Closing and opening Pixelcade listener with Visual Pinball

[Tom Drake]

Pixelcade's pixelweb.exe monitors Launchbox and displays the marquee for the selected game. However, to use Pixelcade with Virtual Pinball, pixelweb.exe needs to be closed before playing a pinball table. Then, when exiting the game, we need to launch pixelweb.exe to work again with Launchbox.

The code below is from the Pixelcade site, and that first quit line works great as is in the Running AutoHotkey Script. What I'm not sure is how to run that start line when closing the emulator. What is the best way to do this?

Quote

Command to stop pixelweb.exe. Be sure and update for your correct path.

Run, "d:\arcade\Pixelcade\curl.exe" "http://localhost:8080/quit" , d:\arcade\Pixelcade\, Hide

Command to start pixelweb.exe

Run, d:\arcade\Pixelcade\pixelweb.exe, d:\arcade\Pixelcade\, Hide

 

Edited March 16, 2021 by tomdrake

[JoeViking245]

6 hours ago, tomdrake said:

What is the best way to do this?

I'm assuming when you say 'Virtual Pinball' you're talking about Visual Pinball X.  If not, just change the exe filename you're waiting for to close.

One possibility.. have your Running AutoHotkey script for your VPX emulator be: [not tested]

Run, "d:\arcade\Pixelcade\curl.exe" "http://localhost:8080/quit" , d:\arcade\Pixelcade\, Hide
Sleep, 10000
Process, WaitClose, vpinballx.exe
Run, d:\arcade\Pixelcade\pixelweb.exe, d:\arcade\Pixelcade\, Hide

I put in a 10 second delay (that probably doesn't need to be that long) to give VPX time to fully load before Waiting for it to Close.  And I trust if you're playing a table, you be playing at least that long.  

[Tom Drake]

Oops! Yes, I meant Visual Pinball and have edited the title to help others find this in the future.

Thanks for your help @JoeViking245. The WaitClose didn't seem to be working, but with full path and quotes, it's working now! Also, Sleep 10000 is a good idea, I tried 5000 and it didn't work, so the extra delay should help others.

While paths might be different for others, below is my exact code that worked...

Run, "C:\Emulators\Visual Pinball\VPinMAME\curl.exe" "http://localhost:8080/quit" , "C:\Emulators\Visual Pinball\VPinMAME\", Hide
Sleep, 10000
Process, WaitClose, "C:\Emulators\Visual Pinball\VPinballX.exe"
Run, "C:\Pixelcade\pixelweb.exe", "C:\Pixelcade\", Hide

 

[wryker]

On 3/16/2021 at 12:50 PM, tomdrake said:

Oops! Yes, I meant Visual Pinball and have edited the title to help others find this in the future.

Thanks for your help @JoeViking245. The WaitClose didn't seem to be working, but with full path and quotes, it's working now! Also, Sleep 10000 is a good idea, I tried 5000 and it didn't work, so the extra delay should help others.

While paths might be different for others, below is my exact code that worked...

Run, "C:\Emulators\Visual Pinball\VPinMAME\curl.exe" "http://localhost:8080/quit" , "C:\Emulators\Visual Pinball\VPinMAME\", Hide
Sleep, 10000
Process, WaitClose, "C:\Emulators\Visual Pinball\VPinballX.exe"
Run, "C:\Pixelcade\pixelweb.exe", "C:\Pixelcade\", Hide

 

Where do you put the first two lines? Before any other script (I use Popper)?

Does only the last line go in the close script?

I have this issue but trying to resolve it through PinUP Popper to play VPX & FX3 games through it w/the pixelcade running

[darkaegis]

Is anyone having issues with this cropping up again in Pixelcade v5 beta? Not sure if something is simply misconfigured on my end, or if something changed in the way the Pixelcade 5 beta works, but I'm suddenly unable to get the marquee to display when launching from Launchbox.

That said, it could be something entirely separate from Pixelcade, because I'm also occasionally not even getting the DMD display in the corner when I launch from Launchbox.

Gonna tinker a bit and hopefully figure this out, but I wanted to check here to narrow down possible causes.