I have been experiencing problems with the bumper light and Rafal has provided a fix. I tried the various options below but was never able to make the bumper cap look the way I wanted.
This is a top view of the bumper with the lit color set to pure white. As you can see it is totally blown out in the center and dim around the edges.
I often change the color of the playfield, lights or other objects to gray in order to make it darker. It didn't work very well here:
This is the best I was able to make it look without Rafal's new code. I chose a color used on the texture for the color of the light. It still does not look very good:
This is the bumper cap now using Rafal's new code:
I learned a trick using Rafal's code on other lights that I used here. You can set the glow radius higher than you think it should be and then set the glow brightness low. This will extend the glow so it is wider but still not be too bright. This is the code I used with the fail safe included:
If BAM_VERSION => 310 then
BumperExt.SetLitColor 255, 255, 255
BumperExt.SetUnlitColor 84, 84, 84
BumperExt.GlowRadius = 70
BumperExt.GlowBrightness= 0.4
BumperExt.Brightness = 1.6
End If
Rafal hasn't released the beta BAM version yet but it works. I left the bumper color set up on the table like the 3rd screenshot above and set the color differently in the script in case the fail safe prevents the new code from running. That way the bumper will look as good as it can. If you use the fail safe, you will need to add this line of code somewhere in the script:
Const BAM_VERSION = 0