Pinball Creator, and my part in it's downfall

guinea pig-powered laptop? I thought it was a hamster powered laptop? Boy, you really are behind the times, my hamster powered computer died 5 years ago. (Heh, legendary the problems I had on it)

Alas no. maybe as we are getting a couple more people who are more knowledgeable, maybe they can answer.

As you know Nic, I have a lot on my plate at this moment, personal stuff, that I am dealing with, and now someone in our apartment building bought in a old mattress, so we all have been sprayed for bed bugs today. Means a lot of cleanup and and every stick of laundry has to be done. Nasty little buggers, but not a bad infection.

I noticed some settings by accident. Maybe if I remember, I will give it a shot. Oh, there are special mobile versions as well that reduce the hit. Maybe that will do, once I learn how to do them.
 
Try this Nic. get another computer, it was a pain trying to figure out the manual with this one, one of the things I think does need to be done is to re translate the manual, as some of the things assume you know what the hell they are talking about, and there seems to be missing pictures for the examples, which didn't make it any easier. :verysad:

http://www.pinballnirvana.com/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=5320

Stripped as much as I could figure out from the manual at least. Sure runs faster on my computer. The ball image I guess disappeared, but oh well....
 
Dear lord, I sincerely hope I never have to deal with bedbugs. My condolences. *shudder*

"Guinea pigs" was a reference to my FB avatar, of course. :p

Anyway, thanks for the mock up. I did get pulled in to a big apartment-related project this past week and haven't checked the table out, yet. ( No ball, you say? D: )

This also makes me wonder if there's something I can do to speed up Unity apps in general. They sure run terribly in Chrome, anyway, which sucks because there's actually a lot of nice content coming out these days. I don't understand why they've done such a poor job in the area of user settings, especially after being around for 12 years now.
 
Have to search things up on settings, as it may be a conflict with Nvidia. Still have my game breaking bugs, but 99% sure it's something in my computer. Very shortly, I will have to update my Bios, as mine is out of date because of all the changes in Win10.

Yeah, bedbugs are nasty little buggers. We are okay so far, but we still have to do everything. There's been a major infection up here in Canada, all over the damn place. Even 5 star hotels have had problems, so just have to deal with it is all.

Oh Happy Turkey Day Canada!
 
This is my first time post though I think I registered in 2016 which is when I started my cab. I bought the asset when it first came out and had the demo table running with no problems. I got sidetracked doing a 1200 sq ft basement remodel which I just completed and had the final inspection approved (whew!) The reason I started a cab was to add it to the game room section of the basement. We also have a stick hockey table and a Multicade.

Anyway, I need a new project this Fall/Winter and will revisit Pinball Creator. I think I will like C# since I liked programming in Java years ago. I am a recreational programmer. I had college courses in FORTRAN, Pascal and C. One of my sons has a CS degree and does programming at a major regional bank and can help me in a pinch :-)

I have to see if I Unity is still installed on one of our laptops? If not, I will get everything set back up this week and run the asset again. And go from there.....

Could be a fun project?

Nice to see other people interested.

For an excellent example of what Unity can do is look at Pinball Wicked on Steam. It is gorgeous. The devs make a big mistake pricing the table for what is essentially betaware. That's another story.
 
Sometimes devs of games just thing they are going to make a gazillion dollars just from releasing something. Not going to happen, for every success, there are thousands of failures.

Good luck on starting, maybe you can teach us a few things along the way. I just wiped my computer, and are still getting it reset up, and a massive resort of my files so I can find things, so pinball creator is down the list right now. Still, looking forward to that time, I changed back to windows 8.1, so I may not have the conflicts I did before, which would certainly make things less frustrating.
 
Getting stuff going after the big computer clean up
Be back soon
 
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Well. As a lot of my unfinished projects are done, time to get back into this. I decided to re-grab pinball creator, as I have a fresh install when I rolled back from Win 10 to win 8.1, but alas, I have to update Unity again, and apparently, it decided to reinstall everything, so here I wait.
There is a new version though, V2, which converts all javascript to C# (oh joys) (as Javascript is now unsupported) and a new mission creator has been added, which sure makes me curious.
In the meanwhile, here's a couple things I have noticed.

- it's still a very small community, which is a shame
- apparently, my "hole" problem wasn't a problem, there is a separate "spawn" setting, though I wish that had been clearer even though it makes sense.
- My small, 1 hour build table somehow has managed to have over 110 downloads so far, which is very surprising to me personally. That's more than a few vpx originals have managed to do, which you can take from that what you want.

