[APP] PinballX Database Manager 24.10.11.0 (supports Touch Play as well)

[Mike_da_Spike]

9 hours ago, johnwillsey said:

sorry, lost track of this thread.  with current version, still having issue.. here is my output after testing...

FTP CHECK    :    FTP access granted
ERROR INFO    :    Encrypt    Key not valid for use in specified state.

ERROR INFO    :    SetRegValue    Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: value
ERROR INFO    :    Decrypt    Key not valid for use in specified state.

 

I just can't seem to save my ftp password after it tests fine.

Looks like your password has a character that our function cannot encrypt. 

Do you have a special character in it ?

[Draco1962]

FEATURE REQUEST:  XML Backup/Restore Button

Besides a Red Blinking Death Button, would it be possible to add a feature to backup the PinballX DBM xml automatically to a predetermined backup location and restore from backup if needed?

May be useful if someone accidentally loads the xml into the Game List Manager and overwrites this one or other scenarios.

[Mike_da_Spike]

Actually it is already build in.

Not the same as you described,but this is how it works:

During save in dbm a backup xml is created as well.

When loading the xml, the backup file will be compared with the xml file on the total columns.

If the xml has less columns than the backup file, the xml is saved in Gamemanager or a favorite or rating is set in pbx. A message will be showed that the file was edited outside dbm and the backup file can be restored.

If you just edit the xml in notepad, there will be no message comming up to restore the backup file, as all the columns are the same.

So the backup button is the 'save' button in dbm and restore is an automated process, but ... we (scutters and I) will discuss  to add an extra option in it for maunally save and restore. But still, if you added/deleted/modified tables in gamemanager, you will loose those settings.

I know from own experience that a manual backup, will be done a couple of times, but when you want to use a backup for restoring, you realize that the backup wasn't made and backup is outdated.

Let's think about a good strategy and if someone has a bright idea how to avoid this, we are open to it

[Draco1962]

Prompt that alerts the user that the backup to be restored has an older date to which they have to decide to continue or cancel (or, if they have Notepad++ installed, option to open both for comparison before proceeding).

[johnwillsey]

On 12/10/2022 at 9:44 PM, Mike_da_Spike said:

Looks like your password has a character that our function cannot encrypt. 

Do you have a special character in it ?

No, just upper/lower/numbers.  regenerated a new password of upper/lower/numbers, blaseted registry for Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\PinballX and PinballX .net 6

re-installed pinx (over existing) and manager (over existing).. saw registry get recreated.  tested new user/pass in filezilla and game manager.  all work but game manager still cant save it and gives the same error messages.

[Mike_da_Spike]

Passwords that is used in DBM is in a different reg key as PBX. As I dont know how pbx encrypt the password, DBM has its own encryption and decryption mechanism. 

You got the issue with gamemanger as well, or only in dbm ? 

[johnwillsey]

26 minutes ago, Mike_da_Spike said:

Passwords that is used in DBM is in a different reg key as PBX. As I dont know how pbx encrypt the password, DBM has its own encryption and decryption mechanism. 

You got the issue with gamemanger as well, or only in dbm ? 

Thanks again for replying...   Issue seems to only be in PinballX Database Manager.  Haven't opened gamemanager for years, but just tried to import fiels on a table and it worked fine.  Here is my DMB log file...which doesn't provide much more insight.  Is there a config file I should blast to start over?

DBManagerLog.txt

[johnwillsey]

2 hours ago, johnwillsey said:

Thanks again for replying...   Issue seems to only be in PinballX Database Manager.  Haven't opened gamemanager for years, but just tried to import fiels on a table and it worked fine.  Here is my DMB log file...which doesn't provide much more insight.  Is there a config file I should blast to start over?

DBManagerLog.txt 4.4 kB · 0 downloads

SOLVED...  Credit to this quick video... 

in case link breaks. I had to go to C:\Users\xbox\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft and delete the Crypto folder to let it rebuild (without corruption apparently).

 

Edited March 19, 2023 by johnwillsey
added text

[scutters]

1 hour ago, johnwillsey said:

in case link breaks. I had to go to C:\Users\xbox\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft and delete the Crypto folder to let it rebuild (without corruption apparently).

That's a new one to me. Good find, thanks for the info.

[Mike_da_Spike]

6 hours ago, johnwillsey said:

in case link breaks. I had to go to C:\Users\xbox\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft and delete the Crypto folder to let it rebuild (without corruption apparently).

