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Post by TheChosen on Dec 27, 2008 14:23:18 GMT -5
Does it exists? How does it work? Is it good? Can I play it?
In other words, I need some guidance about pinball emulators.
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Post by ReyVGM on Dec 28, 2008 1:08:28 GMT -5
A pinball machine can't be emulated, it can be simulated though.
I don't even know if there are pinball "emulators". I guess there should be, but I can't help you there.
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Post by Allie on Dec 28, 2008 4:12:31 GMT -5
A pinball machine can't be emulated, it can be simulated though. I don't even know if there are pinball "emulators". I guess there should be, but I can't help you there. Sort of. Some people have simulated certain machines, but then sync-ed it to a program that emulates the displays and sound... |
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Post by Weasel on Dec 28, 2008 13:49:35 GMT -5
Yeah, pinball emulation consists of two different parts.
The first part is the pinball machine itself. Authors painstakingly recreate the exact dimenions and artwork of the original pinball table. For older electro-mechanical pinball games, this is all that is required for accurate gameplay (i.e. anything older than 1970, I believe). Visual Pinball and Future Pinball have a wide array of these.
The second part is emulating the on-board ROMs for the solid-state pinball games, like anything from the late 70's onward. Basically, after the table's features are rebuilt in Visual Pinball, instead of making scripts for them like usual, the author just wires these into PinMAME as inputs. This way, the ROMs dictate how the game is played, scoring and features are accurate, etc.
In order to emulate a machine, you will need a copy of the table's ROM files, as well as a copy of the table itself. If you don't mind minor inaccuracies, there are a tiny handful of recreated tables in Future Pinball that need no ROM files, including The Machine: Bride of Pinbot.
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Post by Garamoth on Jan 2, 2009 21:35:14 GMT -5
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Post by splatter on Jan 17, 2009 5:46:23 GMT -5
To elaborate on what Weasel said, you'd typically use Visual Pinball and Visual PinMAME in conjunction. Visual Pinball duplicates the appearance of the table; you'd download a table image someone has made and put it in here. Visual PinMAME emulates the table's ROMs, and of course you would download those and put them in here. It all sounds more complicated than it is. I see that Pinball Nirvana has an installer with both programs packed together, though I haven't used it myself and can't vouch for it. Table images you can get from there and here, while ipdb.org has ROM sets. |
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Post by Weasel on Jan 17, 2009 16:51:08 GMT -5
The Pinball Nirvana installer is good. I used it out of laziness and, to be honest, it works better than I could have imagined. It'll set up the whole thing in one fell swoop.
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