Iain

[Iain]

Fair enough, I might have made a mistake but I watched TerryReds tutorials and I *think* that tells you to make the Wheel screen the same size as your play field. Who knows, all sorted anyway, looks awesome!

 

Do you by any chance have the raw image of the button background and font (the ‘Logo Needed’ style)…just if people wanted to make playlist icons with custom names? Understand if you’d prefer not to share the raw files tho!

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[Iain]

Finally, that posted! Sorry if its not very detailed, the moe detail I add it just 403s :/

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[Iain]

Hey, did some quick testing this morning and i’ve been trying to post this but it keeps getting blocked/403’d as I guess it saw code in my comment.

So the error is 100% thrown at game launch and even before VPX is launched. I put a timeout of 5 seconds after the DMD is closed at the end of the Game Launch bit, and the error is displayed on the screen before the 5 seconds starts. VPX then loads up and works fine.

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[Iain]

I don’t know if this was just something that was wrong with my setup or if others see the same thing but don’t know how to fix it.

I installed this theme (awes0me by the way!) but the wheel background didn’t extend to the bottom of my playfield.

I had to go to PinUpMenuSetup -> Popper Setup -> Screens / Theme

Then in the Screens section, scroll down to WheelBar.

Scroll to the right and you’ll see a column called “CustomPos”.

Mine had the values “3,75,0,15,100”. To get the wheel bar to extend to the bottom of the screen change it to “3,75,0,25,100”

Note –
First number is the screen to display it on.

Second number is the X position of the screen as a percentage. We’re in landscape so the wheel will start 75% of the screen from the left.

Third is Y position of the screen as a percentage, so we start at 0.

Fourth is the Width of the screen as a percentage. So before it was just 15% which wouldn’t take it to the bottom of the playfield (75+15 is 90 so there was a 10% gap underneath it). So 25% will fill it.

Fifth is the Height of the screen as a percentage. So 100 will fill the height.

Hope that helps anyone. Could have just been my messed up setup though.

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[Iain]

So I just tried this, gonna have to pack up for the night but I can give you an update on what I saw happening.

1 – The timeout did seem to sort it so that the DMD was correctly displaying again when returning from VPX. Interestingly, although you auto select the *next* game when returning, I still saw the DMD gif/image from the game I just played for a few frames before it updated. I need to just experiment on how short a delay I need to give it, i’m hoping a second would do!

2 – I still had an exception in the background showing an access violation on PupDMD, but its actually shown when *starting* a game in VPX, not returning as I thought previously. Everything seem to work “fine” and the exception doesn’t kill anything. But it consistently displays when starting a game. Maybe need to also delay slightly after Popper closes the DMD? Tbh, for now I’m just ignoring the exception! It doesn’t steal focus and it closes when exiting VPX (I think, or just returning to PinupPopper) so I only knew it was there by Alt Tabbing.

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[Iain]

@NailBuster

I think i’ve managed to reliably figure out what was causing the loss of input when holding down next/prev for long periods. I think its the Thumbnail generation.

Once i’ve scanned through all my tables I can hold next/prev all I want and it navigates fast and never locks up or lags and loses input.

If I then go to the menu settings and clear thumbnails so they regenerate, when I go back to PinupPopper as I navigate through the tables, each new table lags slightly (I assume as the thumbnail is generated). If I then hold down “next” after a few seconds it begins to “jump” multiple tables and then all input just goes completely.

Reloading and starting again everything is smooth again through the thumbnails it generates, until it gets to new tables and lags then loses input again.

 

Is there a possibility to have a “generate all thumbnails” button in the settings to regenerate from there?

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[Iain]

I am quite regularly getting an exception being thrown in the background I *think* when exiting VPX…

“Pupdmd~1

Access violation at address 005EDBB9 in module ‘PIPDMD~1.EXE’.

Read if address 00000008”

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[Iain]

Ok, Getting a bit further. I had an issue with PinballFX3 not returning to Pinup Popper properly and saw someone say to run PinupMenu as Administrator. So I’ve done this and this has *also* fixed the issue with the DMD not re initialising on return from VPX.

So maybe users with a real DMD (or at least PinDMDv3) need to run PinupMenu as an Admin?

It still shows the Default DMD image when entering a specific game menu tho.

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[Iain]

And yeah there see to be two other issues,

1 – When you select a game and go to the game menu, it shows the Default DMD image, going back to the main playlist wheel displays the game dmd again.

