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Time is money folks .. nothing new with that. If you can get 100/200/500+ tables setup in an hour by buying a download/dvd/flash drive .. people will do it. Happens in mame as well.
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I totally agree with Thalamus’ and Randr’s last posts.
Yes, one could make an “install and have fun after an hour” stuff installing everything plus 500 tables and then? You have a brick frozen in time. I think all of us know, it is following the evolution and development which makes this hobby REALLY thrilling. And what was worth the hard way to come so far.
Don’t get me wrong I don’t wanna argue from some elite point (“now that I walked this hard way it cannot be that people, who don’t want to work hard, get the same”) nor from a moral way (“if it’s too easy they will not appreciate it”) but simply I think it is too much in movement to be some kind of easy way mainstream hobby. Only think of the many hardware options or the current topper thing (no, I did not catch up, yet) or color DMD or anything you did not have time yet to test it. This is amazing, from an objective point of view not soooo many people do really big things together, almost every week there’s something new and in it’s way cool out there. And I think people getting a quick setup system would have fun for half a year and then are left behind or want more, but don’t know how. Given, that building or buying a Cab is expensive in any way this is not satisfying.
So, no, I am not a fan of the aim for a quick setup.
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Everyone is different. I have a very high appreciation for VP because I was one of those who struggled to get it to work. There were many many times I nearly threw in the towel because I was frustrated (needless to say I am not a programmer). However spending hours getting to know how VP works and then playing all of these tables and seeing the technical progress within the community, very rewarding for me. Fun community too.
With that said my pinball friends have no interest in learning VP. It’s too much work for them, they don’t feel like they have time, or only consider playing real pinball. For the first group mentioned buying a cab with VP and hundreds of tables seems more appealing.
To each their own.
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I like playing with stuff daily, updates, code, testing tables and whatever else comes my way, it keeps everything interesting. But I can totally understand the fast track.
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I think a system to install hundreds of tables at a time would greatly diminish the enjoyment of doing it a table at a time. If you installed that many tables, how many would you even try? Personally, a little effort and learning never hurt anybody and I’m proud to belong “to an elite band of hobbyists.” I worked hard and long to get here, one table at a time.
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1 user thanked author for this post.
Andy, I think you’re missing an important point here. Creating a fast track to our hobby would dilute the experience for all VP enthusiasts. For most of us playing the games is only half of the experience. VP was never meant to become mainstream, that’s what makes it appealing to us enthusiasts willing to invest the time and effort mastering it. None of what we do here is turnkey material, it requires endless tweaks and improvements and that’s the fun of it. I like having options of 6 different backglasses and 3 different roms, it does not need to be easier to participate than it already is. Personally, I don’t want every Dick and Harry gaining easy access to this stuff just to flood our forums with endless support requests.
Hobbies are supposed to be like that, challenging, time consuming but ultimately rewarding if you’re willing to go the extra mile. Take motorsports for example: learning how to build a 1000HP fire breathing race car IS part of the experience, racing is the cherry on top. And then after every race you must be willing to learn from your mistakes, tweak, rebuild, make it better and race again. It’s an endless cycle of blood, tears, continuing improvement and ultimately realizing joy after getting things right. What good would be selling a car like that to general public?? Wouldn’t they be better off with a Honda Civic? Face it: TPA, FX2 are the Honda Civic of virtual pinball. Leave the race car building and racing to true enthusiasts.
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I love visual pinball and I enjoy the set-up and testing of new tables and totally understand that for enthusiasts that is a big part of the hobby, but that doesn’t mean it has to be like that for everyone. It also doesn’t mean that if someone came to the hobby via an easier route that they wouldn’t develop into an enthusiast or even a talented table author in the future. I am really struggling with the mind set of some in this hobby and that is what I am trying to challenge with this thread. I have come to Visual Pinball from the arcade collecting and arcade emulation scene. One of the main goals of Mame was the preservation of classic arcade games so that they can be played and enjoyed by generations to come. I and many others in the scene have put in huge amounts of effort tracking down and restoring machines. Tracking down rare roms to ensure they are not lost and improving the emulation and experience that pulls it all together. Over time it has become much easier for someone with little knowledge or experience to play these games via emulation and that is exactly what the community wants.
Last weekend I was at an event called Revival in the UK where quite a few of my friends from the arcade scene take their arcade machines and pinball machines that they have spent lots of time fixing and restoring to the event for other people to play and enjoy. They do this at their own expense, hiring vans to move all the machines. This is all to enable others to benefit and enjoy their hard work and experience something they would otherwise not get a chance too. Kids get a chance to play and experience games that they would otherwise not see. My point is that Visual Pinball has a chance to be that for pinball. My five year old son loves playing my visual pinball table and it how he has learnt to play pinball. One of my friends from the arcade scene enjoyed playing Super Mario Pinball on my visual pinball cab and went and tracked down a real one and bought it. I actually think we discredit the hard work done by all contributors to visual pinball, by keeping this to ourselves and not encouraging a wider audience to get involved and enjoy what has been created. I am sure most people who create tables would want as many people as possible to enjoy their hard work, so long as they are correctly credited for their work. I disagree that creating a fast track to our hobby would dilute the experience for all Visual Pinball enthusiasts. I would actually argue that in the arcade scene it has enhanced it for enthusiasts, but has also enabled others to enjoy it at different levels. This is a great hobby, let’s not keep it to ourselves, but use our experience to enable more people to enjoy it.
