vpPlus is STILL not vaporware!

Current News (June 24, 2007):

Release of vpPlus 1.2.0! While it took us longer to get this version upgrade out than we'd initially hoped, we're quite happy with the results and hope you will be too! A complete list of changes can be found under Version History below.

If you are a table author, either of a work in progress or table already designed for use with vpPlus 1.0.4, you will want to read the Developer's Documentation carefully. A fairly comprehensive guide on what changes need to be made is included!

What is vpPlus?:

vpPlus is a set of extensions for Visual Pinball by Randy Davis. Many features will be added as we continue development. The first release includes network play, modal graphic image display, and decals which support both alpha transparency and animated GIF formats.

vpPlus is free for non-commercial use, but is copyrighted by the vpPlus Development Team which consists of Richard Gade, Allen Rubin and Tom Evers. The User's Guide (included in the setup download below) contains a copy of the license agreement as well as instructions for installation if you require those.

vpPlus should run on any computer which runs Visual Pinball, however the additional Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 component is required. The vpPlus setup will help you to download and install the required software if you do not already have it.

The features in vpPlus are available only in tables which have been scripted to support vpPlus. This software will not enable network play in tables which have not been explicitly written to utilize the networking methods. If you are interested in adding network play, or any of the other features in vpPlus, to your Visual Pinball table, consult the developer's documentation, included in the setup below.

Thanks to the folks at Pinball Originals we have a vpPlus forum available where you can get help, table creation advice and answers to your support questions.

Download vpPlus here:

• Version 1.2.0 Setup   (7.37 MB)
• Tutorial Tables for Table Authors
  • vpImage Tutorial Table   (31 KB)

Known Issues:

• If you play Visual Pinball in compatibility mode, images and/or decals may not appear properly.
• More demonstration examples will be included in a later release. The tutorial tables above are a work in progress.
• Due to a bug in Visual Pinball's backdrop rendering, one or more of the chat text lines will be missing if the demonstration table is played with Visual Pinball in windowed mode. A version with improved chat routines will be released when it becomes available.
• The developer's documentation is incomplete, the chat functions are currently undocumented.

Version History:
Version 1.2.0

• Many, many bugfixes, both major and minor!
• vpResource object allows table authors to pack all their graphics into a single file for inclusion with their tables.
• Non-blocking network I/O and priority events.
• Decals with transparency now have anti-aliased edges and appear properly in Windows 98.
• Changes made to the table script and network API handle network hangups more smoothly.

• A timer in vpImage was not being disabled after use and could cause a rare crash.

• Visual Pinball would crash if a vpImage object was created and subsequently destroyed without successfully loading an image file.

• vpImage SetImagePositionAndSize method was ignoring position parameters.
• Fixed a bug which would cause Visual Pinball to crash if the SetImagePositionAndSize method was used prior to the creation of a vpDecal object.

• Fixed two corrupted GIF files in the demonstration table.

• Initial Release

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