Hey There. I'm new to this particular web joint, but not so much to pinball. I'm working on a project this crowd would probably appreciate -- I've slapped a P-ROC board in my Cactus Canyon and am working on recreating the original game, and then expanding on it.

There's a wiki about the project here: http://soldmy.org/pin/ccc/

There's a thread with all the details over at the P-ROC forums : http://www.pinballcontrollers.com/forum/index.php?topic=520.0

And a rundown of key bits I've added so far:
- A new super skill-shot with better prizes that requires a follow up shot on the playfield to collect
- A new gimmick multiball called "Drunk Multiball" with reversed flippers that ties to the beer mug target and saloon
- A new mode that alternates with Showdown called Ambush, which is a cross between Quickdraw and showdown
- A match animation, which if won awards "Last Call" - A special multiball
- A new tumbleweed animation/award for full loops once the horse/trick shots are complete
- A new ramp shot combo system
- Many new 'high score' category types
- A Moonlight Madness
- Cowboys vs Aliens multiball
- 2 new "Save Polly" modes, one for each ramp
- And of course, Bionic Bart

I've been working on it for several months now, and am a little curious what other Cactus Canyon fans think of the project.

E

_{Post edited by epthegeek : Updated added bits}

Yeah, everything that you want it to do has to be fed to it. There's more detail in the thread at the P-ROC forum, but the TL;DR version is that for sound I used M1+Bridge, and for dots I mostly used a new version of WPCEdit -- that was tweaked just for this purpose.

I should probably also add that a lot of the dots are stuff I made up and/or edited and rearranged from the stock graphics. Like everything in the Bionic Bart mode I had to create from scratch. The audio for BB was in the ROMS, but nothing else.

_{Post edited by epthegeek : More detail}

I don't know that there's much more I want to add, I don't want to OVER do it. It'd be pretty easy to really trash up something like this, and I'd rather avoid that. I wanted to give it a little more to do, that fit in with the style/look of the game. There's some other smaller stuff I didn't mention here in the first post, like the new Extra Ball is Lit animation, a new "Ball Saved" animation, lots of little lighting tweaks and stuff, and so on.

A this point, I'm probably just going to do a lot of testing and finishing up details and see where it's at.

Thanks for all the positive feedback. If anybody has any specific "wouldn't it be cool if ..." or "I always thought that it should ..." type suggestions, let me know. There's quite a bit of that from me already in there -- which you'd see more of if you read the thread over in the P-Roc forums.

Yes, this is correct. In order to run the code, you need a P-Roc and a computer to drive it with.

That's kind of what I was doing with Bionic Bart. Bionic Bart is available after the 5 points of the badge are lit, and if you don't beat Bionic Bart, you don't get high noon -- Everything resets.

I may still change/tweak gameplay around Bionic Bart, it's definitely a work in progress.

As for this bit - maybe something like that could be what you get for a match, instead of a "Free game". Hit the match? Whoa! Back into action you go! Hmm..

Whoa. Typo! Man, who programs this garbage. Oh, wait.

Edit: Just checked the code, it actually is in there properly - the font file must have been missing the "F" at that point. Originally that font was just for "Bionic Bart" so it didn't have all the letters, I was adding them as I used more, and if letter isn't there it just gets left out.

I wondered about what more to do with the train too. Part of the problem with expanding CC is that you're stuck with whatever the hardware is, and there's not a whole lot to it.

One thing I do have in my notes is a 'MOVE YOUR TRAIN' (think "MOVE YOUR CAR") where it would move out to the center of the tracks, then shots to the left side move it forward, shots to the right move it back, and you have X seconds to move it X far one way or the other to 'win'. But I wasn't sure how to start it/award it. Maybe a random bounty award? or skillshot award?

I have combos in my notes too, but haven't done anything about them yet. I was actually considering having a 'River Bank' champ for going back and forth between the River ramp and Bank ramp, but haven't added it yet, because every time I look at it, it seems dorky. River-Bank, Riverbank, pffft, that's lame.

In some of the other videos on my youtube account that I didn't link, you can see that in the attract mode there's already a QuickDraw champ and a Showdown Champ - and I definitely intend to add more, just hadn't picked out specific categories. Don't want to over-do it, and with some categories, it's just a matter of whoever had a great game will set all of them. But out of the way stuff is more random. So I'll probably add something for Full Loops, Beer Mug Hits, and maybe Combos.

Update: The list of high score categories now stands at:
Quickdraw Champ
Showdown Champ
Ambush Champ
Tumbleweed Rustler (Full loops)
Town Drunk (beer mug hits)
Undertaker (Quickdraw, Showdown and Ambush combined)
Bounty Hunter (Bart brothers defeated)
Motherlode Champ (highest single motherlode score)
Combo Champ (for longest ramp combo - not just total combos)

_{Post edited by epthegeek : Added list of current categories}

RE: Move Your Train

I don't know. I don't really want to encourage hammering the center ramp, honestly. And with something kind of quirky and theme breaking like this, having it be a little more rare/random seems appropriate.

