JaysArcade

Glad to help!

For anyone reading this, I recently created a tool that will help tremendously with setting up your Future Pinball tables. See the post below for more info.

I split mine by whether the emulator in question does something unique. Daphne for instance or AAE. I also have the standard Arcade platform as well as an Arcade Shooter platform. The Shooter is so I can get straight to games I can use with light-guns on my cabinet. I'm sure there is probably a way to search for these games separately in Launchbox without them having their own platform but its nice to just go to that section and pick a title without the need to think about it.

H'mm, not really. I just sort of cobbled this together. One learns these things from years of trying to get emulators to run with a certain flashy frontend I won't name here, but its initials are HS, LOL. But in all seriousness, Google is your friend. I just usually search for things like running commandline parameters through AutoHotKey and go from there. Beyond that, the AutoHotKey website itself is a great place to start.

I just created an AutoHotKey script that should do what we need without creating any batch files or doing any per-game command editing. Check it out and give it a try.

Future Pinball Loader for Launchbox View File EDIT: I hope the file was useful to the community in the past, but it's no longer needed to launch FP tables in Launchbox. See @sundogaks post here about launching tables. This zip contains a simple AutoHotKey executable and script that will help with loading Future Pinball tables. The Problem: Future pinball requires the /open "Drive Letter:\full path\table_name.fpt" /play /exit commands to be specified individually for each table, otherwise the table will not load. Launchbox currently will not launch Future Pinball on its own without doing a little extra work in each table's settings. You have to manually enter this on each table which can be time consuming if you have a lot of tables to load. Usage: Simply place the FP.exe file in your Future Pinball folder and point to it instead of the Future Pinball executable when setting up Future Pinball as an emulator in Launchbox. That's it. Roll your own: If you are un-trusting and don't want to use the files in the zip (I don't blame you), you can download AutoHotKey and compile your own. The code is below. I've also included the non compiled FP.ahk so you can compile that if that suits you. That way you can open it in an editor to check the code before compiling. Run, "Future Pinball.exe" /open "%1%" /play /exit Submitter JaysArcade Submitted 11/03/2016 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins

I would also like to know how to do this. I've been adding tables manually for about a month now. I also have over 400 tables to import so having a way to do this would be great. This guy recently posted a bat file method he uses to launch WinVice - I think we can make something similar for Future Pinball. Unfortunately I will not be able to play around with this until the weekend but it does look promising.

Here's what I do. I open the zip file containing the table. A lot of times there will be more than one version of the table. I will pick the latest and copy it out to my FP tables (roms essentially) folder. Sometimes there will be a libraries folder with a few files in it, or a textures folder, as well as table and flyer images that may be anywhere in the folder. Any Library or Textures folders should get copied to the root of the future pinball folder. This will just add whatever is in the copied Libraries folder to the existing Libraries folder. If the same files are already in there, it will prompt you to over-write. I think some tables share the same libraries so its not a big deal if this happens. Sometimes, the individual that created the table did a not so good job organizing the folder when they made the table and just dropped the library file or texture file right in with the table file in the zip folder. In this case, if you try to organize things the way you think they should be by dropping the stray texture file or library file in its corresponding folder when you import the table, the table won't run because it is looking for those files in the same folder the table is in. Does that make any sense? In this case I just drop those stay texture and library files right in the same folder as the table. I then load the table and make sure it works. If it doesn't, I copy those files into the proper Library or Texture folder and try again. I test every table before importing it into Launchbox because sometimes no matter what you do, the table might still have issues. I think the tables can be edited rather easily to make each one look for the library or texture file in a different location (e.g.. the corresponding Libraries or Textures folder) but that seemed like too much work to figure out. Another thing I've noticed is the table will generally give you a clue what the problem is when it throws an error. It will usually state it could not load such and such texture or library file. That a good clue you don't have those files where the table thinks they should be. TL:DR; Put those files right in with the table in the FP table or rom folder and try to open the table. Your table folder will be a bit of a mess, but at least the problem tables will open.

Future Pinball works too. Have to run it as administrator but once that is set, it works great.

Wow thats a lot of Android games. The emulation is pretty good. I'd say once you get Bluestacks, AMIduOS, or another Android emulator running and if the game will run on a gamepad, you should have no problems. The biggest hurdle will be getting Launchbox to run them. Bluestacks will be the easiest way to go because it creates Windows shortcuts for each game that can be launched from Windows. This makes it easy to add the shortcuts as roms to Launchbox. I just wasn't thrilled with how Bluestacks runs windowed. That's why I went with AMIduOS. AMIduOS however took some creative thinking to figure out how to launch the games. Also, AMIduOS has gestures support that can be mapped to controls, but for some reason, you have to turn them on each time you start a game. This led me to create an autohotkey script to tell AMIduOS to turn on gestures at each launch. I run the script before launching AMIduOS. Now, about recording some gameplay, I'm having some difficulty in that department right now. I recorded some stuff but the actual Android stuff didn't record. Researching another recording solution right now. I'll see what I can do. Downloaded OBS to record. Here you go. Not pretty but it does work. Like I said, more of a novelty than anything else.

