Does this ever happen with official code? I've never heard of it.

I'd love it if they did that! It's not that hard to edit the assembly to modify a few bad rules. Or gottlieb. Or even classic Sterns. Most aren't even licensed, there shouldn't be any problem with that. A lot of older games could be improved drastically if we had access to the source code, aren't licensed, and the companies aren't around any more to care about people smoking their games or anything.

Something like releasing the code (minus assets in the case of licensed stuff) for games more than 5 or 10 years old would be great future proofing and would help prop up resale values of games. Of course, the bigger companies won't do this, because it would take effort on their part, not worth it, but it would be a nice gesture.

Would this be good for pinball in general? Yes. Will most companies do it? No. I don't see why the OP is getting all these downvotes just because the companies can't be bothered.

If you wait till the machine is out of warranty anyway, you don't need to worry about this.

Resale value is half the reason pins can be this expensive. If you looked at your new Premium and knew it was only going to be worth $3000 a year later, you might rethink that. People know their games are gonna be worth a good price later on, so that helps the initial sale. Will that outweigh the cost of setting it up? Probably not. As I said, most bigger companies won't bother. Would earn them a lot of good will though. How many people are sour because their game got dropped with unfinished code and is now dead?

In the end though, this is a niche market, and companies live and die by the health of the hobby. Open sourcing the old code helps rejuvenate cheaper games, helping more people get into the hobby, etc.

It's still something that'd be smarter for smaller companies like Spooky to do though. They even started doing it, but then stopped for some reason? Did they ever mention that on their podcast? It seems like Rob Zombie and Dominoes are suffering from their code and Spooky is already hard pressed to keep up with their code, and the community would happily jump on it, balancing stuff, adding things here and there to their own branches, which Spooky could then selectively merge into their own official base.

With most of the game code already written, people won't generally be modifying any areas that can cause lock ups anyway, so the danger of that is lessened further

Most people don't need to care about getting into the code, they just need to have better code available, just as most people who benefit from regular open source software don't know how to code either.

So Walking Dead?

Supposedly it is/was but I can't find the code on their site anymore Maybe I'm just missing it. They have the graphics files available and the sounds can be replaced, which is great, but that's the stuff that'd be easier to hack anyway.

Probably easier to figure them out by playing than by reading the source :/

What if I enjoy fixing pinball code?

Free labor? Why do most tech companies open source much of their code?

How's that been working out for ya?

1. Planning on it
2. Built my own boards, PROC costs too much
3. I did.

Plenty of options, yes, but the best one for pinball in general is if they'd just release the code.

Many do.

That doesn't have any bearing

And the companies still aren't finishing their code.

Your estimate of how many people would care is way low, but either way, it not happening doesn't mean it's not better. If you don't demand, then it's definitely not going to happen. It doesn't hurt to have it in the conversation, and it's in no way entitled to want to be able to fix the code on your $7000 machine.

Yeah, and screw those people who did, they have no right to ask for better treatment. You bought the game, you are entitled to complete code. If the company can't deliver, it's on them.

Great to hear

It's not like the rules code (the thing people are actually interested in improving) is at all useful without a Stern machine. And the backend code hasn't changed much since the 90s. There's nothing fancy or secret about it, so nothing to steal.

Besides, tens of thousands of companies invest tons of money in their open source projects. Open sourcing something isn't giving it away, it doesn't work like that.

Even if some op was stupid enough to put untested custom code on their route machine, Stern could easily add restrictions like free play to modified code. The whole 'oh no someone's going to break the game' thing is overblown anyway. The backend has tons of safety checks to make sure nothing gets locked on.

If it was a thankless chore to design and create the boards then yeah, I'd totally have just used existing ones (although I would have used OPP, not shelled out for proc), but for me it isn't. I learned a ton and I enjoyed most aspects of it. All part of the experience. When I show my machine to someone and go 'I built this' and they ask what i mean, I can say 'everything'. Boards code, playfield, wiring, etc.

Also I don't like the idea of running a pinball machine on top of windows/Linux, let alone needing a whole small desktop in there. Slow to boot and too many things to go wrong.

Picture in my avatar for reference. I grabbed a video at one point:

I never publicly announced it or made a thread or anything. I had some posts about it on my blog, but s combination server and backup drive failure plus some mysteriously missing other backups means that blog is lost never got any interest on it before, so I didn't put a lot of time into documenting things, but if someone wants to know anything about it I'm happy to expound. I've gone into detail via a few pms to people in the past.... I wanted to bring the game to pintastic the first year but due to a lot of connector problems (lesson learned: buy a good crimper, use locking housings, and don't mount boards upside down under the playfield) it isn't reliable enough to move. As long as it sits in the corner though it's been pretty reliable, so I've been content to let it sit and try to make my next game solid.

But companies *do* it. And they keep doing it. So it's not a sink of money, they're getting more back from it.

And code an entire game from scratch on specialized hardware no one else has instead of just fixes to existing code

Since when is it the customer's job to make business models for the companies?

That's literally what it is. A guy on a forum is saying we should have access to the source code of our games. And he's right.

So there's been no positive from people introducing tournament roms + fixes, home roms, etc for existing games?

If it's better for the hobby, the companies "should" try to do it, as they live and die by that. In a simpler case, whoever owns the rights to the classic sterns "should" release the source code to them. There's no downside for them, they're not in the business anymore. Just throw the disk up on github and let the community take care of it. It'd be better for everyone involved.

Is it actually viable for modern games? I don't think any of us know their business internally well enough to say. Would it be better for pinball if they did? Yes. Will they bother if no one asks for it? I doubt it. If it turns out to be impossible on their end after everyone asks for it, would they do it? No. So the best course of action is to ask for it. But no one listens if you just ask politely, so we need to demand it.