2 – After playing a VPX table, when closing and going back to the menu the DMD is either left blank, or has the last frame displayed by VPX on it. The PinDMDv3 doesn’t appear to be reinitialised with the popper system.

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[Iain]

Ok I think I found the issue I had and I’m not sure if its a bug or not.

Firstly, res should be 128×32 just FYI.

 

The issue I had though is I think the DMD assets aren’t using the MediaSearch parameter. When I put my DMD gifs into the DMD folder and have them named the same as my Backglass/Playfield assets, even though Game Manager highlighted the DMD files as existing, they never displayed.

 

But. If I drag them onto the DMD section in GameManager (so they get renamed to the same as the game filename), then it all works fine.

 

i.e. I have an ACDC table, the file is something like “AC-DC-LUCIE-v1” or something, but my media search is “ACDC*”. My backglass and playfield are both called “ACDC.flv” or whatever, and load fine, when I put the DMD in as “ACDC.gif”, the MediaManager shows the DMD file as existing (because it matches ACDC*) but it never loads. If I put in the gif as “AC-DC-LUCIE-v1.gif”, then MediaManager shows the DMD as *missing* (because it doesn’t match ACDC*), but the DMD loads up fine!

So my guess is the DMD videos are being looked for purely on game filename instead of MediaSearch ?

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[Iain]

Cool, cheers to NailBuster fixing up the mistakes, here are the updated SQL playlists including a working “Random 5 tables of the day” style playlist….

Visual Pinball X :
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE EMUID= ‘1’ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

Pinball FX2 + FX3 :
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE EMUID= ‘2’ OR EMUID=’3′ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

Star Wars (Theme Set):
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameTheme LIKE ‘star wars’ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

Marvel (Theme Set):
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameTheme LIKE ‘marvel’ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

Modern Stern :
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE Tags LIKE ‘%stern%’ AND GameYear >= ‘1999’ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

Random 5 Games :
SELECT * FROM Games ORDER BY RANDOM() LIMIT(5);

Table of the Day :
SELECT * FROM Games ORDER BY RANDOM() LIMIT(1);

 

Decades 2000s+ :
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear >= 2000 ORDER BY GameDisplay;

Decades 1990 :
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear >= 1990 AND GameYear < 2000 ORDER BY GameDisplay;

Decades 1980 :
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear >= 1980 AND GameYear < 1990 ORDER BY GameDisplay;

Decades 1970 :
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear >= 1970 AND GameYear < 1980 ORDER BY GameDisplay;

Decades 1960 and Earlier :
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear < 1970 ORDER BY GameDisplay;

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adrian kuney

[Iain]

Ah cheers gotcha, did wonder about the TAGS field and thanks for the “Random” tip. Once I get the chance to test it all i’ll post updated SQL here for people. Not at my cabinet for a bit.

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[Iain]

I’m not sure what flavour of SQL is actually being used, but I tried to do the following and it kept failing and I *think* its legit SQL…

I tried to make a playlist that was 5 random tables, kinda like a “Random Table of the Day” style playlist as (I assume) the playlists are evaluated when the Pinup Popper loads up?

I tried,

SELECT * FROM Games ORDER BY NEWID() LIMIT(5);

Both with and without the LIMIT(5) so I’m assuming it doesn’t recognise the NEWID().

 

Basically, its trying to just randomly order the games then pick the first 5.

A mroe efficient way as well would be to do…

SELECT TOP 5 FROM Games …

But I also think TOP 5 isn’t recognised (https://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_top.asp) so not sure what version of SQL is being used…

EDIT –  Actuallly, just googled and LIMIT might be the same as TOP so no more or less efficient….

 

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adrian kuney

[Iain]

So this isn’t quite working with my PinDMDv3.

 

I’ve got 2 gifs set up, for 24 and ACDC. When I edit the config setting, I can see the default image displayed on my PinDMDv3 fine. However when i cycle to 24 or ACDC, it doesn’t update, it still just displays the default image.

 

Then if I launch a game, lets say 24, the DMD works all fine in VPX but when I exit back to Pinup Popper, the last frame VPX rendered to the DMD is left on there, and it stays there (no GIFs or even the default image returns).

Anyone else using a PinDMDv3 and have it working?

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[Iain]

SQL in playlists is an awesome feature of Pinup Popper. I’m a programmer by day but I’ve never actually been able to mess around with SQL so I’d love to know if there are any cool tricks and ideas that some users out there know with SQL?

