[GUIDE] PINemHI Leaderboard setup and use

[Mike_da_Spike]

I just wanted to bring PINemHI leaderboard again to everybody's attention.
This small program from @Dna Disturber is really awesome, light weighted and super easy to use.

What does it do ?

PINemHi LeaderBoard is a program that catches the score and specialscores from player 1
The normal score doesn't have to be on the hiscore table of the game, even scores like 1000 can be submitted.
Special scores however can only be submitted if they are over the score of the hiscore table.
Special scores are for instance , 20 loops (back to the future) or 50 martians killed (attack from mars) and so on...
If you wanna go for SPECIAL SCORES the use of a new,clean nvram might be handy as you can get the scores more easy (especially helpful when trying to get a challenge)

If you have a nice score, just don't start a new game but just quit the game, PINemHi LeaderBoard will do the rest.
When quitting a game you don't have to rush , just as long as you don't start a new game the score(s) can be retrieved.

The scores are sent to the website http://pinemhi.com/hiscores.php
Here you can look at your scores and the scores from others and even do challenges.

In the new version of PINemHi Leaderboard it is not necessary to use a plugin for a frontend.
There is a monitor that you start and that will monitor for activity.
You can play in a frontend or just by starting visual pinball. 
The monitor wil register your scores. At the moment 131 games are supported.

During a game it now also is possible to see your top 10 best scores that are on pinemhi leaderboard by pressing a button
and of course special scores that you made (for example 20 loops), 
Also you can add 9 friends to see their scores as well
you can see the top 10 best score for a table from people that joined the online leaderboard
you can see the cup standings top 10 and your place in the cup
Icing on the cake, there is a badges system in place that you can bring up during gameplay to see what kind of achievements you have made ! 
More icing on the cake , there is a challenge system that you can start with a single press of a button 
 

Installation

Download from http://www.pinemhi.com/ (right upper corner)
You can unzip the files to any folder you like.
If you have an older version of pinemhi installed then i would recommend to rename the old pinemhi.ini as you might need some data from that to put in the new pinemhi.ini file.

First thing to do after the unzip is to set the pinemhi_rom_monitor file to always execute with administrator rights.
You can do this by right clicking and then properties,compatibility and there you will see the option to turn on execute as administrator

open pinemhi.ini with your favorite text editor (I prefer notepad)
And adjust the following settings :

[paths]
VP=C:\Visual Pinball\nvram\
FP=C:\Future Pinball\fpRAM\

Set the paths to VpinMame and Future pinball nvrams and fprams folder
Set the paths and remember that the last character must be a \

By default the 3 options are set to enabled. You can change this by setting this to 0

[options]
replays=1
hiscores=1
buyins=1

replays - this shows the replays when on
hiscores - this shows the hiscores when on
buyins - this shows the buyin hiscores when on

For getting an account to send statistics, go to http://www.pinemhi.com/hiscores.php  to register your name and get a code
put these in the user section

[user]
name=XXXXXXXX
code=YYYYYY

 

The key section is to set a keyboard key to get challenges and information on screen
Challenges are to be displayed in your frontend and information is during gameplay
I hope this will be changed, so we can use a button as well (instead of a keyboard key)
 

[keys]
key=l
challengekey=`

I would suggest you pick a key that is not used by visual pinball or the frontend as the key will not function during gameplay, only to show the popups of course
challengekey, this is the key to start your challenges with

In the display section you can change how the information.chalanges are presented to you

Don't forget to set cabinetview=1 if you use a cabinet (this will rotate the information popup)

[display]
fontcolor=cFFFFFF
bgcolor=c000000
font=courier
fontsize=s10
fontspecial=bold
no_background=0
no_badges_background=1
cabinetview=1
screen=1

The online part will let you choose what you want to display

[online]
personal_scores=1
personal_special_scores=1
best_scores=1
friend_scores=1
cup_scores=1
badges=1
challengeskill=1   

challengeskill is the level of challenges you want (1 = kiddie , 2 = normal , 3 = insane) would recommend kiddie to start with 

Add your friend(s) (maximum is 9) using their PINemHi Leaderboard name 

[friends]
friend1=
friend2=
friend3=
friend4=
friend5=
friend6=
friend7=
friend8=
friend9=

This looks hard, but this is a one time setup

Now you need to do is run pinemhi_rom_monitor.exe at startup of Windows, so it will run always in the background

If you run Visual Pinball with highest privileges (admin mode), you need to run PinEmhi Monitor also with high privilege.

For some reasons , the program didn't want to run as admin when it runs automaticly.
Although the EXE was set as run as admin, the program runs as normal user
I created a little batch file that will run the monitor always as admin (Adjust last line with the correct path)
This is only needed when running VP or FP as admin !

 

@echo off

REM  --> Check for permissions
>nul 2>&1 "%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\cacls.exe" "%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\config\system"

REM --> If error flag set, we do not have admin.
if '%errorlevel%' NEQ '0' (
    echo Requesting administrative privileges...
    goto UACPrompt
) else ( goto gotAdmin )

:UACPrompt
    echo Set UAC = CreateObject^("Shell.Application"^) > "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    set params = %*:"=""
    echo UAC.ShellExecute "cmd.exe", "/c %~s0 %params%", "", "runas", 0 >> "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"

    "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    del "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    exit /B

:gotAdmin
    pushd "%CD%"
    CD /D "%~dp0"

C:\Pinball\PinemHI\pinemhi_rom_monitor.exe

For this an UAC will popup, but I disabled UAC popup on my system.

