Suggestions for cabinets
Hi all,
just some suggestions:
1) allow any keys to be used (so i can map to cab!)
2) support auto rotate of game field (without having to rotate screen in driver settings)
3) allow setting and memory of view for all tables without having to select each time
Already downloaded three packs :-)
regards
shifters67
Not just for cabinets, I'd like to second having another way to get at portrait mode. Having to muck about with windows settings every time I want five minutes of pinball seems entirely unnecessary. How about a command line switch or setting in the options in-game? I'm guessing this has something to do with how you support the mouse cursor, but it'd be much appreciated if you'd consider it for the future
Very disappointed, but the fixes should be simple
All of these would be great. How about a dual screen option to put a static graphic and the DMD on a second monitor?Originally Posted by shifters67
How about navigating to different tables with the left and right flipper buttons instead of the mouse? I would also like to be able to launch each game from the command line and fully quit a table with the ESC key. The flippers are also really, really lagged. It's almost unplayable.
Until I can at least remap the keys in the game, I'm not going to buy any table. Once I can do that, I will buy every single one.
All that said, the game does look awesome on my cabinet (after I rotate the display). I am excited to get everything working without a mouse and without rewiring the inside of my cabinet and changing the controls in all my other games.
Have you tried Alt+Shift+[arrow keys] or Ctrl+Alt+[arrow keys]? Many video drivers will rotate the screen for you with those shortcuts.Not just for cabinets, I'd like to second having another way to get at portrait mode. Having to muck about with windows settings every time I want five minutes of pinball seems entirely unnecessary. How about a command line switch or setting in the options in-game? I'm guessing this has something to do with how you support the mouse cursor, but it'd be much appreciated if you'd consider it for the future
I have put together a script for that with autohotkey. The script switches to portrait, starts FX2 and switches back after the program closes.
http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?sh...24422&p=225277
Ok this is awesome I bought two packs already. It needs more options for the vpin cabinet makers though! Alot!.
It needs support for 3 monitors dmd, playfield, and backglass. If 2 then playfield and dmd backglass combined.
The views are too far back in portrait mode. They should make a view that replicates a 38" high table and a 6' player.
You need to allow the ability to remove the pause and camera buttons taking up huge real estate on the pf
Betabrite support
Custom Table Navigation Gui That Is More Minimal
Rumble support that can be wired to a shaker motor
I can't think of anything else right now.
The above comments sound great. I'd really love to focus on creating a cabinet setup if these options were available.
Just yesterday I got my Samsung SyncMaster 204B vertically sitting on a laptop stand that is just good enough to hold the screen stable in a good angle and am controlling it now with a gamepad controller which is already awesome! Then I read about a "cab setup" for the first time on this forum and was wondering what they meant by it..Oh yeah I'd love to create a full cabinet setup with pinball fx/zen pinball.
Implementing functionality for the above suggestions would be the greatest update!
Thanks guys! We do have lots to adjust and more to add, your input helps!
First of all, thanks for releasing this for PC, and double thanks for including portrait mode at launch! After playing this for over 30 hours in the past 5 days, here's my lengthy list of cabinet suggestions and ideas.
I know you guys are busy and that cabinet owners are a minority (if an extremely passionate one). So I'll organize these by importance as I see it. Some have obviously been mentioned, but I wanted to get all my thoughts in one place. Others can feel free to disagree, offer their own ideas, or expand on what I have. Just trying to help out with ideas and I appreciate your responsiveness to the community in general.
By the way, we don't need menus for everything. Some simple txt or ini files would be fine for a lot of this stuff, if that's a possibility. Also, speaking for myself, I'd be more than willing to pay for access to some of the more advanced features, or contribute to a small Kickstarter.
P.S. You guys should get/build a cabinet for the office. They're awesome.
Critical
-- Multiple monitor support, with ability to move DMD to another screen. Ideally you could drag the DMD to any monitor, rotate 90 degrees in any direction and allow it to be resized to any size to accommodate everyone's builds. A text file would be fine, though (monitor number, X and Y coordinates, X and Y size in px, etc). This would be appreciated by some multi-monitor desktop users as well.
-- Ability to remap controls to any key, any joystick button, or any joystick axis. This would be appreciated by desktop users as well.
-- Analog nudging recognized by input on the X and Y axis would be ideal. Otherwise, an adjustable minimum threshold would help so that accidental bumps to the cabinet (or the impact of a real plunger) do not trigger huge nudges. Either way, a "gain" setting for the amount of nudge force applied once input is registered would help as well. This would allow me to trigger full-strength nudges like the Xbox 360 controller stick does without abusing my cabinet.
-- Ability to rotate to portrait/cabinet mode inside the game, rather than via Windows monitor settings. This would be appreciated by desktop portrait users as well.
-- One of two things:
-- A) Ability to launch directly into a certain table via command line commands. This would allow the front end programs people use on cabinets to launch tables from different pinball games and back out again. Ideally it would skip any splash screens, or at least proceed through them without any "Press Enter to Start" prompts. I'm not sure what might be required, like in terms of closing Pinball FX instantly when an exit button is pressed, or if the script would basically just do an Alt+F4 on it or what. Others can hopefully provide more detail on the bare minimum needed here.
-- or B) a menu system that can be navigated by just the buttons on a cabinet. For example, mine has two flipper buttons on each side, a Start button, a "coin" button, a Launch Ball button and an Exit button underneath the cabinet. I was thinking this would be tricky, because you don't want to have to maintain a separate UI just for cabinets and adding wrapping to the cursor (to avoid mapping up/down buttons) might get messy while trying to use it. But I think the best idea is to just keep the UI how it is in portrait mode and offer an option to have separate controls configured in the menus vs in the game. Given my setup and the existing portrait mode UI, I'm imagining this:
-- Menu:
-- Left primary flipper button: move left
-- Right primary flipper button: move right
-- Left secondary flipper button: move up
-- Right secondary flipper button: move down
-- Start button: select (Enter on the keyboard by default)
-- "Coin" button: switch section (Tab on the keyboard by default)
-- Launch ball button: nothing; or maybe select also
-- Exit button: back out (Esc on the keyboard by default)
-- In-Game:
-- Left primary flipper button: left flipper
-- Right primary flipper button: right flipper
-- Left secondary flipper button: launch ball (for Tesla magnasave, Moon Knight shooting gallery, and other instances where you can't move your hand down to the other buttons on the front of the cabinet fast enough)
-- Right secondary flipper button: launch ball (same reason as above)
-- Start button: launch ball (for starting a game from attract mode and entering initials)
-- "Coin" button: nothing
-- Launch ball button: launch ball
-- Exit button: pause (Esc on the keyboard by default)
Through key-mapping utilities, I'm basically already using this system for the menus and it works well.
