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Is @MasterKai ‘s SSFImpactor still a thing? I am in the process of building my first cab and just got SSF working. I am trying to understand how SSFImpactor works so I can be sure I am setting it up right. I get the basic idea that it provides DOF controlled sound effects via the surround sound speaker system. I can see this being particularly useful for non VPX tables that don’t have SSF. But I am trying to understand how this helps VPX which already has SSF. I thought perhaps it included special sound files that had more umph in the bass to go to the shakers but I don’t see any information about what sound files it is using? Also I have seen a couple posts which claim the version included in DOFR3 isn’t the latest version (why not?).
In my basic SSF setup I am not feeling much coming out of the bass shakers. I tested the wiring by using EqualizerAPO to redirect the backbox channels to the rear surround sound channel then playing a youtube video that claimed to be a bass shaker test and it did indeed shake the crap out of the table. I was happy to see that result so that led me to think SSFImpactor would add that kind of bass line to the solenoid/motor elements. I haven’t actually set it up yet to see, but was stuck on the theory of operation.
I’ll be making some additional posts on other audio subjects I learned and want to verify (might be useful to others as the stumped me a while)
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Almost all discussion about SSFImpactor seems to happen on the FB group. I was hoping that at least the author would make it available with a regular upload here. But, as you see, it hasn’t happened yet. Personally I haven’t tried this solution myself, so I won’t be able to shed any light on the subject. Hope you do, when/if you know more.
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I’m still hoping for input from someone. But what I have learned so far from facebook and looking at the source code…
Kai Cherry hasn’t posted anything here or on facebook since about March 24, 2019 shortly after dropping the release (at least that I can find). On Mar 28th he withdrew the pull request for DirectOutput that was to pull in the changes that match his dropped documentation (comment was that there was some problem with volume control). So all we have is the manually built dll file he dropped (which presumably also has whatever the volume issue was) which will grow out of date with the official DOF release.
I found the sound files in the DirectOutput release and they appear to just be ultra low frequency samples to drive the bass shakers (as far as I can tell, I am not an audio person by any stretch of the imagination).
So the next step for me is to try it and see if I can confirm a little more of it’s operation. I PM’d Kai here to see if he is still around and see if we can get the final version of SSFImpactor actually into DirectOutput. From the looks of things its still at least useful for Shaker/Gear effects.
I’ll update if I learn any more.
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I finally got SSFImpactor working. The sound effects are very much directed to the bass shaker, the exciters don’t respond much at normal volume. The bass shaker goes nuts on them. As others here have noted on a different post this seems to work pretty well for emulating a shaker motor and gear box. To re-iterate what the documentation says this just provides the impact sounds (thump) and isn’t a full sound you would expect for the devices. Its just to give the tactile feedback. The shaker motor and gear sounds sound good on their own.
The problem with the general solution is that the effects don’t overlap well. So if the simulated shaker motor effect is running then the pop bumper effects are greatly diminished and if you have rapid strikes in a jet bumper set it doesn’t seem like you hear each strike generate an impact effect. I’ve been playing mars attacks with just the ssfimpactor effects on. It isn’t an entirely fair review as they are just supposed to provide the impact effect of the SSF sound effects. But I wanted to hear exactly what it was adding isolated from everything else.
I’m going to play it a bit more with the SSF effects mixed in and then start looking into the SSF Thump solution that a few people have directed me toward.
EDIT: I might be overstating the overlap issue, just listening to the bass shakers is kinda unfair. Also I was only listening to the TT25 transducer, when I turned the BST-1 on it sounded better. It seems to use both shakers for most effects. I’ll mess with it more tomorrow.
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I am talking to myself, but thats ok! If anyone is interested I tried to contact Kai with no luck. I have forked his DirectOutput branch and resubmitted his last work to mjr who indicated a willingness to merge it. I think I found the bug that made him withdraw the PR to mjr’s DirectOuput in the first place. I will get it straightened out (volume control of contactor effect) tomorrow. Will this improve SSFImpactor?…. might make it easier to get set up but there is an issue with overlapping sound effects. If two simulated contactors fire too close together one will get skipped. I don’t really know enough to tackle the issue but I may fiddle. I’m kinda an educated monkey randomly changing code and seeing what it does (I’m a linux/unix programmer, last time I had to touch significant Windows coding was maybe 16 years ago).
