Pinball fx2 messes with fx3

[RedHoodRobin64]

So i bought every table for pinball fx3. Pinball fx2 on the other hand i downloaded because they dont sell it anymore. Its the only way i could play some of the lost tables like pvz and southpark. So the pinball fx2 i downloaded signs me in as user skidrow. Thats fine, when im done with a fx2 table and go to play fx3, i get an error (skidrow apid is not configured) if i restart my computer it works as long as i dont open up a fx2 table. Fx2 seems to conect under the skidrow acount then tries to sign in with the same acount through fx3. How can i make it so fx2 is always offline? Is there a script or something i could use? Its really frustrating to have to reset when this happens. Any help would be deeply apreciated 

[SrfrBoyBobby]

I ran into this same problem and was not able to fix. Also when I launched another steam game after it would have the same issue. It has to do with the Steam hack they used in pfx2. You might be able to write an ahk script to kill the steam background processes the skidrow one starts so when you start the other it clears all of that instead of a reboot. I opted out of the pfx2 because I didn’t want to risk my steam account. I don’t know if it will but it ended up not being worth it to me.

I did Visual Pinball X and play it a ton. It was a pain to setup the VPX and a lot of learning on my side.  Here is a pretty good install video if you are interested. It uses pinup player but works in LB BB

 

Edited February 16, 2022 by SrfrBoyBobby

[RedHoodRobin64]

Thank you, its funny i watched that exact video about a year ago and got vpx running. Couldnt figure out how to get pup packs to work properly with a 2 monitor setup. Its odd with fx2 situation tho because it only affects fx3 in my steam library. My other steam games boot up just fine. Im gonna try a couple things and see what i can do to fix this and report back here. But really appreciate your suggestions 

[SrfrBoyBobby]

No problem. The backglass stuff took me a minute to figure out. I found that the screen arrangement in my windows display settings had to be exactly how the video shows and my windows display numbering does not line up with how my computer actually numbers them. I run mine on a temporary monitor until I figure out how I want to handle the marquee. Best of luck!

[RedHoodRobin64]

Wow ausome cab! I got those black button covers but i found that some of the buttons would think it was held down with those caps on. May have installed them wrong. Excuse the mess in the photos, in the process of moving. But this is my set up. The big screen rotates so i get a full table or giant ds out of it, and rotate back when i go back to other games. The pinball isue i was trying to fix with vpx was getting the pup pack videos to display and have the back glass and the dmd all on the same screen. Just couldnt figure that out. But like the pic showing fx3 avp, thats more or less what my vpx also looks like

[SrfrBoyBobby]

Nice. I like the rotating screen. Is it manual or does it rotate automatically?  I love my cab and buttons. They are the eclipse ones from groovygamer. It took a long time but I just completed custom ledblinky colors and callout for all of my mame games. Totally worth it but the cab would have been done years ago if I just choose single color leds     
 

As for the pup packs, They were a bit of a pain to get them to behave how I wanted but it is possible. I had to play in the pinup popper pup screen setups and manipulate them. The dmd I messed with one table and the registry stuff as showed in the video for a long time to get the position right. I wrote down all of my coordinates for future me too. I do have problems still with the extra pinup popper windows opening for toppers and stuff opening open top or behind other windows causing focus issues so I turn them off in pin up popper. Here is a grainy video of a pup pack running and a pinup screen settings I have. 

 

 

[SrfrBoyBobby]

Wow sorry that screen settings is really bad to read.  Maybe this is a little clearer. If not I’ll take a screen capture a bit later. 

 

[RedHoodRobin64]

Unfortunately its a manual rotation. Its pretty cool tho. 200 bucks from amazon and it holds up to a 70 inch with 90 degree rotation. Thats what i got on there is a 70 and its amazing. Once i move into the new house im gonna build a new panel very untraditional. I want 3 sepreat pedastals. 1 for players 1 and 3. One for 2 and 4. And one for the track ball and other accessories. Way i see it, not sure what boards you use to juice your buttons. I got 2 i pac ultimate io to light the rgb buttons. 1 that does the left side, one that does the right. All panels i ever see built are all in one unit like what i got. And it looks amazing to play on. Truth is its way to cramp. So im thinking a board only conects 2 players, soo... why does it all have to be together? But way off topic, i had that same prob with pup pack videos getting stuck behind other things. I stoped fighting with it and assumed it was cause i was trying to do to much on 1 monitor. But i think youve given me the motivation to try again. Thanks for all the advice!

[SrfrBoyBobby]

No problem! 

Love the idea of the separate control panels for the the different players.  I use an ipac2 and 2 Pac64led controllers.  One led controller per side and may center position is on the left side board. Here is a picture of the cp layout.  I have swapped the sticks to IL euro stick which feel like all of my favorite classic American cabinets.  The center position has been swapped to a servostick. Best of luck with the pup packs and send a message if you hit a wall.

[RedHoodRobin64]

Dam that is beautiful! Hey just to let you know asuming you use led blinky, real cool tip, when you demo lights for games, i came up with a neat way to flash multiple buttons at once. Not sure if your a fighting game player, but lots of games like ultimate marvel vs capcom 3, mortal kombat, and some others require multiple button presses for super and stuff. If when you code your lights in led blinky, if you code all players lights under p1, then when you want to light multiple at once, you use the other players. Im gonna put a video on here if possible. If not then a few photos. Least i can do for all your advice. One of the most ausome ideas ive ever had tho for sher, and il defenently let you know how pinball goes when i get some more time

[RedHoodRobin64]

 

[RedHoodRobin64]

If any of this interest you and need me to clarify more let me know. If you notice closely, i told led blinky my buttons are the alphabet. So when it ask for the key code i put both a and e cause that is each players botton 1. Then it opens the door to allowing the other player sections for multiple flashes at once

