Shout Out to Scutters and Mike_da_Spike!!!

[lees1964]

I'm not sure exactly where to put this, but since it was PinballX AND Visual PinballX AND Future Pinball that these guys helped me with, this seems like the best spot for it. 

  Scutters and Mike_da_Spike - These two guys have been the most patient, helpful, considerate people I've met in ALL of the virtual pinball forums that I post in.  Without their help I would surely have never figured this all out.  These forums are only as good as the members who are willing to interact and help, and these two guys are the GOLD STANDARD when it comes to that.  I'm including a few pics of my cabinet that, thanks to them, is now working perfectly!  (note the "Hellcat" cut outs behind the speaker grills   I drive a Super Stock Challenger - Really just a modified Redeye Hellcat - Made those gems with my 3D printer, and they ended up looking even better than I thought they would.  I may even go with a Hellcat theme for the cabinet - black and red, just like my car )

[Draco1962]

Thanks for the post! @Mike_da_Spikeand @scuttersare fantastic in lending support to the community on all levels. 

That is certainly a nice cab - maybe when time permits you can post a thread with your setup details and some more pics/videos in the Gamer Rigs Forum!

 

[Mike_da_Spike]

Thanks for the nice words and really awesome cab you have ! 

I see your frontend can be tweaked a bit more  . You can add an underlay and wheel images. 

But first : play pinball!

Edit: I see that your buttons have lights, do you use DOF for that as well ? 
Not sure if I see it correctly, but does your speakers also have lights ? If so, how did you mount that ?

As @Draco1962mentioned, create your story in the gamers rig thread.
I put my build there as well :(and also mention some modifications I added later)

 

[scutters]

@lees1964Thanks mate! 

Good looking cab you've got there but you do need to sort yourself out some wheel images, but you can leave that for a while.... now it's time to play!!!

[lees1964]

10 hours ago, Mike_da_Spike said:

Thanks for the nice words and really awesome cab you have ! 

I see your frontend can be tweaked a bit more  . You can add an underlay and wheel images. 

But first : play pinball!

Edit: I see that your buttons have lights, do you use DOF for that as well ? 
Not sure if I see it correctly, but does your speakers also have lights ? If so, how did you mount that ?

As @Draco1962mentioned, create your story in the gamers rig thread.
I put my build there as well :(and also mention some modifications I added later)

 

I just read through your build, Mike, and WOW!  What an AWESOME looking cabinet!  I LOVE the clock, and I have something similar that came through our warehouse a while back (I own a liquidation company, so we get all sorts of odd things that roll through).  This is meant to be a "sign" rather than a clock, but the app that I eventually found to customize it, seems like it would be able to work similarly to what you have on yours.  The one I have is quite large (maybe 40" X 10"?) so I'm not sure how that might come out, bit perhaps a scrolling marquee from one side to the other? 

 

[Mike_da_Spike]

Those led displays looks nice too, but hard to show a dmd video on it from 128x32 leds as that height is 16 leds.

So you need to resize/remove half of the heighth to show on your display.

 

[lees1964]

46 minutes ago, Mike_da_Spike said:

Those led displays looks nice too, but hard to show a dmd video on it from 128x32 leds as that height is 16 leds.

So you need to resize/remove half of the heighth to show on your display.

 

That definitely makes sense.  I hadn't even thought about that.  Might have to look into getting one like you have. 

[Draco1962]

Would be cool if you had a DMD for the pin being played itself, but could send hi score data to yet another one.

[lees1964]

Quick, unrelated question (I hope Draco doesn't get mad at me for putting it here, lol).  The DMD editing screen that we talked about in the other thread, doesn't completely show on either my playfield monitor or my backglass monitor.  I've stretched it, resized it and done everything I can think of, but I can't make it so that I can see the bottom portion of that box (probably about 1/5 of the entire box).  I'm sure it has something to do with my resolution being fairly low (because the monitor is only 1360X768), but usually as box like that will have the slide bar on the right side so I can scroll down to see the bottom, yet this one doesn't have that.  Is there any way you can think of that I can PUT a slide bar on the side, or be able to see the bottom portion of that box? 

