Iain

[Iain]

Thanks for the further suggestions HauntFreaks, I downloaded all the others last night, think I’ll go through these tonight!

One issue i’ve had with a fair few is getting them into FreePlay mode. I’m sure I’ve done some in the past but I can’t remember how to navigate the system menus on these older machines? I get lost in the testing menus and seem to struggle to find adjustments.

I tried instead to map the Coin button from “5” to something else via the VPX menus, but that didn’t seem to work for most machines, I still had to press “5” for a credit even though I thought i’d remapped it? Are some tables hardcoded in the scripts to listen to “5” specifically? (I don’t have a button on my cab yet mapped to that key, tried to map it to “i” instead).

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[Iain]

Cheers for the suggestions! Got a few of those 1989-1991 tables already but thanks for linking direct for them all!

I’ll be grabbing loads of them tonight I think.

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[Iain]

So I understand the graphics card is old and only 2gb, but why does the graph of my RAM usage clearly go up to 4gb, hit the limit and then VPX dies at that point? How is that not also a problem?

I’ve asked a few times but am I right in thinking if I go to 8gb of RAM there will be more than enough for the 1.5gb shared with the graphics card giving the system that bit more to play with – right now it in theory only has 2.5gb of RAM free because 1.5 is shared with the card no? I said earlier I updated the drivers so its definitely not a driver issue. I get that you keep saying its my graphics card randr but I actually don’t feel like you’re reading *my* replies to things, I’m asking further questions and just being told “I’ve told you, its your graphics card” or asking things I’ve already stated.

@Thalamus : I’ve not seen anything about the at91jit registry, what are you suggesting to change, do you have a link anywhere with info?

@xenonph : Yeah I certainly would get better results upgrading the graphics card. I think in your case its the CPU though thats giving you the faster performance. The 450 and the 660 are pretty even in terms of performance I think. Whereas the i3 you have is significantly better than the AMD CPU.

 

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[Iain]

Yes, I saw your other post…did you see mine?

“So I have a GTX 770 card in my cabinet, I believe thats a 2gb card. Nvidia system info says that it has 2048 dedicated with 3819 available (1771 shared system memory).”

So its s 2gb card, but its also given 1.5gb of shared memory from my RAM too (if I’m reading the information right).

So if its being given 1.5gb of my system RAM which is only 4gb…then would upgrading to 8 not improve that side of things? The system *is* running out of RAM as shown by my screenshot from earlier. If the GFX card is using up 1.5gb of that, then there’s only 2.5gb left for everything else. Upgrading to 8gb of RAM would be significantly cheaper/easier than upgrading the GFX card.

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[Iain]

Ok, so I may have been a bit of an idiot here but I was previously running the 4k version. I’ve just tried the non 4k version and that was loading up fine and the ROM always initialises.

So, i’m thinking any other tables I also get this issue with may also be 4k versions, and if so I just downgrade and install the lower res version. Otherwise upgrading to 8gb RAM might do the trick?

 

EDIT –  Or maybe lowering the max texture size in the VPX settings?

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[Iain]

So I have a GTX 770 card in my cabinet, I believe thats a 2gb card. Nvidia system info says that it has 2048 dedicated with 3819 available (1771 shared system memory).

So is this the culprit for me, because I’ve only got 4gb of RAM, a good chunk of it is being used by my gfx card resulting in not enough left for VPX and everything else? So an upgrade to 8gb of RAM would certainly improve it (although you’ve said you’ve seen similar with 8gb…)

I’m currently on driver 378.92, and latest is 385.12 so i’m not that far behind. Updating now though to see if it helps at all. (EDIT – As expected, had no really change or effect)

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[Iain]

So, now interestingly (and annoyingly) my Metallica Premium Monsters table almost never works. I just booted up my cabinet and launched it as the first table and the ROM failed to start first time.

 

I gave it another go but this time had task manager running and interesting, it certainly looks like an Out Of Memory issue (potentially due to a leak?)

The graph shows the memory usage just shooting up to 4gb, then it holds there for while (while the table was frozen) and then when VPX dies it goes back down.

Question is, is this expected or not? I’m certainly going to look to buy more RAM but what confuses me a bit is, the version of VPX I’m running is only 32bit. Is there even a 64 bit version of VPX? Won’t it only ever use 4gb max as its only 32bit?