[SrfrBoyBobby]

Wow I never thought of that in ledblinky. I just finished programming my arcade mame games all custom call outs and colors. I might use this technique on my steam fighting games. How are you working around steam/pc game keyboard/co troller limitations (I.e. street fighter v only allows 1 keyboard and a controller or 2 controllers)? I found a program that saved me and made it so easy now. Check out keyboard2Xinput  I have sharing the website with everyone because I was looking for this exact type of app for years

https://gitlab.com/SchwingSK/Keyboard2Xinput

you can make the keyboard be assigned as Xbox controllers. Very flexible and supports up to 4 keyboard Xbox controllers. It broke steam wide open for me and no more problems. I also make “remap” games with with when they don’t let you in game. I also have work around a to get ledblinky working after a steam game launches. They usually don’t hold the profile during the boot up of the game. 

[SrfrBoyBobby]

 

 

[RedHoodRobin64]

So i actually use x360ce because i have ultra stick 360s. So full anologue. The only program i could get to register full anologue. With having a four player cab it was really tricky. I had to get a custom firmware from andy at ultimarc. I can share that on here. But your using ipac 2s, not so sure my fix would work for you. Baisicly x360ce is a pain if you make your pc think your bottons are keyboard presses because you cant have both p1 and p2 use a keyboard. With the ipac ultimate io there is a download from ultimarc that you can make it so your pc sees it as 2 generic controllers and a keyboard. The special request i got from andy made it so my second io for players 2 and 4 (1 and 3 is left side) i had to get it so it was identified differently so my pc could see 4 generic controllers. I can do a litle digging and see whats up with the boards your using. But if you can get x360ce to work for you, it works so much better. Not to mention mame, retroarch and other emulators have no issues with it. Just a few steam games gave me trouble but thats a game by game basis and dosent give me trouble often. As for your lights, i didnt see your controls shut off but i did notice your trackball and function buttons flicker. For me there was a setting that did the trick for me in led blinky. If you double click on steam in the control editor, make sure you tick ignore gamequit commands. That made it so it just stays focused until you highlight a new game. Hopefully that works for you

[RedHoodRobin64]

This is the special firmware for those viewing this off topic conversation lol. I needed this so i could get the second board to get along with x360ce

IPAC_ULTIMATE_139a_ID2.ufw

[SrfrBoyBobby]

I switched my ipac2 to controller mode and had all sorts of issues with the player two side freaking out and unresponsive after some time. It’s something probably on my pc side as it would fix when I rolled back the pc. I decided to default back to keyboard mode. 
 

I will have to mess with the ignore rom quit a bit more. It might be my delay show commands time or something fussing with it. It didn’t seem to work for me in the past but there is an ahk script to reload the layouts I can share but sounds like you have that figured out. 
 

I removed my ultra sticks as I was having calibration uses. The sticks would ever so slightly be off center and send false signals. They also became a bit of a problem with joystick order with the way they order recognized would shift around as I restarted my cab because of windows. She. I started building this cab I was using hyperspin and that gave me enough problems so I removed all wildcards until I got everything working smooth. 
 

We have gotten a bit off topic but I have enjoyed the tips! Not often I chat with others irl who follow what the heck I am saying and I only recently have started getting into the forums to help others. Mainly I would find answers I needed already there and wouldn’t participate. Great community here. 

[SrfrBoyBobby]

One question for you, do you start steam when you boot your pc and BigBox? I have had issues with steam loading and stealing focus. I have gotten around it by task scheduler and delaying BigBox for about a minute or two. It works but the startup is a bit longer then I like.

I could load steam when you launch the first steam game but this causes the first game go back to the game select wheel, unload ahk for buttons and other things.  Then it grabs focus / loads game while you have moved on. That would be fine for me but I think of guests to the cabinet and their patience / understanding. 

[RedHoodRobin64]

Ya i hear ya, I live in Vermont in the middle of the woods and I swear to god i'm the only arcade builder around here. So not often am I actually not speaking a foreign language to someone lol. So for me steam boots up as the pc boots. I know a pop up screws up the big box launch of a steam game if im offline because a little widow pops up but is hidden behind bigbox asking if you want to boot offline. It differently is a slow process to boot games depending on how good your pc is, and what your drive is. I find indie games boot real quick, but some titles take forever, I never really deamed it a prob because when ever the arcade is being used, im always there. Im trying to understand what your saying about it losing focus. I know when i boot a game the screen flashes a few times and isnt the prettiest sight to look at. Defently a pain for those not comfortable with computers like us. Maybe try the load screen option when you boot? Il give it a try and report my findings here.

As for the u360s, your right, they have a pain in the ass time centering completely because of the magnets the sticks use. I need them cause i and others on here love analogue games. Big Box would sometimes scroll randomly because of how fidgity the sticks are. So I decided to disable the sticks in bigbox and use the pinball buttons to scroll up and down in my set up. Obviosly that can be confusing if someones first time is trying to move the sticks and be like why is it moving? So I use to have themes that would scroll left and right, I found that the sticks actually behave when using a up and down theme instead. If you could ever get the game pad mode to work, It was the only way for me to get my u360 sticks to be combine with the generic game pad for x360ce. that allows all the users to play games like mario party and what ever else uses anologue

[RedHoodRobin64]

and for the anologue being off set in game, emulators them selves usually have some dead zones you can set for your sticks per person. My p4 stick was way way off, and in Mario party it would actually move the character a little, so that dead zone trick really came in handy because when I hooked all these up for the first time I went in panic mode when i saw that. Those sticks with the octoganal gates was the greatest thing I ever did. May not click like your traditional sticks but its like having a dpad with analogue! Totally think you should give them another whirl.