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Bord you did a fantastic job on the primitives and lighting on this table!
Now I have to make it play right. I must admit that it’s been kind of hard to play VP after playing a real table because it only points out how crappy the physics on the tables that I’ve released are. I’ve been playing around with a number of settings and have come to the conclusion that setting the ball mass up to at least 1.5 is probably the best change that can be made to make VP play like the real thing. If the ball mass is 1, the balls don’t have enough momentum to them and they tend to just find a upper lane and just dive through. On a real pinball, the ball gracefully bounces around for a few seconds before settling on a lane to go though.
Of course when you set the ball mass up, you need to increase the strength and elasticity of everything else on the machine so one thing leads to another. I’ve also played around with different table slopes and it looks to be that somewhere around 3.8 is just about right. I’ve got the rear levelers on my Tropic Fun cranked up high because I like a faster EM and this slope seems to replicate that feel even though 3.8 is much lower than what I’ve put on my other releases. Not sure why this is, it just is.
I also want to record the sounds of the playfield elements and use those instead of the stock sounds. In addition the way that B2S resets the score reels really bothers me as well, they just all spin quickly to zero. I plan on writing a sub to increment the reels five pulses, pause and the re-increment them by another 5 just like on a real table with stops at zero. These are probably things that only bother me but they really do bug me.
It will be a while before this one is released into the wild…
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Nothing beats the real thing. Period. Now there are cabinet builders who sell cabinets and actually say digital is better then the real deal!! Wtf talk about a sales pitch lmao
umm I like real pinball AND virtual pinball. But could is really getting better and better each year and that is why I like this hobby!
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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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I agree that both are fun, it’s just that unless you’ve got the real thing in front of you, all you can do as a table builder is make guesses about how the table should play. For example I’m currently overhauling my Gulfstream and building a Tropic Fun VP table. When I built Gulfstream I was really happy with now the table played but now when I play it, I’m almost embarrassed by how poorly the VP version matches up to the real thing. The overhauled version plays 200% better than the one I released and that is not an exageration.
That’s why I’m so happy with how well 4MBC plays because I had a tester with the real thing sitting next to his cab to let me know what needed to be changed. Will VP every play exactly like the real thing, no not right now, but as a builder I know I can get a lot closer than what I’ve released on my earliest tables. I guess the good news is that I’m getting better at authoring tables…
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VP will eventually get to a fully 3D engine. Just a matter of time.
…and prepare to rebuild all tables.
Every indication is that this is still years off. If 10.6 through 10.9 take the same amount of time as 10.1-10.5 no one will be rebuilding anything anytime soon. But when the time comes I have full 3D models of all my projects ready to go.
We’re currently entering the world of accelerated ray tracing.. So give that one a bit more time and we’ll get to a full 3D VPX that is ‘worth doing it’ (i.e. refraction and reflection and good lighting at good precision) at some point for sure..
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Good stuff, @toxie! I’m really excited about the future of VP.
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Good stuff, @toxie! I’m really excited about the future of VP.
for sure..
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New spinner primitive, rod and bracket from Bord, modified spinner rod routine stolen from BorgDog. I can sit and watch this all day, it’s almost mesmerizing.
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Amaaaaazing …
VPin: Williams Time Warp Cabinet (1979), 4K playfield: 40" Iiyama X4071UHSU, backglass: 32" LG. Pin2DMD, Pincontrol 1, LEDWiz, nudging, tilt, plunger, 10 big siemens contactors, Shaker, Strobo, Gear, Beacon, RGB Flasher 5x, Knocker, PC: Intel i5 2500k@4.5Ghz, 8 GB Ram, Zotac GTX 1070 Mini, Win10
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I watched that almost a dozen times. Haha.
Looks great!
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Ok that is very nice.Â
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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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Hey guys, I notice that Ibantha (think that is the spelling) has a VP video site that this table is played on. Is there a Beta floating around to play? Being Australian, I like the theme of Boomerang!!!
 
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Funny you should mention this. I’m in the process of adding new sounds to the table and hope to have it ready for release in a week or so.
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Excellent news Scottacus
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I spent quite a bit of this weekend rewriting the base logic that I use for EM tables so that it now incorporate score motor logic. This is something that I didn’t understand when I first started writing EM scripts but I have a good feel for it now that I have an EM machine to play with on a daily basis.
The way and EM works is that anything that scores a single point value usually transmits its value directly to the score reels via a switch and single shot relay. This means that single scores from something like a pop bumper can be updated very quickly. Anything that requires some multiple of scores needs the score motor to run to accomplish this.
