Austin, TX
Below you will find setup instructions for Cactus Canyon Continued running on a Windows 7 PC. If you are running Windows XP, things should be close enough that you can make minor adjustments where needed and get the same result. These instructions assume you have a basic working knowledge of Windows. Obviously, you will need a Cactus Canyon pinball machine with a PROC installed in it if you actually want to play the game. If you find setup variations on your PC, please send me a PM or reply to this thread so that the instructions can be updated to be as accurate as possible for all scenarios. You don’t need anything super special to run CCC – I’m using a 4-5 year old Dell Studio Hybrid that I had in my closet and it runs the game perfectly.
Setting up and installation:
1. Install Windows 7 and complete all updates, service packs, etc. Make sure that your device manager is free of !’s by installing any applicable drivers from your support website.
2. Disable automatic updates if you didn’t already make this selection during setup. To do this, access Control Panel, Windows Update. Click on Change Settings and select any of the options where it won’t install them automatically. This will prevent your system from rebooting during a game.
3. Connect to a network.
4. Download the P-ROC Develop Tools package and save it where you can find it (e.g. on the Desktop). http://proctools.catster.net/ (If you are running IE9 or 10, it may give you an error that the site is unsafe and the download is blocked. If so, download and install Google Chrome and then download the file from there).
5. Browse to where you saved the file downloaded in step #4 and double click on the application to run it.
6. Follow the instructions to install the toolkit. Once the toolkit opens a command windows (black DOS style window), use My Computer to browse to C:\P-ROC. Locate the \scripts directory and make a copy of it by holding down your right mouse button and dragging it to the desktop. A menu will appear – select “Copy” instead of “Move”. You may need these files later and it is easier to save them now than to have to reinstall everything again later.
7. Once the toolkit has finished installation, click “Finish” and restart the computer. If any errors occurred during the installation or if any of the background downloads failed, you can always re-run the installer by double clicking on the PinboxToolkit file again. In some cases, some of the internet servers may be down when the installer is attempting to download files.
8. You now need to download and extract the CCC files. Browse to http://soldmy.org/pin/ccc and locate the three files near the bottom of the page (in the Game Code section). Note that the audio and DMD files are not currently available for download (see details on that page).
9. Download and save the code, the audio and the DMD bits.
10. Create a new directory (folder) called CCC at C:\ (e.g. C:\CCC)
11. Browse to the files you downloaded in step #9. You should have a folder showing with the 3 .zip files.
12. Open another explorer window and browse to C:\CCC. You should be able to see both windows (from step 11 and 12) on the desktop.
13. Double click on the ccc_code_xxxxxxx (xxx=variable date of filename). The .zip file will open and you should see a folder called \cactuscanyon. Right click on this folder and drag it into the explorer window that you opened in C:\CCC. The folder should be copied.
14. Close the .zip file window.
15. In the C:\CCC window, double click on the \cactuscanyon folder. You will now see 10-15 files and folders listed.
16. Open another explorer window and browse once again to the files downloaded in step #9. Double click on the ccc_dmd_xxxxxx file. The .zip file will open and you should see a folder called \dmd. Right click on this folder and drag it into the explorer window for C:\CCC\cactuscanyon. Drag the folder into a blank area of the window.
17. Repeat again for the ccc_sounds_xxxxxxxx file. (You will need to drag over the \sounds folder. Ignore the \_MACOSX folder)
18. Your C:\CCC\cactuscanyon folder should now contain the original files and folders plus the new folders that you dragged over in the steps above (C:\CCC\cactuscanyon\dmd and C:\CCC\cactuscanyon\sounds).
Configuration:
19. Browse to C:\users\yourusername\.pyprocgame\ (where yourusername is the folder name created for the user you are currently logged in as)
20. Right click on the config.yaml file. Windows may give you an error that it can’t open the file. Click on “select a program from a list of installed programs”
21. Locate Notepad and click on it once. Make sure that “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file” is checked and then click OK.
