unplugging sparked creativity?

 So my father-in-law had a fall 2 months ago, and since then he's had spine surgery, recovered from pneumonia, went into rehab (which did a horrible job, in fact it was a waste of time), and has now been back home for about a week slowly trying to get back to normal (he had a couple episodes where he almost went into a coma because of low blood sugar because he's on like 15 pills and doctors aren't great at tracking that stuff).  My hope is that my tag teaming with my wife being there basically 24/7 to make sure he's stable fades off and I can get back to normal life.  Since I've had no access to my computer, I actually took one of my 3d printers to their house so I can keep doing print jobs for clients.

Since I had free time I decided to use it to sketch ideas on paper old school.  Sometimes I forget how important it is to just freely think out ideas without getting into detail.  Just kept sketching stuff on a new piece of paper (what if I did this?  I bet I could squeeze that feature under there).  I've got 2 upper playfields now, and I'm realizing just how many songs I can re-use on each (with a neat feature I'm surprised nobody has tried before).. AND on top of that, the shapes of the playfields ended up being the first letters of the band so I'm taking a nod from data east guns n roses.  I've never been so motivated to get back into it.. I can't wait to start showing some progress.

Homebrew is getting so good.. that makes it hard

 After seeing all the games at Chicago Pinball Expo this year it made me realize two things:

1. If you want your game to get noticed, if the theme isn't killer (big trouble in little china) you better have an interesting mech.

2. If you can't come up with a killer mech, your game should stand out as being very different from the standard pinball cabinet (2x scale, head-to-head).

I'm also realizing I may want to put my new theme on hold for a very good reason and go back to blue.  I think in most cases, your first homebrew isn't that great (there are some exceptions) and I want the other theme to really be executed well after getting a finished game under my belt.  I don't know that I'll have a cool mech, but I have been pondering the idea of an interesting cabinet.. one that will make homebrew tours to multiple shows way more feasible.  As an engineer, I always try to do small experiments to see if something is going to work out.. if I have some success, I scale it up.  I just made a prototype of something and I was sort of blown away by how well it worked (did the math of scaling up and the results were even better than expected).  After going through the cost of a cabinet (mostly hardware) for sure I want to design my own cabinet, and as long as I'm doing that I'm going to cost reduce it, simplify it, lighten it.

Secondarily, I need to just START.. Like I need to build a simple rotisserie, cut a piece of wood and start mocking up my playfield up again.  If you never start, you'll never finish.

Why I will never buy another multimorphic pinball

So I just sold a Weird AL.  I was on the fence buying one when it was announced based on playing it at shows.  But I thought "Oh but look at that theme, they've finally picked a good theme!".. I figured worse case scenario it should hold its value because they're only making so many.  I placed my pre-order probably a few months  before I moved across the country, then it was ready about a year later.  I paid $10,200 for the game, plus $700 tax, plus $700 for shipping (and that's with picking it up from a fedex freight center).  So I'm in at $11,600.  I play it maybe 50 times over the past 3-ish years, realize I don't play it anymore, and also realize the resale value is crap (I lost almost $5k, that's about a thousand shy of a brand new stern).  Keep in mind this is a HUO game, it was never routed and barely played.

Here's a bunch of reasons you won't have people knocking down your door to buy one too.  It's heavy, REALLY heavy... it might be the heaviest pinball ever made (and I've owned a jersey jack game).  it SUCKS to move it.  Oh also, because it's a taller cabinet (it's 28" in the back, not the standard 24"), with the backbox folded down it is NOT going to fit in any SUV (you must own or rent a truck to pick it up).  The playfield layout is always a compromise, if you'd like to argue with me I can prove it.  Sure, compare it to like a batman66 I'll lose that argument, but compare it to a Stern King kong or foo fighters, you could never have that layout on a multimorphic playfield.

If Gerry doesn't think the poor resale value is going to affect future sales, he's wrong.  People that have been buying JJP games for $12k (plus tax and shipping) and realize they're only worth $7-8k are getting hesitant about buying NIB.  The modules themselves aren't holding value either.  I saw an ad of someone selling a multimorphic machine with like 4 modules (including weird al, heist) for $10k?  I really imagined I would just be buying modules and updating my game.  I really loved the concept of swapping out playfields, but in practice I just don't want to deal with swapping games, cabinet art, and storing those playfields somewhere.  I think there's been maybe 600-800 cabinets, and I think that's about the saturation point.  you're going to stop having new buyers, and if you're just selling modules is that still a viable business?

DR pinball

That's what I'm codenaming it.. DR pinball, take that for what it is.

Now that ideas are spitballed, I'm also spitballing a layout in solidworks.  What a difference 10+ years makes from my last attempt.  I was just barely getting into 3d printing at home then.  Now I have no doubts I can 3d print a lot of stuff I need.  There are so many more resources now for grabbing either free or very cheap 3d models to speed up the process.  AI is going to play a big part (no not blurry images like JJP harry potter).  Chatgpt is able to produce images that would take many hours can be done in a matter of minutes.  AI can now generate pretty dam good 3d models from just a single photo.  There's so many projects out there with circuits that can do all sorts of cool things.  One thing I'm doing for sure is a talking head (similar to rudy from funhouse, only better).

New homebrew theme

 So as life evolves, so do projects.  I know I promised my wife a blue october pinball (and maybe that will still happen someday), but I came up with a new theme I'm pretty passionate about (and my wife and one of her best friends shares the same interest and excitement).  It's a pretty lofty goal, but its a theme I feel has been needed for a long time.  I'm not going to share what it is yet (I have a ton of prep work), but I've got a long google doc going with brainstorm ideas and I really think it's going to integrate well into pinball.

Northwest pinball show - van halen returns

So I went to the show this year (it's been tough settling in from such a far move).  Thanks to the coordination of Iomoto (marco specialties) they were able to setup a shipment directly to the show.  When I moved the movers kept jumping the price (low balled a $5k moving fee over the phone, which became a $12k price for maybe 1/4 more stuff, to $22k once the movers had everything on 2 trucks.  We really had no choice but to start leaving things behind.  Ed Owens was kind enough to babysit Van halen and take it to shows in Chicago the past couple years.  He also managed to fix a bad boot image (it stopped booting correctly last I left it), as well as replace the model A raspberry pi with a pi zero.

The speakers Ed included were computer speakers which should have been loud enough, but with all the show noise you just couldn't hear anything (which is sort of the point of a music pin).  also because you can't hear the instructions at the beginning, I'm sure people didn't understand that you have to hit both flippers to choose a side.  While I was moving it out of the exhibition hall out to my vehicle, some random person actually said how much they enjoyed it.  I told him you missed half the fun because the sound wasn't loud enough.  Still, it felt great to hear a compliment from someone.

One of my first goals is to embed some good speakers towards the front of the machine (possibly also include a headphone jack in the front).  I also really want to simplify the connectors (perhaps two that make all the connections to the playfield).  Setting it up at a show with 10 random old bally connectors isn't ideal.  I'd also like to redo the backglass lighting, I think moving the led strips to the back of the box (like Stern does) will help a lot so the lights aren't oversaturating..

Sidenote: I'm also doing some part-time contract work for Fast Pinball.  I did a talk about a pogo pin fixture I designed at the show:

https://youtu.be/7OsVcr8222w