Monopoly (Stern, 2001) VP8

VP8 Stern SS Recreation Monopoly (PD) V1.0 Released v1.3Fast

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Solid State Machines

PacDude

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I've uploaded Monopoly V1.0 to the downloads section under Pacdude tables. You can get it immediately. If you enjoy this table, please consider making a donation to a reputable charity in light of all the worldwide disasters that have been occuring lately. Thanks.

Table Notes (Taken From Table Info)
========================

-Press F6 for Options Menu during the game

-I recommend if you feel this table is worthwhile to play and that you'd probably pay money to play it if it were commercial or if you'd like to thank the author, that you consider making a donation to a reputable charity. Remember that not everyone is as well off as you are to have a computer to play games on. Some people don't even have basic needs in this world like food and shelter. Obviously, this is just a voluntary request by the table author who'd like to see some good come out of his time that he donated for free to recreate this table for the pinball community. Even if you don't like the game, consider donating anyway. You'll feel better about yourself.

Table Notes:
==========

-This table is a brand new version of Monopoly, unrelated to any other versions of Monopoly for VP. V1.0 is the first public release of this table. Note that like with all VPM tables, you should have legal copies of the rom sets to actually play the table. These do not come with the table and should NEVER be distributed with it. Use this product at your own risk. The author assumes no responsibility for this product's use or misuse thereof.

- There are two backdrops available in the game. The default is "back_glass" and is based on the backglass for the actual pin. The other is "back_room" and shows the table in a dark brick-wall type game room type environment. The demon backglass flasher only displays on the "back_glass" backdrop.

- There are alternate cabinet rails and lockbars included as well. Select the side rails in the table editor in turn (e.g. select the left rail's image and change it from "Left Rail Dark" to "Left Rail Medium" for instance) and change the images for them and then the lockbar decal image to match (there are currently dark and medium rails available with matching dark and chrome lockbars). It helps to have basic editor skills to make these changes.

-Mods are allowed (as usual with my releases), but please label your tables as such, both in this table info section and the table and zip file names and leave my credits intact. I'd prefer you keep your own RevHistory file with a different name, but including the previous entries prior to your mod.

Note: This table uses VP "Reel" objects for animation and some lighting effects. They are known to sometimes not display correctly on some graphics cards and/or certain drivers. I've got such a card and have taken steps to work around this VP bug, but I can't be certain it will work for all PCs. Disabling DirectDraw acceleration in the Direct X prefs panel in Windows often solves the problem for most people, so you might want to try that if you see major glitches. Just remember to turn it back on when you are done or other programs may perform poorly. Using 16-bit color sometimes helps as well and usually results in smoother play anyway.

-The table looks best at 1600x1200 resolution, but may perform unsatisfactorily on slower PCs at that resolution. although disabling wall lighting effects (or eve sound) can help regardless of resolution.

Monopoly VP Table Options Menu Settings:
------------------------------------------------------------------
This menu is accessed by pressing F6 during the game and controls actual VP table related options I've provided.

Disable All Lights - This will disable all lights and should help with slower computers since it requires less CPU power (although it's also not much fun without them). It disables all lights including GI lights and flashers.

Disable Flashers - This will disable all flashers from flashing during the game.

Disable Fading Light Effect - This turns off the fading light effect the table normally uses for most lights to simulate incandescent bulb cooling. Lights will immediately go dark instead of fading out. It will also use a bit less CPU power so the table should run a bit faster.

Disable Fading Flasher Effect - This turns off the fading flasher effect the table normally uses for the flasher lights to simulate incandescent bulb cooling. Lights will immediately go dark instead of fading out. It will also use less CPU power so the table should run a bit faster.

Disable Yield Time - Turns off the Yield Time check in the script whereby Vpinmame 1.20 or greater gets yield time applied to it, which helps smooth the gameplay on most computers. Other (usually faster) computers will perform worse with it on and so it should be disabled if you get choppy gameplay. This requires an exit and restart for it to take effect. If you get choppy gameplay with it on and off you probably either have a slow computer or something else is wrong in your setup. The default yield value is 1 and can be found at the top of the table script. A setting of 2 sometimes works better on some computers, particularly if the computer is fast enough and there are sound hiccups. Note that this setting may not work correctly on all computers. You can override it by setting the yield time value in the script to zero which will disable it for certain.

