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Hi all!
I’ve been building MAME machines almost since the first incarnation of MAME – when it supported about 20 roms!
My BiL came over and saw my smaller bar-top machine and decided he wanted a full-sized one, so we set about making him his MAME box – very nearly finished….but….
As we were working on it, our conversation turned to making a full-sized EM pinball machine – I have some background in electronics/mechanics and am a developer by trade – so I started looking around for parts etc…and stumbled across good people like yourselves creating Virtual Pinball machines!
So…the plan has changed slightly…we’re now looking to make a full-sized virtual pinball machine.
I’ve had a read around, looked at specs for PCs, 40+ inch TVs etc…
There’s one particular pintable we’d like to create (that I haven’t managed to find anywhere), and that’s Williams Riverboat – not to be confused with Williams Riverboat Gambler (I had the original machine some years ago, and it’s a long story, but it was effectively stolen).
Is there a tutorial anywhere for creating new table from scratch? I’ve found much of the original artwork online already.
Of course, to start with, I’d like to just get ANY tables up and running on my PC before embarking on building the cab etc…
I’ve installed the Beta6 version, but when I open any ROM it says “This rom has been created using V6 and that by using V5 I might experience problems”.
All advice gratefully welcomed :)
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Don’t worry about that message. Just press save once and it will be gone. Bu,t it sounds like your update wasn’t really done correctly to be honest. Open VPinballX manually and look at the about – what does it say ? Doubleclick a table – stop it – look at editor, does it say the same ?
Very nice story. If you want to emulate a EM I suggest you look at BorgDog’s build here. Believe it is linked in his footer. He uses a lot of EM parts in his and if I would start over today I would have stolen some of his ideas for sure.
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One thing I found helpful when I  started  is just opening a em table in edit view, and start dissecting it. Move a piece and start game and see what happened. Then on things that trigger something like a rollover,  look at name of trigger in options menu and then search for it in script, and see what it does: it plays a sound, it scores X points, it lights a play field light, etc. looks like a fun one.
Onevox
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Hi. Thanks for the replies.
I’ve ignored the message and managed to get *something* loaded, but it doesn’t respond in any way to any key presses. I’ve had a look in the “Keys, Nudge and DOF” menu and the keys are set. It just ignores them.
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Every table I try to load gives the same error “Machine terminated before initialized, check the rom path or file” regardless of version.
Is there an alternative to Visual Pinball that I could try? This software doesn’t seem all that “finished” if you get what I mean. The window popups don’t close on clicking the close button, the windows don’t scale when resized etc… it all feels just a little *too* alpha so far.
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Check this
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If it is a vpm table ( uses rom ) – know that it can act up weird on the first run because it doesn’t find nvram. Just exit completely ( also a think you should acquainted with ) as opening tables after table without exit will often end up with lost sounds and other oddities.
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In VP editor Under preference, video options turn off Force exclusive fullscreen…
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Ok…thanks chaps. I’ll persevere. I feel like my blood pressure is through the roof. I’ve followed the tutorials, over and over, scrapping and starting again, downloading different tables, roms etc… and after around 30 hours, I’ve still not managed to get a single table up and running.
I’m starting to wonder if my health can handle building this thing if I’m failing at the very first hurdle.
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Oooh! I went to the downloads of vpforums and downloaded a really old BluesBrothers table – and it works! It looks awful, but it works!
Just got to work out how to get the better looking ones to work now :p
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You’ll get there. But it does take some learning in a lot of different disciplines. Deep breath. It’s like the way I’ve heard childbirth described: it’s painful but you forget about it once you hold that baby in your hands.
Onevox
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Ha ha – fair enough!
I’m struggling to understand why some work and others don’t. They, as far as I can tell, are for the same version, so it seems odd.
There doesn’t appear to be any pattern to it.
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https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?app=tutorials&article=160
It is a good start. If you get both to work – then it is more of a repeat just like that for the rest. If not, well, then probably something is wrong with the setup.
Forced fullscreen required ddraw to 0 in registry pr. example.
Forced fullscreen has also the negative effect that you might not see the error message.
Forced fullscreen gives better performance, so, at some point you want to enable it.
There is many gotchas in this hobby, depends on what hardware you have.
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Fair enough, and thanks for the link.
I’m running on quite a beefy machine: Core i7-8700K x 12 with 32GB of RAM and an NVidia Quadro P 1000.
I’ll stick it out…I’m sure I’ll get there in the end :p
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Oh. You will. It is just a question of getting acquainted with the software. Actually quite easy with desktop play. Have fun !
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Hey! Thanks for that link…it’s finally making sense! Got a few tables up and running in Visual Pinball, some EM and some SS….AND I’ve managed to create a table of my own (admittedly by changing an existing one).
So thank you!
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