Pinball fx2 messes with fx3

[SrfrBoyBobby]

 I made custom cpo layouts for my main menu that match the platform default. I modified another’s marquee files here on LB. I might redo them but it was a ton of work. Not perfect And I wish I code demo the ledblinky colors on the main menu for each one as well but it works pretty good. I want pixelcade marquee as well so that’s part of the reason I haven’t modified the marquee as mentioned above.  I think the 32” screen marquee will look the best for my setup if I have custom video marquees

 

 

[RedHoodRobin64]

Well i'll be damned. Im dreaming it, your doin it. Id love to work on those, i just dont know how to get started. I got the patience to color code all the games, i just lack the know how. So if you can point me in the right direction we could maybe work together and knock those out. Really glad you stumbled across this thread

Edited February 19, 2022 by RedHoodRobin64

[SrfrBoyBobby]

Hope this will point you in the right direction.  I'm glad you started this post too. Been fun chatting way off the original topic.

[RedHoodRobin64]

Thank you. I was more talking about the images that show on the marquee that refrence what each color buttons do for the players so if people get overwhelmed with it goin by to fast in the boot up demonstration. Ive worked on several systems but very select amount of games. But after this chat on here ive been slaming them out. So i know you did mame, if you need any help with the other systems i can share my file from led blinky when i get done if you want

[SrfrBoyBobby]

Got ya. I misinterpreted the comment. 

There are a lot of different approaches to the artwork and to what programs. I recommend photoshop and illustrator. I also recommend graphic for the ipad. 
 

For the first man part you have recreate your control panel. I used graphic for the ipad and I also use an Apple Pencil.  It works pretty much the same as Illustrator. 

Here is my deck art in its raw form

Next create a cutout to mask the unwanted parts of the art

 

Build what your buttons and joysticks look like pretty much by stacking circles and adding shadows to define the edges and height changes

within this art of the buttons there are several layers. The black caps and joysticks are the top layer. Below that is a color overlay which is a circle of color for each button set to overlay in the layer options. This is where you change the colors of each button. The bottom layer is the rest of the button. Yours probably won’t have the black cap layer. 
 

The final part of the control panel art is the text layer

after all this it is really moving to photoshop and cutout the cpo / remove the white area and place into your marquee art file.  Unfortunately I was unable to link to original art here.  I think it was actually created and posted in the forums here as a clear logo template type of art.  I will add the link if I locate it . I modified the file to suit my needs and swapped out the art and logos in the layers.

I can get into more detail in the future about this last step after the control panels art is complete .

 

[RedHoodRobin64]

I really appreciate all this, when i get home im gonna attempt to teach my self all this. Ive never played with photo shop but having a similar design of what you did with your marquee on mine would be the dream. I know you can do the pause screens with these images as well. If i can get comfortable enough to do all this il be glad to share with everyone. Thanks a million!

[RedHoodRobin64]

The other great thing 2 is your panel is nearly identical to mine. I got the extra button for each player down bellow but close enough to get the job done. I can also do mock ups of your black caps and with out for those interested in veriety. I really want to have the control panel just show 1 person cause all other controls are usually identical. But have a controller of the system next to it as well incase they want the athentic feel

[SrfrBoyBobby]

Awesome! I’ll try to throw together the files I made / used to get you a head start when I get back to my cabinet. 

[RedHoodRobin64]

That would be incredibly helpful

[RedHoodRobin64]

So I took a chance and just went swinging in photo shop. Did the 7 day free trial. If this works out and I get the hang of it I will continue pass the free trial. I tried to follow what you were saying on here but I have android. So goin in blind I watched a video or too and decided to challenge my self and take one of the photos you shared on here and trim out all the stuff in the background. That's as far as I could get so far. I love how you did the buttons and would love to figure out how to do that, on top of adding text for the functions and stuff. If your patient, I'm a slow learner but when I get determined, it will get done. When it comes to my knowledge, Everything i've done with the arcade and everything else was youtube, trial and error, and lots of patience. So bare with me lol

[RedHoodRobin64]

[SrfrBoyBobby]

I figured I should start this as its own topic.  I setup a lot of groupings to help navigate

[RedHoodRobin64]

How did you send that link to go to the other forum made? I want to do that for people to click to go to the box art I'm doing

[neil9000]

2 minutes ago, RedHoodRobin64 said:

How did you send that link to go to the other forum made? I want to do that for people to click to go to the box art I'm doing

Just paste the URL into your reply.

