megashub Posted July 8, 2021 Share Posted July 8, 2021 (edited) Hi All, I've spent a lot of time refining and troubleshooting my AHK start script for Visual Pinball. I don't profess to be an AHK expert, and I'm sure there are fancier tricks you could use, but this is a decidedly uncomplicated approach that results in what I feel is a pretty clean experience, both in transitioning to Visual Pinball, and back to LaunchBox/Big Box. It accounts for the use of Pin Up Player (PUP Packs) if your chosen table uses them, while also working cleanly for typical directb2S, Freezy DMDext and UltraDMD tables. A prerequisite is that you have already hidden your Windows desktop, as it relies on a totally blank desktop background. You'll notice I repeat a few actions here. This is because Visual Pinball is dumb and moves the mouse around on you, which keeps the taskbar active when it shouldn't. So I move the mouse and hide (and re-hide) the taskbar to ensure Windows stays out of the way during the transitions from frontend to emulator and back again. You'll want to adjust the screen dimensions to fit your display because I didn't bother using the screen width and height variables. You'll also need to change the button definition to match the exit key you've defined in Visual Pinball. Hope this helps. ; Minimize all open windows and move mouse off screen WinMinimizeAll MouseMove, 1920, 0 ; Hide Frontend Launcher WinHide, LaunchBox Big Box WinHide, LaunchBox SetKeyDelay, -1, 110 ; Hide taskbar WinHide, ahk_class Shell_TrayWnd WinHide, ahk_class Shell_SecondaryTrayWnd WinHide, Start ahk_class Button ; Wait for Visual Pinball to finish loading WinWaitActive, Visual Pinball Player ; Hide taskbar a second time WinHide, ahk_class Shell_TrayWnd WinHide, ahk_class Shell_SecondaryTrayWnd WinHide, Start ahk_class Button ; Move Mouse off screen MouseMove, 1920, 0 ; Startup Complete ; NORMAL GAMEPLAY HAPPENS HERE ; VPX Exit Button Pressed 2Joy3:: { ; If PUPPacks are in use, wait for PuP Player to fully exit Process, WaitClose, Pinupdisplay ; Wait for VPX to exit WinWaitNotActive, Visual Pinball Player ; Restore Taskbar WinShow, ahk_class Shell_TrayWnd WinShow, ahk_class Shell_SecondaryTrayWnd WinShow, Start ahk_class Button ; Restore Frontend Launcher WinShow, LaunchBox Big Box WinShow, LaunchBox } Edited July 8, 2021 by megashub 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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