JaysArcade

I'm doing a new build. For retroarch, I could not get Astrocade to work at all unless I named the folder the games reside in, astrocde. Letting LaunchBox copy the games into the games folder and naming it Bally Astrocade wouldn't work. Only when I renamed that folder to astrocde and pointed the games to that location would it work. This is with the mame_libretro (0.220) core. I believe this rule is true with the VTech Creativision as well as the Emerson Arcadia 2001 systems using the folder names crvision and arcadia respectively. I previously had those systems set up in an old build, but they are honestly not worth your time. The Astrocade has some fun games on it though, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered. This topic pointed me in the right direction with the folder names. If those retropie nerds can figure it out, why can't I copy them? Just kidding. I'd be willing to bet that the rom folder name is true for MAME as well if using roms as opposed to software list games. Not sure though. https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/22600/how-to-emulate-bally-astrocade-vtech-creativision-and-emerson-arcadia-2001-in-lr-mess Mame (Previously MESS) through Retroarch works good when you can get it working. If it wasn't for the awesome overlays and shaders, I wouldn't have bothered. I guess I could have used stand alone MAME, but where is the fun in that? Plus, I like a challenge. I'm saving this info here so maybe the next time I set up Astrocade, I'll be able to find the info quickly without wasting hours and hours looking for this crucial piece of the puzzle, LOL. Maybe this will help someone else trying to set this up? Before anyone asks. Yes. You have to have the Astrocade bios files inside the astrocde folder with the roms. Oh, and you'll need a hash folder inside a folder named mame inside the system folder within RetroArch. You'll need to scavenge this from a working MAME install, or you can find a link to the hash files in the page I linked to above. The Astrocade controller had a dial on it and it was used to pick game, number of players, etc. An analog stick on a controller (xbone, PS, etc) can be used for the dial. A mouse or spinner can also be used but this is a little beyond the scope here. Once you figure out how to use a dial with this system, it makes it simple and fun to play. Here is the Astrocade overlay I made for my new build. I'm building vertical overlays for all my systems and using the HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader when possible.

Similar problems with pause for me as well. I reported it in this thread back in January. Pause works for me 100‰ of the time in LB. Bigbox has issues bringing up Pause after I've used it 7 or 8 times. Restarting Bigbox is the only way to get it working again.

Yep. I don't think there is any easier way to go than to use zeb's stuff. Spendy, but it will save you a ton of time and troubleshooting.

I don't have any personal experience with them but guess what. They also use a KL25Z, just different firmware than Pinscape. I have heard lots of people have issues with them though. Personally, after my experience with the lockdown bar, I will not be buying anything from virtuapin again. If I didn't want to source the KL25Z and linear potentiometer for that stuff, I would buy from Zebs Boards. https://shop.zebsboards.com/Zebsboards_Plunger/V3_Plunger

Built it myself. It's using a KL25Z device with the Pinscape firmware for nudge and plunger. Works perfectly. The plunger is attached to a linear potentiometer that is interfaced with the KL25Z. DOF is programmed to use ZB launch with the plunger for tables that use a launch button instead of an actual plunger. Basically sends the launch ball command when you pull the plunger instead of pulling the plunger back. That is one of my proudest accomplishments - not needing a launch ball button in addition to a plunger which I see a lot of builders do. The main playfield is 27", backglass 19" and a 7" screen for the DMD. The monitors are only 1080p though. It has 2 power supplies (3 if you count the one the PC uses). The LEDs require a lot of power. Led-wiz for the buttons and speaker leds. Teensy controller for addressable LEDs for back matrix (this was another proud accomplishment. It is the only mini pinball table I've seen with Addressable LEDs). It has some speaker subwoofer combo for the back glass speakers (can't remember what they are off the top of my head) in addition to two small Lepy 838 2.1 amps that provide surround sound tactile feedback to 5 exciters placed in the inside corners of the main box. SSF lets you "feel" the ball rolling around and "feel" the bumpers pop when the ball hits them as well as the flippers. The PC is nothing special, under-powered if anything. The GPU is the main workhorse. It has a 1050 Ti for the graphics. That could be a little better as well but it works. Due to the low-ish specs of the PC, I'm running PinballY. Pinup Popper is probably the best pinball frontend but it is more designed for high end 4K systems. My PC struggled with it, but runs PinballY just fine. PinballY is a clone of PinballX. For my needs, it just seems to work better than PinballX. This thing is so packed full of stuff, I don't think I could get any thing else in it, LOL. If I were to do anything different, I wouldn't have ordered the custom lockdown bar from VirtuaPin. It was one of the first things I ordered and literally the last thing to arrive - over 2 months, I would buy a real lockdown from ebay and have a local welder customize it for me before I ordered anything from them again. The cab dimensions were all based off of this guy's cab. https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=18420 Here are a few links to some of this stuff if anyone is interested in what any of it is. DOF http://pinball.weilenmann.net/docu/DirectOutputWIP/index.html Pinscape/KL25Z http://mjrnet.org/pinscape/index.html SSF/Surround Sound Feedback https://www.facebook.com/groups/SSFeedback/

