Ledwiz Configtool: Questions

[wowter]

Hi,

 

I have a 3 flasher setup instead which is less popular than the 5 flasher setup. I was wondering about the character limit, is that still 250 characters per table for everything? and how does that work? can my adding to the 3 flasher setup result in errors for 5 flasher people? I always test on my own system: if no error there i assume everything to be good, but that might not be the case?

 

Also: how do i add a new table?

[arngrim]

Hi Wowter,

 

I'm not aware as far as i know of a character limit, for example, my world record, lotr config

 

lotr,L80,ON,0,0,S17/S3,S18/S2/S21,S9,S5/S10,S48/S3,S46/S1/S2,0,S11/S4/S8,0,S3 300/S5 300/S24 300/S-1 300/W22 420 18/W24 420 18/W40 420 18,0,S7 300/S22,S25 Red/W33 Green/W35 Green,S3 White/S9 Orange/S23 Yellow/S26 Cyan/S0 Red/W43 Yellow/W58 White,S11 Red/S19 Orange/S26 Cyan/S25 Red/S-1 Red/W37 Green/W38 Green/W44 Yellow,S7 Yellow/S10 Orange/S19 Red/S14 Yellow/S26 Cyan/S-2 Yellow/S0 Red/W45 Yellow/W61 White,S7 Red/S25 Red/S5 White/S27 Red/S-3 Red/W34 Green/W36 Green/S30 Yellow,S7 300 I20/S28 100 I16

 

that's 503 characters , so you don't need to worry about it 

 

The 3 flashers config is totally independant from the 5 flashers config, you could put errors on them, i'll not be affected with my 5 led config.

 

I just expect, and i trust that the approver, if he has a 5 led config, will temporarly plug a 3 led config instead.

 

About adding a new table, take the name of the table from ipdb, and the suffix name of the roms

 

For example Maverick, and the rom which is mav_400 or mav_401 or mav_402, just specify mav

 

Some tables have alternates rom names, like big bang bar, bbb109, bbb108, specify all of them and the one that is the default one, as specified on the table script.

 

You can ask Bent98 to add a table, he likes to do it

 

Also, if you want to update all the config which are missing 3 led config, i would suggest that you start with the tables I won't add any leds.

 

I'm doing a last review of my list, and I'm on letter L

[wowter]

thanks for answering!

 

good to know there is (no longer) a limit, I read about a 250 char limit in the hyperpin ledwiz  "instruction manual" .    For now i am just filling the tables that are actually on my cab, so i can test them a bit before submitting. I am keeping an eye on your improvements, and personally think that in most cases just copying your hard work is fine . Mostly i have just taken your 5 left and 5 outside left and join them, weed out the double entries, and its good to go for 3 left. You could also fill them that way in the tables you have yet to look at, if you want.  If not i will look at them sometime.

 

as for adding a new table:  I do not see a "add new table" button or something in the config tool?  Maybe i do not have the same rights as you do?   I wanted to add 'last action hero' to the table list. I have a LAH cabinet, with my own (extremely crappy WIP) FS conversion of the VP8 desktop table, in which i am trying to incorporate the sharper playfield image posted on VPF. I now have the deepest respect for anyone who has the skills and patience to make something beautiful with such an awkward program like VP.  

[arngrim]

Well, I don't think it is that easy to convert a 5 led config to a 3 led config, when the cases where there's a lot on the sides and almost nothing in the center.

 

In these cases, i would try to make some balance, some mappings from the 5 flasher left or right would go to the center for example.

 

But of course, you would need to understand why tables are mapped like this or like that, that can take of lot of time.

 

This needs some testing, and if i wanted to do it myself, i would need to change my port assignments every time, that's why i don't do it at all.

 

So, just try to have a good balance on the three leds, if you have time to understand the 5 led config of the tables.

 

Just do your best, and if you have questions, just let me know

 

there's no adding a table button, i usually ask to bent or deegor to add, by chat or pm with the instructions above and they do it.

 

Yeah, i would live to see LAH vp9 fs, pindmd, ledwiz, db2s, i don't have the skills either

[wowter]

Making a great config would indeed require a lot of playtesting,  and delving deep into the manual (like you are doing).  But so far the 3 flasher configs are pretty decent, and it is better to have a decent light-show, than none at all. 

 

Also, when there are only 3 positions, it somehow becomes less important where what light goes, it is just nice to have something going off in time to the events. And thirdly: I'm guessing there are only a few 3 flasher people out there, since indiana jones did not work for weeks, and nobody complained.

 

Maybe i should put 2 more flashers in my cab..........     but i currently satisfied with only 3. Maybe if one of the ledwiz alternatives pans out, i will change my config.

