Pmax65

Hi Draco 1962, Here attached you can find the file you requested. Thank you again for your interest in this issue. Have a great day. Massimo custominput.ini

Yes, you are right. My setup use two controllers, one for each group of stick and related buttons, I also have one PS2 mouse for the trackball and one USB mouse board that I modified to handle 2 industrial CNC knobs based on quadrature optical encoders. Everything work great excerpt into the search session of GameEx. In the GameEx.ini file that I attached in the previous message the mouse is not enabled, but I also tried it and the result was the same. That is, the Mouse Y axis works right in the virtual GameEx search keyboard, while the mouse X axis doesn't work at all. Again, have a great sunday. Massimo

Hi Draco 1962, hooops! I just realized that I missed to say you about the controller in my last message, sorry. My buttons controllers are made around 2 boards model CY 822A, even if the boards are marked CY 822B (maybe was it just a PCB revision???). I attached the 2 files you required. Thank you very much for your time spent on this issue. Have a nice day. Massimo log.txt GameEx.ini

Hi Draco1962, first of all, thank you for taking care of my issue. Yes, I can easily navigate the virtual keyboard with the cursors keys of the real keyboard, but I'm building my cabinet and I use the very same buttons of the controllers that work great for the GameEx menus navigation. Meanings that when handling GameEx Arcade Edition menus the left/right joystick direction behave exactly as the up/down ones. Instead, when using the GameEx Arcade Edition search virtual keyboard the up/down joystick direction behave right, but the left/right joystick direction do nothing. I hope I sufficiently clarified the issue to you. Please excuse me, but English is not my primary language, and maybe I use a wrong grammar formalism. Have a great day. Massimo

Hi, I'm new about this, I approached GameEx Arcade just on last few months, so I could be doing a silly question. When I try to select the letters from the GameEx Arcade Edition game search on screen virtual keyboard, the selection cursor moves only vertically and not horizontally independently by using the Lef/Right controller buttons or by using the trackball horizontal movement I do. The keyboard cursors keys work right instead and I can easily select a game. Both the controller left/right buttons and mouse movements works great in games and in other GameEx Arcade Edition selections (they scroll the items as if the were up/down buttons) Anybody out of here knows why this happens? Have a great day. Massimo

I wrote this small program that it could be useful to someone here. The program named ExitShutdownSel.exe has been thought for the pinball cabinet to avoid any unwanted exit to the operative system from PinballX when the keyboard is not installed or not "on hand". As everybody surely know, PinballX has a programmable exit screen with the capability of select whether exit to the operative system or shutdown the system. Usually a virtual pinball cabinet has not the keyboard installed or it has the keyboard hidden inside the cabinet (the one I made, for example, it has a drawer below the cabinet that once opened can be raised and locked on the left side of the cabinet to exposing the keyboard/trackball/USB port to the user). In any case, when the keyboard in not "on hand", erroneously selecting the Exit item from the exit screen could be boring. That because once you did it, the only way to exit and shutdown the system is to install the keyboard or get the keyboard out from the inner of the pinball cabinet. The small program that I attached to this message is a workaround to avoid that boring event. Once ExitShutdownSel.exe is installed, when PinballX is exited by the Exit item using the pinball cabinet start button, the system always shutdowns. But, when PinballX is exited by the Exit item using the Enter key on the keyboard and holding down the Enter key for at least one second, the operative system returns available for maintenance purposes. Inside the Zip file there is also a little pdf document that is intended to explain how to install the program. I hope you enjoy it, have fun with your cabinet. Massimo ExitShutDownSel.zip

Hi Scutters, thank you for your suggestions, I'll do that soon.

Hi scutters. I'm sorry, you should help me about this, you must know that despite I'm a senior electronic engineer with more than 30 years of electronic design on my shoulder (I'm 54, sigh), I'm a very bad Internet user indeed So, I know that there is the tag button just below the title to add the so called hashtags, but I've no idea about what is better to use for this argument. What tag I should add in your opinion to make easier to find this? By the way, since I suppose that you own a pinball cabinet too, maybe you are interested about this other very tiny program that I developed few days ago. The program is named ExitShutdownSel.exe and it has been thought for the pinball cabinet to avoid any unwanted exit to the operative system from PinballX when the keyboard is not installed or not "on hand". As you surely know, PinballX has a programmable exit screen with the capability of select whether exit to the operative system or shutdown the system. Usually a virtual pinball cabinet has not the keyboard installed or it has the keyboard hidden inside the cabinet (the one I made, for example, it has a drawer below the cabinet that once opened can be raised and locked on the left side the cabinet to exposing the keyboard/trackball/USB port to the user). In any case, when the keyboard in not "on hand", erroneously selecting the Exit item from the exit screen could be boring. That because once you did it, the only way to exit and shutdown the system is to install the keyboard or get the keyboard out from the inner of the pinball cabinet. The small program that I attached to this message is a workaround to avoid that boring event. Once ExitShutdownSel.exe is installed, when PinballX is exited by the Exit item using the pinball cabinet start button, the system always shutdowns. But, when PinballX is exited by the Exit item using the Enter key on the keyboard and holding down the Enter key for at least one second, the operative system returns available for maintenance purposes. Inside the Zip file there is also a little pdf document that is intended to explain how to install the program (my English is not that good, I apologize for that but here in Italy when i was at school English language was not taught so much). I hope you enjoy it, have fun with your cabinet. Have a great Sunday. Massimo ExitShutDownSel.zip

