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The old guy comes here to say Hello

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Itchigo:
Nah, I know exactly where you're coming from. AJ's told me about the "old days". I've said several times that management is "head babysitter". :Green: The names change, but the personalities don't. When one leaves, another takes their place. Guess it's all about keeping the balance, huh? :Content: But that was all before my time. I wasn't even computer literate when I got 9.01. I had to be told about subfolders for roms before I even got VPinmame working.

I created this place because my Yolasite was lame. It's actually still up- I don't know why. I decided to try my hand at (for lack of a better term) a mini vpf. After that I tried freeforums.net with TimPinball, a name a childhood friend gave me. Then a friend (Pintrepid) offered to host a full blown site, and Rogue Pinball was born. Paul thought this was an attempt at a "spite site" coming on the heels of the "chat wars". That may have entered into the name a bit, but not the intent. This has always been a place of my own I could hang out and have fun. The Rogue name was probably a bit of spite. One of the many names batted around was "RogueVPSite". Balls of Steel was shot down because some gay site had it.... :Rolleyes: (jk). But every site, like companies, has to have it's own gimmick. I liken vpf to Wal-Mart because they have everything. VPU's gimmick is it has Sam tables. Our's is twofold. First, my cabinet backup is shared with all members. You can download anything you like that I have in my cab. Second we have FS woodrails created by not just anyone, but a former NASA engineer. He buys schematics to get the ruleset PERFECT. Older pins are not for everyone, but no one is doing them. That's a niche that needs to be filled right there. Plus, back when I had time I used to do fs conversions with a working backglass for vp8's that didn't have a vp9 version (Thunderbolt).

I've heard so many things that vp9 has this issue, and vp10 has this, and my conclusion is this: I'm happy that vp exists at all, and is freeware. Before I was computer literate I used to play the pinball that came with xp (whatever the hell the name was :Banghead:). Then I went in search of cd-roms to buy to play more, and I found vp. So what if it isn't perfect, I'm happy to have it at all. The fact that I have 700 working 2 screen tables is just gravy. I can play tables I didn't even see as an operator.

Have you switched completely over to vp10, or are you still working in vp9?

And you aren't that old by the way, from what I remember you're younger than me. :Whistle:

shiva:
That's the way it is, when I started, I didn't expect all the blind hatred and jealousy, or the lack of understanding that the laws of the land also applies to the internet. A lot of things you do have to understand and learn, other than wiping up a basic site and expecting millions of people to join up. You do become very isolated, you have to be to handle the various problems and the pressures of maintaining a site. look, it's a nasty horrible vile job, especially when you have to deal with truly ugly and repulsive people, and it's even worse when you choose to do so, for free. My bad, my mistake, fixed.

I don't use VP at all, not even on my computer. I use FP from now on, perfect for building layouts without the excessive detail work needed like VP use to do. scripting and graphics are very optional with me. I looked at VP10, but it's just too much effort to learn and work with, the code geeks got a hold of it, and made it too complex for me to even consider spending the huge amount of time just to learn how to use it properly. I don't want to spend months just studying and teaching myself how to to use a program before I could even build anything, when I could just do what I want to do very easily in FP. It really is a case is it doesn't matter how good a program actually is, it's only as good as the amount of people (or specifically, just me) that are able to use it. VP and it's complexity is just too much of a time commitment for me, and for a community that would be far less appreciative of it than the FP community. That's just my opinion, if someone is just as happy with VP, then that's great.

Nearly all of the EM guys moved on mass to FP, people like Popotte are still very active in fact, and there's quite a few releases every year. With the new specialized physics for EM's, they certainly should play better than VP8 or even 9 now, and with BAM added it is very impressive. A lot of others will be repackaged with the new physics as well over time, so if you are really in to EM, oddly enough FP will be the superior editor more and more as time goes on. Still have a ways to go to catch up with VP in quantity, but the quality has certainly gotten a lot better over time, but with today's standards, it takes a lot more time to redraw and test and massage the physics for each game. 12 years ago, people were just happy if someone found a flyer image with enough resolution to use as the pf image, now, people expect pixel by pixel redraws, and that could add months.

