HOWTO: Pro Pinball: Timeshock! in Dosbox on Rpi3

[plateofshrimp]

Folks jonesing for pinball asked for notes on getting Timeshock to work, so here's a HOWTO.

1. Get Pro Pinball: Timeshock! from Good Old Games.

Support local awesomeness. As I interpret the licensing, you are licensed to do the next steps.

2. Install onto Windows, to get the files.

I used a standalone installer, but Galaxy might work too.

3. Copy the installed Pro Pinball... folder to the Pi, to /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/ , and rename the folder to pptime.

The main idea being to avoid spaces in the folder name. In the end the installation folder is /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime.

4. inside pptime, move pptime.inst to pptime.cue and move pptime.gog to pptime.bin.

$ cd pptime
$ mv pptime.inst pptime.cue
$ mv pptime.gog pptime.bin

It may turn out the renaming isn't needed, but let's stick to the .cue/.bin convention Dosbox is most likely to expect.

5. Edit pptime.cue to point to pptime.bin and fix case problems.

The cuesheet should point to the CDROM image and to the OGG files in MUSIC. Make sure the filenames' case is correct! Windows doesn't care, but Linux does.

6. Create a startup script /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pic/pptime.sh.

/opt/retropie/emulators/dosbox/bin/dosbox \
-c "@mount c $HOME/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime" \
-c "@imgmount d $HOME/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime/pptime.cue -t iso" \
-c "@c:" \
-c "@pinball"

This instructs Dosbox to make the installation folder drive C: and the cue/bin files a CDROM on drive D: and then run PINBALL.EXE.

7. Crank up emulationstation and look for the 'pptime' menu item in the Dosbox menu. And select it.

8. As you are now in the game, go into the options and set the graphics mode.

• Flipping on
• 1024x768
• 256+ colors
• Low quality

Works ok.

[plateofshrimp]

After it's all working, you can rename pptime.sh to a longer and more descriptive name.

[GtBFilms]

Awesome! Thanks very much for this, I'll hopefully get a chance to try it tonight!

[Graboid]

Nice one! I gave this a go and got it working.
I wasn't a fan of 256 colours, so changed res to 640 x 480 and managed to get 65k colours working.
Thanks for the tutorial

[luchogrox]

Hello! I can not play the game. I do all the steps and when I run the pptime.sh appear a console and nothing else :( And if I press "Pinball" it says "Error 3 initializing cdrom runtime"

[luchogrox]

@GtBFilms hi can u help me please ?

[BobHarris]

I receive the same error...anyone knows what's going wrong?

[BobHarris]

I've made a bit of progress.
I altered the shell script into this:
#!/bin/bash
/opt/retropie/emulators/dosbox/bin/dosbox -c "mount c /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime" -c "imgmount d /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime/pptime.bin -t iso" -c "c:" -c "PINBALL.EXE" -c "exit"

This way you can get the game to start, but as you are using the bin file instead of the cue file, you don't get any sound. :-(

[pjft]

@BobHarris have you followed step 5 and made sure the cue file points to the bin file and is case sensitive?

[BobHarris]

@pjft I thought I did, but:

Edit: Ah I noticed in the music folder all the tracks start with a capital t. I'll edit those and see what happens. :-)
Edit2: That was it! Thanks pjft for making me check this one more time.

[BobHarris]

I cheered too soon. The music is working great now, but there is no speech, no sfx and no mechanical sound (all at maximum level in the in game settings). I changed up the quality settings on sound but that had no effect.
I also included the Timeshock config file in the shell script:

#!/bin/bash
/opt/retropie/emulators/dosbox/bin/dosbox -conf "home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime/dosboxTimeshock.conf" -c "mount c /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime" -c "imgmount d /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime/pptime.cue -t iso" -c "c:" -c "PINBALL.EXE" -c "exit"

But this also had no effect on the sound issue.
The sound effects do seem to be in there. When I go to settings and choose one of the four test speech sound presets, then nothing happens. But when I hit the 'configuration' option and then back out of that menu again, I hear the sound effect looping, repeating every split second (so only a small part of the sound fragment). Then I turn it off, but the sound only stops after I've been into the configuration menu again. So it seems to be quite messed up.

Any ideas on this?

p.s. When I launch this gog version in Windows 10 the sound effects work just fine.

[luchogrox]

thanks for the help. Now i can load the game but when i start the match loads to 95% and the game closes.
"#!/bin/bash
/opt/retropie/emulators/dosbox/bin/dosbox -conf "home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime/dosboxTimeshock.conf" -c "mount c /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime" -c "imgmount d /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime/pptime.cue -t iso" -c "c:" -c "PINBALL.EXE" -c "exit""
this don't work for me :( and how can i configure my arcade joystick ?