I think once I decide what to do with Jungle Girl, you will start seeing a lot more here, and I will make sure I release every bad table I do for Pinball creator till I get the hang of it. Having to learn a new scripting language from scratch though... oh yeh.
 
lets start from the beginning: The asset store

Since this is a new install, we should start over. Once you have unity (free) installed, you need the pinball creator asset. You need to do a quick search in the asset store, find the program, pay for it, then install it.

The best way is to load the Unity editor itself, and select the asset store at the top tabs, as apparently, you need to do that to install the asset. remembering this from last time, this is not a start install and walk away till it's done, you have to tell it what to do multiple steps.

- I can reinstall the asset myself quite easy, since this is a fresh reinstall, the asset store remembered that I had paid for the program, and started the installation
- about 5 minutes in, the first pop up came up, telling me this will overright old projects, so just click "import" to continue. If you have any projects etc already, it may be a very good idea to make a backup of all your assets before you do.
- It is downloading, there is no indicater (at least I can easily see) that tells you the Unity editor is actually downloading, but once in a while, a VBscript like message box appears
- Ah, there's life, the editor is asking me to import the PC assets (why? shouldn't it just do that?) in a sneaky little pop-up box to the left. Click the All button, then import. (Screen 2)
- Now I get to stare at the little box telling me to "hold On" while it's downloading those assets.
- Is it over, just like that? Strange it didn't tell me. For a professional project like Unity, you would think. sigh. Oh well, in the meanwhile, lets show you the 3rd screenshot, which is Pinball Creator now listed in the assets section. Open up the folder, there's the assets (stuff you build with) the demos and the documentation. The text file is the version history.

Code:
>>> Pinball Creator package for Unity by Tropical Studio <<<

Thank you for choosing Pinball Creator.

Warning: Some relevant settings are required to run properly these asset.

See Chapter "Configuring the project" in Documentation Part1
Pinball Creator -> Documentation -> Pinball_Documentation_Part1.pdf

For any questions, please contact Marc at [email protected]

UPDATE 2.0 :
- All the scripts are now in c#.
- New module to generate mission easily.


UPDATE 1.7.1 : 
-To work on both Mac and PC, inputs are now :
Left flipper 	: s 
Right Flipper 	: l
Nudge Left 	: d
Nudge Right 	: k
Nudge Up	: space


UPDATE 1.7 : 
Important : If you use Unity 2017 version you need to change flippers inputs 
Read : Pinball_Documentation_Part1.pdf section ÔÕFlipper Inputs Unity 2017ÕÕ

AddÊ:
- Unity Ads ready to use
- Main menu system (Choose a table)
- New local leaderboard
- Mesh Combiner V2


ModificationsÊ:
- Update documentation part 2 sectionÊ:
	1.8 Setup Lighting for Desktop
	1.9 Setup Lighting for mobile 
	3.9  Combiner Meshes 

New scripts are in c#


UPDATE 1.6 : 
- Don't use anymore Bloom Optimize standard effect
- Add new 2D Orthographic camera (+ demo scene)
- Little modification on table  Demo_Table_01_Desktop 
- Change Inputs :
left and right ctrl for flippers	(don't use shift for flippers)
space, s and l for tilt
c : change camera
p : pause 

- Script modifications :
Camera_Movement.js
CameraSmoothFollow.js
spring_Launcher.js
flippers.js (solve flipper stuck that appear sometime)

Read What's new 1.6 PDF



UPDATE 1.5 : Main modifications :
- Mobile ready
- New Camera System
- New UI system
- Bumper and slingshot led
- Stickers have been deleted on gameObjects( except targets, spinner and poster) see
documentation part1 section 06° How to modify pinball illustration
- New low poly models for Mobile
- New Demo scenes :
Mobile Demo (no Combine Mesh) : Demo_Table_02
Mobile Optimize Demo (Fully optimize, ready to build) : Demo_Table_02_MobileOptimize


Read What's new 1.5 PDF

- Notice the flipper keys keep changing? Unity apparently has problems with key assignments, especially the ones we all use with FP and VP. They may fix it, they may not. It's not important, it's only a commercial program after all
- Say, lets load in a demo. Click on the demo folder, there's a few in there. The file names are a bit cut off, but there's a little slider at the bottom right, that adjusts the sizes, so use that, then lets click "demo 1"
- Screen 4 is how it looks in the scene view, which means we are all going to have to learn how to adjust that view, Screen 5 shows the game view. That big white box is suppose to have text, telling us something or another important. How about we just play a game instead? Well, I can at least...
- You can actually play the game in the editor BTW, nice that, wish VP and FP had that. Oddly enough, that white text box showed up with actual text in it this time, so here's screenshot 6
 

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For an excellent example of what Unity can do is look at Pinball Wicked on Steam...

Mmm, I watched the demo video and at the end it appears the Unreal Engine logo, not Unity's...
 
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