PinMAME
 

I haven't seen anybody bring this up yet, so I thought I'd do so. Is anybody here doing this emulation yet? Personally I haven't, but I just got finished looking at a couple of pages on the subject and I am still unsure. The first site had a screenshot gallery that was mere high score tables (made up of orange lights), so that was a disappointment as I wanted to see exactly how one emulates a pinball machine.

The next page was a little better since it contained screens using backdrops. Kinda OK, but still flawed. I don't care for the angled look, since it seems as if the ball would get lost in the perspective when moving to the top of the table. Would have been nice if they could have done skins like the Pinball Dreams/Fantasies games, although I imagine that would seriously tax the poor PC's resources. I may try this emulation out sometime later today, however. Anybody else tried it or have any thoughts on the subject?

PinMAME is nothing more than a Pinball machine rom player:sad

However, in conjunction with Visual Pinball and VPinMAME it's great fun.

Most tables are designed quite well, and work without any hitches. Only problem is some of the scripts aren't liked by Norton Antivirus, but maybe they're just poorly coded.

If you do download the two I mentioned above, be sure to download the Addams Family Gold, VPinMame table.

This site has most (If not all) the tables that are available:-

http://www.hippie.net/shivasite/

(It's down at the minute though:sad)

Thanks, Ian. I did see a reference to the siva site being down on abe.misc, but there was no url. I was aware of VPinMAME but not Visual Pinball. You say scripts? Ugh...please don't tell me this is some kind of Java shit. If so, I may pass, even though I've downloaded a big pile of tables (roms) from usenet. Still, I'm dying to try it.

What about MPU? You ever do any fruit machine emulation?

No, it's not Java scripts, there Visual Basic script's (Basically), the programmer of Visual Pinball has just added a front end that allows people to design tables and a few instuctions that VB doesn't have.

I have tried that Fruit Machine emulator, I only tried one game (Not quite as fun as when you don't win money;)) and was quite impressed. I'm not really into fruit machines though, so it got deleted after the novelty wore off. If fruit machines are your bag, then you'll like it:cheese

Well, fruit machines aren't my bag, it's just something else to emulate. The screenshots I have seen for it look like they are missing the flashy glitz of the real hardware, so while I downloaded an Andy Capp machine or two, I never bothered to even install it - maybe someday. And anyhow, we Americans barely understand those UK fruit machines, but I have an FAQ that explains it all, so should I ever find time for this stuff, at least I will be able.

Yeah, Visual Basic was the other scripting language I was thinking of (when you said Norton Antivirus didn't like it). Hopefully that is only with Visual Pinball and has nothing to do with VPinMAME...

I have used Visual Pinball for a while, it's pretty cool.
You can change the point of view, if my memory is right, so you don't have to care about that perspective (although there's NO scroll )

And I saw once the "Ignition" table to download for VP , but I didn't tried it

Well, I got bored with my routine and I went ahead and played with both emulations. Surprisingly (for me), I had better luck with the fruit machines. At least I got a graphic display with Andy Capp and was able to play the bloody game!

I'd already downloaded a bunch of VPinMAME games and their corresponding tables (and sample files for some of the games). Once I got everything installed proper (I assume I did, since the program starts and loads the tables), but all I end up with is some cheesy little high score display thing. I did the MAME bit and inserted my coins and pressed 1 to start, but nothing beyond that seemed to work, plus for some reason, there didn't appear to be a table to look at. What gives? The .vpt files are in the tables dir, sounds in the samples dir, zipped roms in the roms dir - so how come I don't have the nice 3D flashy screen that I see on the screenshots?

I haven't tried Visual Pinball yet, but it looks extremely cool and I already have the bug to create a table (if I had the time, which I don't...), but I should maybe cool my jets until I get it at least up and running first.

You have to load up Visual Pinball for VPinMAME to work as it should, if the tables have been designed to incorparate the VPinMAME roms they will load automatically. If you load the rom's just using VPinMAME all you will see is the display you've talked about.

V/PinMAME is just a rom emulator, Visual Pinball is use to emulate the tables and other features.

Load up your VPinMAME (.vpt) table into Visual Pinball and press F5, if your rom's are in the correct directory (And name correctly) you'll have the table and the high score both displayed.

Thanks, Ian...that's what I needed to know. I must have been to every site out there and read every FAQ (except shiva, natch) and never saw that part mentioned in any of the FAQ's I read. may be there, but I never saw it. Most of the FAQ's out there are for assisting people in creating tables.

So my next question: what good is VPinMAME without the tables?

That, my friend, is a good question;)

I imagine all those pinball anoraks would disagree though:laugh

Since the Shivasite appears to have gone AWOL, the IRPinball crew have moved their site over to Zophar's Domain: http://irpinball.zophar.net/. Hope that helps you out a bit, Twist. :great

Sorry to go slightly off-topic, but speaking of Mame, has anyone else noticed MameDK has had to suspend anonymous downloads?
They say it's (in part), due to huge downloading of Mame 57. Is this version that good or is Mame 056 (I use Mame 32 036final myself), that buggy/slow??;)

@Marz
Excellent! Thanks, dood...you done good this time! Up until now, I really had no way to get some of the files I needed to even do Visual Pinball, so now I can go there and get the files I need. I see this will require the latest version of DirectX...does anybody know how to test which version of DirectX I have installed?

@7Z7
I'm out of the loop on MAME updates (although I have them...) performance-wise. I do know that I went ahead and registered at mame.dk, it's quite hassle-free and worth it for full functionality.

@Twistin,
To find out what version of DirectX you have installed, click on the Start button then select RUN. Now type in dxdiag and press enter or click on the RUN/OK button.

You should now see the DirectX Diagnostic tool, there you can get the version and build number. For instance the latest release is v8.1 it will say DirectX 8.1 (4.08.01.0881).

Way thanks...I never knew that command. It appears I am way back on DirectX 6.1a !?! Yikes...I dunno how I have been able to run some of the stuff that I have, as I know they claim to require higher versions. Oh well, I have had the DirectX 8 download for a little while, just haven't bothered installing it. Probably a good idea to go ahead and do so, even though I think I'd rather install v7, but M$ doesn't offer that, so...

The reason why this months Mame release has about 1gig worth of rom downloads is because it has just caught up with Nebula / Winkawaks and started emulating the *big* neogeo roms. (s1945, Kof 2000 etc) plus its got loads more Mah-jong games added :(

If you have got those already then dont need to download them again - just use a rommanager to re-organise your files...

Ive got all the mame roms for the latest release (except the 'missing' raflesia) but to be honest I havent installed the emulator this time round to play them..

You're welcome :), also note that you may want to make sure that your sound and video card drivers are up to date. Check out http://www.3dchipset.com for your video card drivers. They have all the latest BETA/Leaked and WHQ drivers for most of the popular chipsets out there.

One other thing is to make sure you have the latest updates for the OS and of course the mobo chipset as well. If your box has an AGP setup, then having the latest AGP GART driver will help out a lot. Mainly it's bug fixes and performance tweaks.