VPLauncher.dat -> update?

This is perhaps the dumbest thing you have ever posted....
Interesting thoughts. Thanks for sharing.

I wonder, if i were to ask for an example in which a reason can be both solid and not solid at the same time, (btw. i think in physics such a state is being called 'supersolidity'), would we get to see more than a desert-sand/wind/tumbleweed/crickets-chirping scene this time?

I doubt it,...

(Not that im not curious, but i love Uncle Bob too much as to ask him such an unfair question,...)
 
You're quick to respond to the bullshit, but don't respond to the actual questions I asked about the VPLauncher.dat file, hence I must deduce you really only wanted to stir the shit up in Yogi's thread and don't really give a rats ass about the dat file.

I'm not saying you don't have the right to piss up a thread, but don't try to pretend that you're being righteous when you're really just pissin' on someone.

I like this place. :cheers:
 
You're quick to respond to the bullshit, but don't respond to the actual questions I asked...
Thats odd, i thought the same thing about you.

You sure have a lot of stuff to tell but when i ask you to explain any of it there is only static.


If i thought that you were really interested in hearing about the DAT then i would have given you an answer. (As a matter of fact i already did.) But as long as you keep talking trash for talking trash sake, dont expect me to take any of what you say seriously.

P.S.: Your deduction abilities leave a lot to be desired. Unfortunately its not the only thing.

Au Revoir,...and yes, i like this place too,...
 
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If i thought that you were really interested in hearing about the DAT then i would have given you an answer...


Bullshit.... You don't know what it is either.....
loser3pf.gif
 
Question to Self: Why do you keep wasting your time with this?

Answer to Self: Good question, i really dont know.

Note to Self: Say what you want to say but do not ever discuss it. Refrain from feeding people who couldnt care less whether they actually make sense, let them talk with themselves until they loose interest. Counter impertinence with arrogance and reward nonsense with silence.
 
We all know your first post in this thread was only to pick on Yogi.

s0250.gif
 
phoenixx said:
And on a final note, who cries for me when i get attacked for no reason at all?
Maybe I won't 'cry', but I will certainly defend anyone whom I perceive is being treated unfairly. As I did once for you. Your respect for people's intellectual property and loyalty is worthy.

In this case I'm prepared to both believe that Yogi had no intention of ripping anyone off, and that you were attempting to defend Roland rather than attacking Yogi for the sake of it.

Those who entered the 8000-odd Vpinball table entries in the VPL database did a shitload of work (even though there are some mistakes in it) and to start from scratch would be sheer hell. Building upon it is the only way to go, and we should approach any and all of it's originators for more than just their blessing. They may have tools, suggestions for improvement and/or time to help!

It occurs to me that there are other uses an upgraded DB could be used for. There would be nothing to stop us adding fields (one that springs to mind is an IPDB reference number) which may be useful for other applications..

Any other ideas?
 
Yogi has achieved a certain status and if you want to quarrel with Yogi, then he'll be the crowd favorite and you'll be the bad guy.... Once again, this is just the way it is.... Some things in life can't be figured out on paper, you just have to learn them as you go. I think if the community had a mayor, it would be Yogi. quote]

Some people says things I think & feel better than I would say.
So I just quote, agree, approve & thank.:mrgreen::brushteeth::thumright:

(+ I´m quite sure I belong to the (usually) silent majority).
 
The VPLauncher.dat file could really need an update. I only had the stupid idea to post about (without to think about too much). It was only meant as an idea, if and how to improve anything next. As Meecro Hyperion wrote, it would mean a good bunch of work, and as you know, I'm not the fast- and hard-working guy at all. I would offer my help anyway, if there was massive response and offer to help. As that still isn't the case, I'm not that positive. I for my part tend to abandon further thoughts about. But that shouldn't stop anyone else. If you come to conclusion, that you want an updated VPLauncher.dat file and decide to start anyway, it would be nice to ask Roland Scholz for permission first, same as I would have done, independent from any possible factual and legal position.
 
The VPLauncher.dat file could really need an update. I only had the stupid idea to post about (without to think about too much).
Well, thats a statement i respect and accept. Bravo! We all do rash things occasionally, especially when enthusiasm is involved. (Which by the way is precisely the reason why i deleted the second posting.) Its all no big deal as long as we see the mistake and fix it if necessary.

Respect +10



...and that you were attempting to defend Roland rather than attacking Yogi for the sake of it.
I appreciate your perception. That is precisely correct. The person had nothing to do with this whatsoever, i was merely speaking about the act. And those who know me a little longer know that i have always represented this opinion and that i have always said the same thing when it came to such an issue. I said it when it came to modding rules, i said it when it came to stealing VPF. I said it when it came to Rolands stuff and i will say it again when the issue comes up the next time. Matter of principle simply, not personal like or dislike,...
 