I definitely like the idea of improving the animation at the end of Polly Peril -- but I'm not sure I can make anything better myself. 128x32 pixel art is pretty tricky to make things look nice, especially in 4 color. If anybody has mad pixel art skills and wants to take a crack at it, that'd be awesome.

The P-ROC board does do some of it's own processing, for instant reactions on certain things like coils -- but for handling the actual game code, that's done with a computer, running through the P-ROC to interface with all the pinball parts (lamps, display,etc).

I like this idea. I'll switch it to either require a 2x motherlode (meaning all the jackpots had been hit) or 3 1x motherlodes to light it.

Working on combos this morning. Right now I have it set up like SW:E1 combos - using just the left and right ramp, you can chain together combos and each one is worth (currently) 50,000 as long as the chain continues.

How about if you hit the center ramp after the chain is more than 1, you get a bonus of 25,000 for the length of the chain -- so for example - if you hit the left ramp, then right the chain is at 2 and you get 50,000 for the second shot, then you hit the center and the chain goes up to 3, and you get 25,000 * 3 for that, so 75,000 --- BUT, if you're able to string more left/rights together before hitting the center it'd be worth more.

Update: ended up going with this idea. When you hit the center, it calls it a 'super combo' and caps it off - so you can hit R/L as many times in a row as you dare, then shoot the center for the bonus -- center doesn't do anything (currently) if you hit it as the second ramp, only 3rd +

_{Post edited by epthegeek : Updated info}

Thanks.

My goal is to have all the additions and changes be quality enough that if you didn't know it was custom software, you'd assume it came that way. For example, I'm not going to use the 16 'shades' the P-ROC can put out to play digitized video or anything bizarre like that. My intent is to honor and expand the game, not trash it up like 2-for-1 T-shirt shops at a tourist trap.

This video has a step through of the animation for it, but I don't have a complete version of it on any video yet. The idea is the 2 digits are behind the last 2 bottles that break.

The code is available on github, but not the sounds and dmd files. And it's hideous, amateurish and unfinished.

Eventually, when it's "finished" (read as mostly bug free and fully playable) I'll worry about how to get it into the hands of other interested owners.

I'm not really interested in collaborating on the actual coding part. Its hard enough to keep my own bass-ackwards junk straight. If there were bits in there written by other people I'd REALLY be confused. But I'm totally open to discussing ideas and suggestions. And I could use a DMD art guy that's better than me. And someone to record a mob of people yelling "MOVE .. YOUR .. TRAIN"

It has a match, but no animation. It's just numbers.

Once it's "done" enough, I'll figure out some way to get the other parts to people.

Anybody on the thread that has a CC have an oscilloscope? I'm a little worried the way I'm popping/holding the bad guy targets and posts may be bad in the long run, so I'd like to investigate what the real game code does. Especially when multiple targets are up in showdown. If that is possible.

Just wanted to say a quick Thanks to whomever it was that tipped Jim (with the scope) off to this thread. He was able to get some readings for me, and now the drop target behavior exactly matches the original code and I feel tons better about it.

And while I'm at it, here's an updated gameplay video with the code as of the weekend. Not a whole lot of the new code shows up (There's a super skill shot miss, and an ambush) but at the end, it does have the match animation and high score entry (with music, unlike the original).

I keep thinking "I'm done adding stuff to the game" and then stuff like this happens:

Yeah, it's bits of Bangarang by Skrillex, but not all of it. Since it has to repeat ad nauseum. The mode was essentially inspired by the trailer for "The Watch" which is about aliens and uses that song ... and then the wheels just started turning.

The p-roc code can actually be hooked into visual pinball with some work. I haven't looked into that yet, though.

The Gunfight mode is historically the one that is supposed to be a one-shot deal, but still allows time for multiple shots. On CCC that's a little harder, to pull off. QuickDraw, which is really more of a "hurry-up" mode where the sooner you get it the more its worth, is adjustable for time in the settings.

So, I'm going to take CCC to expo. It'll be in Rob Anthony's side room, rather than the main game room. Depending on how stable the code is by then it may not be running ALL the time, but there should be plenty of opportunity to check it out.

Big thanks to everybody who has stopped by to play the game at expo so far, especially for the patience of dealing with issues that crop up. It's making the game better one bug fix at a time.

If you're at expo and haven't checked it out yet, swing by Rob's repair room!

First - one more big thanks to everyone who played the game at Expo. The information I gathered watching everyone play was fantastic. I have a giant list of things to work on, and some new ideas for little details to add (and maybe even a new mode if it pans out). The whole weekend was great.

As for what does it take to run: 1) A P-Roc board, and 2) A computer of some kind. I'm not sure what the minimum specs are yet -- but I'll be testing some options soon. For those that don't want to bother with the computer set up end, I'll offer some kind of option of a prebuilt system all ready to play. Exactly what, and how much that will cost, I can't say at this time.

