The Body of Christ.

The creativity always dies when it becomes a problem for others, according to them of course.
 
- table with a revolving solar system.
- the pacman table.
- warlords table with players in the four corners behind brick walls.
- LED-simulation games, starting with wildfire, with tsukuda pachinko as my final goal.
- H2H games based on the nintendo game "rock n' ball."
- a 4x-size ball, which was eventually used by someone who recreated a williams circus-themed game.
- several others that i can't remember right now. geez, those were the good times...

no idea if any of my old projects run on the latest VP...
 
And I remember getting the Bumper lights straight and adding active illuminated plastics, but I couldn't get a table together before somebody else claimed author's rights.
This was back when, if an author claimed a machine for recreation, it was all theirs and nobody else was allowed to do it but the author who held the claim by declaring the project, even when the author was still trying to sort VP out for the first time.
And then the usual result was a release of a primitive beta.

Someone in high esteem took credit for the illuminated plastics flashing on and off.
That doesn't bother me, but to read everyone praising the author over and over for it when it was an obvious inclusion, and after I had posted a tutorial on the subject prior to the release of his first table, was a time of true innocence.

About the Bumpers, every pinball machine that I've ever played had the Bumper Lights on by default (or off until lit by a target sequence) and they flash off when hit. I wonder why VP has the Bumpers off and flashing on when hit?
The Bumper Lights are controllable in VP by using the same coding routines as Lights, so what you do is, set them .LightStateOn and when the Bumper is hit, turn them off and enable a Timer to turn them back on after maybe 250ms.
 
exactly. too many of us were so busy thumping our chests and being outraged by imitation that we made for lousy collaborators and lousy innovators.

meanwhile, the smooth collaboration of experts in their respective areas is what made williams products as excellent as they proved to be. VP people never grasped the simple realities of that, nor had motivation to learn...
 
I was just trying something with M$ speech, but the game freezes while the computer talks! Have to look in to that.

But like that, the main reason I never did much with VP was because I couldn't do much with VP. It's good for creating stock pinball, but not so good with innovations and I've spent the better part of 10 years listening to the "DONK!" sound of the editor telling me I can't do what I was trying to do, ten thousand times I think before I got the message that, for the most part, you cannot create any controls in VP. You are pretty much stuck with following the commands that are programmed within VP for addressing the pre-established Objects, Bumpers, etc.

Ahh, I can't make a Beep, a Sound, move things around without duplicating a thousand Walls to do it, and when it was discovered how to rotate a Flipper repeatedly in a circle, it was then fixed in the next VP release not to do that anymore.
Simple matters like programming the editor to Allow Lights to be controlled by an RGB value and Timer in script are simply not implemented so Fading Lights using Several Lights are the rule with VP instead of one programmable Light with RGB control.

Hey Ike, I found your collaboration Pool Table Demo with the tracking ball and cue. It is Fantastic!

DONK!
 
haha... thanks, arne. did you like the ability to rotate the table? out of all the innovations on that one, i thought that was the 'freshest'. too bad about the hermit leaving the scene- he was talented, hard-working and knowledgeable. his main contributions on that table were in fixing some bad equations and bad programming that had bogged down the version from many years earlier. btw, any ideas if the pool table runs on the current VP? maybe i should check out the latest build...

tying in the MS speech thing is a nice idea, especially if you have some kind of table with a lot of different word combinations. anybody ever do a crossword or boggle-themed puzzle?

DONK! was always irritating, although i was generally too weak of a programmer to appreciate what a limited implementation of VB that VP offered. actually, just like with the old 8-bit PC's such as the apple ][ and CBM64, i kind of enjoyed figuring out klutzy but effective workarounds. main problem was always my hands, which were getting arthritic even then.

do you have any VP demos to look at around here?
 
No demos man. I just figure some things out and then tend to share them.
The Speech thing freezing the game while speaking was a simple matter of setting it to asynchronous mode, which is the same as setting it to multithreading in a higher language program, say in C. With that, Microsoft Sam speaks while the game stays active.