[BobHarris]

@luchogrox
Probably you have not yet changed the graphics. When they are set too high, then the game crashes during loading. Follow the settings of the first post and it should work (except for the sound effects).
I prefer a keyboard for pinball so I have not looked at how to enable a joystick, but there are some guides if you google.

[luchogrox]

@BobHarris thanks for the help ! this fixed my problem. with ctrl+f1 i can configure my arcade pad... the only problem now is the sound... thanks for the help :D

[DRB]

Greetings!

I have followed the instructions exactly and still getting the - Internal error: Error 3 initialising CDROM routines. Please help.

I tried the script the BobHarris suggested to no avail. Bob, please confirm that is the script character for character because I am new to writing scripts. I also want to confirm that I have changed all the 'case' issues so detailed instructions there are welcome as well. Would the case issues cause the error I am getting?

I am creating the pptime.sh file in my text editor (Notepad++); is this the correct procedure? Like I stated earlier, I typed it exactly as shown above:

/opt/retropie/emulators/dosbox/bin/dosbox
-c "@mount c $HOME/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime"
-c "@imgmount d $HOME/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime/pptime.cue -t iso"
-c "@c:"
-c "@pinball"

Should the path be $HOME/pi/RetroPie... (I tried that too with no avail)

Also, is the directory referenced in step 6 really /pic? Or is it /pc? I created a /pic directory and placed the .sh files there as well with the same results.

Any help here will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Dan

[backstander]

@DRB

I am creating the pptime.sh file in my text editor (Notepad++); is this the correct procedure?

You can accomplish this many ways but this should work. Notepad++ is a great program to use!

Like I stated earlier, I typed it exactly as shown above:

If you're in Windows, you should just copy and paste the code. No need to type lol.

Just at a quick glance at your code, you're missing all the backslashes at the end of each line.

/opt/retropie/emulators/dosbox/bin/dosbox \
-c "@mount c $HOME/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime" \
-c "@imgmount d $HOME/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime/pptime.cue -t iso" \
-c "@c:" \
-c "@pinball"

Should the path be $HOME/pi/RetroPie... (I tried that too with no avail)

In this case, I believe that $HOME is the same as /home/pi/

Also, is the directory referenced in step 6 really /pic? Or is it /pc?

It should be /pc (like in a PC game) and again, just copy and paste from the original post. Then you shouldn't have any typos.

[edmaul69]

For people who create several dosbox .sh file it is bad practice to make the games folder the c drive. Several games need to use the seperately installed soundblaster drivers for audio. You should set the pc folder as the c drive and change the directory to the games folder. You will want to install the soundblaster drivers once in the pc folder. If you are missing sounds you might have chosen irq 5 instead of 7 in audio setup. You should usually go with whatever settings it auto finds. You cant choose whatever you want. You need to use the sounblaster drivers. I havent installed this games so i am not sure if you had to go through it. If you havent, there is probably a file called setup.exe. That file lets you set things like audio and music. You need to make sure they are all set to soundblaster. Also you want it to self exit. Not all games will auto exit even with the exit setting. Do not add the exit option until you have it working. Otherwise it might auto exit right after you boot it and you wont see the error. So this is how the .sh file should look:

/opt/retropie/emulators/dosbox/bin/dosbox
-c "@mount c $HOME/RetroPie/roms/pc"
-c "@imgmount d $HOME/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime/pptime.cue -t iso"
-c "@c:"
-c "cd/pptime"
-c "@pinball"
-c "exit"

[DRB]

Thanks for the responses. I am still getting the same message after trying some of the suggestions.

I have deleted the /pic directory and have placed the .sh file in the pc directory.

I've added the backslashes (actually I copy/pasted the complete script as suggested by backstander)

I tried the script offered by edmaul69 (copy/paste).

I'm still getting the Error 3 initialising CDROM routines.

I'm also not sure I have addressed all the 'case' issues. Could this be the problem causing this error?

[backstander]

@DRB
I noticed that this person is getting the same error for the same game on the Android version of DOSBox
http://www.tomdupont.net/2013/01/how-to-play-gog-games-on-android-with.html?showComment=1369282450689#c2049814093514628018

Also Pro Pinball: The Web has a similar issue because it "uses some funky method for the CD check that dosbox doesn't support." I wonder if this is the same with Timeshock!
https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=3587&letter=P

Here's some more information about the error:
http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=10786

[DRB]

OK, I've made progress, but still cannot get the script to work. I can launch DOSBox and mount the C: drive to /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime

Then I can get the CDROM mounted with the following line:
C:\ imgmount d /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/pptime/pptime.cue -t iso

Then I can launch and play the game via C:\ pinball.exe

Here's where I need help...
How can I properly translate those commands to create the .sh file?