And Dino is going to lose his damn mind if he sees this but; I fixed the horrible audio hissing that the computer was making not 20 minutes after getting it home. We won't discuss how frustrating that is. It sounded like crap all weekend, then as SOON as I get it home, I manage to fix it.

Wow. I mean .. um, wow. Thanks lots, good sir.

For anybody that either missed it - or didn't get to come to expo - here's the rundown of what's in the current version of the code:

Edit: I should point out - this is all on top of everything the orignal game does.

A new super skill-shot with better prizes:
- Activated by holding a flipper when the ball is in the shooter lane, it kicks off with an intro animation, then updates the prizes available.
- One of three shots (Left Loop, Left Ramp, and Center Ramp) is randomly selected to start, and lights up.
- Each hit in the ramp bowl advances both the prize, and the shot selection.
- When the ball hits the ramp, the shot to complete is locked in, and you have one shot to make it - not a timer.
- Hitting anything else on the table cancels the shot and you lose.

A new gimmick multiball called "Drunk Multiball":
- Drunk multiball is earned with shots to the Beer Mug target (configurable amount).
- Once lit, it starts with a shot to the saloon.
- During the multiball, the GI is off and the flippers are reversed
- Shots to the beer mug target add jackpots on the 5 major shots, none are lit to start.
- There's a hefty ball save when the mode starts, and another after you're down to one ball and the mode ends.
- Jackpots in this mode are worth 5 mil, because of the difficulty.

Ambush Mode:
- Ambush alternates with Showdown, after a rack of 4 bad guys is killed via QuickDraw
- Ambush is a combination of Showdown and Quickdraw, and is a single ball mode
- At the start, 2 targets pop up. As the number killed increases, 3rd and 4th target are added.
- Targets remain up for a set (configurable) number of seconds before the bad guy "escapes".
- After a set number of bad guys (configurable) escapes, the mode ends and the bad guys reset for Quickdraws again.

A match animation:
- It doesn't serve a lot of purpose, since it's free play, but it's there.
- I'm working on some idea to make some better use out of it, we'll see if any of that pans out.

Tumbleweeds:
- Once either loop is completed, rather than continue to repeat their 'finished' state, there's a new award
- Each 'full loop' shot counts as a tumbleweed, and each one is slightly more valuable than the last

A new Ramp combo shot system:
- In addition to the existing timed combos, I added a new combo system based on the ramps.
- Shots back and forth to the Left and Right ramps build up a combo chain.
- Staring with the second shot, each shot in the chain is worth 50,000
- After a chain is running, if you hit the center ramp, it adds 1 to the chain and gives you a bonus of 25,000 times the length of the combo, and caps it off.

New high score categories:
- Quick Draw Champ
- Showdown Champ
- Ambush Champ
- Undertaker (All three previous, combined)
- Tumbleweed Rustler (full loops)
- Motherlode Champ (highest value single motherlode)
- Combo Champ (Longest ramp chain)
- Town Drunk (Most beer mug target hits)
- Bounty Hunter (Bart Brothers defeated)

MOVE .. YOUR .. TRAIN:
- Awarded from either the super skill shot, or a bounty award
- Once the mode starts, it moves the toy train to the middle of the track and draws a train on the DMD
- Shots to the left side (Loop, Ramp, or Mine) move the train left
- Shots to the right side (Loop, Ramp or Saloon) move the train right
- Shots to the center continue to move the train in the direction it was going (if not centered)
- The train on the DMD and toy train both move with hits
- The distance to move is divided into 4 steps, so the lowest shot total possible is 4
- The score for a perfect run is 1,000,000 (presently) and it goes down by 100,000 for every shot extra you take, bottoming out at 200,000. So, six shots only gets you 800,000 and so on. I might adjust the scoring. Maybe I should ad some bonus for keeping it on the screen for a high number of shots. heh.
- In the mean time, the game plays entirely normal behind the train, with the one exception that "Polly Peril: Tied To the Tracks" can't start while Move Your Train is running.

Bandits!
- On every run of the gold mine multiball, after the first one, you'll run into bandits.
- When you hit the mine to collect motherlode, they'll show up to steal it!
- 2 guys the first 2 times, 3 the next 2, then 4 after that
- You'll have a set time to defeat them
- While the bandits are around, you can't score more jackpots or motherlodes
- If you fail to kill the bad guys in time, they make off with the gold and you get no points!

Three Separate Polly Peril 'episodes'!

- Polly Peril in "Rescue on the River"
- The third shot to the river ramp starts Rescue on the River
- Any ramp shot advances our hero closer to the boat
- Hit enough ramp shots in time and save Polly!

- Polly Peril in "Hostage at the Bank"
- The third shot to the bank ramp starts Hostage at the Bank
- Three bad guys are holed up in the bank and need to be dealt with
- Each ramp shot kills one of the bad guys, you have to hit all three before time runs out!

