Tried giving Visual Pinball a shot

[TNT]

Yeah, TPA is easier by design so game lengths will be shorter in VP. Also, VP has a lot more randomness with the ball spin and such. Some VP tables are better than others since they are tuned differently depending on who made them.

I think you are right. I think Farsight first wants the bulk of customers to enjoy the tables even if pro pinballers find it frustrating. Hopefully tournament modes are still coming.

And the quality of VP does vary a lot from table to table.

 

[TNT]

Some of it is a mental adjustment too. When I jumped back into VP for the first time in months I was losing balls constantly. After getting a feel for the virtual slope of the tables I seem to be doing better of late.

 

[Robert Misner]

my biggest issue is nudging, In tpa they're too powerful and easy sure,but in VP9 i can't get it work right at all..I've been using an 360 stick like a plumb bob and it either insta tilts or it moves the ball half an inch like its actually steering the ball. vs bumping the table.

I've ordered an analog nudge controller from Zebboards and am hoping that fixes things.

 

[HotHamBoy]

Ok, last night I installed VP and got everything working fine, mostly. I'm sticking with physmod5 tables for now and I think the physics are pretty great. However, some of the dropbox links to the physmod tables are down. I'm also confused about tables with multiple ROMs. Some of the tables I downloaded won't work and I think I downloaded the wrong ROM or something. Also, some tables don't even have a ROM in the ROM section that I could find, like Big Bang Bar or Bride of Pinbot.

So far the only way I've found to run games in portrait mode is to choose 1080x1920 in video settings, but the computer itself has to be displaying in landscape. That's really annoying. I also haven't figured out how to change camera angles on the table, if that's even possible. I searched google but the references I found were dated. Folks said you press F4 but this does not control the camera in the version I'm using.

If anyone can help me with these issues I'd really appreciate it! I know I should probably just post in the VP forums but... Eh. I like you guys

 

[TNT]

I haven't gotten to physmod yet. I have just been looking for tables not available on Pinball Arcade as of yet. Radical!, Fire!, Mousin' Around, Bad Cats, etc. Some of the newer versions you can see the improvements. I have been playing some of the night mods which are cool. And like I said some of the newer revisions are impressive.

 

[TNT]

I use VP-Man as a front end (is that a cabinet term?). Anyway I just use it for table organization. It will even tell you what ROMs you need. Usually it's just the most downloaded version. If you search downloads in the top right menu usually all of the ROMs will come up as well as different versions of the table.

 

[HotHamBoy]

[MENTION=5244]TNT[/MENTION] what the hell, those tables look much better than the physmod tables I tried. What exactly are you using?

Also, the tables I've played are all seen from directly overhead with all elements flattened out rather than in perspective. It sucks

 

[TNT]

Are you referring to the specific table version or the settings used?

Someone with more experience than me can chime in but I usually keep field of view at 50. I have tried messing with it at other settings and I can just never seem to make it look better than that. I always seem to make the table look more distorted. The inclination field I'll change anywhere from 40-60. That just deals with the angle that you see of the table. These settings are what I use for the desktop versions.

Also are you using the full screen or widescreen tables?

 

[TNT]

One thing I noticed while trying to learn more about physmod and how it works is that I am seeing VP9 tables on vpuniverse that aren't posted on the visual pinball website. Do folks no longer go to vpforums.org typically to upload new tables?

 

[mpad]

vpuniverse is for the stuff that is not allowed on vpforums, or lets say they are more open for innovaions.

vpforums is still the main community if you will.

all about vp10 happens there.

 

[SilverBalls]

And vpinball.com have some good stuff as well.

 

[Rainetshop]

I assume VP is mainly a windows software. I have an iMac. Any chance there's a VP9 osx Mac download? I'm not interested in flipping my mac into a half windows/mac etc. I used to play mame alot years ago when I had a pc. But since then I am pretty much now use only a mac.

 

[TNT]

I have been playing a lot of VP the last 3 weeks. Aside from playing Frankenstein's debut on TPA yesterday I have been working on getting physmod5 and VP10 tables working for me. You can really see progress made since VP9. Those guys over there put their heart and soul into writing development code and also take long periods of time to recreate tables. I think someone over on VPF said it usually takes them 400-500 hours to recreate a table! That is dedication.

Anyway I found a Shrek VP10 table and was playing it today. I was surprised. Shrek doesn't get too much love around here but I thought it was great. And also thanks to mpad for answering a bunch of questions I always seem to have on VP.

 

[Kolchak357]

I like Shrek a lot. I just prefer the Family Guy theme better. Same pin as you know. Shrek is much more family friendly if you have kids that play. The mini playfield is surprisingly good.

 

[pinsam]

I assume VP is mainly a windows software. I have an iMac. Any chance there's a VP9 osx Mac download? I'm not interested in flipping my mac into a half windows/mac etc. I used to play mame alot years ago when I had a pc. But since then I am pretty much now use only a mac.

I'm also a "Mac guy" nowadays. There isn't a Mac version, no. You could try Parallels - it differs from Bootcamp in the way that it's actually a Mac "app", you don't have to reboot or sacrifice an entire hard disk partition to Windows (Windows resides "inside" Parallels). Gaming performance can be iffy, though.

At one point I wanted VP (and those tables TPA doesn't or never will offer) so bad, I actually installed Bootcamp and/or got a PC laptop.

 

[odoyle]

I'm also a "Mac guy" nowadays. There isn't a Mac version, no. You could try Parallels - it differs from Bootcamp in the way that it's actually a Mac "app", you don't have to reboot or sacrifice an entire hard disk partition to Windows (Windows resides "inside" Parallels). Gaming performance can be iffy, though.

At one point I wanted VP (and those tables TPA doesn't or never will offer) so bad, I actually installed Bootcamp and/or got a PC laptop.

I'm also on a Mac, and have had limited success getting a wineskin instance setup for VP/FP. I have geometry loading, but no audio or textures as of yet. If/when I figure it out, I might do a writeup for us.

~od

 

[TNT]

Pretty disappointed to hear the news that Stern Pinball Arcade is mobile-only for the time being. Thank goodness VP10 is pretty amazing.

 

[mpad]

+1

 

[crazyflipperfingers]

Pretty disappointed to hear the news that Stern Pinball Arcade is mobile-only for the time being. Thank goodness VP10 is pretty amazing.

I'm real disappointed to hear about the Stern app being mobile only too. However, I tried a few Stern's on VP (X-Men, Transformers) and they definitely were not amazing. More like almost unplayable.