OzStick

Help, I've hit a snag! I've been running WIP9 for ages as I use a slightly modded version that I compiled for myself that disables access to the Service Menu. It works perfectly well, however not with Direct B2S tables! Every time I close a dB2S table in HyperPin it appears to "freeze", however it is simply due to the active backglass not being shut down. If I hold down my Pause/Quit button I get the 3,2,1... screens which THEN closes the backglass, sends focus back to HyperPin and allows proper functionality to resume. But if I rename the table file so it has B2s at the end of it (eg ACDC-B2S.vpt) I end up with an error message when trying to run the table: I'm pretty sure this is due to using an old version of FPLaunch which has the routine from Rosve for handling the older type of B2S tables. So after all that, is there a way I can contiue to use my modded WIP9 FPlaunch file or do I need to bite the bullet and use WIP10? Am I supposed to name the tables XXXX-B2S.vpt and XXXX-B2S.directb2s for them to work correctly in HyperPin with WIP10? I'm apprehensive about updating FPLaunch as this machine is running 285 tables without issue and it's at my sporting club with a lot of different people using it, so I don't want to get caught up with too many problems as a result of trying to add a few new tables!

It's all OK, I managed to work out a solution that will suit my needs. Instead of disable everything inside the Service Menu, I just disabled the Service Menu itself. I found the section in the script where it calls the menu and made the following changes: } Else If (menuItem = 4) { ; service menu SoundPlay alert.wav ;serviceMenuOn = 1 ;menuItem = 1 ;toLog("Exit Menu Swapped - Service") ;Gosub MenuSwap In the end it was a very simply modification, I just commented out all the lines of code that called any action EXCEPT for the line that plays the sound, which I changed to a different WAV file to make it obvious to the user that the "system" won't let them into that menu. I've tested it with all the settings I'm using and it works perfectly.

Thanks Blur, Rather than remove the Service Menu, can I alter the code so those options still appear but they don't do anything? I'm not great at programming but I can see structure in the code so I might have a look and see how involved it is. If I figure it out i can then mod the PNGs and change the labels on those options to "Unused" or something like that. I don't blame you for wanting to simplify the options - there's a crazy amount of variables to consider in there which would make it very difficult to "balance" the code. What sort of app do I need to recompile the AHK script?

So does no-one have any suggestions on how to resolve either of these issues?

I have just updated from WIP5 to WIP8 as I've noticed focus issues in an increasing number of tables. Whilst I'm very happy to report that ALL the focus issues appear to have cleared up, I have noticed another problem. I have opted for useExitMenu = False as I am using this setup in a machine at my local sporting club, so I didin't want people fumbling their way into the Service Menu and screwing things up. I still want then to be able to view Flyers and Instructions though, so I have kept buttons for those functions on the cab. The problem is, if you hit either Instructions or Flyers whilst the game is running, upon exiting back to the game the flippers are disabled. All other functions work, such as plunger, credit, exit etc but nothing will bring control of the flippers back. THe flipper sounds still happen when pressing the flipper buttons but they don't operate. If I revert back to the menu (ie useExitMenu = True) then this problem goes away, but i give a bunch of total morons access to the Service Menu! I have also downloaded WIP9 and can confirm that exactly the same thing occurs. I'm happy to compile my own version of FPLaunch.ahk if someone can point out either how to fix the "broken" flippers, or disable the Service Menu. For the record I am running my own nLite version of XP. Looking forward to suggestions........

Hey Bent, Just be aware that if you leave comment lines in the XML ie: <!-- This is just a comment --> Then UVP will stop working on any table that is in the file after the comment!

Thanks a heap blur - that's why you're the guru!

I have a similar issue to Dazz - I'm putting together a machine that will be "sited" down at my sporting club so I want players to only see HyperPin and run tables and then shut it down once they've finished. HyperPin runs on Startup and it is running 1.295wip4, which is working really well so I don't want to change it! I will disable the Exit menu and set the exit to a 2 second long press of the Quit button which then shuts down Windows. That part is easy, however I also need an "admin back door" that quits HyperPin but does NOT shut down Windows, so I can do any software alterations or whatever. I suspect I've missed something and there's an easy way to already do this, but I can seem to work it out!

Can you work around it by making multiple files with the same name but use different file formats, such as SWF, JPG, PNG etc? It would be interesting to see whether it displays them all, just the first one or craps itself..........

Hey sly, Have you tried removing the hyphen to see if that fixes it? Alter them so they read as: BadCats_FS_B2S 1.png BadCats_FS_B2S 2.png BadCats_FS_B2S 3.png etc. I don't know for certain that it will work as I'm not yet using this version of FPLaunch, but it's worth a try! Could it also be that it doesn't like a two digit number? It may also be worth leaving out the tenth file to see if that makes a difference.

Hey blur, that is an excellent little writeup - it really highlights the new features of this latest FPLaunch. Can you just explain one thing though - what is this "ta's excel file" you are referring to? I too prefer 5 ball games and it would be good to have this file as a reference.

Guys, may I suggest that it would be a good idea to add instructions in the ZIP files? It's all well and good to disperse info "on the fly" in this thread but it ends up very confusing for those of us that read a few posts then download the update after being sold on what it offers. Having just gone through a harrowing 3 hours of "WTF have I done wrong" if there was a detailed instruction PDF or txt file to accompany the new FPLaunch files I would have read it from start to finish and worked out in moments why I was getting the PNG pics "flashing" when I was holding down ESC instead of quitting back to HP!! It's all good now as I realised I needed to alter the settings.ini file. Please don't take this as criticism - I really appreciate the clever work you're all doing with HP, VP, FP etc. THis is just a friendly suggestion to hopefully prevent others from getting so confused and frustrated as I did.......

Yes I noticed this as well. I had to roll back to an older FPLaunch.exe to get it to work. I had a raft of issues I was trying to resolve at the time so I didn't even think to reassign the ESC key to see if the problem went away! On reflection I may have read something about it "somewhere". I might try again once I'm happy that the 167 other problems I'm having are done with........

I'd be gald to not have my service distrubed too!