Nice. What frontend are you running? Popper? PinballX? PinballY? Hyperpin?

Yes. And the most frustrating part for me was Retroarch changing controls every time I would reboot. I finally have it figured out though, thankfully. Looks like you have a nice set up going there. I am out of room for cabinets now so trying to figure out what to do next.... Really want to built a vertical though.....

It just occurred to me that I didn't have a picture of them all together, so I set the bartop up with the others for a family picture. Unfortunately, except for the bartop, they all live in the garage.?

Nice. There are so many settings, its easy to get lost. Glad you got it going. I currently have 4 cabinets. the main one is an arcade cab running LB/BB. Another cab is a mini pacman I built for my son several years ago and has an older system still running a rock steady install of Hyperspin/Rocketlauncher. A bartop running a Pi image and the mini pinball cabinet running PinballY and is pinball only. Next I'd like to build a vertical oriented system with pinball and vertical MAME games using two monitors. The upper would display marquees and backglasses and anything else I could display up there. Still looking over on BYOAC for inspiration.

You can run in landscape and also have a second display as the backglass no problem. VPX tables typically do not include the backglass when you download them. They need to be downloaded separately. (unless you are running FSS tables, but I doubt that is the case) Make sure the xy rotation is set to zero as Joeviking shows in his screenshot. This is landscape mode. If the xy is set to 270, that is the fullscreen orientation. If it is set to 270, the table will appear sideways on your landscape oriented monitor. (Make sure if you make changes like this, and the changes work the way you want, click save in the file menu before you close the table, otherwise your changes will not be saved) Make sure you have the correct backglass file for the table you are setting up. For example if you are setting up the Bad Cats VPX 1.2.1a.vpx table, make sure the backglass file is named the same - Bad Cats VPX 1.2.1a.directb2s. Many times a backglass will need to be downloaded from a different website than from where you downloaded the table. As the Mandalorian puts it, "This is the way". Make sure you ran the B2S_Setup exe file when you installed Visual Pinball. I recommend that you install the all-in-one installer for visual Pinball. https://vpinball.com/VPBdownloads/vpx-installer-10-6-0/ Doing this will ensure you have all the files you need to run VPX including the B2S_setup files. (If VPX balks that you need a newer version to run a particular table, at this point just download the stand alone VPX and install it over top the old one in the VPX folder. You probably won't need the whole all in one install again.) You'll find the B2S_setup in the Tables folder within the Visual Pinball folder.In the B2S_setup exe file, make sure you have the second (or third) display set as the display you want to use for the backglass, as well as setting the dimensions for the display if it doesn't do that for you automatically. You also want to make sure you have run the B2SBackglassServerRegisterApp.exe file. This will make the Registry entry needed for Windows to know where to find the B2S server executable when the table is run. Not sure it entirely matters, but if your second display is above your main display, make sure that is what windows is seeing. Windows will probably be fine however you arrange it, but for your own sanity, move the monitors around to how you actually have them set. If you are using a rotated display, they will be side by side and not on top of one another. I set up a second monitor on my desktop to make sure I had this all right. Not the best images in the world but you can see the backglass on the left and the landscape mode table on the right. Ideally the backglass will be directly over the playfield, but this is the best I was willing to do in short notice. There are a lot of settings within VPX, as well as settings outside VPX that have to be set just right to get things to work the way you want. I highly suggest reading the Visual Pinball Junkies FAQ for the best instructions available to install Visual Pinball X. https://goo.gl/BTzQjV If the above link doesn't work, Try joining the Visual Pinball Junkies Facebook group and find the link there. They are more aimed at full virtual pinball cabinets, but a lot of info can be gleaned from them if you really want to know how to use Visual Pinball. That page also has a spreadsheet that points to locations for all the tables, corresponding backglasses as well as artwork if available. I hope this helps a little.

