a "History" section that someone used to keep updated. Similar to the kind of thing I'm wanting to implement here. Would be cool to be able to pull the production figures and notes section from IPDB. That might be frowned up in some quarters though.

[scutters]

7 hours ago, DBrown67 said:

Just as an update I did try adding... <comment> inserted some text here... </comment>   line to my PinballX XML file for one title to test. (Stern's 24 as alphabetically it's top entry in the XML file). Then in the Configuration Window I only had "game name" and "comments" boxes ticked. Game name does appear for all games, but for 24 test table no comments text appeared at all.

Hmm.. might be a bug somewhere, i'll check when i open the code up.

7 hours ago, DBrown67 said:

I don't think I'm going to get this to work looking nice anyway. I'll just wait and see what Scutters comes up with regarding an update. I know in Mame there is a "History" section that someone used to keep updated. Similar to the kind of thing I'm wanting to implement here. Would be cool to be able to pull the production figures and notes section from IPDB. That might be frowned up in some quarters though.

Yep, the stats plugin was kind of made for 'one liner' type info, scores mainly with some other info available like table authors. Not sure how blocks / paragraphs would look. But no harm in trying it in the next version!

[scutters]

V1.7 posted.

Should fix the flexdmd/xdmd display options and database xml reading incompatibility issues when running PinballX V5.39 and later (.net core runtime compatibility). @DBrown67 - this should fix your 'comment' not showing issue above.

New features;

Virtual DMD drop shadow option;

With

Without

Virtual DMD use VPinMame Colours

To work this option needs the rom information adding to Game Manager or PinballX Database Manager and the Colorize option setting for the rom in VPinMame, the DMD display will then use VPM 100% colour when displaying text for that table;

These colours can be set using dmc files - see https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=27632

Upper Case Text - Previously all text was displayed in CAPS, this is now optional - but note that some text like high score data will be in CAPS anyway, and some fonts choices may not display lower case characters.

Display Text Prefixes - Allows you to change the titles / section headers used in the displayed text

[echodun]

Any chance on getting a real DMD display option?

[scutters]

2 hours ago, echodun said:

Any chance on getting a real DMD display option?

I'd love to add one, but i don't have a real dmd to test with so i'd be coding blind with no idea what i'm doing and how it might affect other apps using the dmd in game etc. So sorry, at this time no (the code is available if anyone with a real dmd wants to try). 

[Mike_da_Spike]

2 hours ago, scutters said:

I'd love to add one, but i don't have a real dmd to test with so i'd be coding blind with no idea what i'm doing and how it might affect other apps using the dmd in game etc. So sorry, at this time no (the code is available if anyone with a real dmd wants to try). 

Isnt the flexdmd option a option to display it on a realdmd ?

The only thing is that PinballX should not initialize your realdmd. 

I will give it a try this week and get will report back

[echodun]

realdmd works in the plugin preview, but is overwritten during PinballX processes.  In other words, I can't see it, but still see either an .mp4 of my original DMD video or if I delete that, the PinballX default video.

[Mike_da_Spike]

50 minutes ago, echodun said:

realdmd works in the plugin preview, but is overwritten during PinballX processes.  In other words, I can't see it, but still see either an .mp4 of my original DMD video or if I delete that, the PinballX default video.

Yeah, that what I mean. You need to find a way that pinballx will not use your dmd. So you can display the stats

[davy33]

hi @scutters! is there a way to hide this plugin for one system?

i explain... i use it on my dmd display...i want to hide it for the mame system (vertical shmups) to show instead arcade marquee .png... 

thx 2U

 

[scutters]

11 minutes ago, davy33 said:

hi @scutters! is there a way to hide this plugin for one system?

i explain... i use it on my dmd display...i want to hide it for the mame system (vertical shmups) to show instead arcade marquee .png... 

thx 2U

 

Good idea!..  I will see what i can come up with.

Got a few things on at the moment so give me a week or two

[davy33]

7 minutes ago, scutters said:

Good idea!..  I will see what i can come up with.

Got a few things on at the moment so give me a week or two

Cool! Take UR time! THX

[scutters]

On 8/26/2022 at 12:48 PM, davy33 said:

hi @scutters! is there a way to hide this plugin for one system?

Added in V1.8 (attachment updated in first post). Thanks @davy33for the suggestion and testing.

[DBrown67]

Re-visited this today. Using up to date PinballX and plugin. Comments still are not displaying at all. Made sure not to use GameManager (as that deletes the comments on the XML file).

I only have Game Name and Comments ticked. Game name shows on my 3rd screen but no comments. It does display in correct font/colour. Comments are there within the XML file in the same format as Game name.