Why is PinUp Popper not open source?

[christianco]

This software is so frustrating, but I'm sure it works perfectly fine if your use case is simple enough. I bet if you know how every nook and cranny fits together, you can accomplish exactly what you want. I'm not at that point, and I suspect a lot of people fall into a scenario where it works "well enough" and they just pray it doesn't break.

 

I don't understand why this software isn't open source—or why it can't be made open source—if the community is (and plans to remain) free as in beer. Open sourcing would let the community contribute documentation, fix edge cases, and help people actually understand the system instead of stumbling through trial and error.

[christianco]

Admittedly, I made this post at the height of my frustration after a long day of debugging. I did eventually get things working, but only after stumbling onto a random batch file in one of the folders and then making incremental changes to see if anything broke.

Here's an example of the kind of confusion I'm talking about—a post I made recently on FB.

 

Quote

r
Can someone explain the difference between these three ways of defining whether Other2 is displayed? It seems obvious when you're configuring a specific table, but all three options can also be set globally (no table selected), and changing one doesn't seem to affect the others.

 

 

[christianco]

Here is the resource I pulled that picture from: https://www.nailbuster.com/wikipinup/doku.php?id=other_settings 

The article describes how to use these three options to achieve a specific goal, but it doesn't provide the user with an understanding of how or why.

[Rappelbox]

you gave the answer yourself: one settings is for global/general setup, whereas the other (PupPack Editor) is case-specific for a certain table.
Ususally you don't need to tinker with specific files and custom setup procedures because, if you setup everything at the start of the baller installer procedure, it works out of the box almost all the time.

 

IF you, for whatever reason, encounter an issue with a specific puppack, you should always ask the author of that puppack first, then the community.

And if both can't help (very unlikely), i'm pretty sure the developer of pinup system will gladly help.

 

BTW, a nice and friendly manner is much more helpful than a general rant at the developer.

I can totally understand your frustration if something doesn't work as intended, but sometimes it is just how these things are built.

 

so, now to your question and a general explanation:

1. picture shows the GLOBAL/GENERAL setup for your screens, usually only called via configuredisplays.bat during the baller installer setup process.

2. this si the setup screen for your pinup popper FRONTEND behavior, which displays to (not) show during scrolling through your tables and playlists library

3. puppack editor to modify a SPECIFIC puppack, so to speak a local setting for 1 particular puppack

 

hope this helps

[deadmanworking]

@pchan what @Rappelbox said 👆🏻

 

You should be prepared to edit each PuPpack individually, I've found the easiest way to copy your Pinupplayer.ini into the root of the PuPpack and while studying the PuPpack in PuPpackeditor to see which screens and triggers are used, and edit screen positions in the Pinupplayer.ini file if they are not right. 

[Tengri]

I don’t really understand why so many people bother with PinUp Popper / PinUp Player, or why alternatives are so rarely discussed openly.
 

PinUp Popper is not open source, which is a significant red flag for me. Overall, the software feels like a collection of workarounds rather than a cleanly designed system, and the way releases are handled is messy and poorly organized.
 

In the past, many people used PinballX - which is also not open source and, for that reason alone, is not ideal from a community or long-term sustainability perspective.
 

What makes this even more puzzling is that we have had a genuinely strong alternative for years: PinballY.
 

PinballY is fully open source, well engineered, and exceptionally well documented. It provides powerful scripting capabilities via ECMAScript (JavaScript). Its author, Michael J. Roberts, is also the creator of the Pinscape ecosystem (hardware, firmware, and software), the author of the Pinscape Build Guide - widely regarded as the definitive reference for virtual pinball cabinet building - and the long-term maintainer of the Direct Output Framework (DOF).
 

Beyond its open-source nature, PinballY is technically superior in several key areas:
 

System integrity: Unlike Popper, which often requires users to disable antivirus software or define broad exclusions for opaque executables, PinballY is transparent in its operation and does not rely on such practices.

Performance: PinUp Player relies heavily on CPU-based video playback for overlays and backglass content, which can contribute to micro-stuttering in VPX under load. PinballY is considerably leaner and avoids this unnecessary overhead.

Ease of management: Popper depends on a tightly coupled SQLite database, meaning that file changes typically must be synchronized manually via the Games Manager. PinballY works by scanning folders directly - add or remove a file, and it is reflected automatically.

Stability: PinballY avoids much of the “dependency hell” commonly encountered with Popper setups, such as strict VLC version dependencies and fragile monitor coordinate configurations that can break after even minor Windows display changes.
 