Nice ! Good to known! New one for me as well.thanks for sharing

[Mike_da_Spike]

if @Tom Speirs adds new features to PinballX, @scutters and @Mike_da_Spike cannot get away with NOT updating DBM AND leave you with a product that will not work correct with PBX

Why are NOT and AND uppercase ? 
Well, that's the extra function that Tom added for filters.
Starting of Pinball 5.83, filters can contain not only OR , but also AND and NOT 
For DBM, we wanted to make it a bit easier, to not use the characters |(pipe), & and !.
Within advanced search a search could already be don with the ' OR ' command as well (note that this must be in capitals and with spaces , to see the differences).
But it now also can do AND and NOT.
There are some rules that are explained in the PinballX documentation and Within the Database manager documentation.

With DBm you can see directly the records that should match to your criteria (if you use the system filter)

For example : All tables where display name contains '24' or display name contains 'Batman':

If we just want display names that contains 'Batman' and '66' :

If we just want display names that contains 'Batman' and '66' and not contains 'Original':

AND and OR cannot exists on 1 line, but you can use them on multiple lines (but don't make it yourself too hard :D)
 

(AND, NOT and OR can be replace with |(pipe),& and ! as well)

All these queries can be saved as Filter as well and will be available in PinballX

This was the biggest change Scutters and I did.
We also fixed some minor bugs, updated 2 core components (JSON and MEGA) and properly some stuff we forgot already.

A big thanks thanks to Tom Speirs for adding extra features to PinballX 
And also a big thanks to Scutters, who is helping with code and ideas to make DBM everytime better

have fun with it

 

[Mike_da_Spike]

@Tom Speirs released PinballX release 5.90 last week which combines the installation of PinbalLX xp/32 bit and the.net core version.
DBM was relying on the Windows installation GUIDs to find the programs. 
To fix this issue, @scutters and I changed the part to identify PinballX and/or Touch-Play
You still need a valid installation of one of the 2 GameEx applications on your system, but if you have multiple versions of PinballX on your cabinet (which is just a copy of all the PinballX files with different settings, database and media files).
 

If you want to manage multiple versions of PinballX or Touch-PLay, just go to settings and click on the 3 dots next to the pull down menu of the 'application to Manage'

This brings the following dialog :

The 'default' applications will be in the pull down box and if you create new 'custom' GameEx applications, those will be added as well (and in the settings you can choose which application you want to manage.

Some rules for adding custom applications :

• Custom Name must be unique and cannot be the same as a default application
• Program Full Path must be unique as well (otherwise you have 2 entries to manage the same app)
• Program Full Path should always be PinballX.exe or Touch-Play.exe
• Default applications are only showed for visibility and cannot be changed from this dialog

Thanks to Scutters for all his help on this release again, and off course thanks to Tom Speirs, for his amazing PinballX front end and all the updates he is doing on it.

 

 

 

[chadman]

For some reason Pinball FX2 is missing the "System List Media" entree.  FX, FX3, Future Pinball, and Visual Pinball have this, but I'm not sure how to create this for FX2.  I think these all got auto created somehow the first time I used one of those platforms.  Any ideas if the database mgr can add that for me?

[Mike_da_Spike]

Can you post your Databasemanager.ini, pinballx.ini, databases. Log and your pinballx log.txt ?

[Mike_da_Spike]

On 6/20/2023 at 2:42 AM, chadman said:

For some reason Pinball FX2 is missing the "System List Media" entree.  FX, FX3, Future Pinball, and Visual Pinball have this, but I'm not sure how to create this for FX2.  I think these all got auto created somehow the first time I used one of those platforms.  Any ideas if the database mgr can add that for me?

lucky guess without any logfiles : Is the system disabled ?

[Mike_da_Spike]

During holiday season, @scutters and I where not getting sunburned, but working on a new release of DBM.

We had a long discussion about the new Zen Pinball FX and thanks to Fraesh (VPS-DB) we where able to add Pinball FX tables in an easy way to DBM.
This is including the correct table names, description name etc.

Here are some small animation that will show how easily it can be done (you need off course to setup the correct system. This can be found here : https://forums.gameex.com/forums/topic/28881-guide-setup-zen-pinball-fx-in-pinballx-steam-version/ )

Single table :

 

Auto import missing tables :

Adding new/missing entries and obsolete checking:

IPDB entries :

Enough about FX. Think you understand now that Pinball FX is handled the same way as VPX/FP and FX3 tables

Another great improvement is the 'Table Version' start time.
This is really  improved if you have a large set of VP tables.
To compare this is from the previous version with my data record set, heres my vp list with the previous version of dbm

And this is from the latest version :

Isn't that an improvement ???