[Mike_da_Spike]

Not sure of I follow you.

So your DMD  is on the backglass. But it doesn't fit because of monitor resolution ?

 

 

[scutters]

14 hours ago, lees1964 said:

The DMD editing screen that we talked about in the other thread, doesn't completely show on either my playfield monitor or my backglass monitor

This screen?

I think all you could with that is temporarily change your screen resolution and make your changes. Don't change size or location of anything just change the other display info as you want and then change the display resolution back.

[Mike_da_Spike]

1 hour ago, scutters said:

This screen?

I think all you could with that is temporarily change your screen resolution and make your changes. Don't change size or location of anything just change the other display info as you want and then change the display resolution back.

Because I have a real DMD i never use/see this screen ..thanks mate !

[lees1964]

Sorry guys, I seem to have gotten two separate issues mixed together.  (by the way, Mike, I spent almost the entire day yesterday getting wheel images so my PBX would look better - AND IT DOES!  So thanks for suggesting that!  Still have to figure out underlays and overlays, but I'll save that for another day).  So the two separate issues are with the high score plugin (pinhimem I believe it's called - I'm at work so I don't have the cabinet handy to check), and the Freezy DMD program. 
  Pinhimem - This is the one that I can't fit on my screen.  It exhibits the issues in my post above, and is missing the slide bar on the right side that would allow me to get to what I presume would be the OK, Save, Exit buttons.  I've tried everything I can think of to get it to show, but nothing has worked so far.  I want to tweak that, HEAVILY, especially now that I have the wheel images coming through (Did I mention how much I LOVE that look?!?). 
  Freezy's DMD - This has worked BEAUTIFULLY ever since you and Scutters helped me figure out what I was doing wrong.  I can put it exactly where I want, size it, etc.  The problem I'm having is on the games that already have the scoring built in (I think maybe Alien Trilogy and Cue Ball Wizard are examples of this.  My work around was to make it as tiny as I could and drag it to a far corner of the screen, and though it is very small, it's still THERE and noticeable (especially to me) when the game is playing, and that just bugs me to no end.  I've read various posts in this and other forums relating to a similar issue that show the ability to show/hide DMD on a per game basis, but I've yet to figure out where that setting is located. 
  Underlays/Overlays - Since I'm on a roll here (and you may notice that I NEVER type a single sentence, or even a single paragraph, LOL).  I downloaded what was marked as an underlay (which I assumed was the portion that would go at the bottom of the screen - overlay being the portion at the top) and it looks like I was incorrect.  Either way, when I applied it in PBX it stretched almost to the top of the screen and was terribly distorted.  So I clearly have to resize that, but not sure if there's some type of guide on how to do it (I have a basic knowledge of the paint program and sizing images in general, so that's a good start, I just need to know a little more before I go changing everything).  I looked for information on overlay/underlay and found a TON of people showing what they had done to their cabinets, but not HOW they did it.  I also found almost NO underlay/overlay images on Google, so maybe the idea is that you find out the size you need and make your own?? 
  Let me say that, at 58, I have had a LOT of hobbies, but this pinball machine, both playing it AND working on it, has been one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done.  It's been frustrating, FOR SURE, but it's been a labor of love.  The last piece of news is this - A few weeks ago, I acquired a non-working 1979 Stern Magic pinball machine, complete with glass top, back glass, the whole works.  The mechanical portion is beyond working (though I will probably see if someone wants the physical playfield for parts, etc.) and the backglass was scraped off and painted black on the back side (it was owned by a church previously), AND the cabinet was painted a flat black (I guess there were images on the cabinet that the church found offensive as well).  So it's PERFECT for another build!  I even have a super fast PC with an i7 processor, 1080ti graphics card, 32gb of ram and I think a 3 or 5TB hdd.  I only need monitors, buttons, ipac2 (or might try a different option on this one), and a few other minor things.  I'm REALLY excited to get started on that one!  I will be making a post by post update on that build in the proper forum category so everyone can see the progress and MAYBE it will encourage someone else to get into this awesome hobby!  Thank you guys, AGAIN.  I couldn't have done ANY of this without you both! 