Also if this is going to happen I would much rather see this develop from within the community, rather than have it done to the community by people outside trying to profit from other peoples work.
My Arcade set-up
My son playing Spiderman at Revival
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I remember long ago when the VP guys were buttholes (well that must have been last week, LOL). Anyway, it was like the good ol boys club many years ago. If you didn’t understand how to install VP on your own, well, you were shit out of luck. They were like snobs that didn’t want to help you, no matter what, even with me begging for help. So I went off to play Future Pinball, the people were a lot nicer on the flip side and it was an easy install. After playing FP for a couple of years , I said to myself, I’ll give VP9 a try, just one more time (fingers crossed), because the software had many of the tables that I wanted to play. The VP programmers made the software a bit easier to install over time (ex: VP8), so thanks for that and so here I am today. It’s a bit overwhelming, all of the work that goes into one big pot to let me play these tables. Enough for now, back to playing.
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Revival Video posted by someone else.
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I play Mortal Kombat XL now, that would be like me installing a cassette player in my car again. Looks fun though.
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That looks like a great retro event :). I almost grew up in the arcades and have always been very much active in the arcade/gaming scene.
In my view the visual pinball software platform has grown into a very mature phase. If you leave early adopters in new beta developments out of the equation the platform is now fairly easy to install and available for a larger audience to enjoy and very well supported. As a community this is great and new enthusiastic people find their way in playing visual pinball. The downside of this is that it is becoming interesting for some to commercialize of it and make money, hence the deal packages (cabinet + fully loaded software) you find around the internet.
This platform enables talented people to develop high quality table recreations and originals that demonstrate the power of the platform and the skills of the people involved. I can only imagine how impressed commercial software companies are of the achievements made by this community and in the process take on some of the stuff they see developed and copy that in their own work.
Many companies that become successful at what they do experience similar challenges the community currently faces. They also see there precious products copied and sold by ‘third parties’ who do not own the license to do so. This is the challenge we as a community face and we need to find a way to deal with this development collectively. You cannot stop progress and we should be proud of what has been achieved over the years and support each other in the further development and maturity of the visual pinball community.
In open communities like this money always creates unnecessary frictions between parties but to me this is very logical. What would happen if in a charity project and some charity members all of a sudden start asking money for the unselfishness deeds and also get this?
Imho the only way it worked in the past and how it could/should work in the future within this community is via donations of free will. People can decide themselves if they want to support someone in their efforts or achievements and donate something to them. It’s also a nice way to enable people to show their gratitude towards someone other than a Thank You via the forum.
The hosting community can support this by seeking alignment on a donation interface that is recognizable for members and provides a low level entry possibility if wanted to donate towards a member to the community for their efforts or achievements.
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Nothing wrong with donations. Vpu has a good system that I used a few times (thanks to everyone who donated!) but on the whole, when I started getting special requests for tables and mods and things like that, I feel like people get the wrong idea. This is all for fun to me, I don’t want it to be a chore. That’s just me, donations are fine and a great way to show support to contributors, but for me it was making me feel like this was now what I didn’t want it to be. I hope everyone else sees it differently, I’m a weirdo. Not like chicken little but I always see the negative side and it consumes me. Money isn’t the root of all evil unless you only see it that way
Punch it!
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Wow, Â i missed all this drama. Â What happened here. Â Guess I’ve been out of the loop for a while.
Better grab some tables from over there before they are gone.
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Wow, i missed all this drama. What happened here. Guess I’ve been out of the loop for a while. Better grab some tables from over there before they are gone.
popcorn
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Wow, i missed all this drama. What happened here. Guess I’ve been out of the loop for a while. Better grab some tables from over there before they are gone.
Sorry about the drama boss :(
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Messing with the VPinball app and push notifications.
So if you haven't downloaded app yet what are you waiting for!?
for IOS and Android********************************************************
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Boss, Â it’s all good. Â We’ve all had our fair share of drama. Â It all works out in the end.
Been enjoying a much needed break. Â Hope to be back to vp shortly.
Playing wit emulation and attract mode front end right now on my htpc and building a ps1 powered by a raspberry pi.
I read all the threads. Â I think a lot of this is all over reaction.
But what do i know.
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Raspberry pi! very cool!
I sure like messing with those but most my pi projects are now kodi boxes :) kinda boring for a pi project but kodi is very neat
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Messing with the VPinball app and push notifications.
So if you haven't downloaded app yet what are you waiting for!?
for IOS and Android********************************************************
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Unclewilly returns!!!!!!
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