VPLauncher homepage

La version Française de VPlauncher a été interrompue. Cependant vous pouvez trouver une ancienne version Française ici.

VPLauncher has been discontinued. There will be no new versions in the future. If this doesn't alienate you, read on. The old version can still be used.

VPLauncher manages your collection of Visual Pinball and Future Pinball tables. It has data bases of tables and shows for every (known) table information like author, version, type of table etc. If a table is selected, a screenshot, the table rules and flyers are displayed (if available). A double click starts the desired table.
Features include:

Supports both Visual Pinball and Future Pinball
You can choose between nine types of display (complete table information or only a list, a tree view, screenshots and/or rules in separate windows etc.)
For every selected table, a screenshot, the rules and flyers are displayed (if available). The size of a screenshot can be changed.
Tables are grouped (like Historic, Original, VPinMame etc). You can select which types are shown.
VPLauncher Visual Pinball data base contains table information for more than 2000 tables and almost 6000 versions. The Future Pinball data base contains table information for more than 70 tables and more than 100 versions. To find a table in the data base, the table file is matched against a checksum (CRC32). If the table file couldn't be found, the file name is matched against a file search name to identify the table without the version.
Table information can be changed and information about new tables can easily be added.
VPLauncher can display, if newer versions of your tables are available.
VPLauncher can check your VPinMame ROMs.
You can do your own screenshots with VPLauncher.
You can rate tables and optionally send your ratings to me, so I can compile web pages from them (available at VPLauncher Table Ratings).
Online help is available.

Latest news:

Current Version of VPLauncher: V3.02 (03/10/06)
Current Visual Pinball data base: 06/02/06 (2170 unique tables with 6068 versions) (thanks to karetag (aka karetagwizard) for the update!)
Current Future Pinball data base: 02/10/06 (78 unique tables with 111 versions)

Requirements:

Windows 95 or higher
Screen resolution at least 800x600 (a screen resolution of 1024x768 is recommended)
Visual Pinball (available at http://www.VisualPinball.com (site seems to be outdated, use http://www.VPForums.org instead)) and/or Future Pinball (available at http://www.FuturePinball.com)
Visual Pinball tables and or Future Pinball tables (see link section below)

Installation:

You need to download VPLauncher installation file. Install VPLauncher to a directory of your choice by starting the self- extracting archive. Optionally, you can download and install the screenshot installation file and all available screenshots update files (see below). Install the screenshot files in chronological order. You also can download and install the optional Flyers and Rules pack. When VPLauncher is started the first time, the configuration dialog appears. Press F1 to get online help.

Deinstallation:

Just delete the VPLauncher installation directory with all of its content.

Downloads:

See a screenshot of VPLauncher
See VPLauncher history
Download VPLauncher V3.02 (03/10/06) (Installer, size 771KB)
updated Visual Pinball data base (VPLauncher.dat, zipped (161kb)) 06/02/06 for use with other frontends like VP-Man as well.
Download Screenshots pack for Visual Pinball tables (2151 screenshots) (optional, but highly recommended; self extracting archive, size 131MB, you need a login at www.vpforums.org to download!)
Download Flyers pack for Visual Pinball tables (optional, self extracting archive, size 216MB!, contains 1047 flyers not provided with the tables, you need a login at www.vpforums.org to download!)
Download Rules pack for Visual Pinball tables (optional, self extracting archive, size 3.0MB, contains rules not provided with the tables, you need a login at www.vpforums.org to download!)

Other Downloads (included in VPLauncher installation):

Future Pinball data base (VPLauncher.FPdat, zipped (4kb)) 02/10/06, maybe usefull for other frontends as well.

Contact the author:

email me

UPX

UPX (the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables) is used to compress the VPLauncher executable. This reduced the size of VPLauncher.exe to 35% of the original size. The VPLauncher installation executable was reduced to 80%. UPX Copyright (c) 1996-2002 Markus Oberhumer & Laszlo Molnar, http://upx.sourceforge.net