WIP: Visual Pinball in Unity (2021 Edition)

[freezy]

Yeah we'll integrate more games at some point. We actually just need to provide a UI for all the ROMs that PinMAME is providing us with, but right now we prefer keeping the list small with the few games we're testing with.

[freezy]

A bit more gameplay, credits to @Rowlan!

 

 

Still a lot to tweak, but happy to see it's smooth, even with DXR enabled

 

[fastdraw]

now it's ok with the switch ID.

but i have this message with the table T2 (gtx1650 8go)

Quote

Max shadow requests count reached, dropping all exceeding requests. You can increase this limit by changing the max requests in the HDRP asset
UnityEngine.GUIUtility:ProcessEvent (int,intptr,bool&)
 

what are the recommended values (hdrp).

and also what table afm recommended and medieval madness 

 

if we do not put the dmd, the light animation does not work .... and the rest also I have the impression.
the dmd is the keystone?

I say that because without I had a frozen table, dead and suddenly putting it on it came to life...

normally the table must have the same behavior in build (even better) ? i'll try

 

çà marche bien , mais je  dois paramétrer le hdrp , pour supprimer le message.

 

 

j'obtiens ces stats :

 

Edited October 23, 2021 by fastdraw

[freezy]

We'll provide a Unity HDRP project with the correct settings at some point, but right now we're still tweaking and finding the best combination of visuals and performance. So unfortunately I don't have much to offer in that aspect right now.

 

BTW the green tint can be fixed by changing the diffusion profile of the material.

[MikeDASpike]

18 hours ago, freezy said:

A bit more gameplay, credits to @Rowlan!

 

 

Still a lot to tweak, but happy to see it's smooth, even with DXR enabled

 

Just a bit curious as an end user.

What type of hardware you need to run a table in decent quality (4k) and smooth experience ? Maybe I need to prepare mrs Da Spike for a hardware upgrade costs in my cabinet

 

Following you guys project for a long time now, and looks pretty awesome. Keep up the good work guys. Even as nin developer or table creator, this project makes me very happy

 

[hitman12]

Read carefully first post of Freezy on first page, there are few words about performance and specs. 

[freezy]

Yeah we've talked about this already, no news there. Rowlan's video was recorded with only a 3080TI so you should be fine, right?

 

In other news, just got the manual ball roller working.

 

[fastdraw]

14 hours ago, freezy said:

Oui, nous en avons déjà parlé, pas de nouvelles là-bas. La vidéo de Rowlan a été enregistrée avec seulement un 3080TI, donc vous devriez aller bien, non?

 

2000 € the card, + the pc that is going well, it starts to be expensive for virtual.

it's almost the price of a homebrew.

I look forward to the next update.

medieval madness works very well too ; for toys there will be pre-designed scripts ?

Edited October 25, 2021 by fastdraw

[hitman12]

Freezy wrote performance will be scalable for those folks who can't afford super hardware. 

[fastdraw]

when your vpe project is completely finished, you will stop everything ?
or else you will port vpe on an exclusive editor (sort of super future pinball, but open source).
with using and integrating other existing open source engines.
I am thinking of wicked engine for example.
or a kind of covertengine (Gerhard Botha)

Edited October 25, 2021 by fastdraw

[TerryRed]

Let the man get to a release point, and focus on one engine first

 

Open Source is... well, open source.  Wants, hopes and pipe dreams are one thing.... getting someone to do the work for another completely different engine is another.

 

 

[fastdraw]

hybrid table
i put an afm rom on the elvis table, if i replace the switch codes, should that work?
you should install a rom explorer to be able to load the correct rom, and thus test the vpx tables

 

I'm sure there must be common constructors rom for various tables

 

 

[freezy]

Patience... without coding you're not going to be able to make a table functional anyway.

[fastdraw]

On 10/23/2021 at 8:31 PM, freezy said:

BTW the green tint can be fixed by changing the diffusion profile of the material.

it's a bit confusing
are these profiles?

 

or 

 

la doc unity hdrp , n'est pas très clair , sur ce sujet. 

hdrp 12.1.0

anyway, whatever i change the lights remains greenish.

 

le lien hdrp n'est pas une erreur , je suis sur 2021.2 et vpe marche très bien.

 

on dirait que le vert provient plus du spot que des inserts

 

Edited November 5, 2021 by fastdraw

[Wylte]

On 10/25/2021 at 2:31 PM, freezy said:

Patience... without coding you're not going to be able to make a table functional anyway.

Don't worry, that's not an obstacle for fastdraw 😜

[BrandonLaw]

10 hours ago, Wylte said:

Don't worry, that's not an obstacle for fastdraw 😜

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

[gStAv]

On 10/24/2021 at 9:49 PM, freezy said:

Yeah we've talked about this already, no news there. Rowlan's video was recorded with only a 3080TI so you should be fine, right?

 

In other news, just got the manual ball roller working.

 

 

 

freezy: "I can juggle one ball, no problem!"....."I can juggle two balls all day!"......"I can juggle three of these. Aaahhh!"

[Gravy]

Pretty awesome watching this progress. Just wondering if the dev team has any thoughts on VR implementation or whether this may be left up to a branch by perhaps another team given VPE is open source? I realise this is likely to meet with "we need to walk before we can run" comments but thought I'd ask anyway. Exciting times ahead regardless and thankyou so much for your continued efforts.

