erling1000 Posted June 13, 2020 Share Posted June 13, 2020 Hi Before submitting a request, I have a question... In the old frontend VPman, there was support for showing Future Pinball hiscores for most tables in the frontend. Now seeing what we can do with MAME highscores, I was wondering if that would be possible in FP? And if not global hiscore lists, then local, like in VPman. IIRC VPman used a highscore.dat, and a hispy thing http://www.fartian.eu/vpman/downloads.html Does this make any sense? Have anyone tried somthing like that? PS. it seems new FP with BAM install has an improved or prettier hiscore GUI? Greetings erling1000 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sundogak Posted June 14, 2020 Share Posted June 14, 2020 (edited) Agree, it would be cool (I have all the pinball flavors in my LB setup), but pinball is a bit of challenge in that space. It would be a different process and code to read Future Pinball hiscores versus MAME. Future Pinball stores high scores in the fpRAM file for each table. Visual Pinball has more similar structure to MAME in it stores high scores (among other settings) in nvram files similar to MAME. The older pinball frontend called VP-MAN (like you mentioned in your post) was able to retrieve high scores from both VP and FP but hasn't been updated in quite some time. I saw a few tools/plugins for HyperPin also that did something similar. Not sure if PinballX does or not (will have to fire it up and see). So likely not so much a "can it be done" but if there is enough priority among all the other features for LB team to spend time and effort do it. Pinball as a whole has been typically lower priority because it isn't as high on past community feature polls. The other headache and likely bigger struggle then the coding of getting the high scores is that pinball versus MAME is all over the map as far as naming conventions for tables. It is one of the reasons media is such a headache (and why LB database is limited for PB media). So it would be tough to do any sort of public leader board feature with FP and VP. Am I playing "Jaws" , Jaws Ultimate", "Jaws Ultimate Pro", "Jaws Ultimate Pro with PinUp Mods", or some other multitude of Mods that people do. In case of FP, that can mean older table is using different physics and harder/easier than newer/different table plus in the end I can name my table whatever I want. Popular table themes are under constant revision by folks, with MODs, tweaks, and graphic/physics updates. Visual Pinball does use unique ROM naming convention for tables using PinMAME ROMs, and the nvram structure is similar as well. Even then, there are VP tables that don't use PinMame roms (i.e., UltraDMD) and/or they are using the same PinMAME ROM for a remake (Attack and Revenge from Mars is good example). So again, back to how to uniquely identify the table you are playing versus another if doing leaderboards. The better bet would likely adding it for some commercial product like Pinball FX3 who would have locked/static table naming convention. But then Pinball FX3 already has public leader boards, so could argue why needed in LB (plus they struggle with folks cheating and that is their primary product). Anyway, for a LB feature, it would be something to suggest for future polls and see what others would think. Otherwise, a LB plugin would be alternative, but would need someone who had the time, skill and desire to make one. Edited June 14, 2020 by sundogak Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erling1000 Posted June 15, 2020 Author Share Posted June 15, 2020 Oh, your right, come to think of it. Leaderboards can be near impossible. Local Highscore like in vpman would be great, then ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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