22. You must now configure the config.yaml file for the installation that was completed in steps 1-18. Your file should look like this (assuming you followed the above instructions exactly). Note that entries after font_path:, config_path;, etc MUST have exactly 4 spaces before the – C:\CCC\...
font_path:
- C:\CCC\cactuscanyon\dmd\
- C:\CCC\cactuscanyon\shared\dmd
config_path:
- C:\CCC\cactuscanyon\config\
dmd_cache_path: ~/.pyprocgame/dmd_cache
23. If you are planning to run this with Eric’s color kit, add the following line below the dmd_cache_path line:
color_desktop: True
24. If you have installed a real knocker, add the following line as well:
use_knocker: True
25. It is now time to test your installation. Click on the start button and in the search programs and files area, type CMD and press enter.
26. Type CD C:\python26 and hit enter. The directory should change the C:\python26
27. Type python C:\ccc\cactuscanyon\cc.py fakepinproc and hit enter
28. You should see a bunch of “storing in cache” commands scrolling by and after a minute or two, the game should initialize and run. You’ll know that it is working when you see the DMD simulation window open and start rolling through the various screens.
29. Click on the DMD window and hit escape to quit. Congratulations – Cactus Canyon Continued is now installed!
If you are adding color to an already existing setup and see flashes of white on fade transitions or odd transparency issues with things like the tumbleweed in the attract mode -- that means the pypinproc recompile still needs to be done. To do this, follow the instructions below:
30. Browse to C:\users\yourusername\.pyprocgame and delete the dmd_cache directory that is located here. This clears out any cached (old) DMD files.
31. While here, make a copy of your config.yaml file and store it on the desktop.
32. If you saved the \scripts directory (from #6 above), skip to step 33. If not, you will need to reinstall the pinboxtoolkit using the instructions above, being sure to save a copy of the \scripts directory during the installation. Note that this will probably overwrite your config.yaml file with a default version that won’t work right until you edit (see step #22)
33. Once it has installed, copy the \scripts directory back into the C:\P-ROC directory.
34. Download the latest code, audio and DMD bits from http://soldmy.org/pin/ccc and unzip them into the appropriate directories using steps 11-18 above.
35. Download the dmd.c file from http://soldmy.org/pin/ccc as well (located under the recompiling pypinproc link). Unzip the contents of this file into the C:\P-ROC\pypinproc-master directory.
36. Browse to the C:\P-ROC\scripts directory and double click on the pypinproc-install file.
37. Your code should be re-compiled to support full color. If you continue to have problems with non-colored screens and/or fade/transparency, your recompile may not have worked properly. In some cases, you may need to manually edit the dmd.c file. Open in Notepad, edit a comment and then save the file again (to get an updated file date). Then repeat step 36.
Automating start-up:
38. Click on Start, All Programs
39. Located the Startup folder and right click it.
40. Choose the Explore option. A folder should open.
41. Right click on an empty space and choose the New menu option and then the Shortcut option.
42. Type c:\python26\python.exe c:\ccc\cactuscanyon\cc.py and hit enter
43. Windows will ask for a name for the shortcut – type CCC and hit enter
44. Attach the computer to the PROC via the USB cable. Wait for any required drivers to be installed (usually 3 will be installed over a minute or two)
45. Connect your audio cable via the method of your choice (note that the PROC does not process audio). More info here -> http://soldmy.org/pin/ccc/index.php?title=Information_about_audio
46. If you are using the color kit, attach the video cable.
47. Once complete, you can double click the CCC shortcut you created about or you can just turn on the computer and it will run automatically.
Potentially helpful info for those running color:
48. Set your desktop background to all black and remove any icons or folders from the desktop.
49. Set your resolution to 1280x720.
50. In the Cactus Canyon Continued Settings/Standard section (get there with the buttons inside your coin door), for color display pixel size, choose 10. You’ll also need to properly align the DMD simulation window with the DMD panel on your machine. This can be extremely frustrating because there is no preview. You’ll actually need to restart CCC before you can see if the changes worked. The settings that worked on my configuration were -38 for the X offset and -64 for the y offset.
51. While you are dialing in the settings, sometimes the PROC will get hung. If your system doesn’t automatically run CCC and it worked before, shut down the PROC and the computer and then restart both to clear the problematic state.
52. If your command prompt window is visible when you run the game (where the DMD screen is), Windows will actually allow you to customize it. To do so, right click on the active command prompt window title bar (where it says C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe) and select Properties. You can change the position and size on the layout tab. Experiment with different settings until the window is no longer visible in your DMD panel.