And now use it !
Within your favorite front end press the challenge key and a new challenge will start 

If you start a challenge it will show you what table you must play and what the challenge is  
Just start the table and play ! But remember. When exiting this table, it will check at that moment the players 1 highscore !
So if you want to submit your score, after the "Game over", just exit the table and highscore will be submitted 

If you just want to set highscores, go to http://www.pinemhi.com/hiscores.php
This page will show you the last submitted highscore from any user

 
Click on the 'HI-SCore Section'
And you can selection per user the stats. Also per table



If you select your name and hit submit, you can see your stats.

You can see also the NOT played games (The tables under highscore and not played are the  tables that are supported now)
You can also earn badges.

It's very fun and you can show the rest of the world how you play (pretty bad, looking at my scores  but I just set it up)

Thanks again DNS Disturber for this tool that is already years available and still maintained
I used a lot of texts from his installation manual and hope that more people will use this program.

  EDIT :

On 10/11/2020 at 1:16 PM, scutters said:

@Dna Disturber Has confirmed that joystick buttons can be used in this section using the format JoyN.  Example for buttons 3 and 11

[keys]
key=Joy3
challengekey=Joy11

Also worth noting, i didn't need to setup the launch as admin script. For me a creating a shortcut to 'pinemhi_rom_monitor.exe'  set to run as admin dropped in the windows startup folder worked.

edit - i'd also suggest keeping the leaderboard files in their own folder (rather than in the main pinballx folder, to stop the pinemhi.ini file getting overwritten during pinbballx updates)

KBE91's discovered the ability to use the Shift, Control, and Windows keys in combination with other keys. For instance, using '+m' as a hotkey triggers the action assigned to the 'Shift+M' key combination. Detailed combinations and their effects can be explored in the AutoHotkey documentation for hotkeys. https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/v1/Hotkeys.htm
Example:

key=+m

above will trigger when you press 'Shift" and 'm'

Edited October 2 by Mike_da_Spike
added Key instructions

[Dna Disturber]

Thanks Mike,

Couldn't have explained it better myself
Hopefully we'll see more people using it and have ourselves a friendly competition.
 

Dna Disturber

 

[Fulltilt]

Great instructions ..yes I need get back into this! Checked the website and I actually have a few points and a few unlocked achievements

Posted a few scores for AFM ..working great!

Thanks for all the hard work and continued updates DNA Disturber.

[scutters]

On 9/15/2020 at 8:27 AM, Mike_da_Spike said:

Challenges are to be displayed in your frontend and information is during gameplay
I hope this will be changed, so we can use a button as well (instead of a keyboard key)

@Dna Disturber Has confirmed that joystick buttons can be used in this section using the format JoyN.  Example for buttons 3 and 11

[keys]
key=Joy3
challengekey=Joy11

Also worth noting, i didn't need to setup the launch as admin script. For me a creating a shortcut to 'pinemhi_rom_monitor.exe'  set to run as admin dropped in the windows startup folder worked.

edit - i'd also suggest keeping the leaderboard files in their own folder (rather than in the main pinballx folder, to stop the pinemhi.ini file getting overwritten during pinbballx updates)

[scutters]

@Dna Disturber has now added a weekly challenge, which is a game of the week high score competion http://pinemhi.com/weekchallenge.php

No reason not to sign up and compete if your cab's online!

[Mike_da_Spike]

52 minutes ago, scutters said:

@Dna Disturber has now added a weekly challenge, which is a game of the week high score competion http://pinemhi.com/weekchallenge.php

No reason not to sign up and compete if your cab's online!

And congratulations to our own @scutterswho won the first weekly challenge and will always be the first who won the weekly challenge!

[Draco1962]

You may or may not know it but we have a forum dedicated to Hi-Score comps..

https://www.gameex.info/forums/forum/42-hi-score-competitions/

 

[davy33]

Hi! Pinhemhi work if i set it in "launch before" in settings?instead of running it at startup windows...I have small ram every octets count

[scutters]

54 minutes ago, davy33 said:

Hi! Pinhemhi work if i set it in "launch before" in settings?instead of running it at startup windows...I have small ram every octets count

I'm not sure how well that would work as you'd also need a 'launch after' to stop pinemhi monitor - and that may stop the monitor before it has had chance to read the score from nvram and submit it to the leaderboard. Nothing to stop you trying it, but pinemhi is tiny really so i don't think it'll be much of a factor even on low ram systems. I'd try it starting with windows and see how you get on.

[Mike_da_Spike]

I have pinemhi also run in a startup script. 

I will post tomorrow how I set that up.

