So while doing errands yesterday, my wife asked me what I was thinking about. I answered honestly and said I was thinking about her pinball design. She's amazed I'm putting this much effort in lately. She's wondering just how many songs I can incorporate into the design. Beyond the 3 songs for the 3 playfields, the waterslide ramp song, I'm going to try to add soundbites to targets if I can. Also thought about incorporating a couple songs by using GI (lights turn off - plays "things we do at night", lights come back on, plays "light you up").
Another thing I can do besides trying to tie in actions / sounds is incorporate a lot of the songs as playfield artwork:
Scar
Black orchid
Clumsy cardhouse
Worry list
This actually helps me with the playfield art because beyond putting band members on, I wasn't really sure what else to do with it
Monday, January 13, 2014
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Am I anal?
Why yes, yes I am. So I took my usual friday trip to pinball life in huntley. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, I'm spoiled living only 5 miles from there. I was motivated to go because I won the T2 LED mod on the spooky pinball podcast. Do I have a T2? No, but you never know, I might get one someday. Terry had my parts ready, I pet his dog who probably thinks I'm family at this point, and $100 later I was on my way. I bought 2 williams flipper assemblies with the standard solenoid size, about 50 clear posts (10% discount on top of the already deep discount for picking up in person), and a couple lane guides. Also needed a new skirt for my pop bumper on black knight so I picked up 4 because they're so cheap it's good to have extras (can't beat 33 cents a piece).
I chose data east lane guides because I like the clear, and the posts could come in handy if I decide to mount plastic art over the top, and they have nice steep angles for blasting the ball across the flippers. Also at $6 a pop how can I say no to that, surely cheaper than trying to get custom ones lasercut out of aluminum.
http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=3202
Now although I could probably plop the lane guides onto the playfield and eyeball it, I like to measure thrice and cut once so I went ahead and modeled it up so I could put it in my assembly. Hey, you never know, I might do another pinball layout and if I do the grunt work up front it will make it easier in the future. I'm also trying to go clear on as many items as I can since I won't have inserts. Yes I will have GI (that's not hard to do, add 6V to a bunch of sockets), but you never know I might want to add LED lighting to posts and anything else that's clear.
Funny how components start forcing you to move and adjust things. I had to back the waterfall ramp a good 2 inches, move the flippers down an inch, and change the text to 2 lines to get it fit properly. I thought about continuing the playfield art to plastics over the inlane guides but I can only imagine the alignment nightmare that would be.
I chose data east lane guides because I like the clear, and the posts could come in handy if I decide to mount plastic art over the top, and they have nice steep angles for blasting the ball across the flippers. Also at $6 a pop how can I say no to that, surely cheaper than trying to get custom ones lasercut out of aluminum.
http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=3202
Now although I could probably plop the lane guides onto the playfield and eyeball it, I like to measure thrice and cut once so I went ahead and modeled it up so I could put it in my assembly. Hey, you never know, I might do another pinball layout and if I do the grunt work up front it will make it easier in the future. I'm also trying to go clear on as many items as I can since I won't have inserts. Yes I will have GI (that's not hard to do, add 6V to a bunch of sockets), but you never know I might want to add LED lighting to posts and anything else that's clear.
Funny how components start forcing you to move and adjust things. I had to back the waterfall ramp a good 2 inches, move the flippers down an inch, and change the text to 2 lines to get it fit properly. I thought about continuing the playfield art to plastics over the inlane guides but I can only imagine the alignment nightmare that would be.
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Goonies pinball
So I gotta talk about this guy (he may be reading this). You can follow his blog here:
gooniespinball.com
gooniespinball.com
I gotta say I admire someone jumping in who seems to not really
have skills (look who’s talking mister refuses to code his own pinball rules). Based on his first video, it seems he can't do board work (not sure about mechanical). He can't code, he can't photoshop, it's going to be one heck of a learning curve. I just hope his passion continues to drive
him along because the reward will be worth it in the end.