Given all this, I find it hard to understand why PinballY is not more widely adopted. My suspicion is that PinUp Popper is effectively imposed on many new VPX users through the “Baller Installer,” which installs it by default as part of a "large, loosely integrated bundle" (to say it in nice words). Newcomers are rarely presented with a neutral comparison of frontends or a meaningful choice at all.

Edited February 3 by Tengri

[Tikimaster]

Oh, this discussion fills many pages. It's tempting to have one installer for “everything.” At a time when most people only have a 30-second attention span, using such an installer is the “easy” solution. Most newbies then have massive problems configuring individual components if not everything works right away. This often leads to a more complicated situation than if they had installed each component individually, when backglass problems, DMD problems, and Pup Player problems arise simultaneously and the newbie has no idea which problem comes from which component. 
At the time, I preferred to install one thing after another and learn bit by bit until Pinup Player was added at the end. I use PinballY. Why? It doesn't cause me any problems. 

Ultimately, everyone has to decide for themselves.
I can't say much about open source. I think it's good.  But every developer has to decide for themselves. The great thing for me is that everything is free and everyone is free to choose. 

[christianco]

2 hours ago, Tengri said:

I don’t really understand why so many people bother with PinUp Popper / PinUp Player, or why alternatives are so rarely discussed openly.
 

PinUp Popper is not open source, which is a significant red flag for me. Overall, the software feels like a collection of workarounds rather than a cleanly designed system, and the way releases are handled is messy and poorly organized.
 

In the past, many people used PinballX - which is also not open source and, for that reason alone, is not ideal from a community or long-term sustainability perspective.
 

What makes this even more puzzling is that we have had a genuinely strong alternative for years: PinballY.
 

PinballY is fully open source, well engineered, and exceptionally well documented. It provides powerful scripting capabilities via ECMAScript (JavaScript). Its author, Michael J. Roberts, is also the creator of the Pinscape ecosystem (hardware, firmware, and software), the author of the Pinscape Build Guide - widely regarded as the definitive reference for virtual pinball cabinet building - and the long-term maintainer of the Direct Output Framework (DOF).
 

Beyond its open-source nature, PinballY is technically superior in several key areas:
 

System integrity: Unlike Popper, which often requires users to disable antivirus software or define broad exclusions for opaque executables, PinballY is transparent in its operation and does not rely on such practices.

Performance: PinUp Player relies heavily on CPU-based video playback for overlays and backglass content, which can contribute to micro-stuttering in VPX under load. PinballY is considerably leaner and avoids this unnecessary overhead.

Ease of management: Popper depends on a tightly coupled SQLite database, meaning that file changes typically must be synchronized manually via the Games Manager. PinballY works by scanning folders directly - add or remove a file, and it is reflected automatically.

Stability: PinballY avoids much of the “dependency hell” commonly encountered with Popper setups, such as strict VLC version dependencies and fragile monitor coordinate configurations that can break after even minor Windows display changes.
 

Given all this, I find it hard to understand why PinballY is not more widely adopted. My suspicion is that PinUp Popper is effectively imposed on many new VPX users through the “Baller Installer,” which installs it by default as part of a "large, loosely integrated bundle" (to say it in nice words). Newcomers are rarely presented with a neutral comparison of frontends or a meaningful choice at all.

I 100% agree. I started to fork PinballY last night to try and make sense of things and have a build I could tweak or investigate if things arise. Last contribution was 2 years ago though subtracting a fella updating some documentation in a fork.
 

With respect to PinUp software - I’m super sketched out that it isn’t open source given the spirit of the community. Then you have things like batch files and autohotkey scripts littered throughout to achieve various things. None of that would be necessary if we had access to its internals. 
 

I know it’s lame to wine about something free but I just don’t understand keeping it closed if the plan is to never charge for it. Given its adoption already this would solidify its hold over the hobby and really push it forward even more.
 

Imagine the security implications though if the reason for it being closed were nefarious. An army of PCs with high-end graphics card that sit idle most of the time and are connected to the internet.. I mean that would be diabolical, and I would be shocked if that were happening but what a story if so. 
 

Also, @deadmanworking and @Rappelbox I’ve resigned myself to making edits for each pup pack and reading the script, comments, description, and reviews in order to get various tables working - that doesn’t bother me.  I can usually find my answer if it can be solved on a table level. The issue I was having last night was with respect to the PinUpMenu. I was having issues with screens overriding other screens (among a myriad of other things) that were disabled in the three places I mentioned. I tried to change each of them individually to identify how they worked to no avail. 
 