[RedHoodRobin64]

Thank you Neil

[NeonNightRide]

On 2/19/2022 at 7:57 AM, RedHoodRobin64 said:

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 26.12 kB · 1 download

Thanks for posting this and this thread has been invaluable to me planning my setup for my new cab!  Long shot, but I had a quick question if you are still lurking....   I installed this firmware on my second board and wanted to make sure i did it correctly.  On the bottom left corner of WinIPAC it states Board attached: UIO and not UIO 2.  Is this normal behavior for this custom firmware for mixed mode on my second board?  Also, did you connect your UltraStick 360s via USB only or via both USB and the IPAC ultimates.   Thank you so much if you see this, and both you guys have been awesome in my new journey!!!

[RedHoodRobin64]

On 12/4/2022 at 12:46 AM, NeonNightRide said:

Thanks for posting this and this thread has been invaluable to me planning my setup for my new cab!  Long shot, but I had a quick question if you are still lurking....   I installed this firmware on my second board and wanted to make sure i did it correctly.  On the bottom left corner of WinIPAC it states Board attached: UIO and not UIO 2.  Is this normal behavior for this custom firmware for mixed mode on my second board?  Also, did you connect your UltraStick 360s via USB only or via both USB and the IPAC ultimates.   Thank you so much if you see this, and both you guys have been awesome in my new journey!!!

Its been so long sence i did all that. If i remember correctly you cant costamize both bords with winpac at the same time. I have my u360 sticks plugged in usb. I have a pinball plunger that is used as the right stick of a xbox controller using x360. My arcade is not hooked up atm because of some health probs and moving. But id be happy to figure this out. 

X360ce and that firmware were the only way i could get the controls to merge with my usb sticks and register as one controller. X360ce gave me trouble because it cant use the same input on 2 controllers meaning you cant use keyboard keys as buttons for all 4 players. Thats why that firmware is nice because it allows your pc to see 4 controllers and a keyboard so you can have your close, play, and volume controls ect. 

Makes me happy this helped someone. Maybe i can get it all hooked up and see what i find for you

[NeonNightRide]

5 hours ago, RedHoodRobin64 said:

Its been so long sence i did all that. If i remember correctly you cant costamize both bords with winpac at the same time. I have my u360 sticks plugged in usb. I have a pinball plunger that is used as the right stick of a xbox controller using x360. My arcade is not hooked up atm because of some health probs and moving. But id be happy to figure this out. 

X360ce and that firmware were the only way i could get the controls to merge with my usb sticks and register as one controller. X360ce gave me trouble because it cant use the same input on 2 controllers meaning you cant use keyboard keys as buttons for all 4 players. Thats why that firmware is nice because it allows your pc to see 4 controllers and a keyboard so you can have your close, play, and volume controls ect. 

Makes me happy this helped someone. Maybe i can get it all hooked up and see what i find for you

I'm sorry to hear about your health problems and hope everything is ok.   No need to try and dig too deep and bother yourself with plugging a bunch of things back in, but I will ask a couple of questions, and if you just happen to remember anything from your setup... cool. If not, please don't worry.  After finally getting some time to tinker and talking with Andy, I figured out I could only configure one board at a time.  

Did you setup all your main player buttons as gamepad buttons in WinIpac, then use x360ce as a Xinput emulater, then configure mame to be used with the gamepad buttons as opposed to keyboard buttons?

Were you able to utilize the ultrastik's ability to download controller maps (e.g. 4 way, 8 way, etc) if you were using it this way? Or was mame able to just handle them as an analogue stick?  I had planned on letting LED Blinky handle the joystick mapping for the ultrastiks, but didn't know if this was possible while also using x360ce.  

 

Just to be clear, I am going through all this trouble because I am trying to have a setup that I am able to play my Mame roms, Steam games, AND use LED Blinky.  After stumbling across this post, It seemed exactly what I was going for!  I am thankful you guys got off topic and started sharing tips as it gave me so many idea to work off of and helped solve a lot of issues/potiental problems. 

I just got everything wired up, except the trackball, which I just mounted and hopefully going to find some time tonight to get hooked up and the LEDs for it setup. ( I still need to mount the IPACs and do a ton of cable management!!)  Not that you care, but here are a few shots of the pedestal I am attempting to build.  It'll be set in front of a 65'' rotating display that I am hoping to use for a vertical Mame setup and landscape for everything else.  