 

What would be interesting to see if you guys with 8gb who also sometimes get the ROM failing to initialize and having VPX lock up, if your system is also maxed out at 8gb. If so sounds like an issue with VPX allocated WAY too much RAM than it needs (or the pin dll leaking and taking too much too).

 

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[Iain]

Howdy

So i’m really new to this whole virtual pinball community so I don’t want my naivety or lack of knowledge and experience to be taken the wrong way! I want to preface this by saying I have no intention on *doing* this but I’m just interested in where the community lies.

So I’ve built my own cabinet from scratch (almost) but the computer, software etc was all 100% my own effort setting up. Obviously though, I’m just downloading everyone elses tables and playing them as I have 0 ability to produce actual content.

Now when I was researching this whole “thing”, I of course saw people selling cabinets, premade and preloaded with X number of games or whatever. I was never tempted because of the hugely inflated cost but I saw them none the less.

 

The place I ordered some of my parts from and my flatpack wooden cabinet was kase-eo in the UK…and I believe they sell preloaded cabinets too (I don’t know what their reputation is…but I will say the customer service was some of the best I’ve experienced and they really helped me when I was trying to get some things setup, not software wise, just cabinet specific).

So, I assume them selling preloaded cabinets is certainly frowned upon?

What if I sold my cabinet on ebay? Would the expectation be to wipe the harddrive? What if I thought, “We’ll, I made this for about £2k, I could sell it for £5k, make another and still have profit left over”.  (there is no way i’m selling this cabinet though, means way too much to me)

Does the community basically view it that you should only sell cabinets with clean installs and no tables on them? Are there “public” domain tables that are ok to be preloaded?

I’ll admit, when I was first looking to make my cabinet and I saw all these “premade” options (for silly prices like £6k+), I never made the connection as to what that actually meant from a software point of view!

 

I of course am forever grateful for the huge amount of work that has clearly gone on over the past decade+ thats made my cabinet what it is!

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[Iain]

No I don’t have full DOF enabled (yet…) but thats not to say there isn’t something trying to trigger anyway. I’ve got board in my cabinet the plunger and buttons are all wired too, with the nudge sensor on it too and it has input/output for LED’s, Knockers, Shakers etc but I’ve not got any wired up yet. Board could still be registering events though for all I know.

I might try over the weekend on the Metallica table I know it happens on, can I just comment out all the DOF calls in the script to stop them firing? Then I could just reload the table again and again and see if it ever goes wrong.

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[Iain]

Yeah I was wondering if was the pin dmd dll essentially failing, but only because the DMD doesn’t light up and the ROM fails to start…it could easily be a bit of a red herring.

The fact a reboot “fixes” it and that it always seems to take some time for it to happen from my experiences made me just think there was a potential memory leak in VPX or that it wasn’t tidying up after itself cleanly when it closes….I haven’t narrowed it down yet though if its only on SAM tables or not.

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[Iain]

I’ve never played a real Metallica before so I don’t know if this is by design, but whenever I get multiball I have to manually launch the extra balls myself.

Is that a bug or how the game was designed?

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[Iain]

Tables looking fantastic. Really appreciate the effort you’re putting in HauntFreaks 

I wouldn’t say the pin is particularly one of my favourites, but it’s certainly one new people are drawn too when they try out my cabinet, so having it look so good is definitely a plus for this table!

Out of interest, do other people get the ‘double flipper’ sfx play on the left flippers but not the right? About a quarter of a second apart? Don’t know if it’s something up with my setup or not.

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[Iain]

Hey

I know its WIP but just thought I’d say that I tried turning those charcoal values to full black (0,0,0) but I still had the weird looking Homer.

I downloaded Neofr45’s table though and the Homer was fine in that one, so thats definitely been fixed.

Gave the table a quick spin (its looking really good by the way)  but got the ball stuck, not sure if you’re aware of this one but i’ve included a screen grab just so you can see. The ball kinda got “held” there, pulled in as it moved past and then it went into the whole “looking for pinballs” loop. No amount of nudging would shift it so it was stuck solid.

 

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[Iain]

Yeah I too have downloaded the one from the first post but I think thats before any fixes went into it (its got the “weird” homer for example)

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