Visual Pinball / Pinmame

[Dumahim]

I've just gotten back into VP after a few years myself. The setup is such a pain that it's taken a few years for me to get around to installing it when I got a new PC. Now I'm very glad that I've taken the time to do it, but it took a little tweaking to get it playable.

I had the same sort of graphics issues and fixed most of them by changing some settings in Visual Pinball. Go into Preferences - Video Settings and make sure the box that reads Hardware Device Rendering is checked. While I was there I also boosted the resolution to 1600x1024x32. It runs great on my so-so gtx460 video card and the tables look way better.

Rom volume has to be adjusted in each game. Almost all the tables I've tried were so quiet they were unplayable. For most tables 8 and 9 seem to adjust volume, sometimes you have to press End first to 'open the coin door' and access the volume controls. Also if you're getting no ROM sound at all, the left and right arrow keys adjust PinMame volume as well. If that doesn't work for you here's a link to an Exel spreadsheet with links to various table specific tutorials, including volume controls.

Most of the tables I've downloaded were made to play on a 4:3 display. I've got a 16:10 widescreen monitor so I've had to adjust each individual table to get the proper aspect ratio. Here's a link in case that's an issue for you as well.

I can't help with the table specific gameplay problems you've had but I can tell you that my own two favourite tables, Fish Tales and Medieval Madness both look and play great.

Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestions. I had done some searching and had messed with the settings trying to find something that works, but nothing I tried fixed it. But you mentioned resolution, and realized I think I just picked my current resolution and left it at that, 1280x1024x32. So I tried 16 instead and it seems to have fixed the graphic problems I had.
Also, totally forgot about going into the table settings within the game. I kept looking for options for it in the editor. I'll mess with that next time I load up Junkyard.

 

[florigator]

Rom volume has to be adjusted in each game. Almost all the tables I've tried were so quiet they were unplayable. For most tables 8 and 9 seem to adjust volume, sometimes you have to press End first to 'open the coin door' and access the volume controls. Also if you're getting no ROM sound at all, the left and right arrow keys adjust PinMame volume as well. If that doesn't work for you here's a link to an Exel spreadsheet with links to various table specific tutorials, including volume controls.

Hi There,
I have the problem that I have no ROM sound at all. The only sound I hear is when I insert the coins. After that - nothing. Sound on my computer is working just fine, all volume levels to 100%. I tried the arrow keys and also opened the coin door and tried 8 and 9, but it just doesn't work. Still no sound at all. What else can I do?

Thanks for helping me!

florigator

 

[Richard B]

Hi There,
I have the problem that I have no ROM sound at all. The only sound I hear is when I insert the coins. After that - nothing. Sound on my computer is working just fine, all volume levels to 100%. I tried the arrow keys and also opened the coin door and tried 8 and 9, but it just doesn't work. Still no sound at all. What else can I do?

Thanks for helping me!

florigator

Which table is it? The 8 and 9, or END 8 and 9 does not work on all tables, especially older tables, and some cannot have the volume adjusted at all (such as Baywatch and other Sega tables released in the same era). Check out VP Forums Volume adjustment guide (it's a sticky), which covers a majority of tables.

 

[florigator]

Which table is it? The 8 and 9, or END 8 and 9 does not work on all tables, especially older tables, and some cannot have the volume adjusted at all (such as Baywatch and other Sega tables released in the same era). Check out VP Forums Volume adjustment guide (it's a sticky), which covers a majority of tables.

Hi Richard,
Actually it doesn't matter, which table I try, I have the same problem with all of them. Let's take "Fish Tales" for example. My only table that does actually a very weird noise when I start it, other than that I only have the sound of the coins. I can open the coin door and adjust the volume, but I just don't have no sound. Except sometimes that weird noise. With other tables, there's only the coin sound and nothing else at all.

 

[Crush3d_Turtle]

Thanks Jeff,

I asked Gord and he edited it for me. Relief!

Richard, are you talking about the amazing HD version? I didn't see that released but i will have to look again.
My favorite table on the site is Beat This, unfortunately available in 4:3 or WS but not full screen. It's an original by 4 of the members there and is very well put together.