We also added a command line option to use DBM with different settings :
here's a small demo to create a new INI and set different settings

These are the most important new features  which @scutters and I brought to you.
read the full release notes if you want to know all of the changes

A big thanks to Scutters for getting this release done

[Mike_da_Spike]

Bug fix release.

This release is a (minor) bugfix release which fixes 3 bugs.

1:
In previous release @scutters and myself focused ourself on better performance.
Some code was drastically modified which causes unexpected behaviour (Well ... for a person  brain damage it should work  )
When you rename the future pinball exe file, or the visual pinball exe file, it results in an error :

ERROR INFO    :    clXMLfiles_SelectedIndexChanged    Executable [<EXE FILE>] for directory [<Table Path> is unknown. Cannot check for new/deleted tables

This is fixed now (thanks @echodun for reporting)

2:
When Downloading instruction cards from FTP or Mega that has more than 1 entry, it resulted that the first file was deleted.
DBM will show a red Information box if there are no valid files

3:
Internal fix. When DBM is launch (and when the check box is checked  in settings to check for updates), it will check if there is a new version available. When new version is available, it will grab the release notes to display this as well (and even translate it another language than English is selected)
Last couple of releases the release notes where empty, because the website changes the layout.
this is fixed and hopefully not an issue anymore in the future.

Another thing I noticed : In last release we added support for Zen FX.
Well, Zen released this week a new table. And what did I see when launching DBM :

the new table was automaticlly added with all the information !
Thanks Fraesh for keeping the VPDB up to date that DBM is using.
pretty need feature, right ?

thanks to @scutters  for getting DBM up to date as well
 

 

[Mike_da_Spike]

@scutters and I just released version 2023.9.14.0
This is mostly an internal release, but we improved some speeds (again) as well

The code is upgraded to .net framework 4.8 as framework 4.0 is out of support by Microsoft.
This means that only operating systems with W7 Sp1 and higher can run this program.
W7 SP1 extended support ended on jan 2020, so if you are still running an older OS, try to upgrade it.

Our main goal is actually move to .net Core (6 or 7), but this needs much more adjustments.

If you don't have .net framework 4.8, you can download it as well, on the download page of DBM it self

if you encounter any issue, please let us know. We tried to test everything and do modifications where needed, but hey ! We are still humans too 

Big thanks again to @scutters for helping out this release

[Dacstyle]

Hello Friends,

Thank you very much for creating this DATABASE MANAGER. It works excellently and makes the task of keeping so many tables updated much easier.

From what I could see, .ini files are not supported, right?

For example, if I update a table and the name of the file changes, the database manager should also change the name of the .ini file.

[Mike_da_Spike]

4 hours ago, Dacstyle said:

Hello Friends,

Thank you very much for creating this DATABASE MANAGER. It works excellently and makes the task of keeping so many tables updated much easier.

From what I could see, .ini files are not supported, right?

For example, if I update a table and the name of the file changes, the database manager should also change the name of the .ini file.

Hello friend,

Thank you for your message.

On this moment DBA doesn't support VPX 10.8 INI'S yet as VPX is still in beta.

But @scuttersand I already discussed this and it will be added when VPX 10.8 will be released. We also discussed the rename of the ini file when updating the table (and directb2s file).

It's on our list and in our minds, but nothing coded yet. 

So be patience and all will work out with new release after vpx releases the final version 

[Mike_da_Spike]

Thanks to @Dacstyle (see previous posts), @scutters and I made for VPX systems aware of INI files that are used by VPX 10.8 (still beta !)

We had some delay as I had a long term 'hospital visit', but Scutters took all care of it (thanks mate !)
First to get INI(or pov) / VBS support for VP systems, you need to enable the option in the settings (if you already had POV/VBS, you can skip this)

And set Ini/Vbs to yes

click close 

Yo now have can see INI / VBS files for your VPX systems

If you don't have an INI file, you can create it by right clicking on the white cog icon and select 'Create new'

The following icon will be showed if an INI is created/present :

If you want to view/edit, you can click on the icon (left click will open it, right click will open the standard menu for multipple actions)

If you still have POV files, it will show you the POV icon.

POV can still be used with VPX 10.8, but if you want to make a 'per table' setting and create an INI as well, it gets messy.
When a POV and INI file are detected , you will see the following Icon :

Edit your table within VPX , make sure you have made your POV settings and save them to the INI file and delete the POV file !

Another new feature is that we finally could make use of HTTP/FTP background processing (since the move to .net 4.8 ASYNC function is available)
What will you notice as user ?
if you use Database manager on an internet connected PC, you will already notice that the interface starts quicker.
If you use the GameEx FTP server from Database Manager, you noticed when clicking the first time on an FTP request, it takes some time to gather the information.
We tried to avoid this now !

old method :

new method:

 

@scutters also discovered that if you enabled IPV6 and you don't use it, that DBM could work slow and could take up 30 seconds to load.
the above background processing should avoid it, but he also made a note in the documentation about it.
Our recommendation : if you don't use IPV6, disable it on your network !