-Polly Peril in "Tied to the Tracks"
- The third shot to the center ramp starts Tied to the Tracks (the original Polly Peril)
- Gameplay is from the original game - left & right ramps advance goal, center buys time
- Shots during polly peril are worth 250,000 - with a bonus for the other ramps being completed first
- For either episode, if it's complete - but lost - you gain 50,000 per shot for each mode
- If either episode has been won - you gain an additional 250,000 per shot for each mode

- If you fail an episode, points on that ramp shot are drastically reduced until reset by a Stampede!

Motherlode badge requirement change:
- To light the motherlode item on the badge you either need:
- 3 regular motherlodes, or
- 1 motherlode after the motherlode multiplier has increased by clearing all the jackpots

Several new animations and graphics:
- Things like "Extra Ball is Lit" and "Shoot Again" now have their own new animations.
- Some stock animations were updated on things like the bronco loops, and the river ramp
- Several places where the original game had plain text with a thin border now have fancier displays

Cowboys VS Aliens multiball:
- At seemingly random times Aliens will invade cactus canyon!
- This is a three ball multiball
- The action starts with a roving jackpot shot that shoots down a flying saucer
- If the saucer makes it all the way across the table without being hit, then aliens teleport down to the surface
- You have to kill 4 aliens to get back to the flying saucers the first time, and +2 every time they show up after that
- The saucers are where all the points are, starting at 1 mil and going up, the aliens are worth peanuts
- At this point, the saucer speed is a constant, but will soon be changed to progressively speed up with each ship.

And of course, Bionic Bart
- Bionic Bart is available where High Noon used to be.
- Once all the badge points are complete, they chase in a circle.
- A shot to the saloon starts Bionic Bart.
- Since BB is a tough guy, it takes a helluva gun to hurt him.
- A shot to either loop, and then the center ramp will complete the 2 step process of loading said weapon.
- Then a shot to the saloon deals the damage (shots to the bart brother toy don't hurt a robot, your aim must be true)
- For continuing shots, a 3rd step of "unloading" the weapon is added (either side ramp)
- Once Bionic Bart is defeated, then High Noon lights as normal -- if Bionic Bart survives, the badge resets and you have to start over!

I'm going to order up a beagleboard-xm to try ($150) and see if it runs well enough. If that'll work, the setup will be as easy as writing an image to an SD card and plugging it in. The raspberryPi I tried was too slow, I'm hoping the ARM A8 cpu in the beagle xm will be enough power.

I took a break from fixing bugs that turned up at expo to experiment with something else. It's been brought up before: Actually killing polly if you fail.

I slapped together an animation for it, and a different reaction for the shots to the center ramp after you fail (before stampede resets it). It came out pretty decent.

If I leave this in, I'll probably make it a configurable option, so you can turn it off if you'd rather.

I talked to Matt Coriale (Software) and Rob Berry (Sound) via email a while back, but the project wasn't done enough to show off at that point. They basically said "hey, cool project" but that was about it, really.

ಠ_ಠ

I've been working on some new stuff in the last few days.

"Boss Bart"
There's a whole set of voice samples for a character that isn't used much in the original software that identifies himself as 'the boss'. I wanted to make use of that stuff, and after going down a really wrong path first, what I ended up with is this:

- Whenever you're on the Bart brother fight that would light the badge goal, "The Boss" steps in
- He works like any other Bart brother, but comes with a Posse.
- When he's activated, all 4 targets pop up, as his intro is "We're the Bart Brothers and I'm the Boss"
- Killing bad guys makes shots to Boss worth more points, and increases his defeat value.
- If you lose the ball while fighting Boss, the drop targets go away, and he continues like any normal bart.
- There was no dot art for him, so I did my best to make him look like the main guy in the center of the backglass art. Seemed fitting.
- Then after you finish with Boss, the regular Bart brothers pick back up wherever they left off in the rotation.

"Marshall Multiball"
There's a quote in the rom for Marshall Multiball, but that's all. So I wasn't really sure what to do with it. Then I had this idea to make it a 'game within a game' kind of thing. When you reach the rank of Marshall, a two ball multiball starts, and the whole game turns into a bells & chimes style simple EM game with a really low scoring system - and there's a separate high score list just for that sub-game. Still tweaking it, but it came out kind of interesting.

Here's a crappy video with terrible audio trying to show off the new stuff.

I noticed after the fact that the Boss Bart damage display gets messed up after the first ball drain - he starts working like a regular bart with the push transition. That's already been fixed. Oops.

The five basic goals to light the badge points are essentially the same. When all those are lit, then you can fight Bionic Bart. If you beat binoic bart, you get to do High Noon - the "have all the balls and everything is lit" orgy of a game. If you fail at bionic bart, the badge resets and you have to start over.

Since Expo (and at Expo, really) the most common question I've gotten is: "When can I have this?"

The simple answer is: I don't know. The complex answer is: You could have it now, really.

I'll explain.