The score motor is a motor that drives several disks that have either notches or spikes (depending on the manufacturer) on them that open and close stacks of switches that are located above them. There is an index disc in the first position and allows the motor to keep running until the next notch or spike on that disk shuts the motor down. These motors run in 1/2 revolution per index cycle
For example suppose you went over a 500 point rollover. The switch is set up to trigger an event that closes a relay that has switches that run the score motor and then score 100 points five times on one index cycle (half rotation) by the one disk in the stack that has five notches or spikes on it. This means that if you hit another 500 point score while the score motor is running, that second score would not be registered because the machine has no “memory” and disregards the event.
My previous games functioned like modern SS machines and took in any scoring that came their way. My new ScoreMotor routine is designed to function like a real score motor and even makes the score motor sounds from inside of the machine while it runs. I’ve also incorporated tasks other than scoring to the score motor like resetting reels, bonus countdown and advancing game logic like ejection of the ball into the shooter lane.
Lastly, I’ve incorporated new sound recordings that were taken from my EM into the table. These include sounds for reels, score motor, pop bumper, kicker, plunger spring (boing), top arch steel ball scrub and others. I’ve sent the table off for some beta testing before releasing it because I may have mucked up something is the base table logic with my new ScoreMotor routine and I’d rather not have to make multiple patch releases to fix this.
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New Tilt code added to make the machine behave more “EM like”. What happens on an EM is that every time you score points that move lights up the bonus tree an “Advance Unit” under the table advances one location. When the machine tilts it cuts the bonus tree lights but the “Advance Unit” is a single step up/down unit which, which means that it takes individual pulses from the score motor to step the unit back down to zero. On Boomerang the Score motor chart shows that this occurs twice per score motor cycle so I’ve added code to do this.
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Curious. Is is very likely that your tilt routine is used for a lot of tables ? Lets say from a period 1970 to ???
Do you have any idea ?
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That’s a great question, maybe Loserman76 or Borgdog might be able to answer that for Gottlieb tables, I haven’t looked over their schematics. The really cool thing about EM tables is that the guys that designed them had no ROM or RAM to work with so everything needs to be done physically with relays and stepper units. Relays come in two varieties, one that turns on when powered and releases when power is turned off to it and one that has two coils that latch in one of two different states depending on which coil fires. These latching relays have a physical mechanism that holds them in either state so the coils only fire briefly to get them to latch while the standard relay needs to always be powered to hold its switches (which generates heat and deceases coil life span).
The stepper units come in a few varieties and all of them use a set of arms to make contact with traces to make physical connection between wires connected to them. One is a continuous stepper unit that rotates in only one direction and when the solenoid fires (match unit). Another is a single step up/single step down unit that has two solenoids and can move one index up or down depending on which solenoid is fired (advance unit).  The last is a single step up/full reset unit that steps up one place and then can fully reset to zero with a single fire of the reset coil (ball in play unit).
For something like an advance unit where you need to void all of the scores, I can’t think of another way of resetting these other than the one that Darling uses which is to kill the lights, remove the link between the advance unit and the score reels and then step the advance unit down to zero.
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To be honest I have no clue how that tilt/bonus works on a Gottlieb, I just make stuff up.. well ok I copy stuff from other people and simplify it so I understand it. Â
I have very rudimentary score motor logic in my em’s, probably not even all of them as it developed over time. but basically simple timers for 10, 100, 1000 multiples as Scott said, singles score immediately, if it’s a multiple then it checks if the timer is running (scoring another multiple) and if it’s still scoring something else it just ignores it. I think Jeff/loserman’s is more involved, and pbecker1946 who does the stuff over in itchigo’s site has some good stuff going on as well. I ran across an old, maybe even vp8, table one time that I was looking at that as far as I could tell was basically a digital reproduction of all the score motors and relays and such. was very impressive and very confusing to follow, if I find it again I’ll point you at it Scott.
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I would be interested in a nudge too @BorgDog
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Got the backdrop for desktop mode done today. This is my first time with a desktop backdrop that actually looks cool like the kind the Borgdog puts out. Very close to release, just a bit more testing to go.
One of the biggest changes that this table has is a new set of sound handling routines for undercab speakers. One of the problems with VP is that the pan and fade of sounds is not linear and that has to do with the base implementation of sound handling in VP. This table uses a special “Constant Power” Pan and Fade to reduce the sound positioning errors in VP’s PlaySound Pan and Fade by using four sound files for each non-fixed sound (ball rolling, ball on ball collisions etc) with each file panned fully to the corners of the cab. The function then uses the position of the sound event and calculates the amount of each sound to be played.
The result is stunningly accurate under cab sound locating. This can be applied to stereo side to side, stereo front to back and 7.1 surround systems. This constant power program was developed by my brother who has been working with sound since the late 60’s and if you have 7.1 surround sound I think you are going to really like what you are about to hear!
Oh and by the way, all of the newly recorded EM sounds from my machines have also been incorporated into the table so it should sound radically different in that respect as well. I really like the “boing” of the spring in the new plunger sound file.
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