Pinball Dreams

[skaboy]

Dear all,

Many thanks to all those who helped me get UAE4All sorted and Pinball Dreams installed.

Pinball Dreams is now running but it's quite jerky. Of more concern to me though is that the game doesn't seem to run as it originally did on the Amiga.

What I mean by that is, where the letters of a word need to be lit to increase the bonus mutliplyer, the lit letters can't be changed by hitting the flippers.

So, if the word "launch" has to be lit letter-by-letter and the ball passes over the switch to illuminate the "L", the flippers ought to be able to toggle the lit letter so that subsequent passes of the ball can light up other letters.

Am I mistaken in thinking that this happened in the original? Furthermore, as a general question, which settings in the emu will optimise the execution of Pinball Dreams, to reduce the jerkiness?

Many thanks in advance.

 

[Belgarath]

I'm pretty sure the reason for this is the level of collision detection uae4all emulates. It needs sprites vs. playfield detection, I think uae4all only does sprites only. Menace is also unplayable because of this. It's not something you the user can change. Hopefully Critical will look into this.

As for making it less jerky...Not much you can about that unless you overclock really high.

 

[craigix]

The SNES has a pretty good version of pinball dreams...

 

[critical]

I'm pretty sure the reason for this is the level of collision detection uae4all emulates. It needs sprites vs. playfield detection, I think uae4all only does sprites only. Menace is also unplayable because of this. It's not something you the user can change. Hopefully Critical will look into this.

As for making it less jerky...Not much you can about that unless you overclock really high.

​

Overclocking, and also changing frameskip to 2 worked for me. Waiting for me to finish cyclone core integration (if it ever works) would be the best bet. This emulator isn't exactly ready for prime-time yet...

 

[bambi007]

If you want another Very Good PInball Dreams Clone then use
DRMD for GP2X (Sega Genesis Emu) and go with Psycho Pinball !
It is 100% fluid and has nearly the same physics and graphics.
AND - You can save Highscores !!!!!

This is my workaround as long as Pinball Dreams on UAE is not 100%.

 

[bacteria]

I have played Pinball Dreams, Pinball Illusions, Pinball Fantasies, etc - the best one I believe, by a long shot, is Psycho Pinball (DrMD - Megadrive). The physics are far better in that it matters where the ball interacts with the flippers and you can use the flippers to manouver the ball; and the ball moves in a correct physics manner. I belive the game is nore fun too. Graphically, it is superior. On DrMD it seems to run (on fw 1.4) at about 49 frames per second, which is acceptable. If you are reading this Reesy - please 1) increase this to 60 frames per second, and change the exit to menu option from left and right shoulder buttons to right shoulder and joystick push - it is logical to use the left and right shoulder buttons for flipper action on pinball games!! (then your emu will be perfect).

 

[skaboy]

Further to my initial post, thanks for all the advice.

Subsequent playing has revealed that although "Ignition" doesn't allow for toggling of lit letters illuminated by switching, "Steel Wheel" and "Nightmare" do have this function. Therefore, my most humble apologies to Critical.

I changed the settings as suggested but my problem now is that Pinball Dreams is crashing. I have the Emu bias set to CPU and frameskip on 2. I have the GP overclocked at 275mhz: I'm getting a lovely, smooth play but with crashes.

Any further advice?

 

[skaboy]

Case solved: overclock at 250mhz and it works like a dream

Thanks all and a special thanks to Critical for the emu.