WIP Original Table FP Billiard Queen (original)

[Anthias]

Yes I know I have too many wips but this one is a little special. You see, Billiard Queen was a comic I started drawing about 25 years ago. When FP launched, it was among the first tables themes I considered for the platform. A promo poster was in the game room on the the first version of Flame Reaper. Sadly the initial concept layout in FP as well as pretty much all the art I had drawn is lost. But I have decided to resurrect the concept. Giving the art a vaguely 1950s/60s comic feel.

Some layout elements from it were on my firepower tribute table, so it's kind of fitting that I've used FPT as a launchpad for this build. Of course the two tables are radically different in the end.

 

[SpacePirateScott]

I love the artwork for this. I'm looking forward to see what you do with this. I would also love to see some of the high res source art.

 

[Anthias]

Managed to get a but of scripting in last night before heading out to work for a couple of days. Dropping the target in the centre opens the shot at the captive ball. The captive ball when struck will bounce around its area hitting the slingshots on the walls, and if you are lucky you get it into one of the three pockets (kickers) in its area. The points scored on the pocket start at 1000, but doubles with each ricochet before sinking. The angle you strike the captive ball can have a huge impact on the points. There is a display on the apron that shows the current pocket value. If you bounce it around but don't sink it, you keep the value and can add to it on a second shot etc.

Initially I set it to start at 5k. But the scoring was unbalanced - in a game where I was reaching 300k total I managed a single ricochet shot that racked up 10mil! Dropping to a 1k base makes those shots more reasonable. Tested at 500 and it was too low for the shot difficulty most of the time but 1k feels nicely balanced against the rest of the table. As the other modes are dialled in that ballance will improve. It's not an easy shot, but it's a fun mechanic.

 

[Anthias]

At this stage I'm pretty much sold on giving this table the full fizx treatment. It's a shooters layout, so will benefit immensely. But dang it's daunting with my limited time and mental resources. It's already got the bam physics as usual, which is no trouble to remove, but I haven't even been able to run any fizx tables on my cab yet so that's got to be step one. Not sure it even can with its ancient GPU. Will have to try to make it work soon.

 

[Anthias]

I think there is just something lacking on my cab. Nothing I do will get any fizx tables to even run. And if I can't even run them, what's the point in making one? I won't be able to test it. I will give it another crack this weekend, as there MUST be something, but everything is up to date, yet every single fizx table crashes out with a random useless bogus error about undeclared variables. Do all fizx tables need pinup popper stuff installed? Because that doesn't run in anything, so that is where I am planning to tinker next. If I say stuff that and don't touch fizx on this one, then it is 90% complete. So here is a playfield shot for you to peruse. I have changed the ricochet mechanic to a flat 5k per ricochet, because tonight in testing I managed to break the table with the score going too high for FP to cope after the ball did a rapid fire stick in a corner thing, so the doubling pocket value rapidly got insane. the falt five k seems to work well and score fairly.

 

[SpacePirateScott]

Have you tried running the AOI demo table from TerryRed? I had a similar sounding problem and it turned out my BAM was out of date, even though I thought I had the latest (I didn't). If the AOI table is throwing an error, post it here and maybe we can help.

 

[Anthias]

definitely latest BAM. Even reinstalled latest bam anyway. the demo table throws type mismatch on line 2726? "BallsRemaining" (same exact error as Cars, and Meteor. I haven't rechecked any others.) Still tinkering. I really hope I find out why it's doing it. If I can make fisx work, and it pays off on this table, I might retrofit some. Eventually. It's a very eventually type of thing. So if anybody wants to jump on that before me, I wouldn't mind! lol.

is there a particular FP executable which is preferred for fisx? I have encountered strange problems with some of the hacked/modded ones so try to never use them.

 

[Anthias]

So nothing at all seems to be able to convince fizx tables to work. Until this can be resolved, this will remain unreleased. It needs the improved physics to be the table it was meant to be. At this stage, I'm stumped. I'm staring down the barrel at a full wipe and reinstall. Time to do that is unlikely in the next month.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Well shoot, I guess some things just were not to be, hey?

You can dance,
you can jive
Having the time of your life
Ooh, see that girl, watch that scene
Digging the billiard queen.....

 

[Anthias]

This WILL be released. I just can't say when.
It's a pretty much complete table and I like it a lot.
But I'll like it more with the physics it deserves.
Nothing more to do on it until I can add fizx.

