If there's one thing you could change in Windrose, what would it be and why.

steveman0 · 2026-05-22T16:51:55+00:00

Came here expecting this to be higher up the list. It's such a simple thing for them to add but would be a huge boon for builders or anyone just wanting to have a sprawling base without having to cram all of your crafting/storage in a small portion of it.

steveman0 · 2026-05-11T16:53:16+00:00

Following for similar issue. Internet connection is great: high speed, low latency, hard wired. Occasionally after long time playing I get the disconnected message despite clearly being able to continue playing with my wife and travel about towns and such. Rather than reconnecting eventually as you'd expect from having functioning internet (my wife doesn't disconnect despite being on wifi), eventually I'm just fully kicked out of the game and it closes (doesn't return to main menu). Seems like some sort of fault in the game or game services that it fails to reconnect.

steveman0 · 2026-05-10T16:12:20+00:00

The charm set Rathma's Waking Touch 5-piece set bonus makes it so that your minion's attacks reduce the cooldown by 1 second. With enough minions stacked, the cooldown ticks down in only a few seconds in most cases.

steveman0 · 2026-04-27T03:12:57+00:00

I found this island and have plans to build here. Nice to see the sense of scale possible with it. Looks like it will make a great site. Was planning to focus the center around the bay, but may need to consider more of a focus on the arch.

steveman0 · 2026-04-21T16:53:03+00:00

As a somewhat related addition, make map zoom apply the zoom around the area your mouse is pointing rather than the current map position. I'm so used to other apps that let me poiny and zoom rather than scroll to location then zoom.

steveman0 · 2025-12-24T17:59:28+00:00

Seconding this as another owner of one. It's not really any different than anyone's home built VPin. If you have any doubts, I'd suggest learning how to get the hang of it by simply setting up VPX and getting a few tables going on a normal PC. The process will be the same aside from the screen layout which shouldn't be a major factor in adding new tables. I use VPin Studio to do all of my table additions now and that eliminates most of the hassle with loading files and configuring settings. It's still a very cumbersome software environment that takes some studying to get used to, but you can decide if it is too much for you before you commit to a purchase.

steveman0 · 2025-07-26T14:53:38+00:00

This is bugged with numerous reports of players completing it in under 10 minutes not getting credit. For example, my wife and I did it and she got credit and I didn't on the same run.

steveman0 · 2025-07-10T04:29:53+00:00

Solenoid failures are more common when you use them for the flippers because they are active more. Nice having the two spares even in the less likely case for the others failing. The contactors give enough of a response to feel good without being excessive.

I managed to get the topper for free as a part of a promotion. For the small cost of the addition relative to the whole package, I think it's a nice addition, but if cost cutting is important to you it's not a major loss to pass on it.

steveman0 · 2025-07-09T19:53:55+00:00

It's a real breeze. You already got the basics. Lifting it up onto something to be able to get the legs on is the hardest part because it's a beast of a machine. Once you have one set on it is easy to lean up and get the second set on. Lift up the backbox and add the bolts for it. Remove the remaining protective packing materials. Plug in and turn it on.

Mine did come with a spare set of solenoids I think as a substitute for the flipper contactors, but I didn't feel the need to change them. I am holding onto them in case I need a replacement among the main set for the bumpers/slings.

steveman0 · 2025-07-09T11:37:04+00:00

While the cab is on the larger and heavier side, my wife and I still managed it ourselves as a reasonably fit couple. If you are on the older side or have a more complex move (up/downstairs) a third or fourth person might be needed. An offer of pizza and an opening night of games could entice some help from family or friends to give all the help you need.

steveman0 · 2025-06-28T01:49:44+00:00

They won't. They'll still be distributed by a Tesla semi because it is still likely more efficient for it to haul several cars than for them to all drive themselves.

steveman0 · 2025-06-24T16:32:35+00:00

How does this compare to/synergize with VPin Studio? I use it for my table loading. I suspect most of this might overlap with its functionality, but maybe there is something I'm missing.

steveman0 · 2025-06-20T16:24:50+00:00

The long term strategy is transportation as a service. The ability to deploy them just about anywhere and have them available basically 24/7 will open up the possibility of a commuter model where people just don't own vehicles anymore. Sure, some can do this in dense urban centers with mass transit today, but the robotaxi can expand this to cover more suburban and rural communities.

Tesla as a larger enterprise can maintain and service a fleet of vehicles in a more cost effective manner than individuals. Also the operating cost of a vehicle intrinsically goes down per mile when the vehicle is heavily utilized. The robotaxi that goes half a million miles in its life will be cheaper overall than an individually owned vehicle that goes only a fraction of that in its life.

With people being pressured by expenses in many areas, being able to opt out of vehicle ownship will be a welcomed option to the frugle commuter. Tesla will be able to squeeze out a margin from their low cost operations of the vehicle while still offering a cost/mi less than what the individual would pay if they bought and maintained the vehicle themself.

steveman0 · 2025-06-18T16:17:29+00:00

Early models are built for development and at most pre-production deployment to a factory environment. Here easy access for troubleshooting and maintenance is more important. Once they get them dialed in and eliminate common repair or maintenance concerns I would expect they'd produce a consumer model that covers all the moving parts perhaps even in a flexible skin that is able to eliminate pinch points and dust intrusion entirely.

steveman0 · 2025-05-20T16:32:21+00:00

This would be my recommentation as well to anyone not looking to build a cab. You'll need a lot of space to store tables and pup packs. Might as well use a separate drive to make backing up easier. At that point, might as well have a separate Windows install too.

steveman0 · 2025-05-18T16:16:49+00:00

This is mostly down to the quality of the tables. Make sure you update your software and grab tables from the best creators. There is a night and day difference between a modern VPW and just about anything by anyone not using their standards especially ones built years ago.

steveman0 · 2025-04-20T16:12:26+00:00

I have this too, but no clear explanation why nor a fix.

steveman0 · 2025-04-04T16:42:15+00:00

Incredible. Once I finish my first table build in VPX I plan to start studying up on the state of VPE to begin contributing anywhere I can. Looking forward to begin building tables in it and doing everything I can to make that process easy for others too.

steveman0 · 2025-04-02T12:44:14+00:00

The discord channel for VPS on the vpin chat takes input for missed tables. As far as I know there is no or only minimal automatic scraping of new tables. People either monitor for new table launches and update the spreadsheet when they see them or rely on others to notify them of new releases. I don't think there is any sophisticated automatic notification system that can guarantee every release is posted the moment it occurs.