I guess the reason I bring this up is that sometimes I get so intimidated with my project, and really the only thing lacking is a full understanding of electronics and code (working on both of those this year). If this guy is not only taking on a project with everything to learn, but is blogging about it (and announcing it on pinside so he's sort of out in the public), there's no reason I can't finish mine. That's part of the reason why I haven't really announced my project (if you happen to stumble here, fine). But I don't want to show the general pinball community anything until I've at least got a partial whitewood done. It's probably the same reason why that ghostbusters guy waited until he was finished, he didn't want the pressure of everyone telling him to hurry up and finish it.
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Blue october update
I realized I haven't yet posted a picture of the playfield layout I have so far from solidworks. I haven't done a ton of work on it (I think I might want to do a mockup with foam before I get too far), but this is what it looks like:
I had concerns with having the left ramp bringing the ball all the way to the right lane. Even though I think the waterfall ramp will give the ball plenty of speed, I don't want balls getting stuck. Plus I had the ephiphany that the ramp can become a lowercase "b" to spell out the band's name (very much like Data East's GNR).
Other features:
The shooter lane will be very much like black knight, which brings it to an upper playfield (18th floor balcony). I want a lower 3rd playfield that will represent "into the ocean". I have a few other ideas for tying in songs, but this is what I have so far.
On a positive note, I received some boards from another DIY guy who is working on some custom pinball hardware which will drive all the extra flippers and VUK's that my 1978 Stern memory lane can't possibly support. Follow his blog here:
http://openpinballproject.wordpress.com
I had concerns with having the left ramp bringing the ball all the way to the right lane. Even though I think the waterfall ramp will give the ball plenty of speed, I don't want balls getting stuck. Plus I had the ephiphany that the ramp can become a lowercase "b" to spell out the band's name (very much like Data East's GNR).
Other features:
The shooter lane will be very much like black knight, which brings it to an upper playfield (18th floor balcony). I want a lower 3rd playfield that will represent "into the ocean". I have a few other ideas for tying in songs, but this is what I have so far.
On a positive note, I received some boards from another DIY guy who is working on some custom pinball hardware which will drive all the extra flippers and VUK's that my 1978 Stern memory lane can't possibly support. Follow his blog here:
http://openpinballproject.wordpress.com
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Total recall update 1.0
I've added some more detail, it's finally starting to look like a real pin. I'm starting to feel sort of like an archeologist piecing together bones to recreate what a dinosaur might have looked like.
So I've split the cabinet into 3 pieces (not worried about the middle piece just yet). I decided to make the cabinet continue at an angle all the way back instead of flaring back to a square angle (There will be angled rails on the back to mount the legs to). The backbox ends up being really big, like 35" wide. Keeping the dimensions of the backglass at the same aspect ratio, it leaves about 4" of gap underneath, which should be enough space for speakers. I know it looks really narrow, but it's because the backbox is so wide. You may notice there are some square channels inside between the cabinets. There needs to be something to tie the cabinets together, and by bolting them together along the seams is the way to go.
So I've split the cabinet into 3 pieces (not worried about the middle piece just yet). I decided to make the cabinet continue at an angle all the way back instead of flaring back to a square angle (There will be angled rails on the back to mount the legs to). The backbox ends up being really big, like 35" wide. Keeping the dimensions of the backglass at the same aspect ratio, it leaves about 4" of gap underneath, which should be enough space for speakers. I know it looks really narrow, but it's because the backbox is so wide. You may notice there are some square channels inside between the cabinets. There needs to be something to tie the cabinets together, and by bolting them together along the seams is the way to go.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Total Recall thoughts
I should have never blogged about it last night because I couldn't get it off my mind and I had a hard time falling asleep (also couldn't keep my mind focused at work today). I find this interesting because I'm sure the guys at Data East at the time had the same thoughts. So here's what I went into deep thought about:
Cabinet design: Looks straight forward right? Build an odd shaped cabinet, done.. Nope, there's no way an operator would be happy trying to lift such an awkward cabinet as one piece, and the home market would hate it even more as it would make lifting into a basement nearly impossible. I'm thinking it really needs to be 3 pieces, one pentagon shaped piece in the back where the top playfield would reside, and then the 2 cabinets. As for the glass it would also need to be 3 pieces with a plastic trim to join the 2 lower panes with the upper.