Also, @Rappelbox is your 1 and 2 descriptions flipped by chance? I thought 2 was the global version but my issue was with trying to identify how the PinUpMenu behaves by tweaking all three. If I disable it globally, it still shows up on the PinUpMenu but not in packs, if I disable it for the PinUpMenu itself it was still showing so I was curious if the other two were overriding it. 

[Rappelbox]

i understand your feelings about having no access to the internals... i know a few guys that get physical pain when seeing closed source soft- and hardware     i'm sure they're reading it!

Up to a certain point you have my full understanding, just to be clear about that!

 

in order to have as few custom work as possible, you should at first globally set your screens, like in pic.1, configuredisplays.bat.

No, it was not by mistake the wrong order. pinup popper and pinup player both reference these, as far as my experience with those go.

hint: i set the music screen also to my 3rd (fulldmd) screen and other2 on my backglass screen

if all those screens are set correct you don't have to touch pinup poppers internal screen config (pic.2, mistakenly named "globalsettings")

and also you need to touch pic.3 only in a very few cases, i can't even remember if I EVER modified one of the puppacks, except for turning topper "off"!!!

just make sure to exec the correct batch file that comes with 99% of all puppacks

[Shivorath]

Cool to see PinballY mentioned in this thread. After endless headaches trying to configure Popper properly and it never working, even after a complete Windows reinstall, I moved to PinballY and it’s been a breath of fresh air. So much easier to use and has some great features.

Edited February 3 by Shivorath

[christianco]

To those of you who adopted PinballY - does that mean you don’t use pup packs or do you just use PinballY for table management and still use pup packs at a table level?

[Tikimaster]

26 minutes ago, pchan said:

does that mean you don’t use pup packs or do you just use PinballY for table management and still use pup packs at a table level?

There is a difference between Popper (Frontend) and PupPlayer. You can use PupPlayer only with different other Frontends. (PinballX, PinballY) 
Yes. I enjoy PupPacks with PinballY as Frontend. With Popper I could have more things like LoadingVideos and so, but I don´t need this blingbling. 

Edited February 3 by Tikimaster

[Tengri]

Personally, I avoid both Popper and PinUP Player, as I prefer sticking to the original tables and a more authentic experience. Beyond personal preference, however, the current development of VPX 10.8.1 allows you to use PupPacks without actually installing PinUP Player.

That said, my feelings are mixed. While it’s a relief to avoid managing PinUP Player directly, this integration effectively cements PupPacks as a 'standard' - something I’m hesitant to support. Using (multiple) simultaneous video streams and graphical overlays alongside the main playfield rendering is inherently a crude, heavyweight approach. It forces you to just 'hope' for a stable framerate without stuttering."

[M1K3Y]

To expand on pchan "To those of you who adopted PinballY" - Is there issues with having PinballY installed along with Pinup to explore its features without breaking a currently configured pinup setup?

[Tikimaster]

32 minutes ago, M1K3Y said:

Is there issues with having PinballY installed along with Pinup to explore its features without breaking a currently configured pinup setup?

I think no. PinballY does not touch anything, just starts a table. It does not change any setting outside of pinbally folder. 

[Tikimaster]

17 hours ago, Tengri said:

10.8.1 allows you to use PupPacks without actually installing PinUP Player.

Are you sure? Or do you mean Popper? Without PupPlayer - you can´t run Puppacks I thought.. 

[Cliffy]

4 minutes ago, Tikimaster said:

Are you sure? Or do you mean Popper? Without PupPlayer - you can´t run Puppacks I thought.. 

10.8.1 uses plugins for almost everything now, pinupplayer, b2s, all kinds of modules. However, as we all know 10.8.1 is extremely experimental and NOT yet intended for every day users. 10.8.0 is the only stable version right now

[Tengri]

Yes, 10.8.1 runs PupPacks through a plugin (I assume it’s just the core of PupPlayer in a wrapper). And yes, 10.8.1 is in development and in an experimental state. But I also report issues regularly. I didn’t mean to sound like I was promoting it as a stable choice with what I wrote above.

[Cliffy]

43 minutes ago, Tengri said:

Yes, 10.8.1 runs PupPacks through a plugin (I assume it’s just the core of PupPlayer in a wrapper). And yes, 10.8.1 is in development and in an experimental state. But I also report issues regularly. I didn’t mean to sound like I was promoting it as a stable choice with what I wrote above.

Not at all! I see you posting on github frequently  My statement is for everyone else to take note