Important
-- Option to disable all non-critical special event cameras. What I mean by this is anything you can see in a normal, full-screen, portrait view of the table should not zoom in to a close-up view. Examples that should not have a zoomed event camera: launching the ball from any plunger (main or alternate), Jabba the Hut coming out into view on Boba Fett, the mission mini-playfield on Blade, the submerged "Fight" mini-playfield on Pasha, etc. Examples that should continue to have special cameras because they zoom away to mythical offscreen areas: Hulk Arena, breakout-style minigame in Fear Itself, Brain puzzle in Biolab, etc.
-- Extra credit: get the upper backbox playfield on Paranormal (when it is released) to operate on the 2nd backglass monitor like the real pinball table Banzai Run.
-- Option to disable the roaming camera in attract mode. It kind of kills the illusion in a cabinet.
-- A backglass image displayed on a second monitor. Ideally built in automatically with some nice art, or else the ability to somehow set an image ourselves per table. The artists in the community would come up with something.
Nice-to-Have
-- Slightly more adjustable camera. I'm torn between views 1 and 2 right now. The angle on 1 seems good, but is maybe a hair too close and a little of the plunger mechanism gets cut off. Maybe custom positioning, or at least custom zoom? Extra credit: some kind of setting where you put in your height and it adjusts the camera?
-- Support for real DMDs. Many people are building these into their cabinets because they are so much brighter and more authentic than emulating the look of a DMD on a monitor. As far as I know, they all use the PinDMD board. The owner, Russ, is active in the virtual pinball community (especially over on vpforums) and might be willing to work with you. I don't know how your DMD system works and what this would take, but it would be amazing. Others in the community may be able to help as well.
-- Built-in support for the the Pinball Wizard controller (and thus Pinball Wizard kit used in many cabs). I haven't used the standalone controller itself, but I imagine it would work well for desktop enthusiasts who want authentic controls. Ideally the game would recognize it so that the plunger and analog nudging would work with no configuration. Probably would be good to still allow button remapping on top of that, though, because people may have different preferences depending on what the menus are like and such (or they may have physically wired their buttons to different joystick numbers other than the default). Barring built-in support for it, it would be cool if you got one and tested with it to make sure it works nicely with generic control configuration options.
Stretch Goals
-- I don't know if this is even possible, but a cabinet-specific camera angle that removes or counteracts the 3D perspective you get from the game engine. What I mean by this is that normally objects in a video game that are further back in the scene appear smaller because they are further away. So on a cabinet if you align the camera so that the front of the siderails of the in-game table line up with the edges of the screen on the near side of your playfield monitor, the rear siderails of the in-game table are like an inch or two in from the edges of the monitor because the perspective effect of the engine takes over -- the far side of the table appears smaller. I don't think you really need this on a cabinet, because the far side of the playfield monitor is physically like 3 feet farther away from your eyes than the near side. It would be awesome if the virtual table just "fit" the real one perfectly. Obviously not a high priority; just an idea.
Extra Crazy Stretch Goals
-- Head tracking like in this video. Maybe via Kinnect for PC? I don't seriously expect this, but it would be cool, right? Assuming there was minimal lag.
Thanks for your time!
I'd like to add two things to Roo's detailed and well written list.
They aren't "Critical" or "Important". I think they go best under "Nice-to-Have"
- Support for two sound cards
Many cabs have two sound systems. The first (and main) sound system is located in the Backbox and gets used for ROM sounds.
This includes speech, music, and sound effects - everything what originally came out of a given pinball machine's speaker system.
The second sound system is for mechanical sounds and usually located in the cabinet. Mechanical sound include bumpers, slingshots and ball rolling sounds.
It makes one helluva difference, take my word for it. Especially if you have matching subwoofers to go with it.- LED-Wiz support
LED-Wiz or Arduino boards get often used to control misc. button lamps, force feedback and toys. Here is a list of what is commonly used, obviously we don't need all of them. Contactors, flashers and shaker would be nice :)
Button Lights - Commonly used are "Start" and "Launch Ball", sometimes "Extra Ball", less common are RGB flipper and magnasave buttons.
Contactors - Up to 8 Contactors for mechanical sounds, usually 2 for flippers, 2 for slingshots, 3 for bumpers, and one in the back. A good post describing this with pictures is here.
Force Feedback - Shaker motor, gear motor, replay knocker.
Flashers - Usually 5 high powered RGB LEDs and a strobe.
Rotating Beacons - It seems more and more people putting one of those on their backbox lately.
Fan - Rarely used. Before you ask, it's for tables like Whirlwind and Twister.
The portrait / landscape stuff is easy to work around so engineering time isn't important for that.
A couple things that would be helpful:
1) provide a way for an external app to read current table being played or know in main menu. Something real simple such as update window title, set a registry key, anything like this. Something simple like this enables someone (me) to update a backglass monitor with the translite image for each game as its being played. Let the community do the work of making this work and creating the images
2) provide ability to map other joy axis for nudge not just Xbox pad. Isn't generic direct input support pretty simple?
3) provide ability to run Dmd in its own window that can be sized and frameless. This will let us drag that window to any monitor. Might be easier to implement than coding multi monitor support into the game?
Mapping specific keys can be handles by the community via script. The current in game options are pretty good.
I would be willing to do some of the engineering work for these features for free
Already in the works. No guarantees, but let's just say Zen have been very receptive to the idea thus far and Russ is already in the loop. Hopefully it will happen...
That would really be incredible.Already in the works. No guarantees, but let's just say Zen have been very receptive to the idea thus far and Russ is already in the loop. Hopefully it will happen...
Recognize you from VPF; have you played any Star Wars Pinball on your Star Wars themed pincab yet? I was just looking at the latest pictures (here) and it's looking awesome! That artwork is really cool.
Thanks for the compliment!That would really be incredible.
Recognize you from VPF; have you played any Star Wars Pinball on your Star Wars themed pincab yet? I was just looking at the latest pictures (here) and it's looking awesome! That artwork is really cool.
I had to leave town the day after I got my cab playable, so I haven't gotten to play much of anything yet. But my wife and kids have been keeping it company and running up scores on some of the VP tables while I'm away though.
I may hold off on buying/loading any of the Zen tables until they have in-game portrait mode and assignable keys worked out. I am itching to try it out though.
Will update my build thread(s) when I get back too.
Actually, none of these things need to be worked out. I suggest the Zen guys spend their time elsewhere as these do not need engineering resources dedicated. I have my cabinet set up with these things all happening automatically when you load the zen platform. You could very easily create a hyperpin entry called "Pinball FX2" and have it launch pinball fx platform properly rotated with keys remapped. From a cabinet perspective, I do not see any benefit of having these things in game. You can remap your keys using an autohotkey script and you can rotate your monitor as you need using the same script and the freeware app irotate. I ended up reconfiguring hyperpin and visual pinball to use left and right arrow for flippers and that saved a lot of effort. My cabinet has four buttons, 2 on each side. I use those to select the game, and plunge selects the game to start. If you have an ipaq or something and only have two flipper buttons on your cabinet, you can set up shift actions for up/down arrows.Thanks for the compliment!
