Take a look here: https://pinballmakers.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

How much do you want to spend?
I’d start with a virtuaPin cab
Go down the p-roc/fast controller route
CPR custom pf/glass/plastics

But that’s a pretty expensive way to do it but I think you would end up with a nice game. With quite a lot of the work sub contracted out leaving you just with the game design / mechanics.

So do most of the major Pinball companies in business today

*Boom, roasted.

You might have trouble finding somebody interested in helping out at this stage. Without knowing the theme or seeing a solid plan on what type of pin you're building, it's hard for somebody to decide whether it's a project they want to contribute to or not.
Programming a pin takes a lot of work - I found it to be a bigger time commitment than physically building the machine. So it's hard for somebody to get excited about contributing at this stage.

If you were to ask this after getting to the whitewood stage and sharing photos of what you have built so far, then it may be a different story. If people can see that you're serious and they like what you have built, somebody might be willing to contribute. You'll get the best chance of finding somebody to contribute if they can see how much progress you've already made and that you've already put in the effort.

Good luck, I'll be keen to see how you go.

I have a set of legs and levelers that I took off a game. Some minor rust but you can polish them up or powder coat. Yours if you want them. You can get them on the coast or I can mail them to you at your expense. PM if interested

This is still really the most important question you need to answer as so much hinges on this.

If your theme involves any potentially copyrighted material, just be careful how you go about selling your copies. You don't want to be the next Predator maker.

Assuming you are going the P-Roc route, the board is $400. Plus you will need a power driver board at about another $300. Then you'll need a PC to run it on for about another $200. Finally a power supply for about $100. Thus the basic electronics will run about $1000. Add to that if you wand a DMD or sound amplifier, etc.

I know a guy that has some rare machines/parts that are meant to be scratch builds. He has mentioned he might sell. I'm not sure if you are interested or what he would want, but I can reach out to him if you like.

Will be interested in following your progress/thread.

Let us know when you have more details such as number of bumpers, ramps, flippers, etc. and I'm sure you will get more opinions on cost. Are you going to reuse a playfield or create your own from scratch?

$1500? Oh man, hate to tell ya but it will take way more than that. I spent double that on a white water not including the base game.

Is this a 1-level game, em or early ss you’re talking about building? Even doing that I think you’re above 2k at the end of the day. time-wise — usually not just a summer project, at least including art and coding. That said, A simpler game certainly cuts time and money though

As others have mentioned, you'll get a far better idea of what the cost will be once you have a rough idea of what mechanisms and features your game will have.

Something I've been playing around with in the last couple of weeks is coming up with basic playfield layouts in Visual Pinball. It gives you a quick and easy way to create rapid prototypes and shift parts around without having to physically cut a new playfield every time you want to change things. Simply drag bumpers, targets, etc. around to find what works and what doesn't.

If you're hoping to create a machine this summer, this might help you quickly refine your ideas and figure out what parts to order. If you come up with a layout you like, you can then figure out how much it would cost to make.

no thanks!

Might struggle with that budget and will deffo have to do most of it in house to save costs. Will probably need to be a em or simple style game as well to keep costs down. Maybe even use a cheap arduino based pinball system (seen a few available on this board) as P-Roc/Fast can be pretty pricey once you buy everything you need.

I'll be following to see your progress, but it's been my experience that you can buy a NIB stern for less than it costs to build a game.

If you are intending to sell them and put them in people's homes, that changes things dramatically as well. I encourage you to think about what risks that brings and how confident you can be with your engineering regarding that.

I wish you best of luck. If someone were asking me to code a commercial pin, they'd be looking in the 50k range to have me on staff for a few months. Could go up or down depending on the scale of their project.

Why not buy an older 70's-80's beat but working pin and change the PF layout? All the parts are there, software done, sounds are usually generic etc (although scoring may be F'd with a different PF layout..but that can be adjusted/changed..) - You'd only need a piece of wood to make your PF and some wire to lengthen some of the mechs to get sh!t where you want it.

It would be cheap and doable while giving you a taste of how hard designing a PF layout really is.

My guess is you could do that for $1500 all in. Most likely it'll be a $1500 brick but easier and cheaper than a scratch build.

GL!

I would recommend finding donor machines and playfields to scavenge parts off of if you want to hit that budget.
For new parts/assemblies, Pinball life makes it easy.
50 LED sockets/bulbs for inserts, and another 25+ for GI will run you another $150 alone.
10 coils? That is another $100-$150.
Coin door is $100-$150.
Complete flipper assembly is $90/pair
Ball trough assembly- $90-$180
Pop Bumper assembly- $50 each times 3(?) $150
And so on...

