Lesson 6) Another "good" table, Star Wars (Data East)

Okay, this is a popular movie, and so I assume it will be a popular pinball. Star Wars was produced by Data East in 1992. Here's a link to the pinside page for the actual pinball machine. Prices for Star Wars (Data East) pinball machines have been rising.

So here you go, Star Wars Visual Pinball!!!

Again, to run almost any pinball table in Visual Pinball you need at least two things. The table file (a .vpt extension), and a ROM file (a .zip extension). This time, the ROM file isn't going to be so easy to find. No problem, just another learning opportunity. Let's dig in!

DOWNLOADING

So, we need the .vpt file, the actual table. We're going to get this from vpforums again, specifically from JPSalas, who does excellent work.

I started by doing a search for "Star Wars Data East" on vpforums download section (you can tell the search which part of vpforums to look in from the search box). I got 22 results, not all of which were tables. So, how did I know which one I wanted?

Firstly, I'm only looking for recreations. So anything that says "Original" is out, because it's probably a fan table. If the search had been for "Star Wars" only, we would have gotten a lot more of these. As it is, the search for "Star Wars Data East" has eliminated original tables.

ALSO, because I'm only looking for tables anything that says "ROM" or "Backglass" or "Video" is out. In addition, I have Visual Pinball 9, so I'm only looking for those versions. That takes me to the JPSalas tables.

Initially, I installed the first one I saw: "Star Wars - Data East VP9 FS 1.0.0". After installation I realized that one had the DMD rotated, and I don't really know how to rotate a DMD (I could find out but I was lazy), so I downloaded and installed "Star Wars - Data East VP9 1.0.0" instead. That one worked fine, and I'm going to walk you through the process of installing it.

INSTALLING TABLE

Download "Star Wars - Data East VP9 1.0.0". Remember, you have to click "Download" then on the disclaimer "Agree & Download" and finally "Download" again. Extract the table, and put it in your tables folder as previously described in Lesson 5.

Now, double-click the visual pinball icon on your desktop to start the program, then click the "File" menu and select "Open...". Select the table you just downloaded and then click "Open".

Now, you have the table loaded. We're going to find out which ROM we need by looking in the script. I'll show you how.

FINDING AND INSTALLING ROM

So you probably noticed that on this table that there isn't a handy link to the ROM on the main page like there was in Rocky and Bullwinkle. Don't know why, but we're gonna find that ROM anyway. 

Now, you already have the table (Star_Wars_VP9_1.0) opened in visual pinball. We're going to click on "Script", one of the six big buttons on the top of the left sidebar. It looks like this:

After the script window opens press the "ctrl" button and then the letter "f" (while you're still holding down the "ctrl" button). That's "Find" in windows. You could also use the Edit menu drop-down menu to select "Find...". The term we're going to look for in the script is "gamename", all one word. That's the name the computer is actually using for the game, and the ROM has to match (have the same name). 

You'll see that the way the script is designed, green lines are comments (ignored by the program). Black or blue lines are executed (seen by the program and run). So, looking at my script, I see there are several "gamename" results, but only "Const cGameName = "stwr_a14" ' version 1.04" is not green. So that's the ROM I'm looking for.

So now, remember when we did the search on vpforums for "Star Wars Data East" and we got 22 results? One of those might be stwr_a14. And it is. The link is here: Star Wars (Data East display Rev.1.04) - ROM - stwr_a14.zip. So you go there and get the download. Remember, DO NOT 7-Zip THIS OR EXTRACT IT IN ANY WAY! It isn't meant to be extracted, you use it just the way it is.

Remember where to put it? In the "roms" folder, inside of the VPinMame folder, inside of the Visual Pinball folder. The address for me looks like this: C:\Program Files (x86)\Visual Pinball\VPinMame\roms.

And that's it. You should be able to start the game now. Set the "Colors and Formatting" the way you like it (as described in Lesson 5).

I changed the "Colors and Formatting" settings on this table. I used:

This made it look more like the real table for me. But feel free to play around with the settings. That's what they're there for!

Enjoy your new pinball table! Next we will install a Stern Pinball table. It's pretty tricky.

Lesson 7) Getting Ready for Stern!

Under Construction...PLEASE let me know if you find errors or get confused somewhere!