I had to leave town the day after I got my cab playable, so I haven't gotten to play much of anything yet. But my wife and kids have been keeping it company and running up scores on some of the VP tables while I'm away though.
I may hold off on buying/loading any of the Zen tables until they have in-game portrait mode and assignable keys worked out. I am itching to try it out though.
Will update my build thread(s) when I get back too.
I also have managed to create a backglass image for every table and have written an app that changes the backglass everytime you select a table from within pinball fx2. I'm still testing this before I might release it on vpforums or such. As it stands right now, the app requires a few things to run right. You have to enable the file system audit policy to syslog read files then set up permissions in windows explorer on the steampinball\SteamApps\common\Pinball FX2\data_steam folder to enable read audits. This creates a syslog entry in the security log everytime one of the files is loaded. Then my app will register for event log changes on this log and look for entries specific for pxp files. Everytime you select a table, pinball fx has to load the data from the pxp file for that table to show the description and screenshot. My app will display an image, if you have such an image in the folder where the app runs with the same filename as the pxp file. I threw together some images, but they are not so great. We need the community to come up with some nice backglass images
For me, the hyperpin platform is an interesting toy. But the pinball fx stuff is actually fun to play - unlike any of the VP emulations. Having a real physics engine makes such a difference. So, for me, I ditched Hyperpin as my primary platform. Instead, I have windows 8 metro window on start up. I can from there (with the pinball buttons) select pinball fx (win 8), Pinball fx steam, hyperpin, or slamit. All those things run their appropriate platform, rotate the monitor, remap the keys etc. But I hardly every load hyperpin. But for someone that uses the hyperpin stuff a lot, you could just have the system boot to hyperpin as it does now and have the pinball fx2 launch when selected from the hyperpin menu. I did all this with slamit a year or so ago and wrote up a vpforums thread on how to integrate it. It would work very similar for pinball fx2. If anyone seriously wants some help with this I would be willing to help.
Right now, the only thing we really need is the ability to move the DMD off the first monitor onto another screen and resize it. Hopefully it can just be made into its own window that can be moved, resized, position remembered, then frame disabled. Currently, I have analog nudging working really well using the xbox 360 pad emulator mapping my accelerometer to the left xbox 360 stick.
Last edited by markmon; 05-19-2013 at 05:36 PM.
That is all good info, Markmon, thanks.
I understand and appreciate the attempt to try to limit Zen's time spent on things the cabinet community can accomplish somehow, but we don't know exactly what they have planned. If some of the stuff is easy for them and they decide to do it, that's a bonus. I'm sure your skills will come in handy to bridge the gap between whatever they end up offering and our full solution. A lot of that stuff sounds really promising, even at this stage.
Some of the things (like in-game monitor rotation) have been requested by desktop users as well, who won't be plugged into the cabinet community or willing to mess around with scripts and stuff as much.
I think most people will stick with HyperPin because it works so well on a cabinet. I think most people are on Windows XP or 7 as well, so they wouldn't have the option of the Windows 8 Metro stuff.
I can see two solutions: one where you launch Pinball FX from a single HyperPin item, and one where you have one item per table with the standard preview video and stuff like is used for Visual Pinball and Future Pinball today. That's why I gave those two options above in my initial wishlist. I think many people would ideally want the Pinball FX tables (and Pinball Arcade tables, and Pro Pinball tables if that happens) to just integrate into the big list with the VP and FP tables. You'd still have your favorites list to use as well. If that doesn't end up working, launching into Pinball FX as a whole could still work.
As for customizable controls, it looks like many desktop users want this as well and Zen have already said it's on the list. Right now I have it working with Xpadder and x360ce, which I posted about here.
I will ask you this: how did you set up your plunger? Mine is mapped to the right trigger of a 360 controller, but it's still pretty unreliable. It always moves the onscreen plunger accurately, but sometimes when you release it the ball goes at like half the speed it should.
And even using key-remapping utilities, I can't quite get it how I want without having different controls for the menu and within a game (see my suggestion above). I have mine set up the way I listed it under "Menu" above and this works great. I can navigate every menu option, including tabbing to the alternate menu (like switching between Overall/Friends/My Score on the leaderboards). But I can't have my secondary flippers be up/down for the menu and also be the "launch ball" button in the game. I would really like this because some modes/missions have things where you need to hit it very quickly. Try doing the 2nd level of the Moon Knight shooting gallery when you have to move your hand down to the front of the cabinet to fire -- you can't do it nearly fast enough.
Also, sometimes the launch ball button just doesn't work for me. For example, neither my start button or my launch ball button (which are both set to the launch ball command) work to drop the ball off the rail after hitting the Arena ramp on Hulk. Pulling the plunger does work, but is not ideal as a quick hit action. The buttons do work in other cases, though, like the Kraken magnet on Secrets of the Deep. Maybe it's just something weird with my setup of Xpadder and x360ce, but to me it's just another reason why native support would be ideal. If you have any suggestions on how I could accomplish this with the current control options, I'm all ears.
Last edited by Roo5676; 05-19-2013 at 07:48 PM.
One comment on the question if Zen implement backglasses for cabinets. There are some instances where this would work very well, for example in Paranormal where the Haunted House table could appear on the back glass rather like Banzai Run. It's true that a static image would suffice or even a nice illuminated directb2s back glass with random flashing bulbs. If Zen could put in hooks then that would be great although markmon's solution works from the sound of it.
A lot of us cab owners have put a lot of time into our cabinets, construction, electronics, coding stuff ourselves, creating complex configurations which the average pinball player and less IT savvy user with a desire to own a cab will never achieve easily. Therefore if Zen (and Farsight) can handle at least two screens automatically it will allow more people to get involved in the cabinet side of the hobby.
Having played some more FX2 in the cabinet tonight I have some "really wants"....
(1) I really want to be able to choose my own custom view of the table. Depending a players height, etc the view of a real table varies, so being able to freely define this per table would be ideal.
(2) I also hope Zen consider a choice of ball to be taken into any table. A more realistic chrome ball as seen in tables like Blade when the light go down would be perfect.
(3) An Option to turn down the lighting/bloom, etc as I have mentioned before is a must for me. The intense brightness of some tables s quite uncomfortable and hurts my eyes and I don't get this with VP tables with the same TV settings. Plus I don't get this problem on my FX2 tables on my Android device or Xbox 360.
Bumping this so people see Sir Cheddar's response. His post got flagged for moderation the other day somehow and then just got inserted in the middle just now.I'd like to add two things to Roo's detailed and well written list.
They aren't "Critical" or "Important". I think they go best under "Nice-to-Have"
- Support for two sound cards
Many cabs have two sound systems. The first (and main) sound system is located in the Backbox and gets used for ROM sounds.
This includes speech, music, and sound effects - everything what originally came out of a given pinball machine's speaker system.
The second sound system is for mechanical sounds and usually located in the cabinet. Mechanical sound include bumpers, slingshots and ball rolling sounds.
