PinballY writes some internal technical information to a "log file" while running. This is a simple human-readable text file that you can review to see the additional technical detail. This is mostly intended for troubleshooting purposes, to provide more transparency on the inner workings of the program when something goes wrong. PinballY tries to keep the graphical part of the UI friendly and non-technical, but that has the tradeoff that it hides a lot of information about what's going on inside the program. The log file is meant to help uncover some of that hidden internal detail when necessary, without bothering you with it when it's not.
The dialog shows the location and name of the log file, in case you want to inspect its contents. Click on the filename link to open the file in Notepad.
Note that PinballY erases any old contents of the log file each time it start up, so that the file doesn't grow to enormous proportions over time. If you want to save the log output from a particular program session for later review, be sure to move or rename the file before you run PinballY again, so that the new session doesn't erase the old copy that you wanted to save. The program always writes the log using the same file name, so all you have to do to save a particular copy is rename it or move it to a different folder.
You can select the type of information included in the log file. The default settings exclude most items, to reduce the size of the file. Writing more information to the file slows down the program a little and obviously uses more disk space, plus it's harder to find the information you're looking for if you have to sift through tons of unrelated information. So the program lets you turn individual logging features on and off. When things are working well, you can turn everything off to minimize overhead and disk space, but if you're having a problem with a particular area, you can enable logging for that feature.
Player system setup: Information on setting up the configured pinball player systems, and for the process of searching for their table files and table databases. This gives you detailed information about how the system is interpreting the settings information for each system, such as all of the folder paths involved, and shows where it's looking for table files and table information databases. This can be helpful if PinballY isn't finding all of your tables or isn't finding bibliographic information that you've previously entered (titles, manufacturers, years, etc). It can also help figure out the problem if you can't launch (play) any of a system's tables successfully.
Real DMD: Information about detecting and setting up your real DMD device, if any.
Media file searches: Enables logging for media file searches, showing where PinballY is looking for media files to display when games are selected in the "wheel". This can help track down why images or videos aren't showing up in the UI when they should be.
Media capture: Logs information when capturing screen shots and videos for your games. This lets you see any error messages from FFMPEG. This can be helpful if the capture process is producing empty files or blank images.
Table launch: Logs details when trying to launch a table with a player system. This can be helpful if a particular game won't launch correctly. (If none of the tables for a particular system will launch correctly, you might also try enabling "player system setup" logging above to see how the system is being configured overall.)
DirectOutput (DOF): DOF is a separate program that provides the software interface to hardware feedback devices in your cabinet (lights, solenoids, shaker motors, etc). If you have any of these devices, you probably already have DOF installed, since it's needed to use the devices with Visual Pinball and some other programs. PinballY will automatically detect if DOF is installed and use it if so. Enable this logging option to include information in the PinballY log file about PinballY's attempts to detect and access DOF.
Note that this option doesn't affect the separate logging DOF does on its own. DOF normally writes its own log file, DirectOutput.log, usually to the same folder where the application is running (so in this case, to the PinballY folder). If PinballY's log shows that PinballY is successfully detecting and loading DOF, but your feedback devices don't seem to be working properly within PinballY, you might need to look at DirectOutput.log to see if DOF is encountering any errors.
Javascript: Enable this to log information about Javascript. PinballY looks for a user Javascript script file at startup, and if present, it loads and executes the file. This logging option includes details in the log about the script search and loading process, which can be helpful if scripts aren't loading as expected.
High score retrieval: Logs details about attempts to retrieve a game's high score information via PinEMHi.