How about a glossary for FP-buffoons such as myself?

Isaac Sauvage

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I was thinking a sticky thread glossary of terminology would be nice, maybe in End User Guides?

It does seem like a lot is already explained in threads like "Fast Tracking my BAM/FP comprehension" and George's and others guides, but I reckon a quick-lookup glossary would be nice as a handy resource on its own.

Does something like that already exist, or already exist in a form that's very close?

For example: "shadow maps" (and not "Shadowfax," Gandalf's legendary steed) has come up a couple times for me recently, and I'm still pretty confused about what that means, exactly. It might even have been patiently explained to me at some point in the past, but given how little I work with FP, I might have forgotten entirely. That's a big point, here. But if there was a glossary handy, then I could keep going back to that until the concept finally stuck en mi cabeza.

For an extra level of hilarity and humiliation, I suppose I could try to comb through past comments and slowly write the glossary myself, relying on you all to correct my errors. Meh, either way.
 

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We could do that. I suppose for you it is like me trying to read the real world table discussions. For me, it is almost like trying to read Greek.
 
We could do that. I suppose for you it is like me trying to read the real world table discussions. For me, it is almost like trying to read Greek.
Guess you're not a current or former owner, then.

I forget, did you tell your 'pinball story' already in the intro thread?
 
a shadow map is simply baking shadows into a texture.
why it is usefull... less process on the user computor...since what you see is literally an image of the shadows composed over the rest of the texture.
 
Explained better than I could. BAM records the shadows as simple black and white images. Then it works I guess as Steve says. If you play "Masters of the Universe", you will see shadows coming from the slingshots. You might think they are painted by the table developer but they are created with BAM. Unfortunately, they don't always work on all tables. I was unable to have the option create any shadows on "Robots Invasion".
 
If you play "Masters of the Universe", you will see shadows coming from the slingshots. You might think they are painted by the table developer but they are created with BAM.
But... shouldn't FP's own light-rendering process create such shadows given the light sources author had set up? Or am I giving vanilla FP too much credit there?

a shadow map is simply baking shadows into a texture.
why it is usefull... less process on the user computor...since what you see is literally an image of the shadows composed over the rest of the texture.
In Shiva's release thread for Jungle Girl, someone was having trouble getting the table to run (as I was), and George suggested commenting out the shadowmaps in table script. Wouldn't that have added load back on the CPU... making the table less likely to run?
 
But... shouldn't FP's own light-rendering process create such shadows given the light sources author had set up? Or am I giving vanilla FP too much credit there?


In Shiva's release thread for Jungle Girl, someone was having trouble getting the table to run (as I was), and George suggested commenting out the shadowmaps in table script. Wouldn't that have added load back on the CPU... making the table less likely to run?

FP doesn't produce any shadows on its own. I don't think it is automatic for the VP guys either although I think they use something different.

Commenting out the shadow maps in the script would make the shadows not run and would require fewer resources.
 
I suspect that you may be trying to figure out ways to play the BAM tables on your system. You could try disabling the shadow maps but I always add some flashers on my tables for the lighting. Try setting "Hardware lights to use" on the video rendering options to the lowest setting. This option changes flashers to bulbs and saves memory. The other ideas I have are posted on Steps 6, 12 and 17 of my guide here:

 
It definitely gets discouraging, doing your best to juggle settings, but running in to mister Crashy McCrasherson over and over again.

At only 4gb of system memory on an older PC, I really need to upgrade and see where that takes me.
 
It is pretty difficult to figure out what to change to make a resource demanding table work on a lower end PC.. I think the reason is that every PC is different so a one change fixes all doesn't apply. It takes some experimentation.
 
I have started it at least:

 
I have posted 3 glossary terms and am out of ideas on what to add next. What do you guys think I should add?
 
I have posted 3 glossary terms and am out of ideas on what to add next. What do you guys think I should add?
Thanks a bunch. I'll be sure to mention anything that occurs to me, in future.

The origin of this idea was based on trying to get a table to run in the past, and needing to make adjustments to shadowmaps in order to do so. I'm guessing there's other similar terms / functions like that which could be covered for FP noobies like me, I just wouldn't know what they are due to lack of experience.
 
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