It makes one helluva difference, take my word for it. Especially if you have matching subwoofers to go with it.- LED-Wiz support
LED-Wiz or Arduino boards get often used to control misc. button lamps, force feedback and toys. Here is a list of what is commonly used, obviously we don't need all of them. Contactors, flashers and shaker would be nice
Button Lights - Commonly used are "Start" and "Launch Ball", sometimes "Extra Ball", less common are RGB flipper and magnasave buttons.
Contactors - Up to 8 Contactors for mechanical sounds, usually 2 for flippers, 2 for slingshots, 3 for bumpers, and one in the back. A good post describing this with pictures is here.
Force Feedback - Shaker motor, gear motor, replay knocker.
Flashers - Usually 5 high powered RGB LEDs and a strobe.
Rotating Beacons - It seems more and more people putting one of those on their backbox lately.
Fan - Rarely used. Before you ask, it's for tables like Whirlwind and Twister.
LED-Wiz and analog plunger support seems to be the most important things left to me. The cabinet community seems to have come up with a hack for just about everything else. As for the LEDWiz, if there was just some sort of API that could let us listen to events, the cabinet community could do the rest.
Real DMD support would be awesome. I know the PinDMD board listens to OpenGL debugging info to work with Future Pinball, I bet a similar thing could be achieved with FX2.
What's the benefit of the led wiz here? Do pinball fx tables even have flashers? I think the led wiz is silly anyway. Even on visual pinball, the flashers aren't going to be in any of the right places.
As for the analog plunger, why can't this be done with the Xbox pad emulator just like I used it for nudging? Seems a lot of people are asking Zen to do things that we can already do. Would much rather they focused on bringing out more tables than spending hours and hours of engineering time into something's like led wiz or supporting real Dmd which only very few cabinet owners even have. I think there's a lot of value getting the Dmd moved to another monitor, though.
agreed!
Now before I say anything, I am not a cabinet owner. That being said, I've been following the community a little, and I have to agree with markmon here. Yes, some of these features would be great, and make it a little easier on cabinet owners and future builders, but as a company, you have to think of your entire market. I think their time would be better spent elsewhere.
Again, all of the above features would be amazing! I think suggesting them is a great thing, just as long as people keep it civilized. I hate seeing people post saying that they wont buy a game, or hate it because it doesn't have certain minor features. ok, I'm done. Happy pinball everyone!!
I certainly understand time constraints and thinking about all the users, not just a minority. That's why I organized my suggestions by priority. My guess is that some of the things would not be a lot of work (disabling roaming and plunger cameras is a good example). I'm sure they have smart business people who will balance what they would like to do with what they can afford to do.
My philosophy is that if we don't at least make suggestions, they might not know what we want.
That said, there is an opportunity for the cabinet setup to be a showcase/marketing opportunity that generates extra buzz. Forza Motorsport has been shown off on triple-screen racing rigs with steering wheels at conventions and in videos, even though most people don't play that way at home.
I'm guessing you've never owned or played a cabinet that has LEDWiz support. There's nothing silly about flashers (and strobes), which I might add from first hand experience are awesome, despite the fact that they aren't physically located on the table. You can't really emulate flashing lights properly on a TV screen/monitor. There is no substitute for the real thing. Having them adds an extra level of sensory feedback to the gameplay.
But LEDWiz support goes beyond just flashing lights. Force feedback would be an even bigger advantage of the LEDWiz support. Again, if you haven't played a full featured vpin with force feedback (I'm guessing you haven't based on the fact that you didn't even bring up force feedback when making your point), you won't be able to truly relate to how much it enhances the game play experience.
Also, I'm not sure I'd say 'very few' cabinet owners have a real DMD. Russ has sold hundreds of his PinDMD boards already. They have been selling so fast he hasn't been able to keep up with the demand thus far. He is already working with Zen on support, and I doubt it will be very difficult to implement. I think it will be an awesome addition.
I realize that the folks that don't have cabinets are probably the ones that will be quick to shoot down adding such features. It's natural I suppose. There's nothing in it for them. But as a cabinet owner, I welcome such support, and if they add it, I will be more than willing to reciprocate by using my cabinet to showcase their game. Win-win.
I recognize that cabinets, in the scheme of things, would still be considered a niche market. But Zen are already positioned for the masses. The niche markets are what remains, and oh, by the way, they are probably among the most passionate of all pin-heads and most apt to spread the word.
Pinball itself has become a niche and a dying one at that, for many years. Zen needs to take every angle possible to continue pinball's revitalization. No stone should be left unturned. Their mantra is 'pinball everywhere...' That definitely should include the cabinets that are purpose built for the job.
There's already tons of tables out, and Zen have obviously already promised more. Tables are a given. These extra things are what will take the game to another level, open it up to a new user base and drive interest in the game from a new angle. I think their tables running in their full glory with cabinet features would generate a lot of buzz. It's another marketing channel that is currently untapped.
Bottom line is, Zen to this point are receptive to adding cabinet support, and by golly I'm thrilled about that, and say more power to them! Sure, some of the features could be accomplished through 'hacks' and 3rd party tools, but we really don't need anymore software kludges do we? We already have too much of that in VP and FP, purely by necessity. I want a piece of pinball software that will 'just work' for a change, and if Zen are willing to provide that, I'm glad to accept it.
I certainly hope this 'Suggestions for Cabinets' thread doesn't veer too far off course and turn into an argument about why cabinet features should or should not be implemented. Zen has openly asked for our input on what cabinet features we'd like to see, and we're going to give it. It's up to them to sort through it and decide how much time they want to spend on implementation.
Last edited by gamester; 05-20-2013 at 09:02 PM.
Well said gamester. These 'niche' add-ons can add value in so many different ways. Publicity it draws, the showcasing capabilities at gaming shows. People will buy the product knowing it can run in a cabinet with the thoughts 'hey, maybe I can make one one day'.
I built my cabinet 2.5 years ago having not played a real pin for years, and I too at that time thought there was no point adding flipper feedback nor flashers to a virtual cab. However after getting to play some real pins some time after the build whilst on holiday I was reminded what the flipper solenoid thump adds to the experience, the wonderful ultra bright orange of the DMD, and the effect of the flashers.
I promptly added the flipper 'thump' using two Siemens solenoids and a opto-coupler and there is no going back after you add this. I have also since added a Vishay DMD using Russ's board. I still need to add a row of flashers under the DMD and from what I have seen these really make a virtual cabinet complete.
Markmon - I think I have read you have 2 or 3 cabs. All I can say is take one of them one step further and add these features to see what you are missing.
Cabinet upgrades in one place!! Please?
It would be a gift from god or Zen in this case if all these cabinet mods where available through pinball fx2 software. I have a 3 screeb pinball cab with ledwiz and all the flashers and force feedback added and I know it has taking me months and months of searching the web and reading forums to get to know the right or best way to do these things.
However even after all this research things don't work exactly how they should and not all tables are supported.