[scutters]

6 hours ago, lees1964 said:

Pinhimem - This is the one that I can't fit on my screen.  It exhibits the issues in my post above, and is missing the slide bar on the right side that would allow me to get to what I presume would be the OK, Save, Exit buttons.  I've tried everything I can think of to get it to show, but nothing has worked so far.  I want to tweak that, HEAVILY, especially now that I have the wheel images coming through (Did I mention how much I LOVE that look?!?). 

I think you might be talking about the stats plugin?, post a screenshot if not. Temporarily changing the resolution should still work either way.  

6 hours ago, lees1964 said:

Freezy's DMD - This has worked BEAUTIFULLY ever since you and Scutters helped me figure out what I was doing wrong.  I can put it exactly where I want, size it, etc.  The problem I'm having is on the games that already have the scoring built in (I think maybe Alien Trilogy and Cue Ball Wizard are examples of this.  My work around was to make it as tiny as I could and drag it to a far corner of the screen, and though it is very small, it's still THERE and noticeable (especially to me) when the game is playing, and that just bugs me to no end.  I've read various posts in this and other forums relating to a similar issue that show the ability to show/hide DMD on a per game basis, but I've yet to figure out where that setting is located. 

If you want to hide the DMD for games with segment scoring on the backglass then that's as simple as unchecking the 'use exeternal dmd'  checkbox in pinmame settings for the rom the table is using.

6 hours ago, lees1964 said:

Underlays/Overlays - Since I'm on a roll here (and you may notice that I NEVER type a single sentence, or even a single paragraph, LOL).  I downloaded what was marked as an underlay (which I assumed was the portion that would go at the bottom of the screen - overlay being the portion at the top) and it looks like I was incorrect.  Either way, when I applied it in PBX it stretched almost to the top of the screen and was terribly distorted.  So I clearly have to resize that, but not sure if there's some type of guide on how to do it (I have a basic knowledge of the paint program and sizing images in general, so that's a good start, I just need to know a little more before I go changing everything).  I looked for information on overlay/underlay and found a TON of people showing what they had done to their cabinets, but not HOW they did it.  I also found almost NO underlay/overlay images on Google, so maybe the idea is that you find out the size you need and make your own?? 

Think of underlays/overlays as layers, underlays appear under the wheel images, overlays on top of the wheel images. I don't think many people use overlays but like underlays you'll probably find some in the downloads section, on the FTP or in the media projects forum. Underlays can be full screen or the original style (bottom 1/3rd ish of the screen), that's controlled in Settings, under display settings, 'underlay image type' - having that setting at full screen for original style underlays will stretch the underlay as you noticed.

6 hours ago, lees1964 said:

The last piece of news is this - A few weeks ago, I acquired a non-working 1979 Stern Magic pinball machine, complete with glass top, back glass, the whole works.  The mechanical portion is beyond working (though I will probably see if someone wants the physical playfield for parts, etc.) and the backglass was scraped off and painted black on the back side (it was owned by a church previously), AND the cabinet was painted a flat black (I guess there were images on the cabinet that the church found offensive as well).  So it's PERFECT for another build!  I even have a super fast PC with an i7 processor, 1080ti graphics card, 32gb of ram and I think a 3 or 5TB hdd.  I only need monitors, buttons, ipac2 (or might try a different option on this one), and a few other minor things.  I'm REALLY excited to get started on that one! 

That's going to be awesome!... you're a full on vpin addict now! , looking forward to the build thread!!

 

[lees1964]

Thank you Scutters!  Question - How do I get to the DMD settings for specific games in pinmame?  That default screen looks familiar but I'm not sure where I saw it at.  I will try the resolution thing (almost did that anyway but was afraid I would mess something up, lol).  I will look and see what I can find on underlays on the forums here.  I'm pretty eager to get one that will work now that I've got the wheel images going.  DEFINITELY a full on Vpin addict, LOL! 

[lees1964]

I found it!!!  REwatched a video on Freezy's and there it was all along, lol!