[ATTN TOM] Pinball Arcade GUI Change

[sirlee]

I have tried both,

I have tried the "official" newest release of pinballx.exe

With it, it goes past the Start Screen and then selects the recently played table and starts it.

If I take the newest "beta" posted above, it does not even go over the start screen.

I have also tried different timings but always the same result, it does nothing or starts the recently played one.

As posted above by Mace i have set Waitfor to 0.

And I am running in windowed fullscreen.

There was also no difference between running as admin and running as regular user.

 

log.txt

PinballX.ini

[sirlee]

sorry dont know why it reposted my old text

but the files are attached

[Draco1962]

A question, have you installed the Windows 10 anniversary updates? I ask as mine were pending and after updating, all appeared to work with medium delay after. Also opened TPA outside of PinballX to make sure all updates from Steam had taken place. I also updated the nVidia drivers .

[mace]

Having just left Microsoft but remained on the Windows a Insider Program, could I just offer a small caution. Win 10 will attempt to install the latest approved NVidea drivers automatically, which is a good thing for some but may not be for cab builds. So it's worth going into your settings and set them so you can approve updates to avoid this and instead updates from the NVidea website.

Obviously this only applies to NVidea users, I have two Win 10 machines in the house one running AMD Catalyst and the other NVidea and the AMD standard installation is not overruled in this way.

My cab runs Win7 x64, I like stability...........

[Draco1962]

Good point. What I suspect may have been keeping me stuck at the "Press to Start" page was another program or process stealing focus.

[sirlee]

Well if it was a pure unfixable Windows 10 Issue, both versions of the PinballX.exe would behave the same on my System with Win10 and Nvidia.

However the older version gets past the Start Screen. So even if this is a Win10 only issue, it looks like it depends on the programming of the pinballx.exe.

[Draco1962]

Not saying this is an "unfixable Windows 10 issue." Not even sure how you could derive that from anything that was suggested. 

The point of it all was to rule out anything that might be stealing focus (update notifications from the OS, driver updates, Steam notifications, etc.).

Thanks to how the new UI behaves slightly differently for many users, this is not going to be an easy fix for Tom to remedy. There is a lot of frustration to share for all involved. 

[sirlee]

No No, don't get me wrong. I really appreciate all the hard work Tom puts into this! Just wanted to say that it only really started to behave like that (not going over the start screen) with the very latest release of PinballX. It sounded a bit like it was concluded that the latest windows update introduced this behaviour, which in my opinion is not the case.

This does, however not rule out, that there could be a whole bunch of other issues which are specific to Win10.

So if there is anyhting I can do to help pinpointing it, I am willing to help.

Thank you!

 

[Draco1962]

No harm, no foul. I don't know that there is anything specific for anyone else with Windows 10 Anniversary update, but in my case, I had applied the update upon shutdown.

The next day or two after, Tom provided his latest beta fix and I started the pin cab. Normally, the you should get the the updates are being configured before getting to the login screen or desktop. I did not and installed the beta which did not work. 

I then restarted the pincab and finally received the notification that the updates were being configured. I then went went ahead and looked for updates for nVidia and there was one that was for W10 Anniversary update, so installed it. One more restart and tested the beta with better results. 

[Tom Speirs]

I am a little confused Sirlee.

I don't believe the last released version supports the new V2 GUI? Are you saying you are using the Pinball Arcade V1 GUI?

If you are not familiar with the technology much its probably best you just stay patient and not get involved in these Betas until it is nailed down and a full release is made.

 

[Draco1962]

Hi Tom, you may be thinking of the similar post...

 

[sirlee]

I just bought this game on Steam (5 days ago or so). So this is definitely the latest version of the Pinball Arcade GUI I am using.

 

[Tom Speirs]

I wasn't thinking of that post. I was worried we were just getting sidetracked. Its just I like to hear from known long time experienced users only with Beta versions. No offence intended.

[sirlee]

All good, no offence taken. Did not want to distract you guys with my posts.

I really appreciate your work and effort put into PinballX.

Thank you

 

 

[Carny_Priest]

I finally got around to testing. I usually run FCM, but the current version is out of date. Table selection is running well with Table Select Delay - Long and Wait for - 5 seconds. Granted, without FCM I'm trying to launch DX11 executable but TPA seems to be launching DX9. But the right tables are getting selected, so I'll take it as a win for now.

