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Future DMD: How to create and manage multiple positions and sizes for Future DMD, for instance with a dedicated Full DMD screen.
DISCLAIMER:
Being pretty new to this scene surrounding Virtual Pinball problem solving, I’ve searched extensively throughout the Internets on the subject of ”how to setup Future DMD to different preset locations and sizes”, kinda like how you could do it per game with Freezy. This information seems to be missing, so after a little testing I’m came up with a viable solution. But, if anyone knows how to do this in a better way, feel free to reply with tips or post info on where to find it. (Also, if Future DMD can take startup parameters, I would like to know about what they are, as I found nothing about that either.) I also assume you have followed along with TerryRed’s awesome tutorial on BAM and things setup properly – it’s available as ”Future Pinball and BAM Mega-Guide by TerryRed (DOF, PUP, SSF, VR and Front-Ends” at https://vpinball.com/forums/topic/future-pinball-and-bam-mega-guide-by-terryred/.
My solution:
Following Major Frenchy’s excellent tutorial on DMD underlays, ”Full DMD installation (Prefered)” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ApllM8qiH4, I had a minor problem.
If I still was going to use the ”always open” strategy with Future DMD, that would limit me to only displaying Future DMD in one way, always needing an underlay that aligns correctly. This is because Future DMD stores it’s last position in it’s .ini-file upon closing and there is no option to save different settings per table when you right click or to make it do this – that I’ve found at least.
My solution to the problem is simple. Having a batch file that overwrites the FutureDMD.ini-file with one pre-copied containing the desired settings (…in my case it’s either ”Full”, ”Mid” or ”Low”…) ,and that this always precedes running the table.
Since I’ve recently installed PinUP Popper, I’m using that Front-End to run the .bat-files from within the Startup script for the Future Pinball Emulator prior to starting a FP table. Then I setup which game should run it, but only if needed.
The main reason I want to setup Future DMD like this is because I want to be able to choose whether or not to use the DMD to cover all of my third screen (…which I use as a Full DMD screen…) or use it with an underlay (…that ’s a PUP-video, this is set in Media Manager of Popper that is running in the background with a smaller sized Future DMD on top). Since there are two common types of underlays I wanna use, most of them created by Andrew Walsh (thanks Andrew, they look splendid :-D), I’m opting for three ”modes”: Three .ini-files and three .bat-files, one pair of files for each mode (Full, Mid and Low) .
Here are some points with pictures explaining how I’ve set this up. The files I’ve used should be available for download with this tutorial.
1. Prepare 3 copies of the FutureDMD.ini – naming them something other than ”FutureDMD.ini”, I chose to name them after the mode they are used for, like ”FutureDMD_Low.ini”. We will need to copy the contents of the FutureDMD.ini for each mode into these, when we’ve tweaked Future DMD to the right position and proportions.
2. Prepare a batch file for each mode. I’ve named them ”FutureDMD_LaunchLow.bat” and then Mid and Full respectively.
(You could just copy the attached files and use them if that works for you, besides changing certain parts in them. My setup example has 3 extra .ini files besides the current FutureDMD.ini and 3 .bat files)
Each .bat-file will be setup to overwrite the FutureDMD.ini with one of the prepared copies for each desired mode. You might need to adjust the paths and filenames of the .ini’s etc, if you want them to be something else.
The content of the Full .bat file is this:
The only difference for each file is the name where it says ”FutureDMD_Full.ini”, on the line beginning with ”copy”.
EDIT: I noticed that sometimes the script would’nt terminate correctly, getting stuck after running a table and the cmd-window not being terminated.
In the batch files, you’ll need to add “exit” on a new line, last in each .bat file. Also, it won’t hurt to run the batch scripts minimized, so adding “/minimized” last to the “start” row after “FutureDMD.exe” is probably going to accomplish hiding it. Note that neither exit nor /minimized should have surrounding citation marks.
3. In PinUP Popper Setup, choose Emulators make sure to choose Future Pinball.
4. In Future Pinball’s ”Launch Setup” tab, make the following adjustments. Replace the part of the first picture with only the text, so it looks like in the second larger picture. Also, you could comment out the last line in the ”Close Script” part as well. This is if you always want to close Future DMD when the table closes, which is a good idea if you choose this approach.
<— Replace this part in ”Launch Script”, only these 4 lines, counting the blank line from the top. When you’re done, it should look like the next picture. Your Launch Setup might look different. Mine was ”vanilla”, so be careful not to remove or change anything else;-)
IMPORTANT: Take notice in this picture below, there is a part with ”CUSTOM3” in square brackets. The line inside it ”START …” what will be triggered if you have blank value set for the table in the GameSetup form in ”Custom Var #3”, so it’s a default one could say. I have set it up so it will run ”FutureDMD_LaunchMid.bat” as default, but you might need to change that to set a different one. (The commented out line that starts with ”rem START” would launch Future DMD with whatever settings was used last, but we probably don’t want that).