Dear Phoenixx,

I thought that the controversial issue was cleared! Do you really want to continue? I don't. I thought that was made clear by my official apology, independent from your ... (whatever) reply to it.

Can't you see what you made out of my previous post? I'm sorry, but it's obvious for everyone and you are considered to be fully aware of your misquote/misinterpretation.

There was no mistake by me and there was nothing to fix. Accept it finally!

Can't you just stop and find an end? Obviously not!
 
Too bad you (again) didnt understand me.

(Or maybe its just that i lack the skill to understand you.)

In any case, sorry i bothered to reply. And sorry i bothered to post my (whatever) in your 'Apology' thread too. I knew it was a mistake.

As for the future: You know the score.

Phoenixx out.
 
Another useful addition to the database (or maybe better as a separate file) would be links to skins/playfields/backglasses - which I've clumsily implemented in gamelist_updater using the skins download page linked to from 3DArcade.mameworld.info/pinball.

Having exchanged a couple of e-mails with Peter, I've got a bit more of an idea of what 3DArcade can do - he says VPLauncher.dat can be used to build gamelists using internal 3DArcade filters.....

Maybe a bit off thread. Back to VPLAuncher.dat. When, where, how, who?
 
I contacted Roland in between and he already answered.

Here's his reply in German (I removed other content of our talk):

"Natürlich könnt Ihr mit VPLauncher.dat machen was ihr wollt. Ich habe nicht mehr die Zeit da aktiv mitzumachen. Ein Update ist natürlich mehr als nötig und wenn das jemand machen möchte wäre das super. Gut fände ich nur, wenn ich auch eine Version bekommen würde, die ich auf die VPLauncher homepage stellen könnte (und die auch noch mit VPLauncher funktioniert)."

I try to translate.

Naturally you can do what you want with the VPLauncher.dat. I don't have the time to take part active. An update is very needed. If anyone wants to do an update, that's kick-ass. I would appreciate it, if I could get an updated version to put it on the VPLauncher homepage (which still works with the actual VPLauncher frontend).

So whatever you think, post and talk about the VPlauncher.dat next, you don't need to feel bad anymore, because you can't be accused of stealing anything anymore.

If there are still doubts in my integrity, please feel free to check. Rolands text above is from our PMs at VPF.org this evening.
 
Ok Cool.

I guess adding fields may not work with VPLauncher as it is. It depends on how it is implemented. If the same delimiter is used, then adding fields at the end may or may not break it for VPL. Easy to test, though. I'll try to get to it by the end of next week.
 
Hi Folks,

I haven't read the whole thread so I will not comment on everything said.
Everyone can do with the dat-file what she or he wants.
If someone wants to update it it makes sense to do it in a controlled way, so we don't end up with different versions of the file floating around.

The file should not be edited with a text editor (too much work) and there is no need to write a tool for this purpose. VPLauncher has the undocumented command line option -admin. If you start VPLauncher with this command line option, you get a new admin menu with a lot of useful menu entries (like a consistency check for the dat, creating the checksums for all tables in a directory etc.). The most important menu entry is "VPLauncher.dat" edit mode. This one works like this:
Start VPLauncher with a configuration, where all tables you want to add are in a directory used by VPLauncher. Then enter the edit mode. Now you see all dat entries with new entries for the "unknown" tables. Now you can fill in all information, which VPLauncher was not able to extract from the table information automatically. The right mouse menu has some menu entries to help with the work (like selecting the table type etc.).
Just enter all information you can find (like filename of screenshot if available, information found in a readme file etc.) and just leave all unknown information empty.

Here is an explanation of the columns of an entry in the dat (note that the edit mode shows more columns and in different order):
1. Table name
2. Version (table version, if unknown, I used the date of the table file in the form "(mmddyy)")
3. Checksum or file name (I usually do one entry which should match all (future) versions of a table by using a part of the actual file name, enough to identify the table and not too short to match different tables. This one entry does have an empty version column. All known versions are using the checksum (created by the admin menu mentioned before))
4. Author(s) of table
5. Year (for original tables year of release, for recreations year when real table was released!)
6. Company (empty for original tables, name of manufacturer of real table for recreations)
7. Table Type (Original for originals, Electro-Mechanical etc. Check with types are currently used and try to use them!)
8. Screenshot and flyer(s) file name(s) (complete file name of screenshot, either provided by table author or in screenshot-pack. If flyers are available, full file name. Example of entry: "screeshot.jpg\flyer1.jpg\flyer2.jpg" (note that the entries are separated by \))
9. Rules files (part of a file name that identifies the rules text file (could be the readme))
10. Newest table version (y, if the table entry is the newest version of this table, n otherwise)
11. No longer needed, always leave empty
12. No longer needed, always leave empty