I don't know how long it's going to take to hammer out the remaining bugs to the point where it can be declared stable enough to run without worrying about issues. If you don't want to help bug hunt and report things, you should wait. I'll post about it when we get to that point.

But, if you're technically inclined, and don't mind setting up your own P-ROC & Computer to run the code, AND willing to deal with (and hopefully report) bugs, you could have it any time. Yes, really. I'm not going to start putting together pre-setup systems at this point, but the code is reasonably stable -- so if you're willing to do the setup, you could have the code now.

This may lead to: "GAH! WHAT DO I NEED TO GET?!"

What you'd need is:
1. A P-ROC with a WPC95 mounting plate ($330 from multimorphic)
2. A computer to run the code on

I don't know what the minimum specs required to run it are, but the one guy testing it is currently running it on a 1Ghz ultra mobile PC with 768 meg of ram - probably wouldn't want anything weaker than that.

I could have, but I didn't. Very simply, the code work for freeWPC is more than I can handle.

I also don't know if it would have been trivial to add all the new audio that I've added. As of August of last year, you couldn't do anything with the sound board and were limited to existing sound as was.

There is a guy doing new code for CC using FreeWPC, but I don't know anything about his project.

Update: Oh! I didn't see the original question above ecurtz - was that a ninja edit addition? Same answer still applies of course - FreeWPC can do straight to ROMS, but would have been far too difficult for my skill set.

I doubt I'll be hauling the game out of the basement again to take it to another show. However people nearby could make arrangements to stop by some time and play.

One thing that should be made clear about working with P-ROC: Once you switch the system over to that, you have no access to the original code at all. You can't just make changes to an existing game. Anything in CCC that runs like the original was re-built from nothing.

Rob did ask me to do a seminar at Expo next year, but I haven't decided yet if I'll do that for sure.

You can take out the P-ROC and put the WPC95 CPU back in at any time to have the original game back. Additionally, with a powerful enough PC driving it, you can run Pinmame to emulate the original and feed it through the P-ROC to play the original code without hardware changes. This might be handy for things like the original testing & diagnostics - which will likely always be more robust than the code in CCC.

Yeah, that's generally the issue - it's not likely that anybody would be willing to bring a CC to a show given what they're worth these days.

Are you saying that I cant unplug the P-Rock board and put the game back to the way it originally was.

No, that's always possible (putting the CPU back in). What I mean is, the P-ROC isn't some shortcut to modifying existing games. You can't just get a P-ROC and set it up and tweak a few things in the software. Anything you want the game to do via the PROC has to be written from scratch.

Several people have looked at my project and said they'd like updates to other games, but it has to be clear that I didn't just update CC, I rebuilt it entirely.

The chrome book runs googles specialize OS, doesn't it? That would mean the drivers would have to be compiled for that -- which I'm not sure is trivial. So I guess the answer is maybe, but it would be a lot more technically involved than setting it up on real windows or linux.

I started on it in May, and the total is at least "hundreds and hundreds" but I haven't really been keeping track of time spent.

I set up a wiki with information about the project - it's mostly just a FAQ list and a rundown of what's new in the game at this point. But I'll be keeping it up to date.

http://soldmy.org/pin/ccc/

Time for a bad news/good news update on the project.

The bad news: The BeagleBoard-xM I ordered to test arrived this weekend. It took a lot of wrangling, but I finally got it up and running with the machine -- only to find that it still wasn't really able to run the code at a speed I'm comfortable with. It seemed to have a little bit of discernible lag in general, but more specifically it would randomly (rarely) slow down enough that the watchdog in the P-ROC would kick in and kill the lights momentarily. I'm sure it's entirely possible to run a P-ROC with one of these things, but as it stands my project isn't working on it. Going over things with a fine toothed comb to optimize efficiency and yadda yadda is not my area if interest or expertise at all. So I'm not going to go to battle with it to work on making it run. I'm officially throwing in the towel on low end hardware. When you can piece together a barebone case, cpu, ram and full on SSD for less than $250, it just doesn't seem worth bothering.

The good news: Since Expo I've been re-working how the code handles stacking of modes, and hammering on strange issues with the management of the ball trough and I think both of those things are finally almost 100%

Real soon now some more people should be getting their P-ROCs and we'll have even more hands on players helping to weed out issues. Should be exciting. Or maybe frustrating. But hopefully exciting.

E

I'm setting up a computer for playing CCC for someone this weekend, so I shot a quick demo video of the setup. It takes about 23 seconds from power on to playable, which I don't think is too bad.

My original thought with the power on boot is that you could use the service outlet in the pin - but that's alway live as long as the pin has juice, so that won't help. Oops.

The other issue is audio. In the video, it's running through my machine which has the WPC95 audio board modified to allow for a line in. As built, the hardware doesn't have that functionality. So you either have to hack your board, or use PC speakers that include some kind of amp of their own.

Just because I'm sure someone will ask, I'll build you one of the mid-sized case version of these for five hundred bucks, the shuttle size would be six.

I worry that a net book might be too slow, or too light on ram; but good luck!