I haven't been at the VPForums for a while. However, I am greatly honored that people like playing Beat This as I was a part of the team that created it. I helped the most during the initial planning stages making most of the drawings and concept tables before the VP wizards took over and made an absolutely fabulous table out of it. I had always been an FP guy, but what I saw that table become made me look at VP in a totally different way. Thanks a lot for playing the table because the process of making it was awesome.

 

[Draftcard]

in order to do the fullscreen tables in vp9 you will need a gig of video card memory for it all to run smoothly with the rom controlled backglass on a second monitor.

Im pretty familiar with this stuff if anyone wants to ask me a question on the side in a pm. I set all of this up on a 2 monitor PC not that long ago so its all still fresh in my mind.

this tutorial should get you going though, as it helped me with like 90% of getting everything up and running.
http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?automodule=downloads&req=idx&cmd=viewdetail&f_id=2990

the guys on those forums prefer it if you try to set everything up yourself and become part of the community.
They are happy to help, but look down upon people that lurk in the shadows looking to snag all the stuff without learning how to do set it up.

 

[Richard B]

I still occasionally have trouble getting tables to run, or even load at all. VP Forums has been a big help. One guy there is especially helpful, going as far as rewriting script code to enable a rom selection menu for Addams Family.
If your video card isn't top of the line, you can still play FS tables, they just won't look as nice. Most of mine have the playfield art difficult to see, as well as pixellation and other graphical oddities in certain areas (particularly clear ramps), but this doesn't affect the game play, so it is an acceptable trade-off to get a great view on great tables.
However, not even the very best VP tables can compete with TPA.

 

[HOW]

I must admit I fired up VP and realised I'd been spoilt TPA.
Though I was always only a VP8/FS user-and some VP9 stuff's STUNNING.

 

[jrolson]

I tried to like VP but it just feels to outdated, like it was meant to be used on Windows 95...

 

[Richard B]

I tried to like VP but it just feels to outdated, like it was meant to be used on Windows 95...

The desktop tables have that feel (especially the VP8 ones). One thing I hated was that the table angle was inconsistent, and could not be changed easily. They've solved that problem with the cabinet (FS) versions. Of particular note is the T2 Chrome Edition, which is one of the best looking reproductions I've ever seen (and is surprisingly light on requirements). It won't replace TPA, but it will make the wait for new tables that much easier (especially if you're a 360 player).

 

[McGuirk]

I'm afraid I find Visual Pinball too inaccessible to even download or install, which is a shame, because I sometimes encounter references to VP and wish I could play it too.

Now, I'm not an idiot but I like things to be simple. Future Pinball was easy to run because it was one easy Windows installer file on the front page of the Future Pinball website. But Visual Pinball? Christ. I went to VPForums.org and I'm afraid I don't know where to start. It's too complicated... VP Installer? VP 9.1.2? VPinMAME 2.4? VB Scripts? Frontends? I'm sure the website tries to make it as user-friendly as possible, but it's still too much for me.

I'm not asking for guidance, because quite honestly I won't spend this much time learning how to make pinball tables appear on my screen please. That's what makes The Pinball Arcade so convenient -- for 800 MS Points all I had to do was click 'A' on my Xbox 360 controller a few times and I had a great pinball game up and running. That's convenience.

But occasionally, whenever I'm browsing pinball stuff on the internet and I run into references to Visual Pinball, I whistfully wish that someone could just give me a DVD-ROM with all the installer files I need, the 20 most popular tables that work with those installer files, and an idiot's guide TXT saying: "Click on this, then this, then this."

ALL THIS.

It's 2AM and all I want to do is play some pinball. Instead, there's four different things to download and the website is completely cluttered with information. One package with everything would be nice, instead this is a giant chore. A huge impediment to people who want to play these games.

 

[unclewilly]

there is an installer on vpforums that just needs to be run. go through the setup and it installs everything except the tables and roms.
download a table and rom and put them in the table and rom folder respectively, and you are playing.

not that hard. ive done more work installing and trying to play daphne. but i wanted to enjoy space ace and dragins lair so i got that working.

i guess its a matter of what you want to play.

do you want to be able to choose just about any pinball table that was ever created or do you want to play one of the 5 or 6 that are available.

i want both.

tpa tables look great and play fairly well. but sometimes i like to play an old em table or something obscure like spectrum or even bad cats.

the question is will these ems or other tables ever make it to tpa. i kind of doubt it. so i enjoy each program for what it has to offer.

hopefully tpa will put out an editor and offer rom support or allow access to pinmame.
this would allow for some of these other tables to be made, especially the ems which i font think farsite is very interested in.

