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Why, What, How

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stoj edited this page Mar 29, 2023 · 11 revisions

Why

Several reasons..

  1. Avoid spend countless days/weeks manually maintaining your assorted Visual Pinball collections (front end media, tables, backglasses, etc). Instead, automate those manual tasks so they are quicker and more reliable.
  2. The third party alternatives which try to fill this gap fall short (in my view) in one or more ways..
    • Functionally..
      • Don't support automatically merging new downloaded content into my collection.
      • Unable to identify out of date content. For example, when newer tables are available.
      • Unable to handle the non-standardized naming conventions used by table/content authors (e.g. versioning, authors initials, versioning, spaces, etc).
      • Reporting aspects are too limited. For example, unable to query the collection by user defined parameters to identify visually what content warrants attention.
    • Philosophically..
      • Not open source solutions. This is very important given that the entire Visual Pinball community is driven by the open source community.
      • Not anonymous as they require account registration. Some of which is also monetized 😞
  3. Give back something to the Virtual Pinball community.

What I really wanted was a ClrMamePro equivalent for Visual Pinball where these tasks can be automated. But written as an open source solution (unlike ClrMamePro).


What

ClrVpin is many things, but chiefly it's..

  • An automated manager of your entire pinball collection based on two 'sources of truth'..
  • Fast, lightweight, and modern desktop application written entirely in WPF using c# and targeting the latest frameworks.
  • 100% open source solution.
  • Doesn't require an account and runs completely anonymously, i.e. no account sign ups required for downloading or installation.
  • PinballY and (by extension) also PinballX compatible.

How

  • Maps out the manual workflows involved in maintaining the VP collections.
  • Automates those manual workflows.
  • More details in the How To section.

ClrVpin v7

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