Goonies pinball

So I gotta talk about this guy (he may be reading this).  You can follow his blog here:
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.

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

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.

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

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:

No progress, just a lot of researching around

After putting the pin in the basement (and back on it's legs), I've realized I really let the blue october project slip.  Maybe I'm a little bit discouraged after seeing all the incredible PROC systems at expo, I don't know.  I'm starting to think that even if I get an entire playfield designed the way I want it, it's going to be useless without having a way to control it.

Part of me thinks that by the time I get the layout done, there will be a solution on the market other than PROC (skillshot, ben heck's C+ arduino based board).  Part of me thinks maybe someone will step up and do the programming for me if I supply the hardware (yea right).

So then I really started to look for other simplistic options.  Sure, I could probably wire up a pair of flippers directly to 50V, but if I held them on they would fry up without reducing power.  Obviously I can't do PWM without a microcontroller, so I thought I'll go old school.  I'll simply use an EOS switch to switch to a 12V tap for holding.  That's great and all, but what about pretty much everything else?  I need logic to keep track of how many balls have been played, track multiballs, track players, track any extra balls.. Hell, just keeping score is a task if I want to bypass the stock Stern MPU I have in there now.

So here's my next logical step, I need to learn electronics.  I can design mechanical things all day long, but half a pinball machine is electronics, so if I want to design one I have to learn.  My boss likes to push adult education, and he agreed to send me to a basic electronics course so I can understand circuits (I work for a company that does gas products but we are starting to get into the electrical market).  Even if my boss didn't send me, I can always take a course at my local college for less than $100 (and my company would likely reimburse me, my benefits cover up to $3k/year for tuition).  Once I learn what does what in circuits and I truly understand how things work, I plan on experimenting with arduino.  I'll pickup some kit that includes a bunch of add-ons and just go through tutorials.  Once I start to realize not only how circuits work, but the programming that goes along with it to run a microcontroller, I should have enough grasp of how to at least create a crude controller to do as much as early solid state controllers are capable of.

I figure even if I don't go down the arduino route, C+ and Python are supposedly very similiar, so if I chose to give in and just buy a PROC system I could adapt easily.  One cool thing about the PROC project for "Wrath of olympus" is that he did all of his layout, artwork, and sounds inside visual pinball first (because it's easier to move things around digitally in case you have a bad ball trap in your design), then he created the real thing based on the virtual one and to his surprise it played almost identical to the virtual one


One key difference on this project, he used one of the plugins where he could run the PROC system through USB into his computer, and have a real controller run a virtual pin.  That way he could tweak his rules at a computer, then start running wires from a driverboard to real parts:
http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=13153

door actuator pinball - part 2

So even though I have so many projects, I've been jones-ing to finally hook up the stronger 10lb actuator to real pinball parts (stopped by pinball life today).  I have to say it's looking promising.  I need to still hook up the other side, wire it up to buttons, build a border around the edges, perhaps some slings, but at least this project is going somewhere.  Here's a quick video: