Steam games

Steam pinball games appear on the wheel as ordinary library entries. You scroll to one and press, the same as any table. When you quit, you are back on the wheel.

What is supported

Game	Windows	macOS	Linux
Pinball FX	✅	✅	untested
Pinball FX Midnight (Pinball M)	✅	✅	untested

Both have been launched, played and returned from on a real cab and on a Mac. Linux is untested and is known to differ — native Steam keeps its registry somewhere else entirely, and nothing has been run against it.

More games can be added

Nothing here is hardcoded to these two. A Steam game is a real library entry, which is why adding another one is a catalogue entry rather than a code change. If there is a Steam pinball game you want on the wheel, it is worth asking for.

What you supply

• The games, on Steam. vPinOps does not install them and does not own them. You buy them, Steam installs them, vPinOps finds them.
• Steam itself, signed in.
• On macOS, a Windows bottle. These are Windows builds; the Mac route runs them through CrossOver. That is how it has been driven, and it works.
• Artwork, if you want it — see Pinball FX Midnight below.

How it launches

Through Steam, always:

steam -applaunch <appid> "-Table 1 -GameMode Classic"

Why not launch the .exe directly

Because Steam puts up a consent dialog that stalls for ever, and Valve ships no way to turn it off. Steam’s own launch route avoids it completely. Do not go looking for a way around that dialog — there isn’t one, and a front end built on bypassing it would break at the next Steam update.

Steam is the source of truth

vPinOps asks Steam whether a game is installed, running or updating — it does not guess from folders on disk:

Windows	Steam’s own keys under HKCU
macOS	the same keys, read out of the CrossOver bottle

It then asks the operating system which process is actually running, matched on the executable.

Those two are not redundant, and the split is deliberate. Steam answers installed, running, updating. The OS answers which process — because a flag cannot be awaited, killed, or asked whether it has exited. Without the process, a launch would report success the moment the flag went up, nothing would be armed, and a Visual Pinball table could start underneath a running game.

Install folder names are not fixed

Pinball FX Midnight on one machine, Pinball M on another — the folder genuinely differs between installs. vPinOps reads Steam’s own appmanifest for installdir rather than assuming a name. Same for the process: on Windows it is PinballM-Win64-Shipping with no .exe, and on macOS the same name with it.

Adding a game

1. Install it from Steam on the machine that runs the cab.

2. Open Settings — vPinOps lists the Steam pinball games it can see, with their state.

3. Add it. It becomes a library entry like any other.

4. Give it artwork by dropping media into its folder under your content root, named the same way as any other table’s:

   <content>/tables/Pinball FX/medias/
       (Wheel) Pinball FX.png
       (Backglass) Pinball FX.png
       (DMD) Pinball FX.png
       (Playfield) Pinball FX.mp4
       (Topper) Pinball FX.png

   Same rules as frontend art — the surface prefix is what makes it findable.

The games

Pinball FX

Launches, plays and returns. It takes a table number and a game mode on the launch line, which is how per-table entries will work later.

Pinball FX Midnight

Also sold as Pinball M, and the install folder may use either name.

It ships no artwork — there is none in the game to read, on either platform. vPinOps shows the entry’s initials and says plainly that it found no media, rather than leaving a blank tile you would have to guess at. Put your own art in medias/ and it fills in.

Only one game at a time

While a Steam game is running, vPinOps will not start a Visual Pinball table underneath it. That guard is the reason the process — and not just Steam’s “running” flag — has to be watched.

Not built yet

• Per-table entries. One wheel icon per FX table, launching straight into it rather than into the game’s own menu. The launch line already takes a -Table number, so the mechanism is there — this is a future addition rather than a gap in what works today.