Having a bit of trouble....

Kimono_skunk

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Ive got the Pinball games runnung... and I LOVE Pinbot. Works perfectly, all thank to the easy install kit.

But one nagging problem I'm getting is a Black Knight table.... when it is drawing the table to play, an error code appears as below.... Cut/Paste for viewing...

Black knight script error
Line 268
Object dosen't support this property or Method:'Controller.hidden'

Any Ideas.... as Black knight is my favorite machine ever, even beating * Ball, and playboy... but Pinbot is a VERY close second...

Hug Bows...

Kimono_skunk
 
This is a likely problem, because you don't have the correct scripts in the table file, if you are running it with MAME. Black Knight is williams, I believe, so you need the WPC script with the table file.
 
Controller.Hidden was something that was added to VPM as of version 1.32.

If you are using an older version of VPM (i.e. 1.12.3) then try upgrading (current version is 1.52) to see if you still get that problem.
 
??

Well I am running 1.52 as you said... is there a specific williams script needed for BK?

I do love Pinbot tho.... even my wife loves it.

Kimono_skunk
 
Well, I guess since you used the Easy Install Kit (I missed that the first time I read this thread), you should already have the necessary scripts. I don't think that's the issue though, unless you got other error messages that you didn't mention in your initial post.

The error message is rather odd, considering you are using the latest VPM. Try this - open the table, go into the script and comment out or remove the Controller.hidden line. Save the change (you can change the name of the table file in case you want to keep an unmodified version of the table) and then try to run the table. Do you get any other error messages?
 
Re: ??

Kimono_skunk said:
Well I am running 1.52 as you said... is there a specific williams script needed for BK?
Kimono_skunk

If you need a BK(not 2k) I could email you a non-mame copy. WPC, though, I think is needed.
 
Ok I got it going... thank you.... PinballFan said for me to remove that line and it worked...

Thank you.. now gonna get more games. Have funhouse already, and going for Silverball next...

Kimono_skunk
 
Advicing people to remove something from the script from a perfectly working table is like advicing someone who gets a burst tyre to drive with 3 wheels!!!

@Kimono Skunk: There's something completely fucked up in your installation. You either don't have all the vbs files or you have older version of VP. Removing the controller.hidden = true will just give you ugly extra score display. Complete ugliness and obscenity. It's a disgrace to play my beautiful Black Knight table with UGLY multiple score display.

You have to start tweaking scripts from at least 100 VPM tables if you don't fix your installation.

Go here and download all essential files: Unzip all vbs files into your /tables directory and you shouldn't get any problems.

http://irpinball.ztnet.com/
 
Advicing people to remove something from the script from a perfectly working table is like advicing someone who gets a burst tyre to drive with 3 wheels!!!

I suggested removing the line because I wasn't sure if the issue was actaully the Controller.hidden line and I wanted to know if there were any other problems/errors running the table if the Controller.hidden line was removed. I'm trying to diagnose the issue and help him - I'm NOT suggesting that he should live with the problem.

Kimono_skunk, at the moment I'm not certain why you are having problems with Controller.hidden, but if I think of something I'll be sure to post.
 
Well, I ran a few tests with VPM 1.52 installed and I couldn't reproduce the issue, but I'm inclined to think that something went wrong with the initial install of VPM.

Kimono_skunk, I would suggest you try this when you have a chance - the worst thing that could happen is you would still have the Controller.hidden issue.

Go here:

http://pinmame.retrogames.com/downloads.html

1. Download vpinmame_152.zip.

2. Unzip the contents of the zip to the Visual PinMAME folder where you have it installed, overwriting any existing files (make sure Visual Pinball/Visual PinMAME are not running at this time)

3. Run setup.exe and click on the Install button.

4. Try the table again with Controller.hidden enabled to see if you still get a problem.
 
Or even easier click on Downloads at the top of the page, and then VPM Essential Files, and it's the last file on the page.

John
 
In VPM 1.52, some video cards sometimes don't function properly with the controller.hidden option. Until the VPM team addresses this (again, since they fixed it once and broke it again with 1.51 I think) there's not a lot you can do.
 
If you're referring to NVidia cards... downloading the new, updated drivers fixed all the problems with VP for me. Every single one of them. No need to remove the hardware acceleration anymore, either.

If this is a video card problem I'm willing to bet this person doesn't have the newest drivers.
 
If you're referring to NVidia cards... downloading the new, updated drivers fixed all the problems with VP for me.

Nope, I'm not. I kind of breeze through all those thread about ATI vs NVidia and what problems they have, since I have neither. I have the POS Intel 82810 onboard graphics adapter. New drivers, old drivers, no matter, sometimes the controller.hidden thing just doesn't work right. Here's an extreme example:
 

Attachments

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Well this looks like you need Kurt's patch... to disable hardware acceleration. My friend's machine had this same problem and I did a DOS batch file which basically just loaded VPinball.exe through Kurt's patch... no problems after that.

However he had a Nvidia-based card... and the new drivers fixed everything for him as well... and thus removed the need to use Kurt's fix.
 