Cool. Yeah it was too much trouble for me to invest that much time into finding the correct backgrounds when I made mine. Maybe Zaazu can replace mine with yours in his set. Feel free to rework any more of mine you don't like. It doesn't hurt my feelings at all. Glad these are getting some attention. I love that these are not busy looking and distracting.

I think so but I haven't bothered trying to set it up.

I5 4460, 8 Gb ram. Mechanical internal drive for windows. External USB drive for Launchbox and emulators. GeForce GTX 750 Ti. The nice thing for me about using pause instead of retroarch hotkeys for the save and load states, its just easier to hit the pause button on my arcade control panel and use the menu. For the xbone controllers the hotkey key combo method is fine but guests find using the pause key easy once I show it to them. Easier than remembering some key combo.

Thanks man!

My experience with the pause screens and RetroArch is they work 100% of the time in Launchbox. In Bigbox however, I can pause 7, 8, or 9 times (Maybe more or less than that, but definitely more than just once) and then Pause will no longer work. Opening and closing a retroarch game has no effect and trying a platform that uses a different core but same retroarch exe has no effect. The only way I've gotten Pause to work again is to close and re-open BigBox where Pause will only work a few times again. Alt Tabbing has no effect. If there is a game I am spamming save and load states through Pause, I can only do it within Launchbox. But now, I'm kind of over it and just use a key combo through RetroArch to save or load states and skip Pause altogether. Probably should have been doing that to begin with, but yeah. Something not entirely right with Pause in BigBox for me. But I have no issues with this in Launchbox.

Here are a couple more. bally_astrocade.cfg emerson_arcadia.cfg

Few more obscure ones. NEC-PC-FX.cfg NEO-GEO-AES.cfg

Couple more I made in the Zaazu format. Intellevision.cfg ScummVM.cfg

Not really, but I guess you could. It would be better in my opinion if Launchbox had better capabilities to run things like pinball with correct database entries and third (and fourth) monitor support without needing to launch a second frontend to run those systems properly. Sadly, I'm afraid its too niche for Jason's taste to give it the attention it deserves. To launch a single program without going through multiple menus is something I've wanted for a long time too, but I'm not holding my breath for it to ever happen.

No. But this is another good example why I would like to be able to launch a single app from the main wheel @Jason Carr. The Pinball Arcade is notoriously hard to launch each table individually. I would just launch the whole program.

Well I haven't messed around with mine in a while, but I don't recall having that issue when exiting tables.

Let me know if you want anything tested. I'm on a Pixel 2 with 128 gigs of ram.

Yeah home button support has been problematic for me in the past. This is good to see.

Try changing the video driver (gl, vulkan, d3d12, etc) in RetroArch and see if it makes any difference with full screen vs fullscreen windowed. What video card do you have out of curiosity? I was having some weird issues with an integrated Intel video. I threw an old nVidia 750ti in and my problems have gone away in regards to the fullscreen vs full screen windowed stuff. If you only have an intel, don't select Vulkan or RA will crash and you'll have to open the RA config file to fix it. The gl driver looked the best on my intel card but it had a few issues with certain cores like bezel support and the like. Its something to try I guess.