They work OK. Android is kind of a pain because of all the ads but it does work. I went against the traditional use of Bluestacks for Android because I couldn't get it to go fullscreen and it always opened with another window over the main one. I use AMIduOS and it works OK. Running it on an arcade cabinet. I use a trackball as a mouse to simulate touch/swipe and some of my control panel buttons to simulate tilt. Joystick for movement/swipe. Some games just don't translate well at all, especially the ones that use pinch/zoom features, but a lot of the others work OK. To be completely honest, I set it up more as a novelty than anything else. I think I have probably less than 20 games set up for it. I had to set up .bat files for each game because for some reason the .lnk (shortcuts) for AMIduOS would not run went launched from Launchbox. I can't remember exactly how I have the .bat files set up (at work currently) but I can let you know later if you're interested. Maybe I'll put up a quick vid of an Android game starting from Launchbox.

Oh, and since I have to enter each table manually, I've only made it to the Gs.

Here is my Future Pinball collection so far in BigBox. Need a few clear logos, but I like what i have so far. Its a little long since I started from the top level platforms and took my time getting to the FP section. Loving those Cinematic HD Platform videos.

Great list of commands here. I thank you. For Future Pinball, I think the commands in your list should be changed to /open "Drive Letter:\full path\table_name.fpt" /play /exit . Unless I am missing something somewhere, this currently has to be entered manually for each table. Just using the /open /play /exit commands will not open the table (rom) properly.

At the top of the page is a link called issues/requests. That link opens bitbucket which is a feature implementation/bug tracking tool that Jason uses. This ticket seems similar to what we need Launchbox to do for Future Pinball although there might be something in there more specific to our problem. If you go to the site and create an account, you can vote on issues/features that you'd like to see get worked on.

No problem. On another thread, Jason mentions making a batch file for launching tables but I'm not really sure how to do something like that.... (I'm not sure how to quote from another thread so I'll copy and paste below). "Right now, officially, you can't. But what you *can* do is create a batch file to do it properly. It's slightly complicated, but it can be done. You just have to use %1 variables and then you can reorder the parameters in the batch file. It's far from an ideal solution though because of the command prompt window that shows up. I do have a fix for these odd emulators somewhere on my list." Maybe you or someone else can make something of that. Good luck!

It is indeed a pain in the arse. You can import the tables into Launchbox and specify Rocketlauncher as the emulator to load the tables for you (which is unfortunately broken currently due to the split xmls, plus Rocketlauncher can be challenging to set up in it's own right), or you can import the tables and specify Future Pinball as the emulator. You will have to manually edit each table entry in order to tell Launchbox how to load the tables. The /open /play /exit in the sticky you refer to is missing is missing the path. For me to get any of the tables to open, I had to manually add the command line to each table. Doing a bulk edit to all tables adding the /open /play /exit to the custom command line won't work because the table path is missing. In Launchbox, right click a table after importing it. Click Edit. Go to the Emulation tab and click the Use Custom Command-Line Parameters: check box and enter the command /open "Drive Letter:\full path\table_name.fpt" /play /exit where "Drive Letter:\full path\table_name.fpt" is the full path to your table. Make sure you use quotes, especially if there are spaces in the name. Click OK and try opening the table. Pain in the butt to set up each table this way but it seems to work. I currently have over a hundred tables set up this way, editing each table one at a time. If there is a way for Launchbox to do this automatically, I must have missed it.

In an effort to make Launchbox more efficient and load faster, the developer recently broke up the Launchbox XML file into several parts. If you have a newer install, you will likely not have an XML that Rocketlauncher can use. The hope is that soon, the folks at Rocketlauncher will re-tool the plugin that Rocketlauncher uses to talk to Launchbox via the XML files.

I just voted for this too.

Looking forward to some official support for pinball @Jason Carr. Spent a lot of time this weekend setting up about 100 Future Pinball tables manually. Thankful that I can add them, but a more automatic way to set them up would be awesome. I followed the tips in the post below to get Future Pinball tables working. I could wait until the Rocketlauncher plugin gets updated again and just use that, but where is the fun in that? Messed around a bit with Pinball FX2 as well. Never messed around with that system before. Pretty neat. If there needs to be a ticket opened for this, just say the word.

Very cool. Love the commercials. Great idea!

@lordmonkus No problem and thank you. I can do an AHK script but not sure the proper method of waiting for the window to open to send the command. Maybe I'll post my half baked script later so someone with more knowledge can help me.

Thanks! Now if you could just tell me how to write an AHK script to send ctrl+alt+t to AMIduOS every time it opens, that would be great. LOL Its really a good android emulator but it requires the controls to be turned on manually every time you open it with those keystrokes. Apparently it is designed that way so mapped keystrokes won't interfere with the keyboard so it can be used for typing. Go figure.

Thanks. The cmd.exe shortcut is a great idea. I'll give that a shot when I get a chance but I do have a question. And I would test this out right now if I had Launchbox available to me here at work. Does the minimized cmd.exe close when you exit the app, game, program, etc, that your shortcut is pointed to, or do I need a launch-after bat file to close the cmd.exe file? Something with a taskkill command in it? Or am I over thinking this and the cmd window shortcut doesn't actually get opened by Launchbox and is just being used as a placeholder? I love that Launchbox gracefully launches the .lnk files regardless of being associated with an emulator or not. Thanks for your input.