5. In Media Manager, find some tables to test your new ”modes” on and set them up with different types of matching underlays. If like me, you also want to have a ”Full sized DMD” covering all of the screen, you don’t need to set that up other than choosing which batch file to launch. NOTE: You’ll need to copy the contents of each type of ”mode” in the following steps (i.e. full sized, low-dmd sized or mid… whichever modes suits your needs), so that they fit your screen and or underlay, into the corresponding FutureDMD_xyz.ini file for each mode.
<— Apron/FullDMD is the one to use for different underlays (…you might need to watch that tutorial about underlays mentioned earlier if you haven’t set this up yet).6. In Games Settings, find the same tables and write in the name of the corresponding batch file into Custom Var #3.
In the examples below ”F-14 Tomcat” was used for testing with a ”low” underlay so I’ve ”FutureDMD_LaunchLow.bat” entered into Custom Var #3 as value, and then ”Back to the Future” was used for testing out Full sized DMD settings with ”FutureDMD_LaunchFull.bat”, that’s the mode covering all of my third screen. The mid mode I already had setup and just copied the settings for that and tweaked them in the corresponding .ini-file.
This is another way to do it if you find it hard to ”reach” the DMD later, when the table is up and running.
7. Now here is where things got a little tricky for me. First, just save the the changes of the tables, close and then launch the Popper Front-End. Browse to one of the tables you’ve prepared and then start it, let’s say BTTF for testing full mode.
I had mine still displaying an underlay, so I wanted to cover that for the purpose of getting the settings for ”Full”. The difficult part was to get the mouse over to the third screen (…or which screen you are using for Full DMD…) and try to right click on Future DMD to choose to resize it. When you get to it, it will be easier to see what is happening when resizing, especially if the DMD is showing a frame. When you’re satisfied, close the table and Popper and open the ”FutureDMD.ini” file, then copy over all of it’s contents into ”FutureDMD_Full.ini” or whatever you’ve chosen to call your ini-file for the ”mode”. Now, do the same for the remaining two modes, copy the settings when you have the position and size correct for FutureDMD so it sits tight in the underlay.
That’s it! Now you’ll have 3 different modes (or more, or less it’s up to you) to enter into the Custom Var #3 for the table so that Future DMD will line up and fit correctly in your underlay, or if you run it in Full screen when there is no available underlay or you just like it that way. This is applicable for other Front-Ends as well, you just need to figure out how to launch the .bat files with the tables you want, if you don’t use Popper
Good luck, and I hope this helps anyone. Please feel free to improve on the solution or post a better one if you know of any.
/Micke
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Hm, now it may seem there is an alternative way to set up tables within the FutureDMD.ini file, I’m guessing that the “table” parameter is the one to use, this is used in the default FP Startup Script in Popper. And the second parameter “close=1” might be used to make certain only one instance of FutureDMD is running?
I haven’t tried it yet, but it seems it maybe possible to skip .bat and .ini files in my solution altogether. Inside the FutureDMD.ini, the settings are stored under [default] and I’m guessing that if you enter a name that’s exactly matching the name of a table and copy all (or some) of the settings giving them alternative values, those settings will be used instead of [default] when the table is started by Popper. This would effectively mean that it’s possible to set up the “Full”, “Mid” and “Low” positions within the .ini file and alter the Startup script to use one of them.
If this is possible, I’ll add an alternative way to accomplish the same thing. But, it’s uncertain if FutureDMD saves a new entry automatically if it gets the startup parameter “table” and it retains the default and other entries or if it overwrites all of it if one resizes manually. The downside of always having to edit the .ini file is obvious so altering the Startup Script for FP still has its benefits.
EDIT: Now I’ve tried sending all kinds of various arguments in multiple ways to FutureDMD. Although it doesn’t not overwrite any other settings than [default], I couldn’t get it to take a table parameter so this doesn’t work, at least I couldn’t get it to work. Guess my solution in the tutorial is the working way to do this.
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Ok, finally found the info about the start up params for FutureDMD.exe. As suspected, the table is telling it which settings to use, but it only applies to colorization, it does not affect position or size (bummer). So, for anyone using colorization, the .bat file will need to be altered to take a parameter for “Table name” and this needs to also be added in the Popper Startup script. If Custom Var #3 is used or default, anytime the batch files are called they’ll need a table argument but only if you wanna use colorization.
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