Ike's Progress

[Isaac Sauvage]

After working through his major house move the past couple months, Jon and I recently found time to make some improvements to the site's Front Page. (also called the "forum list," internally)

-The Shoutbox's lettering and message has been improved. (not sure the nitrous-huffing replies got any better, but whadyagonnado? )

- Latest Media has been moved from the "side bar" to the main area, above the forum list. The images have been cut down to five in order to allow the thumbnails to show up much bigger & clearer now. Note: the latest 30 images are currently being displayed. You can scroll them left-right via mouse action.

- Latest Resources has similarly been moved to the main area. The only issue now is that it's kind of 'too much info.' IMO what would be ideal is to simply list a thumbnail, name of resource, and prefixes. @JonPurpleHaze had the thought that maybe an improved "widget" is out there to accomplish such, so let's see what happens?

- @Popotte has uploaded loads of excellent backglass and flyer pics over the years, and I will try to get it all transferred to the Media Section little by little. Because the more good-quality media we have, the more any author's version of a table can link to a common pool of such media, improving the table entry, while at the same time providing quality material here for all future authors. Here's an example of a JPR resource entry linking to the backglass & flyer pulled from the media secion.

- Feedback is always valued! The main point is that we're listening and trying to make the site better on a regular basis. But feedback is specifically great, because it gives the site more insight in to what people are looking for. A personal message or anonymous shoutbox tweet works just fine if one wants to stay low-key with that.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Okay, I've now sorted the huge collection of playfields in to three subcategories, starting with Stripped Playfields. (P.S. they're safe for work)

But... argh. Looks like many of the ones meant even as reference-material will need to be upgraded or replaced. This comes from the chronic problem of picture-takers snapping photos from one of the ends rather than the middle.

Meaning-- even with Photoshop / GIMP skills, one end's going to have much higher detail than the other. Looking at you, Diner!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Hoo-boy, I'm finally nearing the end of transferring all of JP Renault's excellent "cooking pot / meal"* material (i.e. backglasses, stripped PF's and flyers) over to our MEDIA section.

* "Popotte" means either or both cooking pot or meal as I understand it. I'm thinking it's probably slang for something, and that JP is probably having some fun with all this. Sadly, most English-speakers probably see the word as "poppet," meaning a small child or a doll. Yeah, lame.

ANYway, as I've been going through the material, I can't help but saying that the average quality of JP's materials is super-impressive to me. As in-- remarkably clean & nicely-HD, most of it boiled down efficiently to 1024x1024 by 24color, directly for FP. (hmm... is FP's image limit absolutely locked in to FP-BAM, I wonder?)

Ugh-- I also have to admit that I screwed up with some of the earlier uploads-- thinking that because GIF was famously a lossless format, that it would necessarily preserve color depth. Dammit, it only seems to run 256 colors, though. Because I sadly converted some of the work to GIF's, then uploaded, thinking that I did something clever. My idea was to save server space without thinking too much, and you know that that goes, hah.

So for now, I'm converting TGA images to 100% JPG format, in hopes that there's no significant loss of detail or color-depth (so far the results looks really good).

Bah... anybody have an opinion on that stuff for this here babe in the woods?!

...

Eh, beyond that, I've really enjoyed scouring the Media section as I can and replacing weak material with stronger material. It's just fun for me in general (I love looking at the art!), but I'm also hoping it leads to PN getting better search results, in general. Guess we'll see!

 

[Popotte]

* "Popotte" means either or both cooking pot or meal as I understand it. I'm thinking it's probably slang for something, and that JP is probably having some fun with all this. Sadly, most English-speakers probably see the word as "poppet," meaning a small child or a doll. Yeah, lame.

Thrue, but in my case, it's not that. It's an other story...
I always wondered why the English speakers called me Popette. Thanks! Now I know why.

 

[Popotte]

In an other hand, why do you put my BG's or PF's redraw as everybody can catch them in the table and with, generally, with a bigger size?

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

In an other hand, why do you put my BG's or PF's redraw as every body can catch them in the table and with, generally, with a bigger size?

They come directly from the table file, so they're the biggest size I'm aware of.

It might not be obvious, but the site's Media items are automatically sized-down display-wise, but if you right-click "open image in new tab," you'll see that it's the actual full-size image on display.

If you wish me to cease this "JPR" project, please let me know. It is entirely based on your goodwill and generosity. Thank you.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

All the tables entries for games @Furio upgraded to VP9 (~60 in all) have now been updated with IPDB highlights, as well as backglass & flyer pics. The collection is here.

Certainly it would be nice to further upgrade those tables to VP9.95, but I never was able to research why the ball image disappears going from VP9.21 to VP9.95. Guess I need to dive in to the code to figure it out, sometime.

Anyway, along the way I learned how to use GIMP to create straight backglass images from skewed originals, as well as using some wonderful tools / filters to remove JPG artifacts, as well as to enlarge smallish images using some very effective AI.

The site's backglass collection has come a long ways in terms of high-quality content in only ~six months, so I'm happy about that as a decent little resource Pinball Nirvana can offer the internet. The latest uploads can be viewed here. Credits to various sources will continue to be updated in post #5.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

1) Okay, I was never a fan of the way XF automatically created 'rich previews' of URL links, and a friend of the site also expressed annoyance about it as well, so I'm going to propose turning it OFF for the time being. Below is a before and after:

​

Google.com

Yes indeed, sometimes it works well, and sometimes not. But this new change gives a person more control, and note that they can still turn this feature ON or OFF in their post. @JonPurpleHaze, I know you're partial to the 'rich preview' approach, so please take a look. Also, if anyone else here misses that feature, please say the word.


