Visual Pinball

[Jim O'Brien]

There is a program that will rotate your DMD automatically it is called SetDMD.exe I used to edit my registry all the time until I discovered this.

 

[Jeff Strong]

After a couple of tries where I lost my patience and just shut down my old PC without accomplishing anything, I finally got VP working on my old W7 64bit machine.

It used to crash all the time when loading the table data, but this time I uninstalled everything, made some tea, took a few deep breaths and followed the instructions on the VPForums site with full attention. And voila! Suddenly I´m playing Addams Family, Roadshow and Simpsons. (It really shouldn´t have taken me so long, since I´m kinda used to all this romset business from my MAME experince, but it took me ages to realize that the table and the rom are two different elements.)

I gotta say, while the quality of the recreations varies wildly, tables like Addams are very impressive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFuwe28ns90

Runs super smooth, and the physics feel very convincing - faster and harder than most TPA tables. TAF is one of the very few tables I actually played in real life, and from my memory this feels very authentic.

The biggest thing, though, are the mechanical sounds in that specific table. The flippers have this heavy, loud OOMPH behind them, the bumpers rattle in a very satisfying way - it´s very hard to go back to TPA, where the flippers sound like they were made of cardboard and rubber bands and recorded at what sounds like 11khz.

Good to hear you got it working and you're having a good time.

 

[Jim O'Brien]

Didn't even know VPuniverse had newer Stern tables, are they any good ? I've been playing a lot of Future Pinball lately and getting my newer tables fix there.

 

[Carl Spiby]

Yeah they're fab, TRON is especially good.

 

[Heretic]

garry said you all owe him 5k biatches

most people shouldnt mind linball irl is a collectors thing while some of us are lucky eniugh to own such machines the majority oiss and ****e about tpa, when the onky machine within my range was a dead and dying soiderman, that sucked

 

[Jim O'Brien]

Hey carl, what version of vp are you using to play those newer sterns? I can't get any of them to work.

Same here I'm having problems too. I'm using 9.2.1 and I'm getting a rom error code.

 

[superballs]

Same here I'm having problems too. I'm using 9.2.1 and I'm getting a rom error code.

Are you ensuring that the rom you downloaded is named the same as the rom name in the table script?

 

[Richard B]

Got VP working after so long! The problem is the program gets into registries which causes security issues in the latest operating systems. It's due to sloppy or antiquated programming. That aside, the new tables are fantastic! Only trouble is, it's the three bears all over again. TPA makes tables easier than IRL (though much less so from STTNG on), while VP is often much harder than IRL tables - I couldn't nail the rocket ramp on Apollo 13 once! The sounds are definitely an improvement though, and the physics on the newer tables are mostly spot-on (you have to judge it on a per-table basis.) Sometimes though, they nail it, like the recent T2 (the latest in the always great Chrome edition). This not only played better than TPA (no more endoskeleton SDTMs, like in TPA and previous VP versions), and nailing those ramps was also much easier than TPA and earlier versions. It's been so long since I played a real one, I don't know if it's more accurate, but it certainly is more fun. The only downside are the cannons. Not one successful hit in any games.

 

[Carl Spiby]

Same here I'm having problems too. I'm using 9.2.1 and I'm getting a rom error code.

Very latest, you need the SAM pinmame too though...

 

[Jim O'Brien]

Are you ensuring that the rom you downloaded is named the same as the rom name in the table script?

I'll check into that.

 

[Richard B]

For those of you having trouble, someone on VP Universe kindly pointed out that some of these tables (such as Spider-Man, Avatar, POTC, X-Men, and Tron) are set to B2S. You need to go into the script and change it from "b2s.server" to "VPinMAME.Controller".

A good way to see what ROMs are needed is to try to launch without them, then it will tell you what name you must change it to. The Stern website only has the latest roms for each version. If the table you are playing has earlier (or different) roms scripted (like right now POTC is set for English/Spanish roms, which will not download - you get the English/French roms instead), change the script to the name of the one you have.

 

[Richard B]

I tried to play the Tron Legacy able they had at VP Universe. All I got was HORRIBLE lag. Like, my game would screech to a halt.

That's the result of an underpowered computer. There new Sterns take up a lot of horsepower to run. Try closing all other apps and maybe use a gamebooster. On mine the sound stutters and gets out of sync, but I'm able to play the tables fine, having problems only when there's excessive flashers and other major graphical effects.