I read here now that mark is saying he has created a way to do some of these upgrades already but he hasn't mentioned exactly how to do these things. So now I will spend days searching the known forums on a guide to get these done just like many others.
Now I have a bachelor in computing and still a lot of this stuff is way over my head and for everyday pinball enthusiast that just wants to plug and play this is just not an option.
I have many friends that have 3 screen pinball cabs that have experienced what my table has to offer with all the ledwiz force feedback and lighting mods and would really love to make this happen on there machines but would not even attempt to try due to the complexity and not having the time to make it happen.
So please people let Zen be the first to had all these requests in there software so everyone out there can be able to enjoy there work and pinball with all the mods we are suggesting without having to be a computer wiz or quitting your job so you have the time to make it happen.
So please keep suggesting the cabinet support you need and let the great people at Zen make it a possibility for every pinball lover out there.
That being said Barbie how far away are we from any cabinet support upgrades?
I feel 2nd screen support for the dmd is the most important by far.
Yea. Some if these things can be done now. The things that can be done now are:
1) integration into hyperpin including on demand rotation to and from portrait upon launch.
2) analog controller support for nudging and plunger using x360 pad emulation.
3) having backglass update on second monitor when table is selected within pb fx 2 (via program I wrote to do this)
4) remap any buttons via autohoykey
Things that cannot be done:
1) move Dmd to another screen. As far as in concerned with nothing more than this, cabinet support could be considered complete
2) play for credits / quarters
3) led wiz support
4) real Dmd support. I don't find this important. It prevents is from having colors in the Dmd. And it requires all future games use a Dmd. Dmd are being phased out if real pinballs. I see no reason to use real dmds. But that's just my opinion.
I will be making a cabinet pack and instructions for how to use my backglass app.
Obviously you have much lower expectations and a much higher threshold of pain than most. It's great that all of these round about methods exist, but I would not consider any of them particularly user friendly. Sure, many of the folks that have built cabs are used to having to jump through hoops to make stuff work. But part of the point here is to try to make cabinet features more accessible. That's what will grow the market share. This stuff should just work out of the box. I think we should see what Zen are willing to implement, THEN try to fill in the gaps, rather than cobbling a clunky solution together and waving them off claiming we don't need their help...
DMDs still seem to be going pretty strong as far as I can tell. Last I checked the latest Stern release includes a DMD. Zen obviously has a number of tables that already use it. I can see plenty of reason for real DMD support, even if it's only for the existing tables. To say that including such support now will 'require' future games to use it is silly. If they decide to ditch the DMD type display and move to some other solution for future tables, big deal, that can just be displayed on the back glass monitor. But that's no reason to ditch real DMD support for all of the existing tables. I don't think there's any harm in it, and I don't think it's going to be hard for them to implement. Heck, a hobbyist managed to get PinDMD support working for Future Pinball, with no source code to work with. I suspect Zen devs can integrate this into their own product with Russ' help without much fuss...
Last edited by gamester; 05-21-2013 at 04:35 PM.
Actually from a business perspective, I don't think it makes much sense to do much more. Have you seen all the steps required to get a properly tuned hyperpin set up? These people are use to having cumbersome methods to make things work. It's not all that important that they be handed gracefully via user menus. The users still have to jump through hoops to set up the rest of the virtual pinball platform. And the things I'm suggestions such as mapping of keys or rotating displays aren't even cumbersome to set up. The entire hyperpin platform runs via autohoykey scripts already. Writing in 2-3 extra lines to handle these things is no big deal.
As for growing the market share, I don't think any of this is going to sell a significant number of pinball fx installs. First, most people with cabinets will already move to this platform as it stands because even in its current state, its incredibly cool. Second, zen gets maybe $50 for the sale of all the tables per built cabinet. I doubt adding all these features would even add 200 total cabinet builds and zen sales. But even that only brings in an extra $10000. That doesn't pay for engineering resources to go the extra mile. So since from a business perspective, some things will inevidibly be cut, it makes sense (to me) that the things we can already do now should be the first. Finally, unless zen plans to hire new engineers to accomplish all the tasks, the engineers would be the same folks they have now but just being taken off other projects to work on this. That means less tables being ported or such as the labor resources to do these things come from someplace.
Last edited by markmon; 05-21-2013 at 09:15 PM.
This is exactly what I was trying to say earlier. Thank you for making it clearer
Gamester, I couldn't have said it better. You rule.
How can you possibly determine the business perspectives of Zen? Maybe they want to make the most incredible cabinet ever devised to take to trade shows to show off their awesome product and we can reap the benefits.
Also, you don't seem to know anything about cabs either and just seem to be talking out of your rear. Using the LEDWiz to make the flippers feel like real life flippers and using the shaker motor to physically move the cabinet when it shakes in game would be truly epic. If you don't have any suggestions for cabinets, perhaps you could stay out of the "Suggestions for cabinets" thread. Sorry, I don't really want to be rude to you, but aren't doing anything but a lot of typing in a discussion that you have no interest in.
Ok guys, everyone made their points. If you have suggestions please make them, but otherwise let's see what they announce. Guessing and debating won't really help us -- I think we are getting off topic.
We're going to do as much as we can to make things easy, and stuff that's hard or impossible to work around is higher priority that stuff that is easier to work around.
But I don't think any of it is going to have a noticeable impact on sales. We just want to do it because pincabs are cool.
Did I ever mention I like you guys?
If you guys ever start to build a Cab for trade shows be sure to post your plans here in the forum. We always love to give "helpful" advice :)
See now that's what im talking about.. Yea it will help sales a little cause I know some people are holding out for cab support but like me most of the cab owners prob already paid for all the tables just to help support it in hopes of future updates and things like cab support.. So like most of the others have said just give us dmd support to a second screen and I would be completely happy..Oh and thank you for the screen rotating options!
Rock and roll
Wait, what? I have no interest in cabinets? I have 40 real pinball machines in my house and a pinball 2000 converted pinball cabinet I built running pinballfx2. I have built 3 pinball cabinets and have been into the cabinets for years. I have written programs to help setting up pinball cabinets (setdmd for example http://thebigboss.org/arcade/setdmd.html), have participated in visual pinball development, and have written something to display backglass images on pin cabinets for pinball fx2 posted here: http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=24545. But yea, I guess I don't belong here because I have no interest in cabinets. Thanks.
You know it is possible to have a huge love for cabinets and at the same time think using real plasma DMD or LEDWiz is not beneficial. The feel of real flippers vary a lot from machine to machine. Adding some sort of kick solenoids most definitely does not make them feel like real flippers.
Mark not to be rude and I thank you in advance for anything you might have contributed in to help pinball but I really don't care if you are the pinball king as the title says this is just Suggestions for Cabinets so people can post what ever they would like to have for there pincab and whether or not zen wants to do any of these things its up to them.. Really dont need peoples opinions on what they think we should do with our cabs or what Zen should do... If you like pinball so much just support it. I myself have 2 pincabs and I dont use a real dmd but to each is own.. I will gladly take any support Zen gives us cab owners as a bonus to the great tables that they have already provided..