 

Intel i5, 3570k

8 Gb, DDR3 RAM

NVidia GTX660 running all three screens, playfield at 1080p

PinballX.ini

TEST Pinball Arcade.xml

[Draco1962]

@Carny_Priest - did you include in your .xml the tables FarSight added that you do not own? 

[Carny_Priest]

Yes, although I don't see that having any impact as long as the grid position values match the tables in the in-game menu, Sort A-Z.

By the way, I agree that keeping up-to-date on grid position values with each release is a PITA. Better if it were by order of release, but it is a bit fussy to complain too much about it, first world problem if there ever was one.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Draco1962]

Tom may actually be leaning towards selecting from My Tables instead of A-Z with the integrated Pinball Arcade support.

The logic behind this is simple in that users will not experience a break in calling the correct table from the menu and having to edit their pinball arcade.xml file grid positions every time FarSight introduces a new table.

I am hopeful he will have a version that utilizes this that we can test.

[mace]

Right here the latest results videoed Tom:

Short (fail on screen scroll as mentioned before): https://1drv.ms/v/s!Ao6k3CIlgOqjm9kfcejXbXbn4sBJug

Medium (fail on screen scroll as mentioned before): https://1drv.ms/v/s!Ao6k3CIlgOqjm9kgUkW4buim4q2wTg

Long works fine: https://1drv.ms/v/s!Ao6k3CIlgOqjm9kZGbYkY1hVWZTfdA

Very Long works fine: https://1drv.ms/v/s!Ao6k3CIlgOqjm9keT0BnU4wg3IR30Q

Just to reiterate I had to rebuild the entire hard drive from a back up to get this working as it was before, looks like a windows or NVidia update may be responsible, before the rebuild the game missed the initial key presses due to things not being in focus. Screen mode and aero made no difference the outcome was that the 'last table' option was picked and on the faster settings a PinballX crash and error.

Would it help you if we shared our video driver builds?

 

 

[Tom Speirs]

Thanks. I expect we are probably good to go for a public release now.

I do get the "My Tables" point but I think our community is also likely to share up to date full databases and the Game Manager allows enabling and disabling of games. So I am not convinced on that.

Again, we are probably good for a release now as is.

[mace]

Any chance once that its out we could carry on testing to reduce a couple of the longer loading delays Tom? I wondered if the unused waitfor setting (I'm assuming from your earlier comments that its unused) to adjust the delay before sending the first keystrokes, that would allow for the loading delays between SSD and HDD installations for example.

 

[Tom Speirs]

I don't want to risk breaking other things but yes definitely for the waitfor setting. I noticed this was hard coded to make it actually longer if it was below a certain value (such as 5 or 0). Try using the attached and make sure you set it to something supported by the Setup Wizard (minimum 5).

PinballX.zip

[Carny_Priest]

Oops. I didn't realize that the WaitFor setting was disabled. With the latest exe, I can consistently get the correct tables selected with WaitFor=9 and Table Select Delay - long. 

And it is launching the DX11 executable. I guess I just need to tune the lighting. Still no update for FCM which would put the icing on the cake, but it all seems to be working well for me. Might even be worth purchasing some tables some day.

[mace]

13 minutes ago, Carny_Priest said:

Oops. I didn't realize that the WaitFor setting was disabled. With the latest exe, I can consistently get the correct tables selected with WaitFor=9 and Table Select Delay - long. 

And it is launching the DX11 executable. I guess I just need to tune the lighting. Still no update for FCM which would put the icing on the cake, but it all seems to be working well for me. Might even be worth purchasing some tables some day.

Behave :-)

[Carny_Priest]

Meaning that I have a minimal investment in TPA. I only have four tables: the free table and the three in the launch pack from way back in Season 1. Don't get me wrong. TPA is fun to play, but there isn't anything there that is not already done with more flair by the Visual Pinball community. It is also nice to play the trial versions on my iPad when I am away from the cab. With PinballX, FCM, DOFFX2, and dmdext filling in the support gaps that Farsight won't cover, it is becoming a worthwhile platform for cab users.