Commandline Launch per Table?

[gypsyshred]

I'm using a frontend (AnarchyArcade, HyperPin). It launches games, this included, from a 3D environment. It launches the game itself correctly, is there anyway I could launch specific tables from the frontend?

 

[Mike Reitmeyer]

Currently no way to do that. The game is expecting a certain flow to get to the table. It would require quite a bit of work to hook that up.

 

[gypsyshred]

Thats too bad. If we could sneak something like this into the main menu update, I'd appreciate it

 

[Mike Reitmeyer]

Not making any promises, but I will at least keep it in mind.

 

[hopvision]

Any update on this? It would be pretty slick to be able to launch a table from the command line like "pinballarcade11.exe -table AddamsFamily" and have it skip the menus and go right to the table, ready to start. Using this on a cabinet or a desktop with a frontend is just painful, especially with all of the "what's new" messages and other crap that pops up and throws the keypresses off.

 

[francis247uk]

This would be a great feature to have, fingers crossed

 

[paul.strauss]

I vote for this too. Would be great so we can use a single front end for all of our games.


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[Metalzoic]

This would be a dream come true and fix many of the problems people have with the new UI.
They could bork up the UI all they wanted if they'd just give cabinet owners this one, simple thing.

 

[XXVII]

[MENTION=132]Mike Reitmeyer[/MENTION] please don't forget about command line table launching.

I bought the Pro versions of the first three seasons of TPA as they were released and I put forward about $150 to the TZ and STTNG Kickstarter projects. I gave more than was necessary to those Kickstarters and I would have done the same for T2, DW, TAF, etc., but I stopped backing Kickstarters or buying tables when I finally came to accept that FarSight was probably never going to add cabinet support. I mention this because even though those of us that want cabinet features may be a very small fraction of your customer base, we are likely the most passionate fans of virtual pinball and represent potentially hundreds of dollars of lost revenue from each one of us. Just from me is lost $80 for Seasons 4 and 5 Pro versions and probably another $150 from Kickstarter projects. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

When TPA first launched on Steam, I bought a virtual pinball cabinet in preparation for cabinet support. On the official front, not much has been released for us cabinet players aside from portrait mode, but there have been amazing efforts from the fans to add in most of the features we're missing: DMD moved to another monitor, fixed camera for primary monitor, backglass image on secondary monitor. All of these things we were told to be too difficult or not worth the time and effort to implement, but the fans found a way. Now with those things out of way, the most critical elusive feature missing is likely the least complex of them all to fix on FarSight’s end: command line launching.

As much as I like playing Pinball Arcade, I essentially can't on my cabinet. TPA doesn't integrate nicely in my frontend for starters. More importantly, the TPA menus are really clunky to navigate in and between games when all you're using are flippers and a few front panel buttons. I'm forced to drag out a keyboard, which is a bit ridiculous to be honest, and it's a completely unacceptable solution for friends trying to use my cabinet. Better to not even offer TPA for play than allow it to cause confusion, because it does. As painful as Visual Pinball is to set up and configure (or even look at, depending on the table), at least the VP version of a game will play nice with the rest of my cabinet vs the version I bought for TPA. Doesn't matter how good TPA is if I can't use it.

What I'd love is if you could do as has been said here: run a TPA table from a command line so that you could integrate it into a frontend like PinballX or HyperPin. After the game ends (and also during gameplay really), I'd like to be able to hit my exit button and cleanly exit TPA immediately, no other menus or any other nonsense. At the moment, I keep getting stuck in the custom ball selector after ending a game, which is kind of neat, but much less imperative after I've finished playing a game than going back to my frontend menu. Currently, without an "Up Arrow" key attached to a flipper, I can't even get to the menu item that would allow me to exit the game, or pick a game that's not on my current row when in the games list on the new UI.

Like I said in the beginning, there may not perceivably be a lot of cabinet enthusiasts, but there is a potentially impactful amount of revenue being left on the table due to the lack of these cabinet features, even/especially just this command line table launching. I'd buy the rest of the seasons immediately if I could actually use them in my frontend. I already want them, but I can’t use them as they are at the moment. Perhaps make command line launching only available for Pro versions of tables to incentivize people that already bought all the seasons to upgrade to the Pro versions. That would add some extra value to the Pro editions over the normal versions.

 

[Naildriver74]

I'm sure they made that call on what was best for them financially and what was best for development of other platforms.

 

[XXVII]

Perhaps, but perhaps not. And a decision like that isn’t irreversible. Just because they may have decided against it two years ago doesn’t mean they can’t change their minds now. It wasn’t until last September that Pinball FX2 integrated their cabinet friendly features into their menu. No reason to assume all hope is lost for TPA yet.

 

[Naildriver74]

Perhaps, but perhaps not. And a decision like that isn’t irreversible. Just because they may have decided against it two years ago doesn’t mean they can’t change their minds now. It wasn’t until last September that Pinball FX2 integrated their cabinet friendly features into their menu. No reason to assume all hope is lost for TPA yet.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men... The Shadow Knows.