[freezy]

I'd like to learn to walk before running.

 

More seriously though, each time in VR I'm hesitating to slap the XR packages onto the project and take it for a spin. So it'll happen some day for sure.

[Gravy]

23 hours ago, freezy said:

I'd like to learn to walk before running.

 

More seriously though, each time in VR I'm hesitating to slap the XR packages onto the project and take it for a spin. So it'll happen some day for sure.

Touché. Good to hear that it is at least somewhere in the grand scheme of things.

[fastdraw]

impossible to keep the modified parameters of the dmd, it reinitializes itself all the time.

craquements niveau son , comme des pop

Edited November 1, 2021 by fastdraw

[fastdraw]

pour les inserts , il est plus efficace et plus réaliste , d'utiliser vos inserts 3d  , de les surélever et créer une opération booléenne  ainsi  , la pf est entièrement percée , il suffit de lui adresser l' épaisseur réelle  , pour canaliser les "photons" , provenant de l'ampoule.

c'est très rapide à faire (par lot).

exemple avec quelques inserts :

 

 

Edited November 13, 2021 by fastdraw

[gear323]

Hi freezy. Been following this project for some time now and love seeing the amazing progress you and the team have been making.   Really looks stunning!

One question / suggestion for how to maybe handle table mechanical sounds better than VPX. 

I have a cab and have implemented SFF.  With some fine tuning of about an hour or two per table I can really make the SFF feel amazing (well that is until the author releases and update and I have to do it all over again).    My process usually revolves around editing the audio gain sound levels on each mechanical sound and then bringing each sound into an equalizer so I can adjust the bass levels etc.    Over time I ended up saving these adjusted audio files that are tuned for my specific cabinet and save them in folders by manufacturers.  So for example, the next time I have a stern table and I want the slingshots, solenoid, relay,  knocker, bumpers, kickers, rubber etc. to be just perfect I would just replace the sounds from my library of tuned Stern files (sometimes there is also some script modifications required as well).  I currently just have a folder for Stern, Williams and Data East optimized audio files. 

Anyway, I'm hoping that eventually VPE could deal with SFF better than VPX does.   I'm not sure the best way but I'd imagine it having a mechanical sounds database based on manufacturer and maybe also era for example.  Then table authors would just link to these sounds in the database when creating tables.   Cabinet owners with SFF would then only have to modify every single audio file in the database just one time to tune them to their specific SFF set up and then they would be perfect for all new and existing tables that get released. 

I know there is a PINVOL add on for VPX and that does help some but nothing comes close to the amazing SFF results you can get if you painstakingly modify each audio file to perfection for your specific cab.  Over the years I have found that the only thing worse than no SFF is SFF that is tuned way unrealistic / too powerful etc.  

Thanks for everything!   Just wanted to share a struggle that I spend 100s if not 1000s of hours on currently and hope that eventually there is a easier way to get great SFF results   

 

 

[freezy]

Thanks @gear323, interesting use case. To be honest I have no idea how easy or difficult it will be to override cab-specific settings for tables.

 

What we're generally trying to do is to provide components that authors can use to implement a certain behavior. For sounds I still need to look closer how it's done today, but my first intuition would be to provide a way to easily assign a bunch of sounds to certain events, preferably with a round robin and potentially some randomizable effects applied.

 

So as long as we can keep these in a structured way (as in: make it unattractive to creators to randomly play a sound with some code), I think all kinds of customizations are possible.

[Tengri]

2 hours ago, gear323 said:

Cabinet owners with SFF would then only have to modify every single audio file in the database just one time to tune them to their specific SFF set up and then they would be perfect for all new and existing tables that get released. 

 

My humble opinion: Ideally, you should not even have the need to do such things on your own, like touching audio files and having to maintain several sets (by manufacturer or by any other criteria) at all.

Imho, this topic can be generalized, because there are other areas where a user should not have the need to adjust settings for each and every table repeatedly. Examples:

- Lighting. Some tables offer a set of multiple lighting settings. For other tables, this is not prepared by the table author. How to toggle lighting (which keys / buttons) is done differently for the tables. Ideally, a cab user would want to tweak lighting which fits his cab / TV / preference and use this across all tables. Maybe also switch from a day to a night setting. Personally, i really don't want to adjust lighting table by table.

- View angle / Camera settings. Same story. I imagine that a user can have a set of a few personalized and preferred camera settings which are independent of any table. When switching between tables i expect that the 'view' stays stable. Again, personally I really don't want to touch each and every table to hand tune for exactly one view configuration for this table only.

- Audio: Volume / perceived loudness and all other aspects of audio settings. Also here, it would be great if there is no need for a tuning per table.

- Table / game options: Some table offer options like number of balls per play, adjustable rules, etc. Currently there is no common way for the user interaction. Some table offer a dialog for this, triggered by a custom keyboard / button press. Some tables expect the user to modify script constants. Ideally we should have one single menu concept and maybe on top a UI concept how to adjust settings for a table. So a table author could for example define declaratively a config UI (dialog / pop-up).

 

You raised the idea of a library of shared audio files. In my opinion, that raises the question if the general idea of a fully self contained table(~file) is still a good approach. For scripts, VPX already relies on central scripts being present. True is also - like you say - that many audio files are shared between table. Why copy them into each and every table?