I tried some low powered stuff and gave up on it. These systems I'm building are based on celeron g530's with 2 gig of ram and an ssd -- just because I don't want to have any worry about performance issues. The one guy testing the code in Germany is using a 1ghz UMPC and from things he's said, it sounds like its functional, but lagged.

Congrats to Dan for being the 2nd person anywhere (not including me) to run CCC on their machine!
Hopefully working out the kinks won't be too frustrating in the long run.

Hot news update:

Thanks to a question from the first guy picking up a pre-configured system (I'll let him decide if he wants to out himself or not) -- the systems I set up will come with a built in Update feature, right in the game's system menu. With a properly named folder on a USB thumb drive, you can plug that in, enter the service menu, and update the files -- with no net connection, monitor, keyboard, or mouse.

Should I have done that a while ago? Sure. Had I? Nope. But I did now.

Here's a quick demo of how the USB stick update works. Just needs the files at the root of the USB stick in a specific folder name and it's good to go.

I tested a few single board computer options, and wasn't happy with the performance of even the more powerful & expensive option (BeagleBoard). So I decided to quit spending time and effort on that and just stick with real power. The issue there, of course, is that the case can only be so small. The one I built for expo is a shuttle case that might be able to be fit into the head somewhere if necessary and you built a rig to hold it -- but that's not really all the important. You wouldn't really 'work' on a computer in the pin anyway.

The boot Greg is talking about is having the CPU come on when the pinball is switched on. So that it boots up into the CCC software when the pin is switched on. Since the service outlet is always powered, you can't really use that. With the smaller shuttle case it might be possible to find the voltage it needs somewhere that you could tap into (since it uses a laptop style external PSU) but I haven't looked in to that.

It's not running a 6809 game, though, it's running a game written in python, using pygame for sound and a few hundred megs of assets.

I wonder a little if the SD card read/write speed was bringing down the performance of the beagleboard (even though I pre-load everything), but I really don't know. I just know that in my testing, it lagged to the point where I wasn't comfortable telling anyone else it was ok to use with my code.

The USB update stuff is all python, and bolted on to the pyprocgame service mode framework, yes.

The restarting is a shell script trick based on an exit code.

Was actually Greg (as mentioned a bit higher in the thread), that asked if he'd be able to update the code via USB. Yours is actually the third system -- the first being the one I built for taking to expo that will be going to Dino next weekend.

Thanks to a nudge from MrWizzo, CCC now supports a real knocker if you have one wired up.

It's something I just hadn't even considered since I never wired up a knocker in my game prior to starting the project. It's only used for the match right now, but I'm sure I'll figure out other places to make use of it.

I posted this over on the pinballcontrollers forum, but I know most of this gang doesn't read over there, so:

To finally give the match some real puprose, if you win a match now - you get "Last Call". After the match winners are determined, there's a brief intro on the DMD (lifted from champion pub) and then it prompts for whichever player won their match to step up and hit both flippers to start the mode. If more than one person won a match, the round goes in turns. If nobody steps up and hits the flippers, there's a timeout where the game will stop waiting and move on (either to high score entry or game over as needed) after 30 seconds.

The mode is a 3 ball multiball, that ends when you get down to 1 (or 0) balls remaining. If you still have a ball in play, it kills the flippers when you get down to just one to collect the ball. The side ramps and loops are lit for jackpots, and stay on. The center ramp lights for a double jackpot very briefly after any other jackpot is made. The beer mug raises the value of the jackpots, and the saloon resets the value back to the starting level.

When all players who got last call are finished, the game shows the final scores with the added last call points, then moves on to the game over/high score.

Additionally there is a new high score category for highest last call total.

Just have to test it on my machine a bit more to make sure it's solid, then I'll hand it out to the early adopters (who now number a whole half dozen, woo)

I don't know if any other game does it or not. I kind of wanted to do something along what it ended up being, and then I saw the bartender animation on champion pub this weekend and it just all came together.

As for the knocker - it just didn't ship with one. WMS stopped using them at some point, before CC even, I think. The software support for it was there, but the game didn't come with it. You just have to get a stock WMS knocker rig and wire it up.

Like so:
http://www.flippers.be/cactus_canyon_knocker.html

Code is already there, that's why it came up.

Terry has em for 22 bucks at pinballlife with the
Proper mounting rig and whatnot

Edit: ninja'd

Hey hey,

Code is coming along great. I've been keeping the wiki up to date but haven't been posting mundane details in the thread since nothing new and exciting has been added lately. I'm trying to stop myself from adding new stuff and instead just polish off what's there (but I have snuck a few more things in that are more in the Easter egg variety).

As mentioned earlier in the thread, I'll build and configure a plug and play system for either $500 for a mid size case or $600 for a smaller shuttle case.

