FP What to do with 9 flashers?

[GeorgeH]

On Future Pinball, I am sure many of you have faced this conundrum before when you have 9 flashers but only 7 hardware lights to use. In my case, all 9 flashers flash occasionally for 1 second. Five flashers are on all the time. The rest of the time, 1 of the 4 intermittent flashers might flash for 1 second not causing a problem. The choices are:

1) Let FP convert 2 of the flashers to bulbs when all 9 flashers are on.
2) Change some of the flashers to bulbs.
3) Remove 2 flashers when all 9 flashers flash for 1 second.

I am curious how you would guys handle it or what you have done in the past. Maybe you guys have thought of something I haven't.

 

[TerryRed]

I'm just always aware of what lights come on and when... and then manage them to ensure no more than 7 are used at one time.

If I want certain light shows or effects, then I turn off the GI (which can have up to 5 flashers used) and time it. Then when the lightshow / timer is done then I turn on the GI again, etc.

You can use variables to indicate that you have a lightshow active, and then automatically turn off the GI or other lights, etc. You can have an active timer (or use Sub DrawFrame) to always monitor what's going and make changes accordingly. Or you can use LightLists and a Light Sequence to do some temporary lightshows, etc


Nothing you can do to have FP manage that for you automatically if you want to ensure you never go above 7 active flashers at once.


I do that on all tables I work on... but MOTU CE by far has the most control and thought gone into how many lights are used and when.

 

[GeorgeH]

It looks like you tend to be an advocate of number 3 above.

I don't like the number 1 option. I prefer having control over what gets converted to a bulb.

I used number 2 on Attack From Mars. All of the flying saucers on the original table used flashers on top. There are quite a few of them and I didn't have enough left for general illumination. I exported a flasher and changed it to a bulb using the FPM Editor. I replaced the flashers on the flying saucers with bulbs but also added an extra unrendered bulb near the center of the flasher housing to make the light pattern on the exterior of the flasher more consistent. It takes a little time because you have to add the same coding to the extra bulb that the flasher uses. They are not as bright as a flasher but they are bright enough to satisfy me. True flashers used like this tend to be almost blinding anyway. No one complained about it when I released the table so I guess it was successful.

Anyone else have any ideas?

 

[TerryRed]

Each table is different. If anything I tend to convert some normal bulbs to flashers, like in MOTU CE.

Having lots of flashers is fine as long as you control / monitor how many are used at one time. I just tend to turn off the GI when wanting to use many of them... and for lightshows, I just make sure I don't have too many of the lightshow flashers on at the same time (I have their sequences set to be sure only one or two are on at the same time, but they can toggle quickly).

It's a bit different for original tables as you aren't trying to recreate a real table's lightshow, so you can create and control all the lighting however you want.

Updating someone else's table can be a bit harder at first as everyone does things differently, so trying to redo their lighting in a controlled manner can get frustrating when you don't know how they have it working.

Most older FP tables never had controlled GI let alone using flashers for GI to begin with... so in that regard creating new GI (including a few flashers) and adding the GI flashers and bulbs to a light list and controlling that with a Light Sequence can be an easy way to control the GI.

 

[GeorgeH]

Most older FP tables never had controlled GI let alone using flashers for GI to begin with... so in that regard creating new GI (including a few flashers) and adding the GI flashers and bulbs to a light list and controlling that with a Light Sequence can be an easy way to control the GI.

Interesting, I haven't thought of that.