Since I'm still working on my layout (and don't want to show a partial update), I'll go ahead and talk about Expo a little.
So there's 2 parts of Chicago Expo. There's the Expo that's at the Westin in Wheeling, and then there's the extended party at Terry's at pinball life on friday from noon-6. So being that I live literally 4 miles from Pinball Life, I often find myself there buying parts (or lately, buying 3d prints from Scott Danesi for some LCD mods I've been doing for some small side income). So this was the 2nd year in a row that I brought a pinball to a show, both being Pinexplosion. I've heard nothing but bad stories about what a hassle it was bringing a game to expo, or hassle getting wristband refunds from Pacak. Terry: I drive 4 miles down the road, drop off my pin on a friday weeks before the show at my convenience (not driving 20 miles on a Wednesday night). First year was nice, I brought elivra, it sold so I didn't have to drag it back. This year I brought Freddy, nobody was interested (at least not at the price I was asking), so it's coming back. I'm putting off picking it up because upstairs is packed with 3 pins in the front room (AMH, my newly picked up space station, and the blue october project). My goal is to wait until October 30th, bring freddy home and stick that and space station in the garage so trick or treaters can play it during the day on Halloween as they come by. I've seen other people on pinside do it, and being in Chicago it's not normally warm enough to do that. Well this year seems like it's going to be a mild winter in the midwest (high temps in the low 60s), so even if I have to put a heater out there, the pins will be on. I'm going to have to get a step stool so the small kids can reach the buttons and see the playfield. I haven't had time to decorate this year, but hopefully I can at least get some purple or red lighting backlighting the pins, and hide some of the garage with cotton spiderwebs. Like many others, I don't want to see pinball die, and if I can create an impression on a kid to want to play them later in life, I've done my job.
Pinexplosion was even more packed this year, not surprising since there is no price of admission, there's free food and beer/soda, and 50 pins on freeplay (plus deals on parts). Expo, well.. I mean, freeplay area.. yea that was pretty bare this year. I know Expo isn't mean as a show about playing pinballs, but seeing how there really wasn't any announcements this year (Stern game of thrones was announced early, Hobbit still isn't shipping, Lawlor's title isn't announced until next Spring, Spooky is still 3 weeks from revealing rob zombie), Pinball circus is still in development. So unless you're interested in going to seminars, what does Expo really offer for $25/day? One thing I like seeing lately at Expo are the homebrew projects. I come to find that there's actually 2 Buffy the vampire slayer machines (rethemed swords of fury with new software). At first I was sort of upset that two of this great game were sacrificed for this project, but after playing them I can appreciate it. I mean the code is great (sound cues where to shoot), great graphics, the upper left playfield is transparent so you can see underneath. Nightmare before christmas had great flow, though talking to the owner he did say he had ball detection issues not from hardware but some bug in the latest mission pinball framework (that was being worked on up until the moment of the show). I actually saw Ben heck and Charlie walk over to this machine and talk to the owner for about 10-15 minutes early saturday morning. He had the playfield lifted up, and it was as if Ben was just curious how a hobbyist chose to wire it up (lights, boards, etc), and generally what the latest FAST hardware looked like. Peanuts pinball (which Aaron is working on) had a half populated playfield (with art) which is impressive considering about the only thing done on it the week before was flippers and a ball trough (he did a livestream). For a while he had the playfield lifted up. During the stream you could see that he just had the playfield out sitting on some sort of frame he welded up. At the show you realize this is not a temporary frame, but rather a frame that stays with the playfield, and it rests on rails in the bottom.
This is actually quite genius in a couple ways:
1. It gives you a nice platform for the playfield to sit on, sort of a built in rotisserie (both for building it, and future servicing).
2. In reality, it doesn't need the hooks to attach to the lockdown bar, it could just rest at the bottom if you had something to lock it in place. Then the only thing you'd really have to lock is the glass in place.
The other crazy part about these 3 projects (muppets was barely started) is that the father of Aaron built all these cabinets.. like not kit form, but actually built them from bare plywood. I realize there are companies like churchill that do this everyday, but it's more amazing for a home builder to do it with minimal tools.
So one thing I'm starting to realize, gottliebs have really good flow (and some pretty neat innovations). Freddy plays pretty good, and not a single entry ramp (which is odd for 1994). Waterworld also has entry no ramps (but it does have return ramps, including one that pivots), and has a neat boat that spins 180 degrees to enable ball lock, and also dumps the balls after they've all been locked. It also has this nice flowing side loopback on the right. Nothing innovative there (games like skateball had it), but nice that they implemented it. You look at "lights camera action", and they implemented a somewhat large chunk of playfield that spins and completely changes that layout in that section (almost increasing the playfield size in a way). That's the sort of flow I'm aiming for, the ramps are just icing on the top (and need to be lastly implimented). The main gameplay is on the main playfield.
