One feature I haven't heard folks talk about but is one of my favorite is the chains linking all the pop bumpers!

Trigger one of them and you hear this great clanking sound!

[ ROMANTIC VISION SHATTERED ]

I still reward creativity and this is REVOLUTIONARY, not evolutionary IMHO

Will this one be in your showroom?

Hey I'm crashing that party! ( - :

Since it is shipping I assume it has a manual. Could you provide a link for that? I'm mostly interested in what the service menus look like.

Thank you and congratulations!

Holy cow! Some real innovation here too! One suggestion I have is that once you consider this done NEVER CHANGE IT FOR ANY FUTURE GAMES.

That way someone charging through the menu can develop muscle memory and just know: Enter/Test, +, +, Enter etc etc

When I build a pin of my own design (you've already seen my ideas : - ) I will start with the knocker and build the rest of the machine around it. "Oh, the rest of this stuff - playfield, backboard, theme, etc? They are there to support the knocker"

It will have something called "Bumpstock Mode(r)" where the knocker fires a bunch of times in rapid succession

I was watching a guy play when the machine went to some wonky mode where the flippers were backwards (press button to drop, release button to flip) and also switched side-to-side.

I'd pass on this behavior, annoying not innovating.

Theater of Magic is a machine about magic and they didn't have to do this to have a great game.

Absolutely not line problems. Modern switchers handle a very large input voltage range and adapt. You don't even need a different supply for 110V vs. 220V.

FETs don't change Rds-ON, coils don't change their field characteristics like this...

Software bug most likely - what else could it be?

Question for American Pinball:

What is the power ratings on Houdini? Just the ones on the back is fine. If you happen to know power usage as it is on an arcade floor not being played that would be great too.

Couldn't get near one at TPF let alone behind one ( - :

Thank you

Soldering on quick disconnects? That certainly isn't best practice. Why?

Houdini Kludge.png

If you have PinRemote™ you don't need the key to open the coin door. Just your cell phone and the operator PIN...

For many users: yes it is. My MMR Orcs don't have LED glowing eyes and that is fine for me. Different needs & wants.

I have read all these reviews of how hard the game is. I played 2 games at a non-AP booth along with another guy who played 2 games also. It was painful listening to all the audio hints, but before you point this out you can change all that yada yada. Not as a festival participant.

It didn't feel fun. Usually you know right away.

That and some of their assembly techniques would steer me clear of this title.

No Loctite(r) on switch screws? Add a shaker and it will disassemble itself in short order. And other things. Sorry A-P but these are objective observations.

Just my $0.02 of course

This level of tuning required to make the game playable suggests that a barcade machine will never be tuned correctly. They just don't want to take it offline. They might not know how to tune it anyway.

It would probably be fun to play in a home venue where the owner took this level of attention to get it working correctly.

Isn't this "cheating"? Aren't you supposed to play the game the way it was designed?

You can also make it easier by giving yourself 10 balls/game. More extreme but still a vector in the same direction.

We must conclude that what showed up at your door was the manufacturer's intent. All else is the work of man ( - :

Some games are too hard to have any fun at. If you're in an arcade, you walk to the next one. Some HUE owners will work on technique, others will bend the physics of what they were sent. Both are fine if you acknowledge the camp you're in. Or even if you don't.

I think the game was designed to be of the ultimate difficulty and that's why I don't play or own it. Nice to look at though.

Short answer: because I can. I wouldn't buy Houdini because it doesn't have a knocker. Won't buy a toy without essential equipment.

Your logic does not follow. Here is my logic stated differently:

IF it does not have a knocker THEN I do not buy it

Your assumption above might suggest that I own all machines with knockers which I wish I did

Run the knocker on 110V, get noticed ( - :

Soldering iron ( - :

Owner / Operator vs. user. Have a skit on this, goes something like:

"If you spend more time playing your game than working on it... you might be a pinball user"

No time, about to introduce PinRemote™ I made a note to stop posting possibly controversial stuff here, then ignored it. BAD BOY, no Scooby Snacks for you.

I do have my own surface mount line, ya know

Sorry for being somewhat off-topic, but the last time I checked I owned an EM, a SS and a Beagleboner.

Gotta buy some more but the industry is in flux right now and I don't care for the Iron Maiden theme.

Posting is not ignoring BTW

I think I'll hold out for Big Lebowski or CGC BBB, no brainers to buy those.

Back to work

The catapult should have its own dedicated power supply. Placement near the launch point would help too.

Ouch. Resetting high scores seems so basic

At HP we did design first, implementation next, and testing / bug fix after that. But they didn't design pinball machines.

I don't understand this, but please don't explain. Back to it.

All you need to round this out is PinRemote™ under the hood! Administer this beautiful machine with your phone. See the Iron Transfer store on this site if you want to learn more or order.

I'm going for "Mod of the Year" with my invention and the word is getting out.

Great perks

You tested it with the generator or it will be powered with one there?

A generator is a bad choice to test with because of variance. Both voltage and frequency vary with engine RPM on simple generators. Might I suggest you'd be much better off with a high-quality 50Hz sine wave inverter or an HQ inverter-based generator.

Wow, like the Windows blue screen? Known by some as the BSOD, Blue Screen of Death

It could be triggered by any other playfield device being hit, i.e. pop bumper, slingshot etc.

Call it what it is: % Bricks Launched ( - : "Brickage"

Look at how many inspections this got through, scary

Variac? I'm hearing things, right? What a dangerous kludge, has to be a better way

Heard near a Houdini machine recently:

"I heard you got a variac for your new American Pinball box! Is it Dialed In?"

"No, it's Houdini."

I consider them somewhat dangerous in that if they inadvertently get cranked up whatever is plugged into them usually gets fried.

In my humble opinion the AP design team should have caught this in their trunk testing and went with a separate high-quality supply that fed just the catapult. After all, aren't power supplies supposed to put out constant voltage independent of load or supply? Look at how few parts are in that one, not much regulating ability there - especially for a linear supply. Talk of fixing this with autotransformers (an old name for variac) is laughable.

Sorry AP, but I think this needed pointing out. I'd just let the thing miss.

This is the right direction to solve this problem, good job. I'll be curious to see how many users it helps.

Yeah, most of us get enough criticism day to day without adding this.

I like Elvira's "Oh Poo!" on Scared Stiff

Imagine if Pinside existed when FunHouse was introduced. Megabytes of complaints about that obnoxious Rudy. ( - :

Extend that to changing your spouse's DNA in hindsight (always 20/20 right?) to knock off those few rough behavior edges. ( - :

Some things are best just as they were conceived. Funhouse isn't an exemplary example of this!

A technical aside here: You need to measure your line voltage with a true RMS (Root Mean Square) meter to know how much "working voltage" it contains. I'll assume you are just using ordinary DVMs to measure yours which gives you what you need to know: Will my machines play correctly?

I used to assume that line voltage was the perfect sine wave at the outlet. WRONG! See the picture below showing actual voltage values.

I've lived 25 years off-grid (batteries) so have had all flavors of AC inverters. The modern ones have very clean sine wave power. Yes, some discrete steps but nothing "glitchy".

Be curious to see if the isolators help.

Actual-line-voltage-waveform (resized).png

An "offline UPS" would solve the problem. We used to use them at rig sites because power there was all over the map.

They work by having the battery always power the AC output (inverter AC). The line connection just charges the battery. They cost $800 about 15 years ago. Don't remember the brand names but that is what Google is for.

I still think a good quality supply inside Houdini would fix this.

I wonder about AP's priorities. Wouldn't they be concentrating on this coming October[fest]?

If I had one of these boxes (Houdini) I'd look at replacing the cheesy main power supply. Bet you could source a good one, or two for under $150. Hard to tell which ones might work though, might have to iterate

Running equipment on a variac would almost certainly void the manufacturer's warranty. Bump the dial (dog, kids, gremlins) and it fries things. You almost certainly have to wait for a solution AP condones if you care about your warranty.

Balcer, Kugler?

Can anyone supply a picture and mfg/model number for the 48V PS in Houdini? Thought I would look for a possible upgrade.

Details of how it connects in would help. Thank you

Question for rosh - I understand Houdini is implemented with Mission Pinball Framework.

Could you share with us approximately how many lines of source code it takes to implement Houdini?

I ask because I'm wondering what kind of effort it takes to make a real pinball machine (at least this portion of it).

You can make flippers work on a single page but that is very simple.

Thanks

Thanks, didn't know. Learn every day. 30K lines is a fair amount.

Fair to say it isn't the upgrade media.

I read somewhere that there is a slack channel that is that is mostly P-roc and HDpyprocgame users. Can anyone provide a link to that? Seems like a great place to learn more about ways to implement pins.

Magic powder I think

Yeah, like shooting a man out of a canon - wasn't that a magic trick in the day?

Just solder to something. Aren't all the connections soldered in Houdini? Unsolder it if you want it stock again and no one will know

Mr Kugler seems absent, maybe on holiday learning German traditions

Anyone heard any news about the catapult power fix? Seems like that should come out before they start the next adventure.

Inflows into Lake Powell & Mead are at 37% of normal now. Big problems next year if nothing changes.

Also if Mead drops much more they will have to start shutting down hydro generators due to cavitation. You can bet there will be restrictions on pinball power before they start turning off any of those nice casino lights & games...

You seem to spend all your time adjusting this thing. Have another machine near by you can actually play.

A 10 amp variac should be rated at 1000W. Mfg probably just inflated the rating. Can't get more than 15A out of a standard outlet anyway.

Houdini requires as much preflight and maintenance as an airplane. I could not tolerate this for a new machine.

Maybe adding big capacitors can help Houdini power as it did for Alien:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/alien-pinball-official-game-thread/page/464#post-4591616

Alien users have to fend for themselves. Seems Houdini users like to fend for themselves. The ultimate tinkerers game.

Lurch

Lurch (resized).jpg

Does anyone know if new Houdini machines are now equipped with the better power supply? Tnx

No. Not my cup of tea. Didn't even play the one in Banning. I heard from others that it wasn't adjusted right (the total content of this thread now, eh?). I didn't have a coin door key to try to tweak it to play "right". So I played the other 536 pins & Battlezone of course.

There are people here who love this machine in spite of all the time they spend tweaking it, I'm just in the other camp. Fair, yes?

Also the ball throw was previously listed as 20" but has grown to 22". Feature inflation - maybe you measure diagonally now like TVs

From your web page. Your marketing guys and gals must have thin scrotums!

HoudiniFeatures (resized).jpg

Can't argue your math technique, but I think most readers here know that if advertising says 'Over 20"' it usually means 20.1" or in there somewhere.

If it measured 22.01" you would advertise 'Over 22"' Each reader here can be their own judge on this. In any event both different numbers come from the same company which I question.

As for anatomy look up "undescended testis"

I am disappointed with what AP has done so far and hope they do better in the future. Houdini is nice in some ways and a failure in others.

This is a time where no one or no thing is held accountable. I guess we're supposed to ignore negative things nowadays.

AP - do an excellent job on O.F. Don't release it before it is thoroughly tested and ready. Don't update the code 40 times after it is shipping.

All the above could have been worded in the positive sense for O.F. but I feel the above applies to your first machine.

OK you guys win. I'll buy the racy version of OF when it comes out if they don't inflate the girl's bust measurements ( - :

In the day we had specific "defects per 1,000 hour" metrics we had to meet before we could move forward. It didn't take us 25 years to come out with products, but it took real time that made management upset because we were supposed to obsolete our own products to stay competitive. All this code went into ROM so turning it was a nightmare. Those days are long gone.

It is encouraging to see the patience that some of you converts have on this one. EM's require tons of patience too, so must be a pinball thing.

I'll go back to yelling "GET OFF MY LAWN" now and wait for Heidi to show what she's got.

My deal is to learn and I'm learning. The names people use to settle arguments in their heads include troll, liberal (in western CO anyway), hyperbolic and others I'm forgetting right now. I also think I see some of those "false 'Yelp-like' reviews" on Pinside. What are those called?

I agree that putting stuff on ignore mode is useful but talking about it isn't.

Back to the regularly scheduled program, keep flipping!

Free multiball? That's a feature!

If you have a 1KVA variac you'd like to sell please PM me.

I'm trying to regulate the CFM of some series-wound fan motors.

Thanks, no flames please.

Something unnormal with Nirmal? Oh my

Ah, normal Nirmal nuptials. Got it