Do you run in 16-bit color or 32-bit color? If 32-bit, try 16-bit. But the general problem was supposed to have been fixed in the last beta release and then they managed to break it again for the regular release. I think TomB was going to fix it early on again, but another release never came out except for a few people he sent it to from what I was told. TomB got permission to release interim beta releases, but he seems to be extremely busy for the time being and probably won't have time to do much until Spring from what he told me.
 
kris, you're absolutely right, by the way: advising someone to comment out a line from the script of a perfectly working table WOULD be bad advice.

But obviously this is NOT a perfectly working table!

I've had to comment out a LOT of lines to get tables to stop annoying me with stopping suddenly in mid-game, complaining about some script problem.

I don't know how to solve whatever it is they're bitching about. I also know that, evidently, what I ran across is either a rarity or something that the table works just fine without, since it's been unusual indeed when I ran them again and they spat back at me a complaint about my having taken out that line.

I know very little about scripting (though I've learned a thing or two from playing with VP, and also from listening and learning from you guys), but one thing I'm pretty sure of is that a lot of authors on here grab large pieces of script from those who have come before them, which is a nice thing, especially when they give credit where it's due...

...but in some of those cases, that script that they've thrown in piecemeal doesn't quite match up with the machine they're dealing with. It was specifically intended for a three-ball machine, and they're making a five-ball; it was meant for an add-a-ball, and they're working on a replay. It rewards replays based upon specific thousands coming up, whereas their machine eventually grants thousands in multiples, and thereby skips right past the rewards. (Want some examples? I could give some, but would prefer not doing so.)

I think probably the most frequent script problems stem from exactly that: people "borrowing" snippets of script from other tables, and us users finding out, in the end, that those snippets don't quite match up the needs of the new table perfectly. I certainly don't blame the originators, nor do I entirely blame the "borrowers," except that perhaps they didn't test their table enough to find those bugs. (Of course, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here, that they didn't know those bugs were there and released the table anyway!)

Still...nine times out of ten, if you comment out the offending line, it will be very rare for you to encounter that bug again. (But you WILL, eventually, of course, if you play the table enough!)
 
By the way, I know all that doesn't have a lot to do with the "acceleration" problem which everyone seems to have decided is the real fault here...but it seemed like as good a place as any to mention this.

(For the record, though...no version of Black Knight I've ever tried ran into a video acceleration problem.)
 
Pacdude said:
Do you run in 16-bit color or 32-bit color? If 32-bit, try 16-bit.
Yep, 16 bit works for me on the offending tables and is typically how I fix it. (Though I don't have 32 bit mode... I usually use 24 bit which is as high as mine goes.) Unfortunately 16 bit sometimes breaks other graphics (making them appear much like the noise filter in Photoshop would).

Pacdude said:
But the general problem was supposed to have been fixed in the last beta release and then they managed to break it again for the regular release.
Yeah, that was more my point. I was simply commenting that it was fixed at one point and is now broken again. In most cases I can usually work around VPM's weirdness, but since I know they've fixed it before, it's a bit frustrating to have to do so.
 
It's also a bit frustrating for those of us that can't see that it is broken, because it works on our computers. So a bug report of something we can't reproduce isn't very helpful - more frustrating with all the possible causes for something that works for us. Until we get something fixed that resolves this permanently, there is always the temporary surefire way to make it work for you - run in windowed mode and stick the vpm display outside the player window area at a resolution smaller than your desktop res. That way there is no possible way, EVER, for the dmd to be behind the table display. The second option, is in the next vpm version, there is the option to stick the dmd on a second monitor, entirely, so that it's always visible and active no matter where vp sticks the table.
 
It's also a bit frustrating for those of us that can't see that it is broken, because it works on our computers.
I'd be happy to trade machines with you if it would aid in VPM's development. ;) Or, if you'd like to fire a beta my way I'd be happy to tell you if it's working for me on the tables I know to be troublesome...

there is always the temporary surefire way to make it work for you - run in windowed mode and stick the vpm display outside the player window area at a resolution smaller than your desktop res.
Eh? One, wow would that look ugly, I just hate playing in anything less than full screen mode. Two, how do you "move" the VPM display if it's in hidden mode? It can't be grabbed unless it's supposed to be visible (even if it looks visible), if you follow what I mean.
 
If the vpm display is in hidden mode, why would it be behind the player window? I have the next few days off so I can check this out again and talk to Tom (our com guru)
 
If the vpm display is in hidden mode, why would it be behind the player window?
I'm afraid I have no idea how to answer that. If I set controller.hidden = false in the Sorcerer script that I attached a screeny of, the game loads looking exactly the same except that I can then access the window and resize it, move it, all of the standard stuff. When I leave it hidden as intended, it appears anyway instead of being invisible. What you can't see in a screen shot is that playfield objects (and the ball) fight for position over the VPM display when it's not hiding properly.

I'm attaching a 5 second movie capture which displays the bonus lights fighting for position with the VPM display. I tried to capture a ball in play so you could see the ball travelling through the display but my machine is much too slow for that. The ball basically does the same thing the lights do though, so I think this will be a good enough example.
 
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