Visual Pinball in Unity, 2024

[d-_-b]

Wow! What an amazing update on the progress of VPE! These new developments to what will be possible for designing new tables in VPE is really exciting! As a player, I can't wait to try my hands on these beautiful tables in virtual reality, but I know I will have to wait patiently as it seems there's still much work to be done.

 

Curious, will VPE make it easier for newbies to create their own tables compared to VPX?

[freezy]

Yes absolutely, that's one of the main goals!

[MauiPunter]

8 hours ago, freezy said:

Yes absolutely, that's one of the main goals!

 

The future is looking bright!

[luc1f3rb0b]

looks so amazing! The future of Visual Pinball any way we can help we will. Always putting out a call for people with skills to aide this project, glad to see this crop up in the forums again!

[foofoorabbit]

As we head into the second half of another slow year, let’s at least talk about the features we look most forward to from VPE.

 

For me, it’s the multiplatform support (or at least I hope that still is the plan). I’m really looking forward to running VPE on a Mac.

[kontan]

There is just one thing I want to say, whatever this project turns into. We love you guys and a very special mention for Freezy who have done/given so much for the vpinball community and by extent to the pinball community. You are all already legends.

[foofoorabbit]

I really miss @freezy's updates and the sneak peeks of tables being built using VPE from people like @scottacus. 😥

 

And I only learned recently about Magic Girl being the "special project" for VPE that @freezy was talking about a year or so ago.

 

And the screenshots on the VPE git repo are mostly gone (except for Monster Bash). (Though I see it was flagged as an issue in the repo.)

 

But I’m seeing lots of commits from arthurkehrwald and freezy in the last few weeks which is good news.

Edited November 19, 2024 by foofoorabbit

[foofoorabbit]

So arthurkehrwald is working on  mechanical sounds (which I think was something @freezy wanted before a public release… makes sense, you don’t want the first impression of VPE to be that it doesn’t sound like pinball). 

 

@freezy has been refactoring colliders in the transformable-colliders branch. This, I believe, is support for dynamically moving objects that the ball should react to. I think this will fix an issue that freezy was talking about in a video where moving an object would make the ball teleport if both collide. I think with the refactor, the ball will actually react realistically if you move an object and it hits the ball.

 

 

[freezy]

Yeah, turns out Discord isn't a reliable hosting service (shocker).

 

There will be another update end of this year, with more regular updates following. The whole physics refactoring isn't trivial, but I'm making good progress.

 

EDIT: Re-uploaded the screenshots.

Edited November 27, 2024 by freezy

[MauiPunter]

Thanks @freezy for the update and all your effort.  

[becausereasons]

This is truly exciting. Especially if at some point there will be a way to port the tables over.

[hitman12]

About week ago i read this tutorial:

https://github.com/freezy/VisualPinball.Engine/wiki/Porting-an-existing-Visual-Pinball-PinMAME-game

Edited November 30, 2024 by hitman12

[freezy]

The transformation stuff is more or less done, now given everything is in world space I'm currently updating the VPX meshes and add some normal maps while I'm at it.. Then there are changes to be done for the import because the surface relation doesn't exist anymore and will be replaced by parenting. Then do the remaining kinematics, fix the bumper stuff from Arthur, retest everything, and then there will be a PR...

[MauiPunter]

14 hours ago, freezy said:

The transformation stuff is more or less done, now given everything is in world space I'm currently updating the VPX meshes and add some normal maps while I'm at it.. Then there are changes to be done for the import because the surface relation doesn't exist anymore and will be replaced by parenting. Then do the remaining kinematics, fix the bumper stuff from Arthur, retest everything, and then there will be a PR...

 

So, two weeks? 

[foofoorabbit]

On 11/30/2024 at 8:43 PM, freezy said:

The transformation stuff is more or less done, now given everything is in world space I'm currently updating the VPX meshes and add some normal maps while I'm at it.. Then there are changes to be done for the import because the surface relation doesn't exist anymore and will be replaced by parenting. Then do the remaining kinematics, fix the bumper stuff from Arthur, retest everything, and then there will be a PR...

This is amazing news!

[kontan]

Cannot wait for the detailed update like the one at the end of last year! I wish I could help but I am not good enough at programming. VPE when released will be a game changer. BTW, is it possible to donate to this project?

[freezy]

Thanks for the comments. I don't have anything set up for donations, and I'm not sure if I should, but if I do, just be aware that it will be exclusively used for hookers and drugs!

[MauiPunter]

3 hours ago, freezy said:

Thanks for the comments. I don't have anything set up for donations, and I'm not sure if I should, but if I do, just be aware that it will be exclusively used for hookers and drugs!

We would expect nothing less. 

[lio]

I think my head just almost exploded 😄
VP is such an amazing piece of software... you (talking about me here) leave the hobby for a few years (wife, kid, etc), come back (part time 😉 ) and "now" it has insanly awesome looking tables in VR and VP in Unity seems to be happening... I am blown away and have not even cought up half way! )
Thanks to everyone in the scene that is keeping VP not just alive but still pushing new stuff 25 years after the og "dogfood" releases... what a joy!

[Tengri]

I'm eagerly awaiting Freezys End-of-the-year post (or you could say: Die Weihnachtsansprache an die Nation).

I'm interested to hear about what happens in VPE vs. the parallel development of VPX (BGFX, live editor, etc.)

[freezy]

It's gonna be a Beginning-of-the-year post after all... 🙄

 

I have some good news though, and I wanna take some time to put something interesting together. Have a good Silvesternacht!

[dillman]

Freezy,
I'm sure it sounds like a broken record, but wow, man...I love this project, I have from the start, and the strides you have made are incredible.  I'm "playing' around with it a bit, importing some tables, and generally trying to learn my way around the Unity editor.  Is there still a discord channel for VPE? Where those of us having a go with it might share ideas, and helpful insights?  If not are there any good discord channels for Unity?  Where one might get general Unity help, and I find myself needing it quite frequently.. lol..

I look forward to any and all updates, and all the best to you all in the upcoming year ahead..  🙂

 

[foofoorabbit]

Freezy’s on fire with the VPE repo commits in the last couple weeks. Pretty soon we’ll have to call him Burny.

[freezy]

Yeah, doing some serialization tests - I'll hopefully have an update next week or so.

[freezy]

New update thread!