I’ve got the absolute basic knowledge of it in practice, and I’ve got a few playlists I’ve setup and I’ll share the SQL here for anyone interested.

I honestly recommend using SQL over making your own playlists, even some more specific playlists because you’ll *never* have to maintain lists if you do it right.

So, first a tiny bit of basic SQL knowledge (this is a very very very basic overview and skips *a lot* of stuff)….

All SQL is in the form of something like….

SELECT blah
FROM blah
WHERE blah
AND blah
OR blah
ORDER BY blah

Now. Most of these are optional, all you *actually* need is SELECT and FROM.

In terms of Pinup Popper, you’re almost always going to start with….

“SELECT * FROM Games”

SELECT * basically means, “Select everything” because the * is the wildcard so will get ALL games.

FROM Games means you’re picking items from the “Games” database, this is the main database of games inside Pinup Popper.

The rest are all optional.

WHERE is followed by some equality check. Maybe WHERE Theme=’something’ or WHERE Rating>3 where Theme and Rating are values set when you add games in the Game Manager.
Now, this is where its a little fiddly, but the input values in the GameSetupForm don’t match exactly the name of the value in the database.

Currently the easiest way I found to get the names of the values I need was to go the Popper Setup menu and click DBEditor. Don’t worry, you won’t be editing anything.

In this the basic “Select * from Games” will be shown, so just hit Execute and Open Results, this will show you the *raw* table data and you can see the name of the columns,these are the fields you can use in your SQL.

AND and OR basically do what they say, they let you combine other equality checks. So maybe you want all themes of 3 rating at least, so you’d do “SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameTheme=”blah” AND GameRating>=3″

ORDER BY is how you want the list ordered after being built. If you don’t have ORDER BY, it will return the results in the order they are in the database, which is probably the order you added them in! Most of the time you want them in alphabetical order, so “ORDER BY GameDisplay” is what you want (note. NOT GameName, as that the name of the vpx file itself, not the display name you see in the menu).

So a simple, get all games that have rating at least 3 in alphabetical order might be….

“SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameRating>=3 ORDER BY GameDisplay”.

And if I wanted them in *reverse* order for no apparent reason, pop a “DESC” on the end.

“SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameRating>=3 ORDER BY GameDisplay DESC”.

Now, tbh, this is the limits of my SQL knowledge as I haven’t even looked much at SQL for nearly 10 years. So I’m really interested to see if there are any cool tricks or ideas of there for more advanced SQL searching. For now though, these are the playlists I’ve got in my setup….

TLDR; Here’s my playlists…

Visual Pinball X – Displays all games that are VPX tables…
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE EMUID= ‘1’ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

(This highlights the issue between database and how you input values, the emulator field is EMUID and they all have ids, so VPX is 1)

 

Pinball FX Tables – Displays all PBFX2 and PBFX3 tables (I have both installed as PBFX2 still has 4 tables not in PBFX3)
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE EMUID= ‘2’ Or EMUID=’3′ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

(Note – this uses OR and not AND, it might seem intuitive to put AND as you want FX2 AND FX3, but no table is *both*, they are one or the other, so what you actually are asking for is FX2 OR FX3)

MARVEL – These are all Marvel tables. I set the Theme in the game manager to be “Marvel”.
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameTheme=’Marvel’ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

STAR WARS – These are all Star Wars tables. I set the Theme in the game manager to be “Star Wars”
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameTheme=’Star Wars’ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

 

 

Stern Pinball – This is an odd one. Basically I wanted a “modern stern” playlist, but I have all modern and old stern tables as the same manufacturer. I could have used a Theme tbh but instead I’ve been more hacky and just use the date 1999 as the point Modern Stern tables ‘started’
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE Tags = ‘Stern’ AND GameYear >= ‘1999’ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

(Now we DO use the AND as we want both things to be true, Stern AND from 1999 onwards. Note also, Manufacturer in the game manager is saved to the Tags field…this threw me at first!)

 

I then have a “Decades” playlist which contains a playlist for each “Decade”. So each one is like this…

2000s+ – SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear >= 2000 ORDER BY GameDisplay;
1990s – SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear >= 1990 AND GameYear < 2000 ORDER BY GameDisplay;
1980s – SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear >= 1980 AND GameYear < 1990 ORDER BY GameDisplay;
1970s – SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear >= 1970 AND GameYear < 1980 ORDER BY GameDisplay;
1960s – SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear < 1970 ORDER BY GameDisplay;

Yes – 2000s is actually everything after 2000 and 1960s is everything before 1970, but its good enough for me :P

You could also actually order them chronologically instead, so have something like “ORDER BY GameYear” on the end instead, and can have it go new to old with “DESC” on the end of that.