Gameplay: One obvious thought is how to deal with balls from each cabinet being shared between sides. As far as the live playing, it could simply autofire a new ball in the opposite playfield after one drains in yours (very much like the 2-player joust). I don't remember what happens on joust when the game ends, does it fire any extra balls into the opposite side to make them even? Makes it a little harder when the playfields are side by side but it's certainly feasible.
I think I'm going to go ahead and model up the cabinet the way I think it SHOULD be feasibly built, who knows how far I'll take this. I do think it would be a neat project to make for real. I doubt I would ever go so deep as to create an entire ruleset and custom alphanumeric displays, but I could see buying a generic CPU like an alltek, wire up some targets to existing score points. I think just having built the cabinet and a semi-playable game would blow people's minds at a pinball show. They wouldn't care if it's not as Data East intended, they would just love playing what could have been.
Only thing is I would effectively have to run two separate pinballs (so you could start a parallel 2 player game), and because most likely you wouldn't want to try running 6 flippers off an old power supply (but 3 flippers would do just fine).
Also came up with this parody logo
Cabinet design: Looks straight forward right? Build an odd shaped cabinet, done.. Nope, there's no way an operator would be happy trying to lift such an awkward cabinet as one piece, and the home market would hate it even more as it would make lifting into a basement nearly impossible. I'm thinking it really needs to be 3 pieces, one pentagon shaped piece in the back where the top playfield would reside, and then the 2 cabinets. As for the glass it would also need to be 3 pieces with a plastic trim to join the 2 lower panes with the upper.
Gameplay: One obvious thought is how to deal with balls from each cabinet being shared between sides. As far as the live playing, it could simply autofire a new ball in the opposite playfield after one drains in yours (very much like the 2-player joust). I don't remember what happens on joust when the game ends, does it fire any extra balls into the opposite side to make them even? Makes it a little harder when the playfields are side by side but it's certainly feasible.
I think I'm going to go ahead and model up the cabinet the way I think it SHOULD be feasibly built, who knows how far I'll take this. I do think it would be a neat project to make for real. I doubt I would ever go so deep as to create an entire ruleset and custom alphanumeric displays, but I could see buying a generic CPU like an alltek, wire up some targets to existing score points. I think just having built the cabinet and a semi-playable game would blow people's minds at a pinball show. They wouldn't care if it's not as Data East intended, they would just love playing what could have been.
Only thing is I would effectively have to run two separate pinballs (so you could start a parallel 2 player game), and because most likely you wouldn't want to try running 6 flippers off an old power supply (but 3 flippers would do just fine).
Also came up with this parody logo
Monday, December 2, 2013
Total Recall pinball
This subject comes up over and over. Someone isn't aware that Data East had a concept to do a dual side by side playfield, and about every year someone discovers this and goes "Hey! anyone see this?" You know what sucks (besides the fact it never got past a whitewood stage)? There really isn't any good info on it (or renderings of what it could have been). So what I'm going to do (since I have no skill in messing around with virtual pinball but have great solidworks skills) is attempt to recreate it in solidworks. Yes, I'm going to take the crappy photo from IPDB:
http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=4335
And attempt to recreate it in 3d, plop the backglass in, and make up my own artwork of what I think a data east total recall would look like. It might not be accurate, but it would be something to look at. Here's a very early rough layout:
http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=4335
And attempt to recreate it in 3d, plop the backglass in, and make up my own artwork of what I think a data east total recall would look like. It might not be accurate, but it would be something to look at. Here's a very early rough layout:
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)