[RedHoodRobin64]

1 hour ago, NeonNightRide said:

I'm sorry to hear about your health problems and hope everything is ok.   No need to try and dig too deep and bother yourself with plugging a bunch of things back in, but I will ask a couple of questions, and if you just happen to remember anything from your setup... cool. If not, please don't worry.  After finally getting some time to tinker and talking with Andy, I figured out I could only configure one board at a time.  

Did you setup all your main player buttons as gamepad buttons in WinIpac, then use x360ce as a Xinput emulater, then configure mame to be used with the gamepad buttons as opposed to keyboard buttons?

Were you able to utilize the ultrastik's ability to download controller maps (e.g. 4 way, 8 way, etc) if you were using it this way? Or was mame able to just handle them as an analogue stick?  I had planned on letting LED Blinky handle the joystick mapping for the ultrastiks, but didn't know if this was possible while also using x360ce.  

 

Just to be clear, I am going through all this trouble because I am trying to have a setup that I am able to play my Mame roms, Steam games, AND use LED Blinky.  After stumbling across this post, It seemed exactly what I was going for!  I am thankful you guys got off topic and started sharing tips as it gave me so many idea to work off of and helped solve a lot of issues/potiental problems. 

I just got everything wired up, except the trackball, which I just mounted and hopefully going to find some time tonight to get hooked up and the LEDs for it setup. ( I still need to mount the IPACs and do a ton of cable management!!)  Not that you care, but here are a few shots of the pedestal I am attempting to build.  It'll be set in front of a 65'' rotating display that I am hoping to use for a vertical Mame setup and landscape for everything else.  

That cab is amazing. The shape is exactly like mine only my button lay out is different. So big post you got so if i miss anything please let me know. Trust me its really cool to have someone share there build with me. I live in vermont in the middle of the woods and i swear im the only person around here that mostly knows how to do this stuff. Im so happy the off topic helped. It helped me also because sirfirboy bobby taught me some ausome skills to build control scheme directions and helped me with video making for marquee videos. At the bottom of this post il point you to 2 other posts I have that may interest you.

As for the health deeply apreciated. I just have a insane amount of inflimation in my chest. Hoping it calms down so i can start making crazy stuff again. Didnt have time to plug in the arcade. Its all put together but the pc is upstairs with me so I can play with it when im resting.

As for the sticks, i just keep them as full anologue. I have octoganal gates to help make it feel like a anologue dpad essentially. Steam defently perfers this with games that use anologue and you shouldnt run into probs with mame.

So to program your ipacs ultimates, your right, they work when both plugged in but in order to program there functions, you have to have them plugged in 1 at a time. The buttons i have programed as button 1 button 2 ect... Then my function buttons are enter for play, volume up and down ect...

Heres where i got creative. Now im no expert and just figured this out on my own. In led blinky, i told the ultimate io boards that my buttons are keyboard keys even tho there not. One of the apps that led blinky has, the one that tells the pc what button is each light. The reason why is if your running x360ce so steam will recognize your controls, this makes led blinky strugle to know whats what in mame because its seeing the xbox buttons and not your virtual gamepad buttons from the ipac.

example. All 4 players on my board have 7 buttons. 9 including start and coin/select. Buttons 1 through 7 are a,b,c,d,e,f,g in led blinky. But on my ipac its buttons 1,2,3,4,5,6 7,start,select. P2 would be h,i,j,k,l,m,n and so on. The start buttons for each player is 1,2,3,4 and coin is 5,6,7,8. If this needs to be explained better let me know. Long story short, tell led blinky your buttons are keyboard keys even tho its not, then when you code your lights per game, you can say i need a,b,1,5 on for p1 for super mario bros for nes. H,i,2,6 on for p2

Thats exciting you have a swivel mount. I too have one. Theres so much more then vertical mame you can do. You can use blue stacks which is a android emulator to play phone games. You can have a gaint ds/3ds. It also makes great for full size pinball. Just so much possibilities.

Now for your lights are they just led or are they rgb programable lights? Feel free to message me anytime. Not a bother at all. Hopefully this all works out great for you. Its hard to go back to playing console when you make something as ausome as this.

Heres my build at my old house sence we are sharing.

[RedHoodRobin64]

Heres the link to my marquee projects. The later on stuff is much better