It looks like the changes are small, but like a car, we modified the engine a lot !
 

thanks @scutters for all your work and getting Mike v2.0 happy this year (internal joke)
We (well mostly me) already have plans for a next release, but first we wanted to share this with you !

 

[Mike_da_Spike]

@scuttersand myself released a relative small update.
well small for the end users, but a big one for code.

When you use Database Manager on windows 10 or higher with applications set to dark mode, you will see huge difference when the application is launching.

it could be looks like this : 

yes, DBM now has a dark mode as well and on first launch it will use the theme setting from the operating system.

You don't like the dark theme (or you have light theme and want to switch to dark ?), just go t settings and toggle the theme button. The program will restart and you have the selected theme.

 

Another small addition is something that was on the release calendar for a longer period, but never came to it (although it was an easy one).
A help button on the main form that will open the user documentation (a default PDF reader must be installed and associate with .PDF files)

 
Just 2 small things.

We hope you like it.
As usual, big thanks to @scuttersfor his help, ideas, testing and coding (and changing images to be used in dark mode ).

 

[Mike_da_Spike]

Version 24.03.04.0 released.

This is just a small bug fix release for a couple of dark mode issues.
thanks to @burno_sardine for letting us know that the buttons where not coloured on his system (and we discovered that it has to do with language)

Also 2 small other issues detected that are fixed

Thanks to @scuttersfor his enormous support and quick code modifications

[Mike_da_Spike]

Version 24.03.26.0 released.

Some parts of DBM rely on the connection of internet.
Just think of checking new version of DBM, getting media from FTP or MEGA links and also the download of the virtual pinball spreadsheet.

as we only did a check for internet during launch of the program, there wasn't an option to do a retry of the internet connection.

if during launch, or even use of the program , discovers that internet connection drops, it will come up with an icon in the top right corner:

 

this indicates that internet connection could not be established and failed. Clicking on this icon will re-do the internet test. If it still fails, nothing changes, but if can connect to internet, it will reset the status and internet options will be available again

The Virtual Pinball Spreadsheet, updated their backend to V2.0, and also their DB moved.
to get all to work, we changed DBM to use  V2.0 as well.
If you use table versions/theme's or any other data from VPS, you are good with this version.

We also updated our internal IPDB with the all the latest tables up to IPDB nr 7052. 
We noticed that some IPDB entries didn't have a year number. 
We tried to add those from the VPS data we imported. 

We also fixed some bugs we discovered. Maybe not all the bugs are mentioned in the release notes, as we fix on going and forgot what we fixed, but the most imported are :

• Darkmode - Unicode characters not displayed correctly in VP versions
• Darkmode - New Version icon background incorrect colour
• 'Loading media mode' check improved
• IPDB import (bulk and single) could result to error DBNULL
• 'Table versions' could results in double entries

And a small update we did is on the 'busy' animated gif (in the corner of the action log)
This icon was sometimes not spinning correctly. 
We tried to fix this, to calculate every frame and show them in a separate process.
Sometimes it still not shows fine, but think it is better than it was.

A big thanks to @scutters for his great help on this release as well
I can't say it enough, but he is the one who made it happen that DBM is alive 
thanks mate for all your help in the 4 1/2 years we worked on DBM !

[Mike_da_Spike]

Version 2024.04.15.0 released:

We've made a small but significant update to the IPDB dialog form, both manual and bulk. We understand that some users prefer not to have the word "The" as the starting word of a game title. In the wheel menu of Pinball X, games beginning with "The" are traditionally listed under 'T', which can be counterintuitive for those looking for 'The Flintstones' under 'F', 'The Addams Family' under 'A', or 'The Who's Tommy Pinball Wizard' under 'W'. 

To address this, we've introduced a new feature within the IPDB dialog. Now, you have the option to either move "The" to the end of a table name or remove it entirely. This adjustment will help locate your favorite games where you naturally expect them to be.

Simply set up your preference once within the IPDB dialog, and all future IPDB changes will automatically apply this option, streamlining your gaming experience.

Here's a small example video to show:

In addition to other improvements, we've addressed some minor bugs in the bulk FTP dialog. While it may not be widely used, we believe in refining all aspects of our software.

Special thanks to @scutters for his assistance in making this release possible.

Edited April 15 by Mike_da_Spike
typo corrected