I hope this information will make it easy to update the dat-file. I don't have time to help with this (but I can answer questions to clearify the information given above). If more than one wants to update the dat, please do it one after another, so we can have one new dat-file if it is finished and not several versions. If someone wants to do the job, I would be more than happy to receive the new version to put it on the VPLauncher homepage (http://VPLauncher.RolandScholz.de btw) so everyone can download it.
 
Ok, now let's think about, if there's any feasible way we can go to try to update the VPLauncher.dat, before anyone starts in reality.

Division of labour/work?

Administration?

File name conventions for new tables, screenshots, flyers, rules?

Best compatibility with other frontends?

Whatever else that I actually don't have in mind?
 
I could think of this:

Anyone is appointed as administrator. That one always tries to keep the VPLauncher.dat up to date in correlation with the current updates provided by the participants.

The participants deliver updates by i. e. the first alphabetic letter of their available tables first. This would mean devision of labour. This could be done by providing all the needed informations, maybe previously seperated from the individual used VPLauncher.dat. The administrator incorporates the updates to the current VPLauncher.dat.

Anyone with other tables of the first alphabetic letter available delivers additional information, which is to be incorporated to the VPLauncher.dat by the admin as well.

About the file names: As far as I understand, VPLauncher itself only uses the entries of the VPLauncher.dat (checksum or abbreviated file name for the table, precise file name for the screenshots, flyers, ...), so the table file names are nearly irrelevant. VP-Man needs the same file names for the screenshots, flyers, ... as the table file names (sure, with different file extensions (*.jpg)). What's the best idea? I'm not sure about further frontends.

The project needs some or much more participants, so I would recommend to post about at VPF.org as well, if and when guidelines are specified or even before.

What do you think? What are your ideas?
 
Ok. Sounds good yogi, or should I call you 'Administrator' :)

As I see it, the requirements are:
1) Collect as many versions of every table made since 2006. Sourced from here, pinball originals and VPF.org - wherever
2) Distribute these to project participants.
3) One participant at a time holds the 'baton'.
4) The participant holding the baton, runs VPL -admin over their share of the tables and add the information missing from the VPT file and update the 'latest' flag (y or n).
5) The participant passes the VPL.dat file over to the next participant. They now hold the 'baton'.

We need to decide if we want to add missing playfield screenshots early. If so, it would make sense for the 'baton holder' to generate these, and add them to the table zip file, but it would be extra work (even more work to incorporate 3DArcade skins and backglasses), and the new zip files would then need to be republished.

Roland, I would really like to be able to add an IPDB reference to the DB. I think I can automate this as a final process. Can we use the 'unused' fields 11&12, or will that break VPL?
 
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The dat should be used like this: Someone downloads a table, unpacks it and runs a frontend which uses the dat. The frontend identifies the table and shows all relevant information.

Because this, the following does NOT work:
1. Changing the table itself (for example adding a screenshot in the table info)
2. Changing a file name (for example a stupidly named screenshot file)

Reason:
1. If you change the table, create the checksum and enter it in the dat, the checksum will be different from the table, the table author has released and therefore if someone downloads the table, it will not match the checksum in the dat and the entry in the dat is useless.
2. If you change the name of the screeenshot file and enter the new name in the dat, it will again not match the orginal file and someone who downloads the table will not see the sreenshot.

So it is very important that only unchanged tables (and file names) are added to the dat.

This is another story, if a table doesn't ship with a screenshot, flyers, rules. Then it would be helpful to create a screenshot and try to get the flyers and rules from somewhere else and update the screenshots/flyers/rules packs. Then the names used in the packs could be used in the dat. But this is optional, if the information is not available, leave the appropriate field in the dat empty.

If you want to have at least some participants, don't make it too hard to
participate, i.e. instead of "every participant has to download all tables since 2006" it would be much easier to say "if you have at least some table created after 2006 and you haven't changed them yourself, you can participate". Also, just give the dat around (I like the "baton" rule) and everyone can add some tables. With the admin-mode of VPLauncher, it is easy to see, which entries are not yet in the dat. I think this would work better than to say "you work on the tables with first letter A-E and you work on F-G etc."

yogiholzer wrote:
> Best compatibility with other frontends?
You should ask Fartian (author of VP-Man), I think VP-Man is the only frontend (besides VPLauncher of course) using the dat.