You guys are awesome!
I can say that if you guys are willing to add these features just for the fact that you're fans of pincabs, I will do everything in my power to try to use those features to generate some extra buzz for you.
Zen if you could post us with an update if any of these things are being worked on atm or planned for the near future I know we would love to know.. Thank you!
1. DMD move to a second screen/support for custom dmd sizes?
2. Key remap for custom controls?
3. Option to turn off the auto zoom/like plunger and back of the table or Cutscenes?
4. Tables with extra small games/videos cutscenes switched to a 2nd monitor?
5. Be able to launch/exit tables without going thru the main menu?
6. Ledwiz support?
I would like an option to disable all music during the menus prior to starting a game and upon exiting a game. Often a cabinet may be left on running and it would be nice if it could be silent until a game started. As it stands now, the only reasonable way to shut it up is to exit pinball fx.
Cab Support
Zen if you could post us with an update if any of these things are being worked on atm or planned for the near future I know we would love to know.. Thank you!
1. DMD move to a second screen/support for custom dmd sizes?
2. Key remap for custom controls?
3. Audio/Music menu options on/off control
4. Option to turn off the auto zoom/like plunger and back of the table or Cutscenes?
5. Tables with extra small games/videos cutscenes switched to a 2nd monitor?
6. Be able to launch/exit tables without going thru the main menu?
7. Ledwiz support?
Solitude any word on any of this stuff? just a simple yea they working on for future patches or no not right now maybe later...
I just wanted to say thank you for listening to the virtual pinball community. Owning a pincab and having this is a great addition. I think most of the stuff has already been covered but, my biggest things are.
1.remapable buttons (while i already have a work around using fplaunch being able to do it native would be great)
2.Pindmd support. Im sure that something can be done to intercept the video already in place and allow it to play on the pindmd.
3.Multi monitor support for backglass images or better yet videos.
Other than that i think it looks great and i look forward to more tables.
Thanks again.
For number 6
As far as i know this is already being done using pinballx.
That's got to be a horrible experience. There's no way to really launch one table. So it'll have to auto send the necessary key presses to get you there. That means still seeing all the logo screens and tons of time loading to get to one table then repeating it all to get to the next. Simply exiting one table will put you to the pinball fx menu where you can still change tables internally but then the backglass is out of sync with the game.
After installing this last night and integrating it with my HyperPin setup, here is my list of suggestions:
- Currently on the main menu you use the tab key to switch from the table specific menu to the table selection menu. You use the down arrow on the table selection menu to switch to the bottom menu which has the menu items such as Options Achievements, Leadboard, Exit, etc. I would like for the tab to take you to that bottom menu rather than the arrow keys.
- Allow you to navigate menus using on the left and right keys. All cabinets have keys that make sense for left and right (specifically the flippers) Few have keys that make sense for up and down. Using the right or left keys should cycle to the next row when going through the table menu.
- A view that does not zoom into the launch ball that makes sense for cabinet use.
- Backglass on second monitor support, I know there is a work around for this but, I would like for it to include DMD support.
- Native key remaping including the navigation (arrow) keys.
- Ability to launch directly into a specific table
- Lastly I know this isn't a cabinet specific request but Plants vs. Zombies please.
I use this in hyperpin with no problems and just set my magna save buttons to up and down and flippers to left and right so the menu is not a problem but I would like to see custom control support..
I think DMD support is the main request ATM from cab users all the other stuff has a workaround..
I would really like to launch tables directly tho
I believe we're still working on game fixes at this point. Of that list I think 4, 5, and 7 will be the most difficult for us.
Thank you! as long as we could get DMD and control support I'm sure people will love you for it... I know I will
I can see how evaluating/changing/testing all the different event cameras could be a pain, but if you could at least have an option to turn off the zoom to the plunger cameras, that would be great.
A few of them are actually borderline broken in portrait mode right now. The worst one I know of is the "max thrust" mode in the left plunger on Boba Fett. After you launch the ball, the camera stays zoomed in on the plunger for like a full second while the ball is loose on the playfield over by the right lanes and flipper (off the screen). I think there was one other one kind of like this, but I can't remember right now.
Then there are all the ones where you have to press a flipper to see which skillshot to hit (e.g. Death Race mission on Ghost Rider), which is kind of annoying when you would be able to see the whole table in portrait mode anyway. But on some of them (like Blade, I believe), that doesn't work (probably because you can see the skillshot targets from the plunger cam in a normal landscape view?), so there is no way to see which skillshot light is lit while stuck in the plunger cam.
The skillshot ones I can live with, but I hate it when it's stuck in the plunger cam while the ball is loose. It seems like disabling the plunger cam would be easier than trying to tweak them all for portrait?
Might be fine if you have magna save buttons, if you don't not so much. Also I would also argue it is not very intuitive to use buttons on the left and right of a cabinet for up and down. This is why I would like the navigation simplified to less buttons in a cabinet. Doesn't mean up and down have to be eliminated but would be nice if left and right were augmented.I use this in hyperpin with no problems and just set my magna save buttons to up and down and flippers to left and right so the menu is not a problem but I would like to see custom control support..
I think DMD support is the main request ATM from cab users all the other stuff has a workaround..
I would really like to launch tables directly tho
Yea and im sure it won't be to hard for them to add custom key controls.. And even better if we get to launch right into the table we want to play.
And for #4, I think it's nice if launching in this manner bypasses all the logos and critical that exiting from the table exits the app. So it makes it more complicated I think.
Since your the best
Since your the best
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPcXImThU5Q
thx
Hate me for it if you like but...QFT!
And with that you guys just became my new favourite software developers. All tables bought!
(so it did impact sales, even noticeably :P)
Last edited by DYSEQTA; 06-04-2013 at 01:52 AM. Reason: Wit
Looks like I am a little late to the party, but here are my suggestions for modifying the software for cabinet users.
Absolute must, cannot imagine a satisfying cab experience without
1. Screen rotation with fit to monitor (no additional perspective.)
2. No screen scrolling or zooming (no special event cameras, including shooting)
3. Score/DMD able to be moved to reside on second screen
Changes that make a cabinet feel like a cabinet therefore a high priority
4. Feedback and event API. “Toys” as they are often called are the single biggest advance in cabinets in the last few years. Realism is significant increased with force feedback.
This is best handled through and API that raises events. In this manner, no matter what the target hardware evolves into there is a unified method of capturing your applications events. It would also allow Zen not to worry about the details of implementation as once the API is complete, the community can take the hooks form there.
5. Analog plunger and nudging support. As mention here already, using the joysticks analog X,Y axes for nudge and Z for the plunger is the current standard. It is a major killjoy to have a plunger sitting in your cabinet and using a button to launch the ball. Likewise, pressing a button to nudge that table is so 2010.
