I guess sterns definition of "very soon" and mine are different

Have you heard the broadcast of Stern’s expo presentation? Gary is so damn cavalier (and arrogant). It’s not so much what he - and some of the others that spoke - say (although that can be pretty lame too) but it’s how they say it. Like they’re all in a members only club that only they are the members of. His comments on widebody pins for example. OMFG. Even George to a degree, and he’s a delightful fellow by all accounts, came off a tad high falutin. Even while expressing “mea culpa”on the “every two weeks” promise.

On the whole the entire presentation smacked of hot air and holier than thou posturing. Now that I’ve heard it, I have less issue with their focus on market expansion and barcades and whatever, but their smug demeanor is a clear indicator that they really don’t give a fart about all the things we’ve been bemoaning, complaining, and expressing concerns about.

It will come, the fact Lyman is doing it means it will come and it will be completed and from the little teases and leaks we know, he is trying to get it right and if he does it how he wants, will knock the theme integration out the f##kin park!

Unfortunately the wait for BM66 to potentially be a top 5 Stern is going to be a long one that we are going to have to wait out and more than likely continue to be lied to and fed a load of shit by Stern unless they change their ways, until Lyman is happy with it and feels its complete to his satisfaction, which as much as the wait suck I will wait for.

He has never let me down on a pin I have brought that he has had his name on before #In Lyman I Trust!

So now the Left Ramp and Atomic Pile are being made, last thing to complete the "This is what should have been on B66" list is the gadget button surround on the lockdown. Laser cut stainless like on Aerosmith. Size should also be like Aerosmith (Star Trek/TWD) because the lockdown bar changes angle about 1/2 way up. If we keep it below the angle (like AS/TWD etc) the plate wont need to be bent. Attachment could be double sided tape, or drilled and screwed/rivetted if your'e game.

Could likely get Cliffy to do the actual cut.

Just need someone with some design talent to do the art. Anyone?

I think the fact that Stern has not released the code from the expo is an embarrassment. Spend the 10 minutes and load it on the server. I don't think the code will change at all in 2 weeks or whenever they decide to upload. Hey and if it did then load the newer one in 2 weeks. I will happily take the 30 minutes and upload another code. That would match the original schedule anyways.

Thank god they didn’t compromise the tournament with the .72. Stern is always looking out for us players.

Yeah its mad to think how many of these mods should have been factory, Stern must of had a lot of reddish orange acrylic lying around the factory collecting dust and used it on BM66, the Atomic Pile and Batmobile Spinner would have looked 100x better and so much more show accurate in clear or smoked with the red edging Yelobird pulled off on his Batmobile/Boat mount - really looking forward to see what Yelobird comes up with for them both this weekend!

I would normally agree about the lockbar button surround, but I actually like the decal as it matches the style of show where Batman labelled everything with named labels. Something a little more hard wearing would be good though and ideally using the correct Bat Symbol, as the armour is supposed to represent the Batmobile on the LE and SLE, using the Bat symbol off the Batmobile makes the most sense and seems the perfect fit imo.

Did a couple of mock ups a while back:

emblem 1 (resized).jpgemblem 4 (resized).jpg
Text cut be cut out so the black powder coat makes the text show up as black, would help with the limited space around the button and on the lock bar

They probably don't want to send out any more node boards than they have to...

I concur. I’m not worried about all the other mods, but I feel the lock bar button surround is a must.

The red sticker is SO F**KING LAME.

At the same time my expensive B66 Premium arrived, so did my AS Pro, and that has a freaking stainless surround! WTFFFFF mannn!!

My red sticker already has a big crease in it which looks like crap.

As you say, the only issue is the lockbar has a big crease in it. The usual Stern surrounds sit under the crease (see pics) The red sticker goes over and under the crease.

So to replicate the sticker in metal, you’d need to have a crease in it.

A big metal bat symbol would look badass.

You could make it in stainless, or steel then powdercoat it red.

As you say, maybe Cliff can make some? It would be a job for someone with a laser cutter who can make 20-30 of them for us owners.

I have contacts in a lot of fields, but alas, I don’t know anyone who could make those.

rd

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I was just thinking. How the Hell is JJP's POTC so far along in code and BM66 is STILL no where near 1.00 in a year's time for both? I love Lyman and all but at this pace what Spike 2 game will ever have finished code? If it takes this long to code a damn Spike 2 game Stern has a HUGE problem.

If you really want to start thinking, think about how far along the Dialed In code is. A game that was announced the same time as BM66 but was shipped later...

JPotC is supposedly only 20% coded and already far beyond Batman'66 0.75.

I can say I’ve got a contact, and in the works ( powder coated steel to match the new left ramp). They are using the decal as a template. Also have an engraver doing a plastic laminate version of the Bat Gadget selector. Been busy w getting the door back, w chromed coin doors ( screwed up my first attempt).