 

[Dumahim]

It's by no means that easy. The installer has out of date files so you have to still download the updated files. Run this in Administrator mode. Download the table, search the script to find out what ROM it's looking for, because clearly it's too cumbersome to just post which ROM it's looking for in the table description. Run VIPMame to test the ROM (not sure if it's supposed to be required, but I can't play a table unless I do this first). Hope, pray, and hop around on one foot hoping the table will launch.
TZ vexed me for about 2 hours because the damn thing wouldn't launch. I did everything I usually do, even downloaded every ROM on the site (probably a dozen) because even the script just said "gamename" and gave no ROM version. Nothing would work. Eventually I found out an option screen was popping up behind VP that I couldn't see and didn't show up on the task bar that I had to go through.
Then you want the graphics right, better be sure you've got a beefy graphics card for a game that, at it's core, was developed a decade ago.

 

[McGuirk]

It's by no means that easy. The installer has out of date files so you have to still download the updated files. Run this in Administrator mode. Download the table, search the script to find out what ROM it's looking for, because clearly it's too cumbersome to just post which ROM it's looking for in the table description. Run VIPMame to test the ROM (not sure if it's supposed to be required, but I can't play a table unless I do this first). Hope, pray, and hop around on one foot hoping the table will launch.
TZ vexed me for about 2 hours because the damn thing wouldn't launch. I did everything I usually do, even downloaded every ROM on the site (probably a dozen) because even the script just said "gamename" and gave no ROM version. Nothing would work. Eventually I found out an option screen was popping up behind VP that I couldn't see and didn't show up on the task bar that I had to go through.
Then you want the graphics right, better be sure you've got a beefy graphics card for a game that, at it's core, was developed a decade ago.

Well said. I ran that installer and it's still done nothing for me. I go to launch Funhouse or something else, and VP closes after it supposedly loads the file. I look around the forums and everyone's talking about graphics card setups and more and more files.

Pardon me if I'm going off on a tangent or just venting, but this is just pinball. The game should not be this complicated to set up. This should not be just something for hobbyists to get into. I never had problems this bad running MAME or WinKawaks, and that was 10 years ago on hardware that was also old. I'm having slowdown issues on TPA on my phone, and we all know there are bugs that need to be ironed out, but they got it right. Granted, they also got the licenses and the approval to do all this, as well.

 

[Heretic]

Been trying to give gorgar n monster bash among others a go in vp. It just feels so off after tpa....shame those guys dont have farsights engine to work with!

 

[Fuseball]

I had a lot of fun with VP/PinMAME when it first appeared. After a couple of years folks seemed to get bored of trying to build the tables properly and accurately, and started doing everything with animated reels. Everything looked beautiful but played terribly. I lost interest after that.

The JPSalas and Groni tables are fantastic though. Their AFM is stunning and plays just right.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

The installation problem is a common issue with open-source software. OSS hackers work on stuff that annoys or interests them, and there's little incentive for them to improve or even maintain an experience that you only have to go through once.

I think there may even be a deep cognitive bug/feature of the human brain involved: somewhere I recently heard about a study of memory recall that demonstrated that the details of an already-accomplished, unrepeated task fly right out of the mind once it's been done (the study was motivated by waiters, who can keep complex orders in their heads but instantly forget them once they're fulfilled). Unless you write down everything you do, you usually literally cannot remember everything you did to get a complex piece of software going, which makes it all the harder to make the experience better for the next person.

So the stuff is often fiendishly difficult to set up.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

...of course, there are open-source projects that do better than that. But it takes discipline and an explicit focus on making the product easy to install.

 

[ZForceFFC]

I tried firing up Visual Pinball again, so I could play some Cirqus Voltaire and others while I wait for the DLC, and any table I try to run, it displays sideways. Does anyone know why this is? I'm running through the VP Man front end.

 

[SpiffyRob]

Are you playing on a single monitor? If so, are you attempting to play in portrait or landscape mode?

If in portrait, make sure you download tables from this section.
If in landscape, make sure you download tables from this section.