Meecro Hyperion wrote:
> Roland, I would really like to be able to add an IPDB reference to the DB.
> I think I can automate this as a final process. Can we use the 'unused'
> fields 11&12, or will that break VPL?
That should work, I just checked the source code, VPLauncher doesn't read in the columns 11 and 12. Someone should ask Fartian to check whether VP-Man has a problem with such entries.
 
My first thought was, it would be better to have anyone, who collects and incorporates only the current changes into the VPLauncher.dat step by step and always provides an updated VPLauncher.dat, because to keep some control over the changes. Not that we end with a completely botched VPLauncher.dat later. But I'm fine with the 'baton holder' idea as well. So let's try that.

My idea is this:

The VPLauncher.dat version to start from is provided here as file attachment in zip format with additional date and time information. The VPLauncher.dat that I have here is 1.047.239 Bytes, in zip format it's 163.845 Bytes, so I think there's no problem about the file size. If I would attach it here, I would name it VPLauncher_02062006_1322.zip, where 02 is dd, 06 is mm and 2006 is yyyy and 1322 is 13:22.

If anyone wants to update, he/she downloads the latest available VPLauncher.dat from this thread, makes an announcement here that he's/she's updating the VPLauncher.dat in the next days (shouldn't be too long in time). When ready, he/she uploads (attaches) the updated VPLauncher.dat in zip format with additional date and time information.

That way the latest VPLauncher.dat is always available here. People can try and test and report about problems, errors, what else. The previous updates should stay here as well, so we always have backups, if anything goes wrong.

I will contact Fartian next to ask him about compatibility, ideas, wishes, ... .

About adding missing playfield screenshots, flyers, 3DArcade skins and backglasses I'm not sure. I guess that would exceed the projects first intention.

Please let me know your point of view.
 
RolandScholz said:
If you want to have at least some participants, don't make it too hard to
participate, i.e. instead of "every participant has to download all tables since 2006" it would be much easier to say "if you have at least some table created after 2006 and you haven't changed them yourself, you can participate". Also, just give the dat around (I like the "baton" rule) and everyone can add some tables. With the admin-mode of VPLauncher, it is easy to see, which entries are not yet in the dat. I think this would work better than to say "you work on the tables with first letter A-E and you work on F-G etc."
That makes sense - every participant will add the tables they have which are missing from the dat file.
yogiholzer said:
If anyone wants to update, he/she downloads the latest available VPLauncher.dat from this thread, makes an announcement here that he's/she's updating the VPLauncher.dat in the next days (shouldn't be too long in time). When ready, he/she uploads (attaches) the updated VPLauncher.dat in zip format with additional date and time information.

That way the latest VPLauncher.dat is always available here. People can try and test and report about problems, errors, what else. The previous updates should stay here as well, so we always have backups, if anything goes wrong.
Good thinking. Then we always know who the baton holder is.

yogiholzer said:
About adding missing playfield screenshots, flyers, 3DArcade skins and backglasses I'm not sure. I guess that would exceed the projects first intention.
Ok. lets keep it simple. If the zip file for a table the participant adds came with screenshots/flyers, then add them. If not, leave them out.

RolandScholz said:
So it is very important that only unchanged tables (and file names) are added to the dat.
We all need to remember this. It might be tempting to add info to blank table-info fields, but as roland says - this will change the CRC32 value which VPL uses to identify tables and essentially make the table a new 'version'.
 
Fartian says, that VP-Man is actually only using columns 1-9, the rest is ignored independent of how many columns will follow, but 1-9 have to keep the same.

@ Meecro Hyperion: About the screenshots/flyers ... : Do you mean to add the file names to the VPLauncher.dat, or do you mean to collect the files to offer them later as additional screenshot/flyer pack?

VPLauncher uses the screenshot/flyer filenames that are in the VPLauncher.dat. VP-Man needs the screenshots and flyers named exactly the same as the table (version) name. Any idea, how we can try to make still not available screenshots/playfileds and flyers and backglasses and cabinet side art (from any packs) usable with both frontends? I believe, the naming that VP-Man is using works also with 3D Arcade, so maybe that's the solution, because VPLauncher would use them as well, if in the VPLauncher.dat.

I have a question: I have changed many/most table file names to my needs/wishes. I used a file manager program to rename them. It's not by using the VP Editor. The crc checksums still seem to be the same. I used this little program to check: http://www34.brinkster.com/dizzyk/index.html (the CRC32 Calculator, windows based program: CheckCRC). I guess I can still use my tables (as long as they aren't changed elsewise) to update the VPLauncher.dat, but I'm not sure 100%. Right?
 
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