By default the Speech runs in a synchronous mode, same as a BASIC.exe, so EVERYTHING STOPS while a synchronous mode program runs.
Put it this way. If VPinMame were programmed with a synchronous mode of operation, the game would stop and the ball would freeze while the DMD is active. In fact that is exactly what happens when you click on the DMD in VPinMame. When clicking on the DMD, VPinMame then switches (EDIT: or the system switches its Focus to the DMD only) as a synchronous mode while VP and the table behind it freezes.
 
Beer nectar of the Gods or the devil's brew?

I've had to have a few weeks of no brews for me, had a gout attack a few weeks ago. Damn, that hurt like Hades, not the worst pain I have ever felt, but very close, though the longest. I was in agony for a bad 18 hours, still only just getting over it, and could only just hobble around for the first week or so.
 
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maybe you are getting old, like the rest of us ;)
 
Not getting any younger that's a given, mind you I have lost 4kgs, now down to a lesser rotund 84kgs.

I know what triggered it, mowing the lawn and sweating out a litre or so of fluid then getting on the brews, whilst being most likely dehydrated. On top taking some herbal remedy for digestion, containing Ox bile, which google told me, increases uric acid levels...doh!
 
Also drinking water now before and after my brew sessions, hard to stomach, the water here is not great, even through the filter I've added to the kitchen tap.

It has a pH of 7.9, the amount of pH down I have to add to my hydroponic ahem indoor medical herb garden is not ideal.
:rasta:

@NitroNimbus

Just a head shot of my last herb...:wave:
 

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Damn, that herb is pretty spectacular, Steve. oO

Also drinking water now before and after my brew sessions, hard to stomach, the water here is not great, even through the filter I've added to the kitchen tap.
You mention the water not being great, and in terms of that, I'm worried about microplastics these days. [1], [2]

Microplastics of course are produced from the natural breakdown of a variety of plastics and fossil fuels; even stuff like the clothing we wear (polyesters, etc). The tiny particles get in to the soil and the air, but for whatever reason, seem to accumulate most abundantly in our water supplies. Unfortunately, I understand the particles are too small for standard municipal water filtration to catch. Which presents a problem, as a commonly-quoted current estimate is that we're now absorbing around 5g of plastic every week, enough to constitute a credit card's worth. How much of that is safely excreted out seems unknown for now.

The health consequences of microplastics are poorly studied so far, but like I say, I'm worried. Because we already know that plastic containers commonly leach chemicals (like BPA) in to stored beverages that can mess with our hormone levels. Also, because plastics that are heated tend to produce carcinogens, so I fear that simply boiling water may up our cancer risk(!)

If I get organised sufficiently, I'm thinking about trying out some kind of filtering remedy, such as carbon blocks, reverse osmosis or distillation filters. Either way, it's obviously a confusing hassle on the consumer level.

Ideally this issue gets lots of rapid attention & study, such that most govts revamp their water-processing plants, so that the consumer doesn't have to worry so much. Guess we'll just have to see. :s
 
My on tap filter does filter micro plastics.

Also this I have the devil beat! :devil5:

 
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It's nothing that fancy, just a basic on tap filter, Stefani brand, with a replaceable filter, good for 1500 litres/3 months. Bought it at my local warehouse hardware super mart, Bunnings. May not be perfect looking at the small print, still better than nothing, I guess. Cost me about $50 and replacement filter is $11.25, was an easy DIY fitting.

Effectively reduces* bacteria - Particles such as micro-plastics - Chemicals such as chlorine, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and pharmaceutical residue - Metals such as lead
 

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@StevOz,
Yeah, this is why we need more science and awareness put on this stuff.

Because if we really are absorbing 5mgs of microplastics per week, and a filter can catch 99% of that, then I guess we're looking at a pretty big filter, or one that would have to be changed quite often. I think this is what the 'carbon block' people are saying, anyway.

This is also why legalised bribery (via lobbying, etc) or regulatory capture is such a killer for public health. Because in the States, huge industries like plastic or fossil fuel have been killing most legitimate scrutiny and oversight of public health issues like this for decades.

Dunno if it's quite as bad in Oz, but a lot of this stuff started getting sharply worse around the time of Nixon.
 
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