Hi scutters, I finally found a solution. I wrote a small software to launch before and after the table that I called ShowDMDbackground.Exe. Before launch the table it must be called using the command line /L FileName and after the table exit it must be called using the command line /U In few words the software place a copy desktop image above the black windows that PinballX draws before launch the table and at the table exit the software is unloaded to allow PinballX to show the DMD recorded video correctly. I attached to this message the software with my own desktop image file (note that FileName in the launch before command line must be the complete file name including the extension and without any quotation marks. For example, in my case the command line would be /L WallPaper.jpg). It supports JPG and BMP files only. Thank you again for support me in this issue. Have great days. Massimo ShowDMDbackground.zip

Hi scutters, yes, at this point it's a personal choice of course. I don't believe the black screen would be better than leaving the desktop image, surely it is not better by a CPU/GPU performance perspective. It could be just a very little better under a video driver power consumption, since a black screen signal is less dynamic than a complex digital high contrast static image. This is the reason I wrote that I don't understand why PinballX darken the monitors. Thank you for suggesting to add a request to the feature request tread, I didn't noticed of it before, I'll do it surely. Again, have a nice weekend. Massimo

Hi scutters, again thank you very much for your messages. I just realized that I believed to attach my PinballX.ini file but I didn't indeed! So, I attached it to this message with the two photos. One shows the videos recorded by gtxjoe's PBX Recorder while PinballX is selecting the tables, the other instead show what I see once the table is launched. As you can see the DMD doesn't show the twos yellow areas. Yesterday night I already tried to disable the Hide DMD tag and I checked the CPU performance which loose about 5%. Not that bad indeed (the CPU rises to max 31% of busy), but I prefer to don't load that way it, so I'll keep it as it is. Anyways, I don't really know the reason that Pinball X darken the monitors background before start the table, this clearly conflicts with gtxjoe's PBX Recorder which is much friendly not doing that. In my opinion, in future the PinballX programmer should consider to add a tag to disable the monitors background darkening. Thank you again for your time and suggestions. Have a nice weekend, Massimo PinballX.ini

First of all, thank you for taking care of my issue. I know what you suggest, but is not what I need. There are some tables which occupy the whole 3rd monitor with the DMD, others that occupy the "standardized" DMD size in the center of the vertical size of the monitor and others again that don't have the DMD at all. An example of the the first case, that is a FS DMD, it is typically when the pinball has a full screen video mode such as Mr. Game's Motor Show https://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=3631&picno=14305 The second case is the standard DMD and could be set right following your suggestion, but it precludes the first case which is currently working right. While the third case is when the pinball has no DMD and it should be currently fixed by not hiding the DMD monitor during the game (I just suppose it, I still didn't check it). What I can't understand is why PinballX should clear the whole 3rd monitor while I can easily move the DMD everywhere also on the 2nd monitor, that it should means that the DMD placement coordinates are absolute not relative to a supposed PinballX DMD restricted area. In fact, when I sized and placed the UltraDMD in the VBscript code, I always used the absolute coordinates which the X ones started after the sum of the widths of the 1st and 2nd monitors. Note that when the tables are launched by the PinballX Game List Manager everything is already running perfectly. i suspect that PinballX substitutes the desktop background with some default underlay image which is empty and It could exist some image file to put somewhere to get it as a background. I just suspect, of course. If it exists I would know how to enable it, instead in case it doesn't exist that's not a tragedy and I'll keep it as it is. Thank you again for your interest in this issue. Have a great day. Massimo

Hi there, I downloaded my PinballX and in the last 5 months I get my pinball cabinet working really great, for that I would thank all the people in this community who made this possible. I've a little question about an issue not that much important but which could be "the cherry on the pie" . My cabinet has 3 monitors and for many tables I had the DMD on the third monitor which is a 16:9 shaped 10" type. To get the right proportion I resize the DMD window to occupy the center of the vertical size of that monitor. I already placed on the desktop an image which fills the upper and the lower areas of the monitor that are unused by the DMD. This works great when I launch the tables directly from the OS, or when I run them from the PinballX Game List Manager or also when I run the very nice gtxJoe's PBX Recorder, but when I launch them from PinballX the desktop background image is completely removed leaving the two areas black. Is there any solution to this behavior? Thank you in advance for your time reading this message. Massimo

Hi scutters Wow! You finally solved my issue! It was that damned AutoPositionPinMAME which was set to True and other than re-positioning the DMD into the third monitor it also re-enabled it when launched from the Pinball X Front End. I turned it to False and now every table DMD works right. You gave me a nice Christmas gift, guy Thank you very very much. Many thanks to all of this nice community members which shares my passion for these great tables which were my youthfulness primary amusement. Massimo.

Hi there, Merry Christmas to everyone. The issue is still there, but I experienced a new misbehavior which could be of help to understand the issue. It seems to me that launching Pinball X the PinMAME setup for the DMD is rewritten. I experienced it adjusting the size and position of the DMD in the Bally's NBA Fastbreak table. That backglass has the dedicated area for the DMD, so I activated the DMD window border and moved and resized it to fit the area. Launching it by the Pinball X Game Manager or directly from the VP everything works correctly but it suffices to run the table by the Pinball X Front End and the virtual DMD returns definitively on the third monitor. That is, after that any successive launching of the table (directly from VP too) has the virtual DMD set to fit the third monitor. To get it back on the backglass I have to readjust size and position outside the Pinball X Front End. I still believe this is not a VP or a PinMAME issue but a Pinaball X issue instead. Again Merry Christmas. Massimo