BTW, I am older, I was on route with a operator in '78, so respect your elders young man.  :)

Itchigo:
I've read some posts that some people enjoyed the site, and were sad it had gone. Let's just leave it at it brought joy to some, even if it was a lot of work. :Smile:

The VP "god" likes FP?! Say it ain't so! Blasphemy!! :Content: I just don't have the time to learn FP, or even VP10. It would be like starting over to me. Same goes for primitives. I can use flipper primitives, but that's about it. I did at one time want to try to make an FP table, but that was more to be able to say I've done it. I've used this example before, but FP to me is like "driving someone else's car. Sort of similar, but different. Just "feels weird" is the best way I can think of. I'm glad to see someone has picked up FP with Bam and other things, I never wanted to see it die. I'm really glad that FP authors are letting people use their graphics for VP, and the other way around too. That kind of cooperation is important for the communities. It wasn't always like that...  I'M one of those that are happy with decent res. :Green: When I had my other job I'd find a VP8 with decent graphics, replace all the blocky rubbers, and make a working backglass, turning it into a fs table. I can't do a redraw because I suck at art. :Whistle: But I can take the top 10 layers of dirt off it, by replacing the rubbers, and other objects. Then that will suffice until someone comes along who wants to do a ground up.

I see something similar to your example at vpf all the time. "Hey, where's the stickynote high score"? Completely passing by it took a lot of time and effort to make this, and this person could learn to add this little thing via the tutorials out there. Then he could add it to all his games. I'm doing that with my cab- adding analog plunger support on all 700 tables. I'm through the "A"s. :Wink:

I'd been going on my dad's routes since I was little. I don't even know when, but I remember Bally's Bow and Arrow coming out. Then he had a licensing issue with a jukebox, and he took the company bankrupt. He restructured, and sold me the company for 1$. :Green: So technically, I was President and CEO of Tim Todd Services (my name and my brother's name). Hey, it got me laid at the time. :Whistle: I'd actually been running it since I was 16, but I think I was about 20 when I was CEO. Probably the only time I'll be able to ever say that, so I'm making the most of it. :Green: We even had 2 arcades (at different times) when I was involved. After that I bought my Defender (still have it). My dad still operates to this day, at the age of 77.

I was going to say it would be cool to have a beer with you at Tamoore's party next year, but you live a lot further away than I thought.

shiva:
Pair of old guys then. :)
It doesn't matter what you use, it's still pinball after all, that's what matters. I work in FP not just for the editor, but because of the people there. FP does drive me nuts, not just the wonky things about it, but what it could have been if it wasn't for the developer being so stubborn and anal. It took a year of begging just to get him to add walls that drop, but he took everything as a criticism, and it wasn't. We all saw just how much better FP could be with some small simple changes. He did reappear a year ago and seemed to be much happier, so that's nice, because god damn, was Black such a pain in the ass to even talk too way back then.

I think I'm so happy because with FP because there is so much going on there, so much wild creativity, it reminds me so much of the time in VP 12 - 14 years ago. There's now talk of combining the various exe's, adding bam and zed physics to a package installer, and fixing some of the really annoying bugs, and just have one complete package. All for that, and that's a big thing for me to say as I have always jumped in with both feet to protect authors rights, but, pretty apparent that Chris just doesn't care any more about development.

Yeah, just a bit far from each other, one of these days, it's on my bucket list, to visit the east coast, haven't been to the states in many years (even though I live about a 10 minute drive to the border!) and hopefully, I will be able to drink beer by then (really bad for the stomach I have) and I certainly wanted to attend Pin Expo. I hate being stuck here with nothing but Stern machines to play.  ;(
 

 

Itchigo:
As long as it's old SS Sterns, I'm ok with that. :Green: That's the era I like the most. It's also what I build in, as you may have seen.

http://roguepinball.com/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=39

But I do have 1 original (if it's ever finished as people keep crapping out on doing artwork for it), I thought it would have a chance at taking the title away from Trigon :Whistle:. The weird part about this is- these are not the kinds of games I play. It screams to be a DMD game, DMD games are when I lost interest. Kind of weird in that respect, but I will admit- it's not half bad imo.

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