 

Thats all I’ve got for now, I don’t have ratings set for games but if I did I’d go with something like a “top 25” playlist or similar with

SELECT * FROM Games ORDER BY GameRating DESC LIMIT (25)

This introduces a new thing, LIMIT which basically limits the result to the amount in the brackets.

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[Iain]

SQL in playlists is an awesome feature of Pinup Popper. I’m a programmer by day but I’ve never actually been able to mess around with SQL so I’d love to know if there are any cool tricks and ideas that some users out there know with SQL?

I’ve got the absolute basic knowledge of it in practice, and I’ve got a few playlists I’ve setup and I’ll share the SQL here for anyone interested.

I honestly recommend using SQL over making your own playlists, even some more specific playlists because you’ll *never* have to maintain lists if you do it right.

So, first a tiny bit of basic SQL knowledge (this is a very very very basic overview and skips *a lot* of stuff)….

All SQL is in the form of something like….

SELECT blah
FROM blah
WHERE blah
AND blah
OR blah
ORDER BY blah

Now. Most of these are optional, all you *actually* need is SELECT and FROM.

In terms of Pinup Popper, you’re almost always going to start with….

“SELECT * FROM Games”

SELECT * basically means, “Select everything” because the * is the wildcard so will get ALL games.

FROM Games means you’re picking items from the “Games” database, this is the main database of games inside Pinup Popper.

The rest are all optional.

WHERE is followed by some equality check. Maybe WHERE Theme=’something’ or WHERE Rating>3 where Theme and Rating are values set when you add games in the Game Manager.
Now, this is where its a little fiddly, but the input values in the GameSetupForm don’t match exactly the name of the value in the database.

Currently the easiest way I found to get the names of the values I need was to go the Popper Setup menu and click DBEditor. Don’t worry, you won’t be editing anything.

In this the basic “Select * from Games” will be shown, so just hit Execute and Open Results, this will show you the *raw* table data and you can see the name of the columns,these are the fields you can use in your SQL.

AND and OR basically do what they say, they let you combine other equality checks. So maybe you want all themes of 3 rating at least, so you’d do “SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameTheme=”blah” AND GameRating>=3″

ORDER BY is how you want the list ordered after being built. If you don’t have ORDER BY, it will return the results in the order they are in the database, which is probably the order you added them in! Most of the time you want them in alphabetical order, so “ORDER BY GameDisplay” is what you want (note. NOT GameName, as that the name of the vpx file itself, not the display name you see in the menu).

So a simple, get all games that have rating at least 3 in alphabetical order might be….

“SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameRating>=3 ORDER BY GameDisplay”.

And if I wanted them in *reverse* order for no apparent reason, pop a “DESC” on the end.

“SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameRating>=3 ORDER BY GameDisplay DESC”.

Now, tbh, this is the limits of my SQL knowledge as I haven’t even looked much at SQL for nearly 10 years. So I’m really interested to see if there are any cool tricks or ideas of there for more advanced SQL searching. For now though, these are the playlists I’ve got in my setup….

TLDR; Here’s my playlists…

Visual Pinball X – Displays all games that are VPX tables…
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE EMUID= ‘1’ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

(This highlights the issue between database and how you input values, the emulator field is EMUID and they all have ids, so VPX is 1)

 

Pinball FX Tables – Displays all PBFX2 and PBFX3 tables (I have both installed as PBFX2 still has 4 tables not in PBFX3)
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE EMUID= ‘2’ Or EMUID=’3′ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

(Note – this uses OR and not AND, it might seem intuitive to put AND as you want FX2 AND FX3, but no table is *both*, they are one or the other, so what you actually are asking for is FX2 OR FX3)

MARVEL – These are all Marvel tables. I set the Theme in the game manager to be “Marvel”.
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameTheme=’Marvel’ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

STAR WARS – These are all Star Wars tables. I set the Theme in the game manager to be “Star Wars”
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameTheme=’Star Wars’ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

 

 

Stern Pinball – This is an odd one. Basically I wanted a “modern stern” playlist, but I have all modern and old stern tables as the same manufacturer. I could have used a Theme tbh but instead I’ve been more hacky and just use the date 1999 as the point Modern Stern tables ‘started’
SELECT * FROM Games WHERE Tags = ‘Stern’ AND GameYear >= ‘1999’ ORDER BY GameDisplay;

(Now we DO use the AND as we want both things to be true, Stern AND from 1999 onwards. Note also, Manufacturer in the game manager is saved to the Tags field…this threw me at first!)