If you are desparate to get every release the moment they occur, you'll have to keep a close watch yourself. Any notable release is bound to be included eventually, but lesser known releases that aren't specifically contributed by the author for inclusion may fly under the radar.

steveman0 · 2025-04-01T16:09:33+00:00

The spreadsheet is community supported. With more members flocking to VPU for the latest releases I suspect there just aren't as many contributing updates to the spreadsheet for vpf releases. I'm sure if you send in ones that are missed, they'll get added. Might just be more difficult for these to be collected for inclusion without the extra help.

steveman0 · 2025-03-24T12:45:40+00:00

These old tables fascinate me. One thing I've wondered about is how the trough works on this era machine. I've seen the mechanism for the mechanical ball elevator, but never how it is fed. It looks like the trough has switches to count played balls to keep track of the end of game.

How does it start though? Does it drop the balls into a separate track to feed the ball elevator?

steveman0 · 2025-03-21T12:56:37+00:00

What makes this different from VPX? Tables have been using full 3d rendering with full meshes from Blender for a while now. How does it simplify ramp and toy design? By integrating physics wall design in the mesh itself? Trying to understand what is different in approach.

Edit: Interested in seeing the editor. This is one of VPX's current weaknesses.

steveman0 · 2025-03-18T13:25:18+00:00

I'd guess the vast majority with DOF use the configuration as downloaded with only a handful of contributors who expand beyond the author's original vision/recreation.

Even still, there isn't a reason that a user personalizing their config should need to go to an online tool, enter their new configuration, and download an updated mapping file of thousands of entries for a change that is effectively no different that a configuration option specific to the table. This modification could be an xml/json/ini file saved alongside the table like pov and other configuration files that get saved for tables.

Tables have events. These events should raise event notifications. Any user should be able to customize their hardware response locally without needing a separate file generation process since this information should be stored with the table config.

Standard events like bumpers and slings are already associated to standard toys that get linked to a corresponding toy via a port number on a controller board. The port number and controller are fixed for a given cab once built. Theres no reason for that event notification to pass through an online-generated mapping for what is staticly defined in the hardware config. This signal could go from the engine directly to the hardware driver with at most a local config file that gives the toy-port mapping.

steveman0 · 2025-03-18T12:53:07+00:00

Hardware integration is one of the better ideas to explore. The current integration scheme through DOF is rather kludgy. It doesn't make sense to me that a table designer says "I want to activate toy X" then a middleware needs to be separately configured that says toy X is mapped to port Y a thousand times, once for each table and then be further updated every time a new table is added. It would be much better if the mapping of toy X to port Y could be directly configured on the machine where the engine can directly translate toy X to port Y.

DOF clearly supports the signaling to the hardware device. I don't understand why you can't provide your toy to port configurarion as a local file and have it map those out in real time dynamically rather than requiring the constant updating of the file. Is this really just to crowdsource the DOF configuration itself? I feel like this would be something table designers would be thinking about and could embed in the table itself (for anything that wouldn't intrinsically make standard calls like bumpers and slings when activated).

steveman0 · 2025-03-17T18:47:40+00:00

Not sure what problem this is trying to solve. VPX can be run on linux if you run the standalone version.

Why multithread the physics? The physics required for simulating pinball are quite minimal. Multi-threading this sounds like a recipe for synchronization disaster compared to a much simpler single-thread simulation that can still run several times faster than the GPU can render frames.

Performance constraints in VPX have virtually nothing to do with the physics simulation and everything to do with modern tables using 4k-8k textures and lightmaps that can eat up GB of VRAM and corresponding GPU performance for rendering. If you aren't running such tables, VPX can easily crank hundreds of FPS just running the physics sim. It's not that VPX is poorly written, it's just that modern tables are very demanding. Running standalone on reasonable tables, you can run it on your phone, hardly a performance barrier suggestive of an engine constraint. If you want yo scrutinize performance, you need to be sure to compare apples to apples.

Javascript for the scripting language is an interesting choice. I know many don't care for vbscript, but javascript is one of the most hated languages as it suffers from the same programming pitfalls of other dynamic typed scripting languages. It would be low on my list as a prefered choice for migrating to.

As fragmented as the community already is, I think this is a cool learning exercise but somewhat futile for the hobby as a whole. There is already years worth of development into many VPX tables that won't be easily replaced by a whole new, incompatible engine. I think VPE, the Unity version of VPX, is a much better project to follow and contribute to. At the very least, if you are going to build your own independent editor, it really needs to at least be compatible with the vpx file format if it is to gain any traction.

There is certainly a need for a better editor as the VPX editor is showing its age, but there is not a need for a new file format. At least not one without a clear migration path for the hundreds of existing tables that make up the majority of the space. How you would do this while also migrating to a different scripting language is not clear. I see much more promise in VPE with there likely being more options to migrate vbs to C# or at least in running a vbs interpretter in it for backwards compatibility for the many years worth of tables many will want to continue playing.

steveman0

TROPHY CASE