So there's 2 parts of Chicago Expo. There's the Expo that's at the Westin in Wheeling, and then there's the extended party at Terry's at pinball life on friday from noon-6. So being that I live literally 4 miles from Pinball Life, I often find myself there buying parts (or lately, buying 3d prints from Scott Danesi for some LCD mods I've been doing for some small side income). So this was the 2nd year in a row that I brought a pinball to a show, both being Pinexplosion. I've heard nothing but bad stories about what a hassle it was bringing a game to expo, or hassle getting wristband refunds from Pacak. Terry: I drive 4 miles down the road, drop off my pin on a friday weeks before the show at my convenience (not driving 20 miles on a Wednesday night). First year was nice, I brought elivra, it sold so I didn't have to drag it back. This year I brought Freddy, nobody was interested (at least not at the price I was asking), so it's coming back. I'm putting off picking it up because upstairs is packed with 3 pins in the front room (AMH, my newly picked up space station, and the blue october project). My goal is to wait until October 30th, bring freddy home and stick that and space station in the garage so trick or treaters can play it during the day on Halloween as they come by. I've seen other people on pinside do it, and being in Chicago it's not normally warm enough to do that. Well this year seems like it's going to be a mild winter in the midwest (high temps in the low 60s), so even if I have to put a heater out there, the pins will be on. I'm going to have to get a step stool so the small kids can reach the buttons and see the playfield. I haven't had time to decorate this year, but hopefully I can at least get some purple or red lighting backlighting the pins, and hide some of the garage with cotton spiderwebs. Like many others, I don't want to see pinball die, and if I can create an impression on a kid to want to play them later in life, I've done my job.
Pinexplosion was even more packed this year, not surprising since there is no price of admission, there's free food and beer/soda, and 50 pins on freeplay (plus deals on parts). Expo, well.. I mean, freeplay area.. yea that was pretty bare this year. I know Expo isn't mean as a show about playing pinballs, but seeing how there really wasn't any announcements this year (Stern game of thrones was announced early, Hobbit still isn't shipping, Lawlor's title isn't announced until next Spring, Spooky is still 3 weeks from revealing rob zombie), Pinball circus is still in development. So unless you're interested in going to seminars, what does Expo really offer for $25/day? One thing I like seeing lately at Expo are the homebrew projects. I come to find that there's actually 2 Buffy the vampire slayer machines (rethemed swords of fury with new software). At first I was sort of upset that two of this great game were sacrificed for this project, but after playing them I can appreciate it. I mean the code is great (sound cues where to shoot), great graphics, the upper left playfield is transparent so you can see underneath. Nightmare before christmas had great flow, though talking to the owner he did say he had ball detection issues not from hardware but some bug in the latest mission pinball framework (that was being worked on up until the moment of the show). I actually saw Ben heck and Charlie walk over to this machine and talk to the owner for about 10-15 minutes early saturday morning. He had the playfield lifted up, and it was as if Ben was just curious how a hobbyist chose to wire it up (lights, boards, etc), and generally what the latest FAST hardware looked like. Peanuts pinball (which Aaron is working on) had a half populated playfield (with art) which is impressive considering about the only thing done on it the week before was flippers and a ball trough (he did a livestream). For a while he had the playfield lifted up. During the stream you could see that he just had the playfield out sitting on some sort of frame he welded up. At the show you realize this is not a temporary frame, but rather a frame that stays with the playfield, and it rests on rails in the bottom.
This is actually quite genius in a couple ways:
1. It gives you a nice platform for the playfield to sit on, sort of a built in rotisserie (both for building it, and future servicing).
2. In reality, it doesn't need the hooks to attach to the lockdown bar, it could just rest at the bottom if you had something to lock it in place. Then the only thing you'd really have to lock is the glass in place.
The other crazy part about these 3 projects (muppets was barely started) is that the father of Aaron built all these cabinets.. like not kit form, but actually built them from bare plywood. I realize there are companies like churchill that do this everyday, but it's more amazing for a home builder to do it with minimal tools.
So one thing I'm starting to realize, gottliebs have really good flow (and some pretty neat innovations). Freddy plays pretty good, and not a single entry ramp (which is odd for 1994). Waterworld also has entry no ramps (but it does have return ramps, including one that pivots), and has a neat boat that spins 180 degrees to enable ball lock, and also dumps the balls after they've all been locked. It also has this nice flowing side loopback on the right. Nothing innovative there (games like skateball had it), but nice that they implemented it. You look at "lights camera action", and they implemented a somewhat large chunk of playfield that spins and completely changes that layout in that section (almost increasing the playfield size in a way). That's the sort of flow I'm aiming for, the ramps are just icing on the top (and need to be lastly implimented). The main gameplay is on the main playfield.
I'm going to make another guess for Ben and Charlie looking at a wired up Fast system. They want to see how much less wiring a more distributed system takes versus a centralized system. Spooky uses pinheck which is centralized in the backbox. Charlie has mentioned that the thing he hates most is wiring harnesses. Building large centralized wiring harnesses take a lot of labor and are prone to errors. Stern has moved to a more distributed model with the spike system. In theory, a distributed system should allow higher margins because of the simpler wiring.
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