Changes that would be nice but could be handled by the community
6. Key remapping
7. Displaying a backglass image
A nice but not high priority change
8. The ability to "turn off" internal sounds for events raised in the API (If you have invested in a pop bumper solenoid to make the sound and force feedback for you, it would be nice to turn the software’s internal sound off for that)
Not necessary at all, but major “wow factor” for Zen.
9. Send the video for the tables to a double buffer and allow for 3D stereoscopic images. (If the game is being developed in a modern DirectX environment, this actually should not be too difficult.)
All in all I think the most important things for the next version are moveable DMD and freely definable keys, maybe a backglass for each pinball.
It's certainly not wise to ask too much, small steps are faster to do...
Agreed! I know the ability to remap keys is on the list.
I would personally really like to see the use of a second monitor as a backglass and/or an extension of playable table area. For example, it would be really awesome to have the haunted house on paranormal be up on my backglass screen. I would imagine that would be a pain to do for you programmers though.
Just a thought for the wishlist...
Moving a freely placeable DMD to another monitor would be important, too. It's just in the way on the playfield...
And please add a pro-player setting - especially the slingshots do absolutely not behave like on a real machine!
The DMD drives me crazy! There are so many awesome things to see on each table. It's pretty annoying to have them blocked. It's infuriating to have the DMD affect game play because the ball is hidden behind it. The top of the screen is 3-4 feet away from me when I play, I can't see the ball through the DMD.
You can change the size, location and even turn it off completely in the settings.
Hey Barbiebobomb,
what is the current state of reprogramming pinball fx2 for cabinet users?
We are waiting now a couple of month and nothing happen.
I am a professional cabinet builder in Germany and need the update to implement pinball fx2 into
my cabs. My customers can hardly wait to play pinball fx2 with full cabinet support.
I´m waiting to hear some news.
Greetings
DJJoke
Well it works great in the cab now.. You can Rotate the screen, change camera angle and setup controls.. just cant use a second screen for dmd yet..
A good reason to support pin cabs..
If you look back at the history of hobbyists, you will find that many companies supported hobbyists in the early days which led to formation of new markets in that hobby. Model railroading is a good example. Had early supporters not developed products, there would have been no interest or market for that area of the hobby. This is no different. Once pin cabs catch on, you will reap the profits of this new and exciting market. You must think about the future not always next quarter profits.
So....
OK so I have been watching and since my last post I have seen stacks of tables released and not a single change made to support pincab users. I have still bought every table hoping that I was just being impatient but it has been over 6 months and not even the DMD request has been sorted??
Come on guys. Is it really that hard to take some time to implement some of these wishes? It is really starting to feel like this promising of pincab feature support was just a sales spin and I'm a sucker.
Whats up with DMD support?
Why are you taking so long in providing support for DMD on second display? A little info would be nice Zen?!
I'm starting to believe that Farsight is going to beat them to the punch with a cabinet friendly offering. Never would have imagined that a few months ago. Very disappointed in the seeming lack of progress on this from Zen.
Maybe they will surprise us, but I've stopped holding my breath...
Yea it's kinda crazy I know it wouldent take long to add a movable DMD. I have been behind them this whole time and payed full price for every table on release day to help support them. But they havent supported us and i'm not going to get any more till they do something about the DMD it drives me crazy to have to shrink it down and put it in a corner and not being able to see it good...
Sorry - we've got tons of things to fix/update across many platforms, doing cabinet support is on the list, though it is not our number one priority right now.
Just adding my voice here as a noob to Pinball FX2. I just bought the Humble Bundle in the hope that cabinet support will be here soon. I don't enjoy tinkering and creating scripts all that much so for me I expect a commercial product to be reasonably easy to set up.
Things I would like to see:
DMD freely movable to 2nd or 3rd monitor
Fixed camera portrait mode easily selectable
Controls mapped to any joystick buttons
Backglass displayed on 2nd monitor
Analogue nudge support
Long time supporter...
...first time cab player.
I've been happy to support Zen for a number of years, and on multiple platforms. I've purchased several tables at least 2 if not 3 times over. A few months ago, I decided to take the plunge on a cabinet - primarily for VP and FP, but I always knew I'd end up putting FX2 on it at some point. Well tonight was the night... OMG.I had no idea what I was missing. Seeing the entire playfield makes such a huge difference in terms of playability and enjoyment.
I still have a bit of tweaking to do on the input side, but it was no hardship to get individual table and back glass selection running in PinballX alongside all my other tables, and the load experience is no worse than some of the heavier FP tables. PinDMD support (or at least movable DMDs) remains the only item left on my wishlist. You guys have always done alright in my book, and I'm one happy camper. Can't wait to unleash this at my next party.
It seems that the moveable DMD is the one thing that can't be worked around.
Unbelievable
Wow... 1 month short of a year and still nothing beyond in-game portrait view and remapping of controls.
That is just pathetic.
Come on ZEN. Just lay a TV flat on the table and adjust a view for it in your engine. Should be two hours work. Making a patch maybe another two.
Gesendet von meinem Q10 mit Tapatalk
That part works just fine for cab owners. It's quite playable on a cabinet with XPadder and AHK scripting. The consensus view seems to be that moving the DMD to a second monitor (or a PinDMD) is the only missing feature for cabinet nirvana.
That part does NOT work just fine. Granted, they do have portrait views but none of them replicate the view you would have standing in front of a table. The views are as if you were hovering about 6 feet directly over the table. Everything is small and flat looking. Check out TPA for how a proper portrait view should be. No, theirs isn't perfect either but it is a lot better than Zen's. The tables themselves are great and play great in landscape on a console but the portrait views for Steam suck.
That's what I meant. Views are very bad. And in my eyes the most easiest thing to fix. These are real time rendered graphics, so one could even put in a slider to adjust angle and perspective on the fly.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. It's not as awesome as Future Pinball running with BAM and head tracking, but I don't consider it any worse than Visual Pinball. Everyone who's played FX2 tables on my cab has been wowed by them.
Zeiram, Do you have or play The Pinball Arcade? To me, pinball is all about whether it "feels right", which is really hard to describe. With me, it is a combination of graphics, physics, and viewpoint. TPA comes the closest to hitting all three. Zen would be right up there with them if their view was adjusted to be more up front rather than overhead. In fact, I think it would rate rate as my favorite if not for the subpar viewpoint because I really like the themes and deep missions.
It has been a while but I just did not enjoy VP or FP. FP, while it had very good graphics, the poor physics just killed the experience. It is furthest from "feeling right". VP is better with the physics but also just never felt like real pinball to me. Zen and TPA have different physics but they both feel more like pinball to me. Graphics for both are great and, as I said earlier, if Zen would just adjust the portrait view to more front and centered (like the landscape view), it would be a near perfect pinball experience.
I think the best option would be for Zen to offer views for both of our tastes and get rid of some of those weird views where the table tilts back and forth or zooms in and out. who wants a view like that? No pinball table in existence does that!
