DOF night mode and soundfx

[SecretAntelope]

Curious about this, and not sure it's possible (but would be nice). I have the soundfx turned off in favor of DOF in vpx. And I also have night mode for my pinscape board that turns off the solenoids because they are quite loud. The downside is that the soundfx aren't playing when it's in night mode so it's 100 percent silent for those mechs. Is it possible to enable soundfx dynamically so if I go into night mode it'll switch to soundfx? Otherwise I can play both and it achieves this - but it's much louder with the soundfx underneath the solenoids. Thanks!

[arngrim]

Hello,

 

The soundfx settings are stored in the registry:

 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Visual Pinball\Controller\

 

you can tune this settings programmatically, I don't know if you switch in night mode thanks to a software and not hardware, if yes, you can incorporate the change of registry in the sequence.

 

If it's from hardware, you need an interaction inside your frontend that can interact with a script that changes the registry settings.

 

That's a high level view

[SecretAntelope]

Thanks! It's being done through the night mode that's configured in the pinscape setup tool, I'll have to see if there's a way for me to run a script when I press the joystick button I use for that mode (and works alongside PinVol) - I don't think I can edit any of the arguments being sent since it's through that software. There's probably a solution to be found here.

[BigDogAl]

Easy fix: install a left/right channel switch button (like the one used in the atgames legends pinball haptics upgrade) before your ssf soundspeakers, and ALWAYS send the mechanical sounds through that. Then just have it send the sounds into the unused slot when using dof, and switch over with one motion when activating night mode to feed the sound to your ssf speakers. 

[TheSupremacyCabinet]

@SecretAntelope Hi, I had the same problem as you. And the change in the windows registry didn't help me, because I found out that the DOF settings were saved in the VPinballX.ini file in the users folder.

 

I use an external utility that allows me to modify the variables contained in this case in the VPinballX.ini file on the command line (IniMod.exe). In this way, via a Windows batch file, I can modify them on the fly.

 

So I created a batch file that I run when I need it. So I run the file "Enable_NightMode.bat" when I want to play in night mode, while I run the file "Disable_NightMode.bat" when I want to make the DOF effects work.

 

If you are interested, I have uploaded to my mediafire space a package containing 3 files to extract wherever you want. Inside the 2 batch files you will only have to change the settings that interest you.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/9bqa34vewosngqp/VPX_Enable-Disable_NightMode_Batch_script.zip/file

 

I hope it was helpful.

[SecretAntelope]

On 4/22/2025 at 5:59 PM, TheSupremacyCabinet said:

@SecretAntelope Hi, I had the same problem as you. And the change in the windows registry didn't help me, because I found out that the DOF settings were saved in the VPinballX.ini file in the users folder.

 

I use an external utility that allows me to modify the variables contained in this case in the VPinballX.ini file on the command line (IniMod.exe). In this way, via a Windows batch file, I can modify them on the fly.

 

So I created a batch file that I run when I need it. So I run the file "Enable_NightMode.bat" when I want to play in night mode, while I run the file "Disable_NightMode.bat" when I want to make the DOF effects work.

 

If you are interested, I have uploaded to my mediafire space a package containing 3 files to extract wherever you want. Inside the 2 batch files you will only have to change the settings that interest you.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/9bqa34vewosngqp/VPX_Enable-Disable_NightMode_Batch_script.zip/file

 

I hope it was helpful.

This is awesome! I'll have to try it out. I had no idea the file existed - I submitted bug reports for the registry not working and never heard back. How are you triggering this along-side night mode? In my cabinet I have a button for night mode so I was thinking of using something like AutoHotkey to monitor the key press and I could trigger the batch file alongside NightMode.exe.

[TheSupremacyCabinet]

On 4/24/2025 at 3:13 PM, SecretAntelope said:

This is awesome! I'll have to try it out. I had no idea the file existed - I submitted bug reports for the registry not working and never heard back. How are you triggering this along-side night mode? In my cabinet I have a button for night mode so I was thinking of using something like AutoHotkey to monitor the key press and I could trigger the batch file alongside NightMode.exe.

Look, I'm still building my cabinet, so at the moment I haven't seen how to combine the script with the physical button/key to enable/disable night mode.

 

Let's say that at the moment the script only works to disable real feedback (DOF) and force sound FX, when you want to enable night mode and re-enable real feedback (DOF) and disable sound FX.

 

Surely it would also be enough to add a line in both batch files, to run "NightMode.exe" with the ON or OFF parameter (but I'm not sure).

I use the KL25Z card with Pinscape, I'll have to figure out if I can do it from there or if I also rely on external software to launch the batch files.

[SecretAntelope]

17 hours ago, TheSupremacyCabinet said:

Look, I'm still building my cabinet, so at the moment I haven't seen how to combine the script with the physical button/key to enable/disable night mode.

 

Let's say that at the moment the script only works to disable real feedback (DOF) and force sound FX, when you want to enable night mode and re-enable real feedback (DOF) and disable sound FX.

 

Surely it would also be enough to add a line in both batch files, to run "NightMode.exe" with the ON or OFF parameter (but I'm not sure).

I use the KL25Z card with Pinscape, I'll have to figure out if I can do it from there or if I also rely on external software to launch the batch files.

 

Huh - well you know what, after testing the .ini changes, this doesn't seem to work for me anyway. Are you on 10.8 as well? Sadly it functions just like the registry changes for me, it just ignores it.

[TheSupremacyCabinet]

On 4/26/2025 at 5:50 PM, SecretAntelope said:

 

Huh - well you know what, after testing the .ini changes, this doesn't seem to work for me anyway. Are you on 10.8 as well? Sadly it functions just like the registry changes for me, it just ignores it.

Yes I am using 10.8.0 Final - Build 2051

Maybe after running one of the 2 batch files check that it actually modified the VPinballX.ini file correctly.

[SecretAntelope]

4 hours ago, TheSupremacyCabinet said:

Yes I am using 10.8.0 Final - Build 2051

Maybe after running one of the 2 batch files check that it actually modified the VPinballX.ini file correctly.

Yeah it's definitely editing the ini. Something about my setup simply doesn't care about it. Perhaps that's why the settings themselves in the menu also do nothing to change things. But DOF works perfectly so I'm not really sure why... Maybe a difference with using 64bit? But I highly doubt it... I'm at a loss.

[TheSupremacyCabinet]

On 4/30/2025 at 7:39 PM, SecretAntelope said:

Yeah it's definitely editing the ini. Something about my setup simply doesn't care about it. Perhaps that's why the settings themselves in the menu also do nothing to change things. But DOF works perfectly so I'm not really sure why... Maybe a difference with using 64bit? But I highly doubt it... I'm at a loss.

I actually use the GL 64

[SecretAntelope]

On 5/2/2025 at 3:45 PM, TheSupremacyCabinet said:

I actually use the GL 64

I'd imagine that there is a setting or file somewhere that is simply overriding these on my machine. But I'm not sure I'd ever be able to find it... It's probably something that would only be solved by wiping the PC and starting from a fresh OS. I've already re-installed visual pinball recently, including DOF, and that didn't solve it.