Help Solved Pinball Emporium/Joytokey - I've been at this over a week and still can't find the problem

lees1964

Pinball Wizard
Joined
Mar 6, 2022
Messages
10
Solutions
1
Reaction score
7
Points
13
Favorite Pinball Machine
Captain Fantastic
I know how frustrating it is to see someone make a post about something they could have just as easily searched and answered on their own. This does not seem to be the case for my situation. Oh, I'm SURE the answer is out there in the vastness of the internet on one forum or another, but if it does exist I have not been able to find it. Here is the short version - I recently acquired a virtual pinball cabinet (preowned). It was set up to access future pinball through mouse clicks and keyboard, etc. It worked exactly as it should (flipper/coin/nudge buttons all did what they were supposed to do). I've been around a LONG while and never knew such a thing even existed, so I was pretty excited about it, and like always happens, I began to search the internet for cool things to do with it (this may have been my first mistake, lol). When I found out that there were program that allowed you to choose games and even play without using the keyboard or a mouse, I knew I had to have it. Enter: Pinball Emporium. Because the PC in the cabinet is running windows 7 I opted to download and install release 10. I followed Nate's video to a T! I have the VP cabinet in my office here at home, so I had the video up on my main pc and following along on the screen on the cabinet (I paused about ten thousand times, no kidding). When the Joytokey part came up (and I've watched and followed along with several other videos of the same thing) it didn't display like mine did. Pressing my cabinet buttons didn't light any of the option in the righthand box. I opted to leave it alone and went on with the install. When everything was done, I ran PE and it came up beautifully and did just what I had hoped it would do! I could cycle through the available games and choose whichever one I wanted to play! My excitement was pretty short lived. I could play any of the games that launched through Steam (though the cabinet buttons did all work correctly - the flippers and start button were fine, so I could at least play something). I still needed a mouse to get back out of the game and steam interface. The real stumper is Future Pinball games. They all were working correctly before I installed PE (not blaming this awesome program, just explaining) and now, when I bring up one of the FP games through PE the cabinet buttons are all completely dead. I have, over the past week, gone into Joytokey and though I cannot see anything lit up in yellow on the main screen, if I double click to edit the individual buttons, I CAN see a reaction when I press the cabinet buttons (which I then saved). Nothing that I do (or have done) seems to have an effect on whether the cabinet buttons work or don't work in PE. I've checked back in FP to see if the buttons that were originally mapped out were still in place and the same, and they are. As I learn more about this whole Virtual Pinball thing, and dig into various front end programs, I can see that the previous owner has apparently tried Hyperspin and possibly PinballX, which I assume he had no luck with or he would have instructed me on how to start the games THAT way vs the keyboard and mouse route. I'm at my absolute wits end and I have no other ideas. I've searched and read and watched SO much that it's all starting to get a little mixed up in my head. OHH! Very important piece that I left out - This cabinet was set up with an iPac 2 controller board for the physical buttons. I'm sorry this post was so long, but leaving any of this out could potentially waste much of your valuable time with avenues I've already been down. Thank you for reading!!
 
Solution
The short answer (I can elaborate if anyone needs me to) is that the cabinet buttons, when pressed in J2K were registering but not correctly (I didn't know this at the time). I went in to FP and noted what keyboard keys had been assigned to the cabinet buttons, then used the keyboard to enter those same keys into J2K, and VOILA!
I can no longer even play Future Pinball outside of Pinball Emporium :( I have made a terrible mess of this thing.
 
Upvote 0
I am sure one of the Pinball Emporium guys @NateMac00 or @cav01c14 will be able to help you with your problem.
Hang in there and assistance will be coming shortly.
 
Upvote 0
On they joy2key make sure you highlight joystick1 or whatever your controller shows up under your presets with PE. Also with FP I run everything through the front end. I add all my tables to the PE table file.
 
Upvote 1
On they joy2key make sure you highlight joystick1 or whatever your controller shows up under your presets with PE. Also with FP I run everything through the front end. I add all my tables to the PE table file.
I think that part of my problem is that I am using the iPac2 encoder rather than something that J2K sees as a joystick. When I open J2K it sees "0"joysticks, though it will recognize my cabinet buttons in that secondary screen if I double click on a specific preset control on the first screen. I've tried saving them and it doesn't change anything. (Thank you for answering!)
 
Upvote 0
Last night, out of desperation, I did a full UNinstall of Pinball Emporium, then REinstalled it. Any tables that use Steam (PX3 I think) are working like they were when I first installed PE. By that I mean that the flippers and plunger buttons work like they should, but the rest of them are either not working or must be assigned incorrectly. In future pinball games NOTHING works like it should, though I can hear some odd noise associated with the left and right flipper buttons. I should also mention that I watched (and followed) Nate's video for the installation AGAIN (this is probably the fifth time I've watched it all the way through, lol), and like the first time I watched it, there were a few inconsistencies (always with JoytoKey). In his video he uses a controller as an example and shows how the controller buttons will light up the various slots on the right side of the Joytokey program. Having no controller, I did this with my cabinet buttons and none of them caused anything to turn yellow and signal that it was recognized. In a different video (I think this was also made by Nate) it suggests opening notepad and seeing if your buttons create characters in that program, and mine do (well, all but two of them). I'm not sure if it matters, but as an example, my left flipper button is showing up as "space", by right flipper does nothing that I can see in notepad, my player one button is the number 1, the coin in button is a number 5, my blue button (that works like the escape key) shows nothing in notepad, my plunger button works as "return" or "enter", my additional button next to the right flipper button comes through as the letter A, and my red button (used to be nudge in future pinball before this all started) does nothing in notepad. So that's pretty much everything I've come up with at this point and don't really know where else to look. I should actually mention that I believe the builder of this cabinet used Winipac to set up the iPac2 encoder (I'm not sure if that makes ANY difference or not, but wanted to mention it just in case). I feel like I'm SO close, but I'm now at the point where every new idea I try actually makes things worse. :/
 
Upvote 0
@lees1964
Perhaps you could share how you fixed your problem, so others who may have this same problem, will know how to fix this problem?
 
Upvote 0
The short answer (I can elaborate if anyone needs me to) is that the cabinet buttons, when pressed in J2K were registering but not correctly (I didn't know this at the time). I went in to FP and noted what keyboard keys had been assigned to the cabinet buttons, then used the keyboard to enter those same keys into J2K, and VOILA!
 
Upvote 0
Solution
Forum activity
Help Users
You can interact with the ChatGPT Bot in any Chat Room and there is a dedicated room. The command is /ai followed by a space and then your ? or inquiry.
ie: /ai What is a EM Pinball Machine?
  • No one is chatting at the moment.
      Chat Bot Mibs Chat Bot Mibs: GotBrawndo is our newest member. Welcome!
      Back
      Top