Yes, I've played TPA a lot, and have bought many tables on multiple platforms. I was as excited as many cab owners when Farsight bought a Virtuapin for development last fall, and dutifully installed the steam version on my cab when it came out. Honestly I didn't think it was appreciably better than the VP or FP tables I'd already installed that have functioning dynamic back glasses, DMDs, and analog controls. I tend to cherry pick which engine's treatment of a table I like best in my PBX setup, and like you I weigh physics, visuals, and cab hardware support when making the decision. I tend to prefer FP with BAM unless the physics are bad. That's been changing a lot with Zed physics. Centaur is a good example of a Table where I've hopped between engines as improvements have been made. The FP version was sluggish and floaty until recently. VP has also seen a lot of improvements in both physics, transparency, and lighting. Uncle Willy's Monster Bash is awesome if you have the hardware to push it. If you haven't tried them in a while you might take another look. The Unity3d engine is also worth keeping an eye on. If TPA ever supports other features on my cab, I'll buy yet more versions, but for the time being it doesn't cut it for me.
I tend to give FX2 a fair bit of slack with respect to physics since they aren't recreations, and the shenanigans that happen on many of the Zen tables cater to video gamers - which I'm completely fine with. They're creative and fun, and a welcome addition to the 250 or so tables on my cab.
Try view 1 or 1w if you haven't. It's not perfect (sides are maybe cutoff just a tad), but short of a truly tweaked cabinet camera it feels like a pretty natural position to me on a cabinet. It's slightly lower than view 2, which seems to be the best "fit" for the screen. I suppose it could depend on your height and stance as to what feels "right" to you.
Keep in mind that I'm guessing that all the camera settings are heavily based on the way they are in landscape mode. You don't have to use one of the ones that zooms or pans -- those are really only needed for landscape where that's used as a compromise to see more detail and also see the whole table.
We updated the game today to include:
-Movable DMD (can be placed onto a separate screen and positioned/scaled as needed via config files)
-Touch screen controls
Enjoy!
That sounds great!!!
Barbie,
i love you. ;-))
Last edited by moewe; 03-28-2014 at 08:54 PM.
The movable DMD is great!
I posted in another thread, but this one seems more appropriate. A backglass image that functions like the DMD would be great. The ability to turn off event cameras would be nice.
Also the ability to add a command line parameter to launch into a specific table would be nice. The folks that work with the frontends that people use on cabinets have been creative with the macro's but they always have to be adjusted after Zen adds tables/rearranges menus.
But happy with the DMD for sure!
-Mike
As one of those creative folks that addressed the back glass issue, all we need is a very simple change. That's to add the game title to the DMD window. This would solve the backglass issue entirely as I could write something to handle the rest. I do not think we need direct table launch via command line. I'm not even sure of steam apps can do that. The idea of launching from within hyperpin should be ditched.
Keep in mind that the DMD window isn't active unless a table has been started so you won't have BG support while selecting a table like there is in your solution now.
Also, steam does pass command line parameters to games and applications, so that wouldn't be a problem. I would consider command line options very useful.
I'm not sure about hyperpin, I use PinballX. It seems to work really well and is very versatile. I like having the FX2 tables listed there and launching from it. Steam has always supported passing command line parameters to apps. That's how you enabled the console to cheat...er "enhance the game play" for HL2.
-Mike
But we could show a really cool generic pinball fx backglass when the dmd isn't visible. This feels like a proper solution to me.
I would like to see a generic Pinball FX2 backglass on a monitor of my choice just to have something other than a blank screen. I guess I could do this pretty easily with a workaround but I'm lazy
I appreciate the creative solutions you and others are implementing, but I disagree with this statement. Maybe if you only used one piece of pinball software on your cab, but I find that unlikely. How would you even launch the various programs, by busting out a keyboard or mouse?
Ideally, I'd want every table from all the various pinball programs (Visual Pinball, Pinball FX 2, The Pinball Arcade, Pro Pinball, etc) to be launchable directly from HyperPin/PinballX on its own. The idea being to have one central UI to navigate to any table, rather than a collection of shortcuts to different programs that then have their own UIs and navigation keys/mechanisms. I want it to be easy for anyone to walk up to my cabinet, pick a table, play it, back out and pick another table, etc. without having to learn their way around each pinball program.
Now we may or may not get there, depending on what Zen and other companies implement into their "cabinet mode". But that's ideally what I'd like to see.
I don't understand - I'm able to launch any individual table regardless of if it's from FX2, VP, or FP using PinballX with table specific back glasses. The methods for doing this are well documented and in my experience reasonably robust. Updated AHK scripts show up on the PinballX FTP within a day or so of Zen adding new tables. Besides analog plunge/nudge (I'm currently using digital mappings via Xpadder), PinDMD2 support (DMD shows up on the bottom of my backglass), and view modes that some folks dislike; what's really missing at this point?
Sorry, I wouldn't call a macro that manually navigates through the menu for you (and breaks every time said menu is modified when new tables are out, even if you don't buy them) "robust".
It's better than nothing, but hardly ideal.
WTF? Absolutely not. You have a single button in your front end to load the whole platform. A Hyperpin button (one selection inside hyperpin) to load pinball arcade or pinball fx is fine. I have ditched hyperpin for the most part and use steam big picture. I gave a launch hyperpin from that if I want it. I also have pinball fx and pinball arcade in that. There are plenty of good options that never restore pulling out a keyboard. Anything that requires the monitors be rotated into the incorrect rotation so tables can be rotated as well is an archaic solution and should probably be ditched as a primary front end.
Last edited by markmon; 04-11-2014 at 09:37 PM.
The analog nudge stuff us easy to set up also. Its a lot better then xpadder. Although I don't find much use for nudging in pinball fx2 to be honest.
Very late, but here's some suggestions
Just got round to installing PinballFX2 on my 3 screen cab.
I'm launching using Hyperpin
I think all of this has already been mentioned, but from my point of view, this is what is needed in order of priority:
1. A way to bind the navigation keys in the menu, separate from the games. Personally my cab is set to left shift/ right shift for flippers, LCTRL/RCTRL magnasaves, could be used for left/right/up/down
2. Backglasses for the tables sent to any selected monitor
3. Be able to set a global view for all tables (no.2 seems best for cab)
4. Be able to cancel the zoom feature on ball launch, this is really annoying
5. Send different sound to different devices I.e. Music to one and effects to another
6. Be able to launch into specific tables directly using a command line or similar, also exit out of a table/PinballFX2 on single key press
7. Be able to support nudge on a gamepad or similar
I realise cab owners are in the minority and that the main platforms have greater priority, but it's really great to see what has been achieved so far and it would be good to see some or all of the above.
H
Good list. For 1, 2 and 7 I have working solutions but something build-in would be preferable.
4, 5 and 6 would be very welcome.
Especially 5 - having the mechanical sounds coming from the cabinet with decent bass makes a huge difference.
Are we any closer to getting a full screen, non-scrolling, non-zooming view for cabinets?
Plus support for colored dmds like pin2dmd
Not sure when we'll update with more cab features, sorry. I'll post once I have any good news
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