Here's the wiki link again: http://soldmy.org/pin/ccc

So far Dino (He-Man40) and Greg (Azpinlawyer) have the pre-configured systems in house. I'd love for either of them to chime in about the game any time -- but I can tell you that Greg's had some painful hiccups with the USB update feature, since he's the first one to use it and we've hit a few kinks. Totally fixable, and I've learned from the problems, but they did occur. I put teamviewer on the boxes, so that in a worst case scenario, you can plug it into the net and fire up teamviewer and I can fix it remotely.

Here's an interesting development. Well, I think it's interesting anyway. I built a cable that hooks into the power system so the CCC computer can turn on with the switch. Originally I was looking to build a pass through adapter that connected where the green circle is in the picture below. However while I was testing voltages and looking at the wiring I noticed that there's a single black and white pair that goes to the other side of the cabinet to the area where the orange oval is - and terminates in the plug highlighted by the yellow circle. Testing that plug, it's got the 115v when the pin is on, and nothing when it's off. And it's not used for anything!

So I dug around on digikey for the proper connector and cobbled together a wire and shazam. The version shown is a non-grounded outlet, simply because the shuttle computer doesn't have a grounded plug. For the mid-size case that uses a 3 prong grounded outlet, a third wire just runs to a loop that you can wingnut on to one of the cabinet ground strap points.

IMG_0262.JPG IMG_0263.JPG IMG_0265.jpg

Although my saying this will probably jinx the project and make all sorts of things go wrong; stick a fork in it. It's done.

All the major show-stopper bugs seem to be gone, and I'm not really interested in bolting anything else on to the game. I haven't heard anything serious from the testers on the latest build, and I played a bunch on my own this weekend without issues.

Sure, going forward there will be adjustments and such, but as of right now it's really stable and pretty awesome.

So for anybody that asked me at expo when it would be 'finished' - that's today.

E

I'm not doing any dealing with a safe shutdown at this point. The game, when running very rarely writes anything to the disk so it SHOULD be no issue to just kill it. Of course, the owner of the game could safe shutdown the computer before powering off the pin if they wanted.

I didn't think to check if the default ubuntu setup in my preconfig boxes is to safe shutdown on a tap of the power button -- I'll look into that.

I might do tournament mode at some point. As far as I understand it, tournament mode should de-randomize the random awards and replace extra balls with points. The de-randomizing is the much bigger job there. I've got nothing against adding this, it's just not a big priority for me.

The game already has a Max extra balls setting. It removes them from random awards and replaces them with points in some situations once reached.

I still haven't looked into this much myself. There was someone trying to make it run a while ago (with early code) but I never heard back from him about it.

Just a quickie update about a few things.

The pre-configured systems now come with three different ways to shut down the CPU before killing the power to be sure it shuts down clean, if you're nervous about that sort of thing.

Option one: tap the power button on the CPU case and it shuts down immediately & safely.
Option two: Use the service menu's "shutdown" option
Option three: When in attract mode, hold both flippers and then hit start and it will shutdown the CPU

Of course it's still very resilient to just cutting the power as well, but computers DO prefer to be shutdown properly.

Additionally, there's a new built in faulty-switch warning system in the code. Sort of like a WMS 'credit dot' in a way. If a switch goes unused for a (configurable) amount of games, the system will tag is as possibly bad and display a message in the attract mode. You can set how many games it takes before the warning in the service menu. Here's a quick & dirty demo of how it works:

Great to hear you're happy with it (and more importantly able to play!) after the rocky start you had to go through. I'll get your power cable in the mail your way some time in the next day or two and include a thumb drive with the latest code.

Drunk Multiball is easy. Finding the Mad Cow and MOOtherload awards is more tricky

I'm running mine on a modded board. As is MrWizzo, I believe. HeMan40 runs his through PC speakers.

The work the audio board isn't very difficult, but you do need parts (a cap, some resistors, etc).

Aw, bummer. That internal power hookup is handy.

So didja try it yet? didja, didja, huh?

Now that the code is essentially complete, "testing" comes out more like "playing" and it sure is fun.

Stacking Drunk Multiball with Goldmine Multiball is great for cranking out points, but I realized last night that stacking Goldmine Multiball on to the 'Polly Peril in: Terror on the Tracks' gives you a huge advantage to actually getting the shots in and getting the extra ball reward.

Good times.

I posted new code on the wiki yesterday that completely replaces the ball trough handling code - specifically because of stuff like this. Are you running that? If not, pop over to the front page of the wiki and grab the latest goods - http://soldmy.org/pin/ccc

Not sure what you mean about the audio. There are some places where I dramatically turn down the volume of the music to make the quotes easier to hear for important items, then it pops back up. If that's not what you mean, you'll have to be a little more specific.

Aah. That sounds more like something wonky with the wired connection. It certainly shouldn't be doing that (and doesn't on mine that I've noticed).

Well then give me more details so I can look for the same things on my end. I'd love to make it right if it's really wrong, but I need to know what I'm listening for.