Now, if you can find used mechs, you will save quite a bit of that. The programming is the tedious part, and probably the main reason you do not see many people just making their own machines.

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What do you guys think?

It will be more work than you have imagined.

If you are doing it because you like to tinker/work...go for it.
If you are doing it to save money or build a "better" pinball...turn around and go back.

I know several people that have done scratch builds, and all have said they would have been better off just buying a pin.

I support this 100%.

This is a skill you can take to a lot of places in life, and learning it on a pinball game seems like a real fun way to do it!

$1500 is not going to make a dent in a custom machine.
A good programmer will eat that up in a month. Materials will come to at least that, PER machine. I have spent more than that refurbishing old SS pins. You would be hard pressed buying a working EM and rethemeing it for that.

Repairing pinballs is what gives me disposable income

I would do this JUST for fun and drop any notion of mass production. Trying to mass produce would make it pretty not fun and also is near impossible Unless you’re a Multi-millionaire Or have a really rich uncle. You’re familiar with predator, cosmic carnival, alien, and magic girl sagas right?

Please don’t gofund a hobby project.

Rest of the plan sounds good, have fun and get ready for this to cost 3x what you expected and take 2+ years to complete it’s a solid project. I’d say from my experience that going simpler may be smarter. Trying to make something really complicated is tough.

Have a look at MPF: http://docs.missionpinball.org/en/dev/tutorial/index.html. That should get your game going on the software side. A basic game with known elements (slings, pops, flippers, trough, VuK and a few multiballs) should not be too hard. Light shows, sound and videos take up much more time than the game logic part in my experience. Building a game with a few modes is a matter of a few days. With show, lights, videos and sound it can easily turn into month of work.

Jan

I'm really looking forward to seeing this build! I'm really impressed by the MPF documentation. Now I want to build and program my own machine!

When I was a newbie 3 years ago I had no idea how terribly common it was for every new guy to log on, post an ad looking for “cheap beater projects” and then immediately think they can build a game. And then start trying to reinvent the wheel because they “can do it better”

I had similar notions and thankfully I’ve bought a lot of projects and made lots of contacts. I’ve rebuilt/shopped a few games and I’ve built my Orbitor from scratch and sourced parts from all over. Those endeavors have reigned me in and taught me realistic obstacles and goals to set up when having such crazy projects. Building your own machines isn’t just “I’ve got woodworking skills and I can slap shit together, maybe I can sell it”
It’s a lot of work and you want to be VERY familiar with everything pinball and have a good conceptual understanding of playfield and ball physics.
There’s a reason we’ve seen nearly a dozen pinball companies spring up and fold within the last decade.
You don’t just “build a machine” and nobody will work for free, except yourself!

Very well said and yes finding project pins would be the way to go. Building a game from scratch is NO EASY task.There’s another thread that was put up recently by a Pinsider about building a TAF from scratch and from reading many comments made by fellow Pinsiders it”s really a hard process not just putting the game together but all parts,wiring,boards,ect. Will need to be found and bought.

Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland, in search of our better selves

Pimpin’ ain’t easy.

I say go for it. Sometimes it’s fun to reinvent the wheel.

If you plan to sell my advice is do an OG concept/theme.

Those who say “it can’t be done” should get out of the way of people doing it.

SickNate you’re crushing it so far With yours but words of caution to people looking to possibly sell machines to others is to be advised. Just words of caution, thats all. Honestly it’s easy to say ‘hey i can do that’— but pinball actually ain’t that easy at the end of the day, and evidence and history backs that.

I can’t, too busy

Absolutely any business is hard work and most fail.

I think most pinball companies fail because they don’t understand manufacturing and the supply chain side of the business.

This is hard... but it is getting easier.
The homebrew community is incredibly helpful. There are plenty of people on slack answering questions ,brainstorming , trading parts and tips etc.

I predict it will get easier and easier with time.

Someday you’ll be able to download solid models of every part.(every other industry does this already)

I’ll give solid models to anyone who asks of my build. (I’d prefer to wait until I’m flipping to make sure I’m not sending junk)

At the end of the day, If it were too easy....everyone would be doing it.
and that’s what I want

I give full permission to everyone who’s completed a homebrew to roll their eyes at me , when I’ve only made solid models and a few parts so far. I just think we could all be more encouraging in this hobby. There is an incredible amount to be learned doing this. Turns out that knowledge is useful beyond pinball once gained