I think it will work as well, but 5 min challange will be not possible, but as scutters said, you can have issues when closing it 

[Mike_da_Spike]

As promised.
What you can do is a startup script for Visual Pinball tables

tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq pinemhi_rom_monitor.exe" 2>NUL | find /I /N "pinemhi_rom_monitor.exe">NUL
if "%ERRORLEVEL%"=="0" goto SKIPPINEMHI
cd C:\Pinball\PinemHI\
start C:\Pinball\PinemHI\pinemhi_rom_monitor.exe
:SKIPPINEMHI

And for starting any other (non visual basic), you can add the following to your launch script (and maybe at end of Pinballx)

taskkill /FI "IMAGENAME eq pinemhi_rom_monitor.exe" /f

This will make sure that your pinemhi monitor is running when launching Visual Pinball and will be killed if you launch a non visual pinball table.
So you properly don't have to worry that the score isn't retrieved from the nvram file.

But : As Pinemhi is an AHK file that is running in the background, I don't think it will have  a lot of resources (BUT I can say that with an I7 7th gen and 16 GB of ram)

Let me know if this make sense to you

[roskoroswell]

Where it is said, "open pinemhi.ini with your favorite text editor (I prefer notepad) And adjust the following settings :" I got very confused as my .ini files did not have any of that.  And yet, I am working with version 1.3.1 which I think is the most curent.  Should I just be adding it all manually then in text editor and saving?

 

Edit: Okay, I'm a noob.  I realized that the new version is 3.3.1 not 1.3.1.  Working with it now.  Will save my silly questions for later after more diligence.

 

Edited February 17, 2022 by roskoroswell
mistake to correct

[scutters]

19 minutes ago, roskoroswell said:

Where it is said, "open pinemhi.ini with your favorite text editor (I prefer notepad) And adjust the following settings :" I got very confused as my .ini files did not have any of that.  And yet, I am working with version 1.3.1 which I think is the most curent.  Should I just be adding it all manually then in text editor and saving?

 

Latest version is 3.3.1 (maybe 1.3.1 is a typo?). Download from http://www.pinemhi.com/, the zip there should have the ini file with all the sections.

I'd download and try again, maybe your file was corrupted somehow.

[roskoroswell]

Yup, had wrong version.  Got it now and on the board.  Check me out, I will be at the bottom...but climbing.  Let's go!!!

[Mike_da_Spike]

Welcome to pinemhi ! Check also the weekly challanges (also a very good plugin created for pinballx and an pinemhi api launcher).

 

[Mike_da_Spike]

Just saw this on vpf :

Quote

New version is here  PINemHi and PINemHi Leaderboard v3.6.2

 

 

The new version can be downloaded from http://pinemhi.com/

I would recommend to overwrite all files on previous install , maybe rename your old pinemhi.ini first to have the paths and user and code easily copied to the new pinemhi.ini file (and other settings of course)
You should only copy the values from your old pinemhi.ini as there are new settings that need to be in there

Also don't forget to stop pinemhi_rom_monitor before you overwrite the files
Leave the rom section in the new pinemhi.ini intact as this has been altered to work with the newer version of vpinmame as well

 

Whatsnew:

***************************
PINemHi Version 3.6.2
***************************

Added the following games to PINemHi LeaderBoard:
The Simpsons
Michael Jordan
Laser War
Playboy 35th Anniversary
Monday Night Football
Atlantis
Blackwater 100
Truck Stop
Escape from the Lost World
Dungeons & Dragons
Heavy Metal Meltdown
Party Animal
Hardbody
City Slicker
Strange Science
Special Force
MotorDome
Black Belt

 

Badges added to PINemHi Leaderboard:
Scores
-------
All of the above (new) games

Special scores
--------------
The Simpsons (loops)
Monday Night Football (loops)
World Challenge Soccer (most goals and world champ)
Gladiators (beast slayer)
Teed Off (holes in one)
Street Fighter II (the master)
Operation: Thunder (five star general)
Surf n Safari (rapids record)
Car Hop (record heat wave)
Hoops (high basket points)
Vegas (slot king)
Title Fight (highest punches)
Silver Slugger (highest runs to date)
Lights Camera Action! (5 of  kind)
Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles (Data East) (loops)
Checkpoint (loops and speed record)
Robocop (ramp jumps)
 

Important !
Submitting a score can now be done in game using a button/key of your choice or f3 (vpinmame reset).
Best way to do that is after a complete game played.
When you do it in the middle of a game you can get pinball missing message starting a new game.
If you get a lot of missing pinball messages even after completed games revert to the old method (exiting a game)

 

PINemHi Changes:

Added 161 roms in total (more details about them are in whatsnew.txt)

 

New games supported:
Aaron Spelling
Agents 777
Ali
Amazon Hunt II
Amazon Hunt III
Andromeda
Atleta
Attack
Attila The Hun
Big Game
Black Velvet
Break
301/Bullseye
Bushido
Camel Lights
Catacomb
Cerberus
Cheetah
Cheech & Chong: Road-Trip'pin
Chuck-A-Luck
The Clash
Old Coney Island!
Corsario
Captain Hook
Cue
Cyclopes
Dale Jr.
Dracula
Dragonfist

Bugs fixed PINemHi:
Star Light (L-1)=strlt_l1.nv, not showing all 4 high scores