 

And yes,   Last Action Hero is a great table that would make a fine candidate for a VP9 recreation. 

[arngrim]

for some tables, 5 flashers seems not enough lol

 

it's hard to add stuff on our cab when it's finished, i'm just lazy to just wire a rgb ledstrip

 

It's even more hard to review all tables, i can tell so enjoy the show how you like it, in the end that's all that matters

[wowter]

and I remember reading on VPF that Last Action Hero is on Player1' list at No 8,  this was before Al's garage band, so it must be at No 5 now: which means we will probably have a great recreation  2,5 years from now: Something to look forward to!

[Spektre]

Since most actual cabinets had NO flashers, 3 seems quite enough.

 

I went with 3 myself.

Making a great config would indeed require a lot of playtesting,  and delving deep into the manual (like you are doing).  But so far the 3 flasher configs are pretty decent, and it is better to have a decent light-show, than none at all. 

 

Also, when there are only 3 positions, it somehow becomes less important where what light goes, it is just nice to have something going off in time to the events. And thirdly: I'm guessing there are only a few 3 flasher people out there, since indiana jones did not work for weeks, and nobody complained.

 

Maybe i should put 2 more flashers in my cab..........     but i currently satisfied with only 3. Maybe if one of the ledwiz alternatives pans out, i will change my config.

 

And yes,   Last Action Hero is a great table that would make a fine candidate for a VP9 recreation. 

[arngrim]

That's just a personal opinion.

Almost everybody uses 5 led config now, and when i see my 5 leds configs, all the leds are pretty busy already, so this is not a luxe:)

Question, at the generation of the ledcontrol.ini, if the configtool automatically combine the 2 left led and 2 right led from the 5 led config, to the 1 left and 1 right to your 3 led config, would that help you?

[wowter]

That's just a personal opinion.

Almost everybody uses 5 led config now, and when i see my 5 leds configs, all the leds are pretty busy already, so this is not a luxe:)

Question, at the generation of the ledcontrol.ini, if the configtool automatically combine the 2 left led and 2 right led from the 5 led config, to the 1 left and 1 right to your 3 led config, would that help you?

 

This will work, but as you said yourself. It is not ideal. I do see that some 3 flasher configs i copy/pasted from your 5 flasher setups are perhaps too busy.  But again:  a lightshow is better than no lightshow.     

Also i dont know how the ledwiz copes with double entries, since there are bound to be some after the copying.

 

Maybe this could be run once, to fill in any empty tables? (but keep the 3 flasher config essentially separate)

[arngrim]

The ideal would be that everybody uses 5 led config

 

I saw old config before i reviewed them had double entries in one led of the 5 led config, and it didn't cause a crash.

 

I'm 99.9 % sure that there are no double entries, for same outputs in all reviews.

 

As we can anytime update a config, a one shot copy of the 5 config to 3 config will not be up to date, i still want to review a lot of other, and older tables

 

Do you have special 3 led config that is not aligned to the 5 led config?

 

If no, we could clean up all 3 led config, make the rule to automatically create the 3 led config based on the 5 led config, and keep a personal 3 led config, IF somebody is really interested in it.

 

What do you think?

 

Deegor would be the one that will do this, so Deegor, your opinion is also worthy

[wowter]

There are some minor differences in some tables between the 5 and 3 flasher setups that i copied (like NBA fb), but nothing major though. 

 

for future proofing, i think your idea is good.

 

I dont know how the system works, but i think it might not be possible to keep a personal 3 flasher setup, AND have the tool convert 5 to 3 automagically during the generation proces. I would like to keep the possibility for personal 3 flasher configs.

 

Another thing: Flasher simulation has come a long way in VP,  the on-table flashers in NBA fastbreak look very bright, and the table has its own lightshow. I personally also liked the bare-bottom 3 flasher ledwiz setup that was originally there. Especially for this table (and probably more in the future), it might be better to keep the ledwiz flashers a bit more minimalistic, especially for people who have their flashers under the glass. I'm kind of torn on this issue though.....

 

bare bottom original config for the 3 flasher:  (i will probably add a video of the complex config later)

[arngrim]

I'm not the configtool developper, but i think it is possible imo.

 

Like no possibility of having a public 3 led config, just a personal one

 

and if there's no personal 3 led config, the file would generate the 3 led based on the 5 led, on the contrary, it would take the 3 led config.

 

What is the issue with nba? is it because flashers are improved in JP version that we would diminish the usage of the leds? i don't think so

 

 

my original point in this topic that if i had 3 leds instead of 5, i would not necessary copy the 5 led to the 3 led config, because you would have 2 or 3 solenoid flashing at the same time on the same led, and the result will not be good.