 

I then have a “Decades” playlist which contains a playlist for each “Decade”. So each one is like this…

2000s+ – SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear >= 2000 ORDER BY GameDisplay;
1990s – SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear >= 1990 AND GameYear < 2000 ORDER BY GameDisplay;
1980s – SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear >= 1980 AND GameYear < 1990 ORDER BY GameDisplay;
1970s – SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear >= 1970 AND GameYear < 1980 ORDER BY GameDisplay;
1960s – SELECT * FROM Games WHERE GameYear < 1970 ORDER BY GameDisplay;

Yes – 2000s is actually everything after 2000 and 1960s is everything before 1970, but its good enough for me :P

You could also actually order them chronologically instead, so have something like “ORDER BY GameYear” on the end instead, and can have it go new to old with “DESC” on the end of that.

 

Thats all I’ve got for now, I don’t have ratings set for games but if I did I’d go with something like a “top 25” playlist or similar with

SELECT * FROM Games ORDER BY GameRating DESC LIMIT (25)

This introduces a new thing, LIMIT which basically limits the result to the amount in the brackets.

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[Iain]

Bug – Total loss of input in Pinup Popper

Where – Pinup Popper menu

Setup – Win7, 64bit, Input via keyboard input triggered by input board from buttons

Version – 1.3.0

Steps to reproduce –

* Load up Pinup Popper
* Select a playlist with lots of games
* Cycle to ‘Next’ once or twice
* Notice it works fine.
* Hold down the ‘Next’ button and watch the games cycles quickly
* Hold for 2 or 3 seconds
* Release button
* Notice all input has now been lost, no buttons appear to work
* Next, Previous, Start, Exit etc all do nothing

Not sure if this is just my setup or other are experiencing this too?

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[Iain]

Snag – Issue with setting Game Media that instantly is *not* found as set to GameName instead of GameDisplay

Where – PinupMenuSetup

Setup – Win7,64bit

Version – 1.3.0

Steps to reproduce –

This is a bit awkward and I freely admit I have no real idea on how you might address this (if its even an ‘issue’).

* Have a game added, with the filename something like ‘AFM.vpx’ (for example, Attack from Mars).
* Have the Media Search set to “Attack From Mars*” – I had this because I was trying to ‘reuse’ media from PBX
* Go to Media Manager for the ‘AFM.vpx’ game you’ve added.
* Drag your “Attack From Mars” wheel image, called something like ‘Attack From Mars.png’ and drag to the Wheel Image.
* Image gets “set” but fails to be found.

The issue is, the file gets renamed to the GameName which is AFM.vpx instead of the GameDisplay name which is maybe more likely to match media file names.
The file gets named to “AFM.png” which failed the “Attack From Mars*” search string…

Of course, manually moving the files into the folder worked fine, this was just when I tried dragging a few files.

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[Iain]

Snag – Test ActiveSQL doesn’t display a helpful error when Active SQL Query is disabled

Where – PinupMenuSetup

Setup – Win7 64Bit

Version – 1.3.0

Steps to reproduce –

* Go to PlayListSetup
* Click Settings on a playlist
* Enter in some SQL – Select * From Games;
* Do *NOT* enable Active SQL Command
* Go to ActiveList tab
* Click Test ActiveSQL
* Notice, nothing happens

This has caught me out a few times, it makes me think my SQL is failing but its because i’ve not enabled it. A simple alert telling me “Active SQL is not enabled for this playlist” would be helpful

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[Iain]

Snag – Discrepancy between use of GameDisplay and GameName in multiple views

Where – PinupMenuSetup

Setup – Win7 64bit

Version – 1.3.0

Steps to reproduce –

* Go to Game Manager
* Notice table uses GameDisplay as the “main” column
* Go to PlayListSetup
* Notice the games list on the right uses GameName as the “main” column
* Noitce the PlayList tabe uses ‘GameDisplay’ as the main column
* Go to MediaManager
* The column this time is just called ‘Name’, which isn’t clear but is actually ‘GameName’

The inconsistency can be a bit confusing, I think the game list in the PlayListSetup should ideally use GameDisplay, not GameName
I also think Game Manager should really be GameDisplay too.

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[Author]

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