E

The trough code was pretty good at losing track of how many balls were in play in certain situations which causes all kinds of weirdness. Not that the drop target not being up is part of that, but the rest of it is. I haven't seen showdown do what you're describing yet on my machine, but I'll some more focused testing to see if I can force it. Is it always just target #2 that fails to rise? And only during showdown - like, it works normally in gunfight/quickdraw/etc ?

I had been kind of lax about checking the bug tracker, as I was working pretty heavily on the change around of the trough/ball save -- I'll try to be better about checking on it. It's still a fine place to report stuff.

Oh! This is an angle I wasn't getting. That's much more interesting and bug-ish. I thought it was a physical malfunction.

Sure. But it's always on power, so you'll have to turn the CPU on/off independently.

Because of the midnight madness thread, now I'm thinking I should come up with something to do for that. heh!

Looked up some videos of Midnight Madness this morning. I didn't realize every pin with the mode did essentially the same thing. Now I'm torn. I was brainstorming ideas for what to do that seemed 'madness' like, but maybe I should just include the standard midnight madness mode for consistency. Decisions, decisions.

That might be confusing, since the game already has a "High noon" in the gameplay. I mean, I get it. But ... awkward.

Just checked that one out on youtube - it's the same as the other two I checked out (Congo and JM) - all the lights flashing like mad, every switch worth tons of points and the same "Bang!" "Powie!" "Zap!" etc banners. So that's the question. Do that thing like all the other games, or do something else.

Just a clarification update - Re: Preconfigured systems.

The systems I'm building/selling are a computer only. They don't include the P-ROC board. Options are the $600 shuttle case version or $500 mid-size case version (and if your CC has a bill adapter plug, I throw in a power cord). You have to pick up the P-ROC board separately from Multimorphic, so it does get pretty pricey.

The systems Andre in Germany is selling do include the P-ROC board, but I have no idea what he's charging for them, you'd have to check with him. The thread about his systems is over here: http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cactus-canyon-continued-gaming-station

So as mentioned, after the thread about "Midnight Madness" modes, I really wanted to throw something like that on CCC. I started banging on it this afternoon, and here's where it stands right now:

I didn't want to go straight into the points orgy like every other game I've seen with a MM mode, so instead it starts with a lit thing to shoot at it. Hit that thing, it goes out and 2 others light. Etc. When all 9 are lit, it goes into the typical moonlight madness mode.

Originally (as in the video) I had it starting with just one lit item, so getting to the big points was pretty hard. So now it defaults to 3 items lit, and is user adjustable.

Still needs some work on the intro to sexy it up a bit, and maybe some sounds for hits - but I'll work that junk out later.

Here's a more complete version, video style:

Heh! I didn't mean 'sexy it up' that way, just polish it up more. The plain old text was dull.

Just wanted to mention I'll be dragging my CC out of the basement one more time to take CCC to MGC next month. I'm not sure where I'll be at this point, but I'll be there somewhere.

Small MGC update - The Spooky Pinball guys have graciously allowed me to set up in their room - so that's where it'll be, not in the main pinball area (if there is one? haven't been to MGC before). Swing by and check out their awesome stuff, and then as long as you're there already, you can try out CCC!

Also, a small note to anybody already running the game, the last update seems to have an odd bug in it were in certain conditions the mountain motor will turn on and just keep running. Harmless, but odd. If anybody comes up with a way to re-create this condition on purpose (before I can find it) let me know!

I spent the last week working up a new more feature rich service menu for CCC. I wanted to have all the basic diagnostic stuff that the real game did -- it just took me forever to get off my butt and work on it. It's got custom tests for all the main mechs, some utilities for resetting game data & scores, and a few other things, like a function to empty the trough out.

It's not fun or exciting like new gameplay features, but in the long run, for anybody running the software -- it'll be great to have. It'll be on the wiki in a few days after I test it a bit more.

new_menu.png

new_menu_2.png

And here's the switch test. The grid shows activated switches on the matrix, just like the WMS switch test does. And it shows the wire colors, and a descriptive text name for the switch rather than just the program reference name for it.

new_switch_test.png

Here's the other mech tests.

new_mine_test.png

new_train_test.png

new_drop_target_test.png

I already block the display in some situations, just forgot to do that during Moonlight Madness - will adjust. Thanks for pointing it out. So easy to miss details like that when you're nose down on making it work.

One last reminder that Cactus Canyon Continued will be at the Midwest Gaming Classic this weekend in the Spooky Pinball room. Swing by and check it out if you're at the show. See if you can find the "MOOTherlode" or "MAD COW" awards while you play

moo.png mad.png

Not only is not having a ball saver during showdown an option, you can set it so that it only does the "add a ball" thing after a cleared rack one time. So you can't perpetually go from 2 to 3, back to 2, back to 3, etc.

Somethin' weird going on in this video.

There's not much to test. The method I came up with to do the color uses the same dmd files already in place, just with a little extra data in for the colors. It'll take me a long while to get everything colored though. And then there's working out what to do for a display.

I do have to tweak a few more things to get the cross-fade transitions working, but that shouldn't be too bad.