 

For the leds on the playfield, i have 5 of my 10 leds near the playfield, and when i look the mapping of the 5 led config of nba, it's not very very busy compared to many other tables, i played it a little bit yesterday and i still like the config.

 

Perhaps if you get the 2 remaining leds you will change your mind

 

 

 

[DeeGor]

We could add functionality to auto populate the 3 flasher config, but I can see it getting really busy condensing 5 flashers down to 3.  Setting up these flasher assignments can be a work of art in itself sometimes.  IMO, it's better to have someone go through and figure out what is best for the 3 flasher configs.

 

If enough people want it, I can simply do a few database queries and populate all the 3 flasher configs, and then from this point forward, anytime we add a new table we would make sure to populate the 3 flasher config as well.

[Spektre]

Actually no.  The idea that 5 flasher is the best is personal opinion.  The FACT that most real cabinets have none is ..well... fact.

 

That's just a personal opinion.

Almost everybody uses 5 led config now, and when i see my 5 leds configs, all the leds are pretty busy already, so this is not a luxe:)

Question, at the generation of the ledcontrol.ini, if the configtool automatically combine the 2 left led and 2 right led from the 5 led config, to the 1 left and 1 right to your 3 led config, would that help you?

[Spektre]

Most likely too much workload, but instead of tagging the LEDs, FL, L, M, R, FR, you could simply tag the LED with a percent from 0 to 100.  The config tool could simply then round to the nearest LED regardless of how many you had, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or in 3 years when everyone is arguing that it's really not a pinball table if there is less than 20 flashers.

[arngrim]

sorry i don't understand, all real pinballs from about mid 80's have flashers.

 

Williams, Bally, Midway have even a a flasher test section on their service menu.

 

If you are happy with your 3 flashers, then that's perfect, i was just saying that most of the virtual cab owners prefer to have 5 flashers, but in the end that's a personal choice indeed

 

i'll continue to support the 3 flashers for my next updates, welll, i will just copy the content of the 5 to the 3.

 

I like your idea spektre

[Spektre]

Maybe we are using different terminology?

 

Whereas a few pinball machines had flashers (bright lights atop the backbox or at least outside the playfield) they certainly were not standard in the games I played.  Coming from the Pinball Hall of Fame last month I can only remember a few with them.

 

Are you doing the flasher mappings/assignments currently Arngrim?

sorry i don't understand, all real pinballs from about mid 80's have flashers.

 

Williams, Bally, Midway have even a a flasher test section on their service menu.

 

If you are happy with your 3 flashers, then that's perfect, i was just saying that most of the virtual cab owners prefer to have 5 flashers, but in the end that's a personal choice indeed

 

i'll continue to support the 3 flashers for my next updates, welll, i will just copy the content of the 5 to the 3.

 

I like your idea spektre

[arngrim]

Yes i am doing almost all the mappings.

Can you give an example of such pinballs?

[wowter]

(bright lights atop the backbox or at least outside the playfield)

 

This is a very narrow definition of a 'flasher', most people also refer to flashing lights ON the playfield as flashers:

 

like this definition from pinball-fixers.com:

 

Flashers (not marked on diagram)

The really bright lights that draw your attention to a position on the Playfield.

Flashers are mainly used as attention seekers. Their main purpose is to alert the player that something is about to happen, but they can also be used to note something that has just happened.

[Spektre]

Yes i am doing almost all the mappings.

Can you give an example of such pinballs?

Just off the top of my head , a few of my favorites: Southpark, Star Trek, Cyclone.

 

Thanks for the hard work.  Maybe in a future pass we can try and do the percent idea.  A quick first pass of this would be to simply map the 5 lights to 0, 25, 50, 75, 100.  If differences were needed from these they could be done table by table.

[Spektre]

That is a fine definition but is certainly not applicable here as no one has these lights on the playfield., nor would one expect we are trying to draw one's attention to the top of the backbox or the back of the playfield.

This is a very narrow definition of a 'flasher', most people also refer to flashing lights ON the playfield as flashers:

 

like this definition from pinball-fixers.com:

[wowter]

@Spektre:    apparantly our forms of communication are incompatible, so forget i ever said anything.

[ViriiGuy]

I was trying out NBA Fast break today and it SEEMS to have the replay knocker mapped to what should be a contactor. However, it has been so long since I have played it for real, I am not sure. But when I start playing, it starts tossing the basketball from the bottom right to the bottom left of the PF.. The Replay knocker goes off every time the ball gets to the left side.

[arngrim]

The knocker is not mapped for nba, so it seems you have made a wrong port assignment config?