Damn, this stuff takes time: ( thank you Terry for supplying the electroplated chrome coin housings)...done:

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My first thought when George repeated that "Lyman is working full time on Batman at Expo was maybe that is actually true, but that means Batman+Spike2 since Batman is the first Spike2 game and that there are serious issues with Spike (Jokes about Star Wars frying node boards notwithstanding).

You can't just sit down as a programmer and say "today I will be brilliant" and furiously turn out code and sometimes you can go days or weeks without major progress. Maybe he did write major sections of code, throw them out and start over because he didn't like the direction. We know there was a June code package ready that was never released, but what's been happening the last three months if the Expo level code isn't significantly different from what was in testing in June?

It's not like Lyman is a junior programmer just learning how to program a pinball game. If George was telling the truth (and I want to believe that's the case) that means something is seriously wrong.

Maybe Lyman is sick and unable to spend much time on Batman. Maybe there is a serious underlying problem with the Spike 2 platform. Maybe they just way underestimated what it would take to integrate video (it took JJP years to get WOZ going). We may never know. But this can't be "normal".

Isn't Aerosmith Spike 2 as well? They seem to have got that one near finished didn't they?

I'll be the first to say if you have writer's block then go ahead and take break, but a year is a long time to have your main guy accomplish so very little, with still miles to go.

A large part of that was already laid out when they used KISS as the base, plus they had more time with the Batman/Aerosmith release date switch.

100% agree jfh.
Something is seriously off with this situation.
Either its on the backend of Spike 2, or the layout in this game is just not lending itself to good code design and fun. Something....5 months and nothing to show is f#cked

All true, but if Lyman has indeed been working on BM66 for over a year without much progress in the last six months, it's gotta be causing frustration at Stern as well, because that will cause setbacks on the next game he will be scheduled to work on.

But most of his games are released kind of bare bones anyway.

I'm going to go back to my theory that there aren't enough targets or inserts to incorporate everything they wanted to do.

What do you do in Mr. Freeze mode? Hit the Penguin crane?

You have the two LCD screens - you can have any virtual inserts you can dream up to repurpose shots or apply rules.

I'm more interested in seeing seasons. Minor villains are interesting, but I don't want them to be a roadblock. Maybe the function of a minor villain is to slow down Batman and Robin from capturing a major villain so Mr. freeze freezes the flippers or disables scoring until you hit done certain shot combo (and you get big points when you do).

I understand that, but if you look at past games remember how each shot had several different inserts for different things to do. They kind of locked up the playfield to the major villains, at least visually.

But as far as being behind because of Spike 2 doesn't Star Wars and the coding it has so far kind of negate that? I mean that games only a few months old and is already further along.

JJP was a lot slower on code for a while and they kept releasing base software updates. It took a while but my guess is they have the base system nailed and a bunch of that initial time went into making the base system easier for them to code. I believe b66 is the only game code Lyman is working on but bet he is putting a bunch of time in on their system which given the node board deaths I suspect they still are working on. Just look at the system menus they have not changed from dmd.

Exactly what i think to. When people say 'Game Code' they usually mean just 1 of the layers that go into making a pinball game. For example with a linux based system you have:

Game layer
Firmware Control Layer
OS Layer

As a minimum really, so that's 3 layers straight off. The System menu in the spike games looks like a direct port from SAM/Whitestar days or even an emulation, so there's work to do there...

Then adding the LCD Graphics Screen, you could now argue the layering is:

Graphics Layer
Game layer
Firmware Control Layer
OS Layer

So now your up to 4 layers! If you are Stern then your best programmers get more work to sort out the more complex issues at any given layer including still working on their own game layer projects, so you can see how delays can happen. We know that there are 'issues' with the firmware layer and possible node failures. The solution usually is to hire more people and off load some of the simpler coding tasks on to more junior people, or create teams of coders around 1 main senior guy. I think this is what is happening now, as we heard more people were being hired to assist programmers.

Sometimes you can offload the graphics section to someone else and coordinate between the two (graphics and game), but as with anything coding together with multiple people doesn't always work nicely. There can be many conflicts both with style of writing, organisation, commenting, layout, timing, hours or work patterns etc etc

Anyway, just a few comments from my life of working with code and hardware!

Having seen the posts in the SW thread about the pulled update of v092 on premium games, i doubt we will see anything ourselves until this problem is resolved and the SW updates are re-released. All these games share the same lower control layer code, or framework i would think.

Didn't Gary say the SPIKE system would be easier to code?

I think the minor villains won't be the same types of modes as the main villains. I think Lyman wants them more as complimentary features to the main modes. In the dead flip stream Lyman mentioned that if Mr Freeze was active your timers would be frozen for the remainder of the ball. Since Bookworm is obsessed with old books his feature might have something to do with your success on a previously completed mode. Not sure what would work well for Mad Hatter, Shame, Egghead, or King Tut.