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Talking to yourself is ok by me. You are at telling things I’m interested to hear ;) I don’t see me using that impactor myself, because I’m struggling enough with keeping the bass from the sub making it jump already on some tables. Never the less. I appreciate that this is an option and that you are working with mjr on it. He knows what he is doing, so, if you’re code (mostly Kai’s) isn’t up to snuff, I expect him to point it out ;)
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Volume control and low impact mode (only using one of the bass shakers) are now functional. I’ve also re-embedded the bass.dll file so it doesn’t have to be installed separately and I don’t see any conflicts so far (Kai removed the embedded version early on because of some issue with visual pinball sound, I can’t recreate it, will try a bunch more tables). I’m pretty happy with the progress. This is what happens when a software developer tries to physically build something, goes down the first coding rabbit hole he can find. I don’t even have the flipper buttons on the cabinet wired, still have the keyboard perched on the lockdown bar. I admit the impactor thumps are nice. I still want to install real solenoids but I bet a nickel I am going to prefer these due to volume control.
Thanks for the comment Thalamus.
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I haven’t been able to reproduce any issues with VPX sounds so I am pretty happy with the newly embedded bass.dll. The only issue I see now is SSFImpactor doesn’t seem to work if you load a new table in VPX, you have to completely exit and restart. Per another forum thread it appears that may not be a serious issue. But I am in the process of tracking it down anyway and if it looks fixable I will. Its funny how quick you get used to it. When I play attack from mars without it everything feels hollow and even with the SSFImpactor’s limitations for overlapping effects (you don’t notice it) it really brings life to the table. My bass shakers are turned up way too high so the effects are a bit exaggerated but once I am happy with the code I will get the amp levels adjusted just so and I think it will feel real natural. Its been a long time since I played a real pinball so I’m not sure what the real physical impact feelings are, but even if this turns out to be exaggerated over the real thing I think it brings real life to the machine. The nice thing about it is you can feel the cabinet move without things really having to be loud so you can be at low volume and still get a good feeling thump. Good in a house with wife and kids.
EDIT: I was able to fix the problem with it not working when table was reloaded. It was skipping initialization because it was conditional on a static class variables being set. I need to reorganize it a little but it should be in good shape after that.
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I think I fixed the last issues, made some configurable options match the documentation defaults and a fixed a couple items that had hard coded audio channel destinations rather than using the configured settings.
If I can make time tonight I just need to test each of the configurable items to ensure they work as advertised then maybe try to find some people who want to test it.
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Interesting. No impactor for me, but always glad to see more programmers in this hobby who are curious and have the skills to make improvements. It’s much appreciated.
Onevox
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I’m pretty happy with the state of SSFImpactor. I see three issues remaining.
- Logging output displays invalid speaker location names sometimes (they are set correct, just the mapping to names is wrong in some cases).
- If your windows default audio devices gets changed to something not 7.1 things go badly
- Impactor sounds triggered less than .2 seconds apart on same device don’t play
I guess I’ll fix #1, will have to switch it to manual value to string mapping because of the way ManagedBass handled flags. #2 I guess I can add a sanity check and abort initialization if it finds fewer than 8 speaker channels. The difficult one remains #3. Naively looking at the Mixer addon for ManagedBass seems like a promising solution and it looks like Kai had been trying to use it, but my initial efforts have failed as well since I am guessing how to make it work. Not sure if I will work on it this weekend, I kinda want to actually work on the cabinet (I don’t even have my buttons working, still have keyboard sitting on top of lockdown bar).
EDIT: First two items are fixed.
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I wasn’t able to get the sound mixing addon to ManagedBass to work inside SSFImpactor and I may revisit that in the future as it will require a more structured approach to learning than just poking wild guesses into the code. However I was able to come up with a solution which will make it work the way I think Kai intended. <SNIP OLD SOLUTION>
EDIT:
Found a simpler solution. Simply restarting the sound effect stream of the thump when a second solenoid fires produces a better result than playing both effects when they are super close together.
EDIT:
Combined with regular sound effects it all sounds pretty good. I’ll test on a few more tables and then let mjr know its ready. Was this worth the effort? Too early to say, was a fun project and I got to learn how to build DOF from sources so thats fun. I’ll setup SSFThump next and see which parts of each system I like the best and will keep using. I just felt that Kai’s work should be tidied up and made available.
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UPDATE: Well I was about to tell mjr I was done but I found two more bugs in how the gear and shaker motor simulation work. This was causing the shaker to sometimes run longer than it should and for some pitch changes in gear or shaker. I think I fixed the issue with the shaker running too long. But the pitch change has me baffled. It may just be issues with shaker and gear sounds running at the same time (could also be bug in table, so I need to download newest version of the table i am testing with).
EDIT: The second issue doesn’t appear to be a bug. I think its essentially a distortion artifact from running the bass shakers pretty much maximum volume and combining sound effects. If I lower the bass shaker volume and effect volume to something reasonable the combined effect sounds seem good. I’ll keep messing around with theory and see if I can balance my sound system and get a good result.
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