Enable Real Knocker - This option takes advantage of the fact the game will also fire the autoplunger when it it supposed to play the internal digital knocker sound (which is just an annoying noise) and so the game will substitute a knocker sound for an autoplunger "miss" sound since the only time this sound is played is when it's fired when there's no ball sitting in the plunger lane and the game normally only fires the autoplunger when a ball is sitting there. However, it may fire it at other times also so if you hear a knocker sound when you shouldn't with this enabled that's why. If you'd prefer an autofire "miss" sound to be played instead and no knocker sound, leave this disabled. Otherwise, enabling it should play a real knocker sound during replays.

UK Save Post Support
==================
- If you enable the UK Save Post option in the Service Menu ("7" to access and then select it under adjustments), you can use save posts placed on the two outlanes with the KeyUpperLeft (default is the 'a' key) and KeyUpperRight (default is the ' key) buttons on your keyboard. Pressing both at the same time will make a center post between the flippers raise up for a couple of seconds.

Rev History:
==========

V 1.0 (Released on 1-7-06)
- First Public Release
 

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Huh, it wasn't there a few minutes ago when I compared version numbers of the other tables.

Very nice, thanks PD.
 
Thanks for this awesome work, PacDude.
The table is truly amazing.

Surprisingly enough, it plays (and shows) properly also with full hardware acceleration on my ATI card (despite the fact that the table uses several reel animations)

Thanks for this one, really appreciated
 
Very nice, looks and plays oh so sweet.....until the ball gets stuck here and VP freezes, happened three times so far. :(

Even thought it may have something to do with those silly UK posts so I set its top height to zero, didn't work.

Screenshot of frozen VP, VPM still running, actually it asked if I wanted to add a ball to the trough after a while, didn't help at all, just made VPM freak out.
 

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Very nice, looks and plays oh so sweet.....until the ball gets stuck here and VP freezes, happened three times so far.

I adjusted wall510 and wall110 to give the outlane more space - works fine now.

Thanks for the table PacDude!
 
StevOz said:
Very nice, looks and plays oh so sweet.....until the ball gets stuck here and VP freezes, happened three times so far. :(

Even thought it may have something to do with those silly UK posts so I set its top height to zero, didn't work.

Screenshot of frozen VP, VPM still running, actually it asked if I wanted to add a ball to the trough after a while, didn't help at all, just made VPM freak out.

Were did the ball get stuck?

PD, I speak for us all when I say "Thank You Very Much!"
 
Were did the ball get stuck?

Right outlane - look at the picture StevOz attached.

As I mentioned, if you adjust wall510 and wall110, the ball should clear without problems.
 
Great work, PD! Totally top-notch. Thank, you!:)
 
Nice to finally have a version where everything works... Is it just a wild coincidence that KC's version was released on 1/7/2005 and PD's version was released on 1/7/2006? :D

I've experienced the right outlane problem that has been mentioned, but for me the ball doesn't stick there it just pauses for a second and proceeds. I would have thought it was my slow computer if not for the other reports.

The ball also hangs up occasionally in the upper bumper garden. It looks like it may be getting caught under the ramp, not sure. I've attached a screen shot, but the ball is totally hidden so the best I could do was turn on the debugger so you could attempt to see the active ball. If you look VERY carefully, you can see the active ball rings at the top left corner of the debugger window, on the Electric Company sign (lower left corner of the "E").

Otherwise, this seems to play great... A whole lot harder than KC's version was, but since I've never even seen the real machine I don't have a basis for comparison.
 

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Strange that I never got the ball stuck to the right outlane although I played it excessively. Ah well...
 
Yeah, I've played a LOT of games and the ball has NEVER hung up in either of those locations here and believe me, I've sent a LOT of balls down that right outlane. I'm wondering if you guys that are having that problem could tell me if it's VP6.1 you're using or VP7 unexpiring? I'm using VP7 period now. The ramp one would be hard to adjust since there's not much room for adjustment, but it works fine here so I'm wondering if it's a VP6 issue.
 
I've experienced the same "problem" that ghostface have. The ball just freeze for 1/10th of a second when entering the right outlane (and I'm using VP7 unexpiring).
It's not a big problem, though

Oddly enough, the table don't play very smooth (on a 2.8Mhz Sempron), but this probably depend from the large use of reel animations.
Disabling VPinMame sounds, it gets better, but still some drop in framerate.
 