Is it fair to say that if this game used a DMD we’d be at 1.0 code already?

Maybe. I believe it is more the turntable than anything else causing the delay.

Most probably Lyman would have delivered a lot more... 1.0 - who knows. AC/DC, Metallica and TWD also took a lot of time!

It's not only the graphics but also the audio. Both have to fit and it has to be extracted from a lot footage. Not an easy job, a lot of it has not really anything to do with coding itself..a and it's very time consuming. Beside that - SPIKE(2) seems to be also quite critical for the deverlopers. Each internal release has probably a good chance to grill the nodeboards like SW 0.92 does. Complexity is obviously huge, but that is not an excuse for the current status of the or the communication skills of Stern.

... and the mutlicolor leds are also some pain in the a** for the developers... for complexity reasons.

I posted some ideas previously:

Mr Freeze - Freezes your timers or a specific timer of your choosing with the action button?

Shame - Randomises a modes shot pattern?

Bookworm - Could force you to make mode shots a set number of times to light up shot multiplier inserts

Tut - Changes up the number of shots required on a particular shot in order to progress to SJP

A perk/bonus that matches the villians personalities from the shows would be cool which is why I thought of the things above to best match their characters.

Seasons would be great as mini wizard modes and would be awesome if the main villain modes changed up their shot requirements and patters season to season similar to how ST modes work/change from level 1, 2, 3.

Cool ideas hope they are reading. It is fairly sad though that we are Imagining what this game Could do instead of it just doing something. lol

Clearly there are changes to the Spike platform:

Moved to System 1.77:
- Replaced hardware version number with OS version number on diagnostic
screen.
- Added a message LOCATING NODE BOARDS. This will display if a required
node board is not discovered, previously it would incorrectly state
UPDATING NODE BOARD and UPDATE FAILED. The node board number(s) of
missing boards will be displayed and updated as boards are found.

SW maybe getting a lot of code drops but the one thing I keep noting is a lot of it is tweaking and optimisation.

The only real adding of content has been to the LCDs - video mode, light saber duel, loads of extras focused on the mini LCD, once code on BM66 is level with SW, it's going to blow SW away, BM66 will be able to have all the mini LCD stuff SW has plus the physical stuff like the crane, 3 sides of the turntable and the villian content on the screen.

I'll take the turntable and crane over the mini LCD 3 bank any day! Which I think is another reason why SW is progressing faster than BM66, SW is all LCD LCD LCD, BM66 has a lot more physical real estate in my opinion and far more physical coding opportunities plus it can have all the mini LCD stuff SW has plus all the villian vision specific features like villian taunts etc.

I really do hope Lyman knocks this one out the park it will certainly be his crowning jewel in just how damn good he is at taking layouts and turning them into the best stern have to offer.

SW .93

Sometimes you just gotta laugh to keep from crying

I think I've forgotten how to update a game.

Honestly, nothing Gary says should hold any weight. He is a salesman, a marketer, a promoter. His statements have one goal - to sell more games. If all of his statements were truthful then he would likely be working against that goal.

True. However I'm getting so tired of his beer, barcades and bloated BS.

gary= pt barnum

"theres a sucker born every minute"

Why does it have to blow SW away, man I'm getting sick of this place.

Why not? We all have games we prefer more than others, imo BM has the potential to blow a lot of Sterns recent releases away.

I'm also hoping JJPs POTC has given Stern a kick in the ass to up their game.

So have you joined the BM66 club Hazoff with your first post here? Prem? LE?

Batman Blows at this point but just not in a good way! lol My opinion and fear is the only thing Stern carried away from the JJP unveil is their pricing structure. SW, BM66, I hope they are Both great and finished within our lifetime!

Why not? because you can just say it will great when the code is done and I agree with that, what does SW have to do with it, seems like u had to make a dig because SW got more code updates which is week, last week. I'm not an owner but really like the gameplay of BM66, the price is a little too high, especially in Canada, dollar is getting better but when this game was released we were really low and with no pro option ur looking at 12K, maybe when and if they start coming up secondary.

I hope Lyman kills it, and he probably will. But nothing lasts, and there’s gonna come a day when Lyman under delivers. That’s just life.

He already did...on Batman TDK. So, hopefully this is the redemption.

This is actually a big reason why I bought the game.

The final BDK update Lyman did was pretty good, no way near as bad as people make out, the code suffered due to the lacklustre layout specifically the single ramp leading to the tedious upper playfield and flow stopper teeter totter ramp, I actually enjoy the drop target and lock under the joker can, the fact the drop didn't make it onto BM66 in some way was a shame.

It made it *better* that it was, but still nowhere near what people expect from a Lyman creation. That's fine with me, though. He can't be PERFECT, and honestly calling the misses is just as important as fawning over the masterpieces.

Bat Turn!

(Check out the snappy editing!).

rd

the video after this one that covers the van is interesting also.