Pinball FX3 instruction guides / cards

[joyrider3774]

Hey guys, Since multipage instruction cards are working i tried to get a complete set for pinball fx3 but carnypriest seems to have created those PDF to SWF guide conversions of ShoryukenToTheChin for pinball FX2 and there did not exist any for pinball fx3. I noticed ShoryukenToTheChin still creates guides for pinball FX3 and releases them in PDF (see here https://www.pinballfx.com/?page_id=7527 ). So i spend half a day figuring out how to get from PDF to SWF where each page is one SWF file. I figured it out eventually and i have created all missing instruction guide cards for pinball fx3. The only ones missing are for williams pinball volume 5 but there don't exist such guides yet for those tables. 

you can download those guides from ftp on this location "/-PinballX-/Other Uploads/Joyrider3774/Pinball FX3/Instruction Cards" the other instruction cards made by carny priest are available here "/-PinballX-/Media/Instruction Cards/#open6l" 

these are the ones i created each file consists of multiple SWF files one for each page to show as instruction cards. it i have named some like game name and some like the descriptions i use (because REDCUP1 etc is not clear what it means)  if they do not match with you, you'll have to rename the extracted swf files manually to match your database

1. Adventure Land Pinball.zip
2. Back to the future.zip
3. BALLY_Attack_from_Mars.zip
4. BALLY_BlackRose.zip
5. BALLY_Champion_Pub.zip
6. BALLY_Creature_from_the_Black_Lagoon.zip
7. BALLY_Party_Zone.zip
8. BALLY_Safe_Cracker.zip
9. BALLY_TheatreOfMagic.zip
10. E.T..zip
11. jaws.zip
12. Son of Zeus.zip
13. Star Wars - Ahch-To Island.zip
14. Star Wars - Battle of Mimban.zip
15. Star Wars - Calrissian Chronicles.zip
16. Star Wars - Solo.zip
17. Star Wars - The Last Jedi.zip
18. UNIVERSAL_Jurassic_Park.zip
19. UNIVERSAL_Jurassic_Theme_Park.zip
20. UNIVERSAL_Jurassic_World.zip
21. WMS_Fish_Tales.zip
22. WMS_Getaway.zip
23. WMS_Hurricane.zip
24. WMS_Junkyard.zip
25. WMS_Medieval_Madness.zip
26. WMS_Monster_Bash.zip
27. WMS_Roadshow.zip
28. WMS_White_Water.zip

[joyrider3774]

For future reference here's how i created them.

I'm not sure how @Carny_Priest initally created the SWF files for pinball fx2 but i used the xpdf command line tools (more specifically pdftopng.exe) to convert each page of the PDF to a PNG image with font aliasing enabled. Then i renamed each png file to match either tablename or table description following the format pinballx accepts to use multipage instruction cards because pdftopng does not name the png's in the format pinballx excpects. I was not going to rename over 700 png files manually so have i created a small program in delphi to rename to files in batch for me to the name pinballx expects. Then i used swftools which contains a pngtoswf.exe file to convert the png's to an swf file. The reason i convert the png's to SWF afterwards is because pinballx otherwise stretches the png images to your monitor resolution and this looked funky / distored the pages. Initially i had tried to use ffmpeg but it introduced too many artifacts for some reason probably due to higher compression of the SWF files and it just did not look good. The output from pngtoswf.exe was just much better quality. I tested them on my pinball cabinet and they seem to look good even the images on some pages.

I mostly automated everything using batchfiles in a few steps. It took me a while to figure all this out and create the delphi renaming program but it worked out great.

 

[Mike_da_Spike]

Thanks @joyrider3774. I have a big backlog for my cab, but will definitely add them !

[joyrider3774]

The Williams™ Pinball: Volume 5 PDF's got released a few days ago so i created SWF files based on those PDF files as well. Available on ftp now "/-PinballX-/Other Uploads/Joyrider3774/Pinball FX3/Instruction Cards"

• WMS_Tales_of_the_Arabian_Nights.zip
• WMS_No_Good_Gofers.zip
• BALLY_Cirqus_Voltaire.zip

[Mike_da_Spike]

12 hours ago, joyrider3774 said:

The Williams™ Pinball: Volume 5 PDF's got released a few days ago so i created SWF files based on those PDF files as well. Available on ftp now "/-PinballX-/Other Uploads/Joyrider3774/Pinball FX3/Instruction Cards"

• WMS_Tales_of_the_Arabian_Nights.zip
• WMS_No_Good_Gofers.zip
• BALLY_Cirqus_Voltaire.zip

Thanks @joyrider3774

I also put them in the instruction card folder, so it can be downloaded via Gamemanager and/or Database Manager.
I hope you don't mind

[joyrider3774]

5 hours ago, Mike_da_Spike said:

Thanks @joyrider3774

I also put them in the instruction card folder, so it can be downloaded via Gamemanager and/or Database Manager.
I hope you don't mind

thats fine but can gamemanager download multipage instruction cards ? 

[Mike_da_Spike]

13 minutes ago, joyrider3774 said:

thats fine but can gamemanager download multipage instruction cards ? 

Not sure, but think it does. Database manager can do it

[joyrider3774]

1 minute ago, Mike_da_Spike said:

Not sure, but think it does. Database manager can do it

maybe the ones from carny priest (open6l folder in instruction cards) should be extracted as well then if not done so already

[fakename69]

What's with the partial url links?

[Mike_da_Spike]

11 hours ago, fakename69 said:

What's with the partial url links?

See first post :

you can download those guides from ftp on this location "/-PinballX-/Other Uploads/Joyrider3774/Pinball FX3/Instruction Cards"