2) Regarding the 'best of last year' concept, it seems like the idea is sound (if done tastefully), but as the idea originator who's willing to write the final article, I'm... just not in a position to also come up with all the candidates and choices myself.

Specifically, I just don't have all you folks' familiarity with the various FP tables that came out in 2021. To put in more plain terms-- I frankly need more help. So unless there's a bit more specific suggestions in this thread, I guess we're going to have to shelve the idea for this year. Pity, because I suspect a finished article would be nicely helpful in getting more eyes on our scene, but whatcha gonna do?


3) Ah, but if the Best Of article doesn't happen this year, I'd still like to express some "fluff, yeah" gratitude towards people in the scene who've greatly helped me out this past year. Those folks would be: Jon, Bob, Charles, and DaveH, with a nod towards Furio, Paul, and Steve.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

1) TBH, sometimes it's a bit hard trying to make helpful changes to the site without Jon, who's our ultimate expert at backend site-stuff. Unfortunately, it seems he's still struggling with his PC-upgrade issue and maybe other new issues, but still paying the bills for the site, so we're all good in terms of site health. Just that... we might have to keep making due without Jon for a while more.

So then, I've taken the liberty of turning off the "unfurl" and "convert URLs to page titles" options in the admin panel, as mentioned above. Hopefully it will give a cleaner look when pasting URL's. Please let me know if you see a problem.

Edit: Unfortunately, manual-unfurl isn't working like it should, so I had to turn it back on. It's either always-on or always-off in the system, evidently. Looks like a bug to me, but maybe XF can fix it at some point.

2) I guess this might seem quaint or irrelevant to most, but the more I get in to the backglasses project, the more I've enjoyed it. As of today, I've now hand-uploaded ~600 media items, most of them better-quality backglasses, mainly with the hope that such effort makes our site stand out a little bit more amongst all the others. Along the way, I've already learned a merde-tonne in GIMP (while still remaining a GIMP noobie, hehe) and using AI to reconstruct poor source material. It's honestly kind of an addicting rabbit-hole.

On that note-- Looking for a better backglass? Ask here.

3) I want to thank @Furio in particular for finding so many nice VP8 tables to upgrade to the vastly-better VP9 physics. They all play so much better now, and you can see the growing list here.

4) I notice there's been some squabbles behind the scenes recently, and amongst various authors / contributors, and to me it seems like humans being humans, which is going to happen. Debates and belief-clashes can get downright spicy, after all. Welcome to Pinball Nirvana. :D

That said, I remain here to put my ego aside and help others wherever possible. I think Charles is like my superhero-friend who arrived from Krypton to do the same!

 

[Furio]

Grazie per la citazione. Gli autori che raccoglievano i pinball su Irpinball scrivevano che volevano preservare i pinball. Io non ho questa vpretesa. Il mio operato deriva dal fatto che mi diverto. Saluti

 

[NitroNimbus]

Ego is not a dirty word.
Don't you believe what you've seen or heard.
Some people keep their egos in a bottom drawer, cheers!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Haven't been feeling well lately, and haven't been around much the past week in particular. Hopefully the docs can figure this stuff out. (it's probably not CV19, as I've already been vaxxed 3x, Pfizer)

@Furio,
I hope to resume working on the VP995 upgrade project! I still mean to publish an example table and include helpful notes. Sorry for taking so long, amico.

And oof... do I really miss working on backglasses.

Charles @xenonph has been doing a great job from what I'm seeing. I'm so thankful to him, and it seems @JonPurpleHaze is finally coming back, too. Yay!

 

[Furio]

Ti ho scritto da qualche parte che nel mio PC non è possibile istallare VP995. Ho provato ma non ci sono riuscito..

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Ti ho scritto da qualche parte che nel mio PC non è possibile istallare VP995. Ho provato ma non ci sono riuscito..

Okay maybe, but I refuse to give up at the current time!

It's like... WHAM! We'll figure it out one day!!

 

[Furio]

Ho il Windovs 7 , e non si può istallare il VP995.

 

[xenonph]

@Furio
Dovresti essere in grado di eseguire VP9.95 su Windows7.
Penso che tu abbia bisogno di DirectX 9 installato per farlo funzionare. Hai provato il programma di installazione All-In-One VPX? Installa tutto ciò di cui hai bisogno e installa VP8, VP9.21, VP9.95 e VP9.9 PhysicsMod5. (così come VPX)
Il programma di installazione VPX All-In-One installa anche DirectX9, Net Framework 4.0, UltraDMD e molto altro!! Trova il programma di installazione All-In-One qui..
https://pinballnirvana.com/forums/resources/vpx-all-in-one-installer.5178/

Spero che questo ti aiuti amico mio.

 

[Furio]

Ho istallato All-In-One VPX? . L'istallazione non è stata completa ed inoltre i pinball VPM non funzionavano. Forse il mio window 7 non è integro. Spero che tu stia bene, potresti fare un tampone per approfondire il tuo stato di salute. Furio , Saluti dall' Italia.

 

[xenonph]

Non sono sicuro di cosa causerebbe la chiusura del programma di installazione a metà del processo. Valeva la pena di tentare. Forse qualcuno con più esperienza sarà in grado di aiutarti a farlo funzionare.
Saluti dal Pacifico nord-occidentale!!