I think the only reels that cause some slowdowns are the flasher "lit up" ones on the apron. Those are fairly large reels compared to the other ones and just turning off flashers won't help much since reels suck up much of their CPU use by just "existing" on the table if you can believe it. If you don't mind losing those effects, you could delete them on the backdrop screen and change this code in the script from:

FadeRm 191,F191 ' Left Ramp Flasher Bottom
FadeR 191,ApronFL ' Left Ramp Flasher Bottom
FadeRm 192,F192 ' Right Ramp Flasher Bottom
FadeR 192,ApronFR ' Apron Lit From Flash ""


to

FadeR 191,F191 ' Left Ramp Flasher Bottom
FadeR 192,F192 ' Right Ramp Flasher Bottom

and it should run much smoother for you, I think.
 
I've always upgraded to the newest version as soon as it's been available. I use VP7 unexpiring. Mine's never hung up in the right outlane, only paused momentarily there. The upper bumper garden thing has happened to me maybe 3 times in about 20 games. A nudge won't release it, a bang back is always required to free it.
 
Ok, I see why the ball is getting stuck in VP6.1. I think VP7 must actually be more tolerant of certain things than VP6. In any case, I'll have an update up shortly with the problem fixed.

I'm also going to release a "fast edition" that removes the apron flasher effects in favor of smoother ball movement on slower computers.
 
Unrelated question... Every Stern release makes me think of this... Is there anything that can be done to crank up the volume in these pins? I've cranked the volume to the top in the rom, but all Stern's are still much much quieter than other games.
 
Ask the VPM team about that, Ghostface. It should be fairly easy for them to normalize ALL system volumes to reasonably similar levels. Considering all the complaints about such things, you think they would give it a little bit of priority, but I don't think most of the VPM team members actually are into playing VP tables. They just like doing emulation and so what if it's not perfectly usable? It's meant to be a preservation project, not to play games (to borrow an attitude from the Mame team).

The only thing I could do is go back and further lower my sample volumes (I'm already using my quietest ones) with a wave editor and then you could turn your volume up more (you can turn them down in VP preferences much more easily, though). I know it's a pain, but VPM volumes need adjusted in VPM.
 
Pacdude said:
I think the only reels that cause some slowdowns are the flasher "lit up" ones on the apron. Those are fairly large reels compared to the other ones and just turning off flashers won't help much since reels suck up much of their CPU use by just "existing" on the table if you can believe it. If you don't mind losing those effects, you could delete them on the backdrop screen and change this code in the script from:

FadeRm 191,F191 ' Left Ramp Flasher Bottom
FadeR 191,ApronFL ' Left Ramp Flasher Bottom
FadeRm 192,F192 ' Right Ramp Flasher Bottom
FadeR 192,ApronFR ' Apron Lit From Flash ""


to

FadeR 191,F191 ' Left Ramp Flasher Bottom
FadeR 192,F192 ' Right Ramp Flasher Bottom

and it should run much smoother for you, I think.

PD, thanks for the hint.
Also disabling fading effects / fading lights helped a lot.
 
Anyone using an ATI card experienced this problem?

It looks like a transparency issue on the apron graphic (left side).
I'm using an ATI 9200 with latest catalyst drivers, so I'm sure a driver update won't help.

Also, congratulation for the table info page (really complete with all the table details and rules).
It's nice to notice that someone really do the job keeping attention to details.
 

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forchia said:
Anyone using an ATI card experienced this problem?
My Intel onboard graphics adapter shows the same thing. When the apron image is lit, the "jaggies" go away.
 
Pacdude said:
The only thing I could do is go back and further lower my sample volumes (I'm already using my quietest ones) with a wave editor and then you could turn your volume up more (you can turn them down in VP preferences much more easily, though). I know it's a pain, but VPM volumes need adjusted in VPM.
Nah, I'm not suggesting you make any changes, I suspected this was a VPM issue but I just wanted to be sure I wasn't missing anything since it seems like such an obviously wrong thing.
 
That looks like the edgy junk you'd normlly see from usinga JPEG for transparency (which I used on those flasher reels to save space, although it was set to the highest level in Photoshop). But the thing is, I don't see ANY jagged things here (or I wouldn't have used Jpeg in the release). I'm guessing it's a graphic card issue combined with borderline pixels or something. The apron images themselves are BMPs so it wouldn't show up if you removed the reels.

I'll put the BMP versions back in and see how the zip file size comes out....
 
Ok, V1.1 is up now with BMPs for the flasher reels and the right outlane bug addressed. I'll have the fast version up shortly (with the apron reels removed).
 
I have found with this VPM rom emulation I can turn the volume up all the way to 31, without any static occuring, this makes the sfx a bit louder.
 
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