I have a couple of new ideas to try when I'm home next.

 

[madmrmax]

useless bogus error about undeclared variables.

Oh, I've seen this as well! Usually there is some sort of thing missing but because of how Fizx uses a feature called newton tick, the error message that is shown isn't helpful.

Can you try the instructions here:

Bogus Error Messages Related to NewtonPhysicsTick

I thought I would post my findings when I encountered when I got an error for the line containing "FlipperStroke()" in the FizX code listed below. I find this often occurs when the script has FizX coding. When it happens, the error codes are meaningless. When I encountered it on a table I was...

pinballnirvana.com

Specifically:

I added a normal playfield timer set to 10ms.
I moved the contents of The NewtonPhysicsTick() to my timer's update sub and it started correctly pointing out the linenumber where the error was. I did have to completly comment out the NewtonPhysicsTick() function even though it was empty for this to work. So like this:

'Completely comment out the entire function including the Sub NewtonPhysicsTick() and End Sub lines
'Sub NewtonPhysicsTick()
' lightHelper.Update
' gridLightsHelper.Update
' arrowsLightsHelper.Update
' FlipperStroke() 'FizX
'End Sub

Ran this instead.

Sub DebugTimer_Expired()
lightHelper.Update
gridLightsHelper.Update
arrowsLightsHelper.Update
FlipperStroke() 'FizX
End Sub

 

[Anthias]

Thanks for that I'll try it. But the concern will be this is every fizx table I download, not one I've just created, and those work on other people's systems, so I know it's not an error in script.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Thanks for that I'll try it. But the concern will be this is every fizx table I download, not one I've just created, and those work on other people's systems, so I know it's not an error in script.

This is probably dumb, and I'm prolly a big dummy for saying, but it kinda sounds like some critical software / resource lacks an update on your system.

Could it possibly be BAM, or your graphic cards' latest drivers, etc?

Or something at the system level? (if it happened to you it doubtless happened to others, google-google)

 

[Anthias]

Yeah that's what I think. Gpu drivers is a likely one. The most recent ones are ancient. It's a prehistoric ATI card. I might have to revert to my desktop to finish this table.

 

[madmrmax]

But I wouldn't expect a generic "AIO" Fixz table to crash even on a low-end PC.

For me, since I'm a bit more security consensus, my initial bogus crashes were in PinEvent tables only which were attempting to perform CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") since I had BAM Security model set to no exceptions.

@Anthias - what are some non PinEvent tables that you've tried?

​

 

[Anthias]

Cars and meteor of the top of my head.

(My phone autocorrected that to caravan meteor, which would be an altogether different game! Lol)

 

[madmrmax]

For Meteor, what is the error message?

 

[Anthias]

For Meteor, what is the error message?

 

[madmrmax]

Ok we're getting somewhere. I do believe it is just a configuration issue. Do you know if regular BAM table works?

 

[Popotte]

@Anthias It's just a generic error. You have just forget something in your BAM script (and I had to fight hardly for my first FizX tables).

 

[madmrmax]

@Anthias It's just a generic error. You have just forget something in your BAM script (and I had to fight hardly for my first FizX tables).

Note that the error Anthias is getting is for the Meteor table which is released and works. That's why I think it is something related to the configuration of BAM and FP. Apart from raycasting & shadowmaps, the FizX doesn't add anything to the "graphics" overhead (modulo the runtime perf aspect of the real-time physics calculation)

 

[xenonph]

Have you tried setting the FP-BAM Loader.exe to run as Administrator? (Or the shortcut on DT to FP-BAM Loader)
(Right click FP-BAM Loader.exe with mouse and go to Properties, Compatibility, Run as Administrator.)
I needed to do this to get rid of Meditation Error I was getting.
You may only need to do this once, and after it works, you can set it back to not run as Administrator.

 

[Anthias]

Yes I've tried run as administrator. It has to be something with configuration. Regular BAM tables work fine.

 

[Anthias]

Btw thank you all for your input

 

[madmrmax]

Do you use the PuP or DOF add-ins? Perhaps for Meteor, open the script and set these two values to false:

    DOF_enabled            = True    ' enable DOF for cabinet users with feedback and lighting
    PUP_SSF_enabled        = True    ' enable PUP SSF (needs Pinup Player and FP_PUP_SSF PuP-Pack installed)