VPX Achievement Watcher - Add Achievements, Stats & Challenges to VPX!

[Solters]

Hey all!

 

I’ve always loved the gameplay of classic tables, but I missed the modern progression systems you find in today's video games—things like unlockable trophies, and alternative game modes.

 

So, I built the VPX Achievement Watcher.

 

 

This is a standalone, companion app that runs quietly in the background. It safely parses your VPinMAME NVRAM data and projects a sleek, modern meta-game right over your playfield.

 

Achievement System

 

- Session Achievements: Unlocked during a single game (Example: "Trigger 3 Multiballs" or "Hit 20 Ramps").

Each table with a matching nvram map has its own achievements. For example, Attack from Mars has up to 127 achievements!

 

- Global Achievements: Lifetime tracking!

The tool remembers your stats across all sessions. Hit 5,000 drop targets over the course of a month? You get a global trophy.

 

- Customizable: You can write your own ROM-specific rules using simple JSON files to create unique challenges for your favorite tables.

 

Highly Customizable Transparent Overlays

- After a game, a transparent UI pops up, analyzing your run and showing your "Highlights" (Example: Combo King, Spinner Madness).

 

- Cabinet Ready: Full support for Portrait Mode (90° / 270° rotation). You can tweak the scale, colors, and fonts via the GUI, and easily place the overlay exactly where you want it using a visual drag-and-drop tool.

 

Alternative Game Modes (Challenges)

- Timed Challenge: You get a strict time limit (3 minutes). A massive countdown is rendered on screen. When the time is up, the tool auto-closes VPX and records your final score.

 

- Flip Challenge: The ultimate test of accuracy. Pick a difficulty (Max 300 Flips). The tool directly hooks into your keyboard or cabinet buttons. A live counter ticks down with every flip. Once you hit 0 flips, the game ends immediately.

 

Cabinet Hardware Support & Feedback

- All features (toggling overlays, selecting/starting challenges) can be bound to your physical Cabinet Buttons (DirectInput/Joystick supported). No keyboard needed while playing or use. 

(Keyboard and joystick support)

 

- It features "Toast" notifications (pop-ups) during gameplay and optional voice announcements for challenges.

 

- It saves detailed text and JSON summaries of every session

 

-When vpx closes, the achievements that have been attained are triggered. Now, after closing vpx, but with the release of 10.8.1, I will utilize superhacs plugin (thank you for this!) for real-time scoring, and then it will appear differently and multiplayer support.

 

--- Hassle-Free Setup ---

 The tool handles the heavy lifting. Just point it to your VPX Tables and NVRAM folders. On the first run, it will automatically download vpxtool.exe and fetch the latest NVRAM mapping files (thanks to tomlogic's repo and francisdb repo for vpxtool) straight from GitHub. Then open gui from the systray at the bottom right. Determine overlay positions and assign buttons 

 

Happy flipping!

[Solters]

Update:

 

1. Completely new user interface (Arcade Dark Theme): The GUI has been rebuilt from the ground up. A stylish, dark pinball theme with improved structure, clear tabs (Dashboard, Appearance, Controls, Stats, Cloud, System), and new quick actions.

 

2. Enhanced Cloud Leaderboard (real achievement progress): In addition to challenge scores, your overall achievement progress per table (unlocked/total in %) will now be uploaded to the cloud and displayed in the leaderboard. Here, you can compare yourself with others or play challenges against each other.

 

3. Flip challenge by difficulty level: The cloud leaderboard for flip challenges separates scores by difficulty level (Pro=100, Difficult=200, Medium=300, Easy=400 flips).

 

4. Player ID System (Restore Function😞 The system now uses a 4-digit player ID. This is displayed in the "System" tab. Make a note of it! If you ever reinstall the app, you can enter your old ID there and your cloud progress will be restored. The ID is assigned automatically. Only the Watcher communicates with the cloud!

 

5. More freedom with overlay scaling: The hard scaling limit has been removed. You can now shrink overlays to an extremely small size (down to 30%) without text being cut off—perfect for smaller screens or DMDs.

 

6. Improved toast notifications: The achievement pop-ups have received a visual upgrade, and the unattractive "(Session)" / "(Global)" text tags have been removed from the overlays.

 

7. Local anti-cheat signatures: All local save games and scores are now signed with an immutable hash. If the JSON files are manually manipulated in a text editor, the system detects this and immediately blocks the file.

 

8. Strict separation of challenges and normal gameplay: Players who are playing a challenge will no longer unlock regular achievements. Challenges are now an isolated "mode" to prevent achievements from being farmed undeservedly.

 

9. Tables without NVRAM maps cannot play challenges or trigger achievements.

 

10. Challenges that are canceled during the game are not scored by the Watcher and are not uploaded.

 

11. Finally, hours of bug fixes. I won't list them here.

 

This version includes a large number of improvements. Therefore, please delete the old installation completely. Old installation files are strictly not permitted due to the anti-cheat system.