PinballX 5.15 - Menu Applications

[scutters]

Hi Tom,

Thought i'd have a play with the menu applications added in 5.15 to get a feel of how they work . For now just using notepad.exe as the executable to play with.

A few things cropped up;

1. When i first added an enabled menu application it did not appear in PinballX.  I had to toggle the Enabled value in settings off and then back on for the Enabled=True line to be added to the ini file. After that the Applications menu appeared in PinballX.
2. There is no drop down in Settings for the menu applications, so the only way to add more than one application is to edit the ini file directly and add [App_2] etc manually. 
3. When launching the app PinballX treats it is launching a system and clears the backglass\dmd windows etc. I think this could be useful sometimes (if directly launching a game) but if the exe is just being used to toggle a value somewhere with a script that takes <1sec or something else that runs with no gui before you launch a table it might not look great visually hiding and then showing the game media again. Could an option be added via a flag in menu applications settings to not hide game media when set?

Thanks for the new feature, I think it'll be pretty useful! 

log.txtPinballX.ini

[Tom Speirs]

Okay, thanks, but no dropdown in settiongs and not appearing? Are you sure?

[Tom Speirs]

Oh yeah, I see

[Tom Speirs]

My bad/bug for first two. Fixed today. New version out in a minute.

[Tom Speirs]

(5.17 out). 1 & 2 should be resolved. I look at 3 for the next release.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Mike_da_Spike]

Good catch Scutters and sorry Tom I didn't check it yet. (-shame-) 
I have some ideas to use this, but limited time because of work and private life.
Thanks for updating this already

[scutters]

Thanks Tom, i'll give it a go later on

 

[scutters]

Tried v5.18,

Can confirm issues 1 and 2 are resolved 

The option not to hide media works too for dmd/Backglass, could it also be respected for playfield?. Also just notices the menu applications are limited to exe files, could .bat,  .ahk etc be added too  for simple scripts?

Happy for this to be closed as resolved anyway, i can add the last couple of bits as feature requests if you want.

Thanks

[scutters]

Another follow up question Tom,

Should Application Menu launches cause any events to be raised for plugins?. They don't appear to at the moment (but i may have messed up in my testing).

It might be useful to raise the usual Event_GameExit/Run events setting SystemName to the [App_n] number and GameName\GameDescription to the application name or something so plugins have visibility that something happened (even if they then choose to ignore it)

Just a thought anyway 

 

Edit - I was being a bit shoddy with my testing. It looks like PinballX does raise events for plugins with Application menu launches, but the parameters are not set, so in the plugin when reading the GameName/SystemName in EventRun/Exit it actually just results in an 'Object reference not set to an instance of an object' exception.   Can the variables be set in PinballX for Application menu launches? - if not i can change the plugins to assume an application menu launch took place when not set. Thanks.

[Tom Speirs]

I guess great mind think alike as I was thinking along the lines. ill get to it. Thanks.