I had been racking my brain trying to think of the best way to return the ball to the bar. This is perfect in it's simplicity.

I think you could just have that hole tube be longer than the rest (as in, not flush on the back side like the others) and then wrap the LED's flexible PCB around it and then tape it down. You're already going to need to squeeze the IR sensor and emitter in there as well, they could just be further away so you have more space to work with. In order to protect it a little, just mount the RGB LED on the bottom of the tube so a falling ball won't smash into it.

I randomly came across this thread in my Google searches: http://www.gamoover.net/Forums/index.php?topic=35454.0

It looks like we're not the only ones attempting to build an ICB style game at the moment. Competition!

I don't think they've cut anything yet. I skimmed the thread quickly, and through a translator, but it didn't seem to me that any of them owned a machine already and are basing all their measurements and assumptions on photos of the game and the Visual Pinball recreation. I believe the photos you see of cabs and playfields are all Le Chuck's progress shots.

Yeah, they are recreating the vanilla game. Something to note is that they are building their game with a single Arduino and segmented displays, which I'm sure is of interest to some of the watchers here vs. our RPi + lots of boards, high-level approach.

Came across a Chinese ICB clone called "Tom's Adventures": http://forum.vecchiflipper.it/flipper-forum/discussione4942-ice-cold-beer-taito-cda.html

It has pirates!

CIMG1083_(resized).JPG

This guy is making Ice Cold Beer cabinets:

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=384191

Any idea what he is selling these cabs for?

Yeah, I believe this is just the I.C.E. ICB layout, based on the top three target holes.

Wow, those are nice. I'd want one for my ICB if I wasn't planning on building a new game.

It's too bad those cut vectors aren't online somewhere, that would save me a lot of time. My progress on mapping out the cabinet has been pretty slow. I was busy for most of the weekend with other obligations and assembling my CNC. Hopefully I'll make some meaningful updates this week.

I found this ICB clone called Rock 'N Roll Verti-go. It's an LCD screen vs. a mechanical game, but it shows off some theming possibilities and ways to modernize the cabinet design:

Back on the first page of the thread, ralphwiggum mentioned that he has the I.C.E. version of the game. Perhaps he can open his up and measure the playfield size for us. I don't know how much of a hassle it'd be, but I'd also love to see a close-up photo of a target hole's proximity sensor on the back side of its playfield.

I had the same thought of adding holes to the big "wasted" space at the bottom of the playfield, but I after some more thinking about it, that space isn't very optimal for holes. People already tend to lean down to better see the lowest holes on the existing playfield, if they were any lower it might be pain in the rear for them. The wide open space also serves as a safe practice zone for newbies to get their bearings in trying to balance the ball. We could probably reduce the newbie zone by an inch or two to add more hole space at the top, but I think the cabinet would have to be designed to shift the playfield up by the same amount of inches to prevent people from having to lean over more. Depending on how much space you have to eat up, you have to move the LCD screen elsewhere.

About the LCD screen, I was thinking of two potential options:

The first is that the LCD can stay in the spot that it's at. In order to remedy the viewing angle problem, we could design a mount for it that would have the screen tilted back so that it's angled toward the viewer's eyes (say 45 degrees), then fill the hole in the playfield with a piece of acrylic so that a ball doesn't roll into it. That option may require a larger hole cut vertically to see the top of the LCD screen.

The other option is to move the LCD screen to the top of the playfield. Le Chuck's Space Base has the score displays relocated to the top right section of the playfield. No reason we couldn't fit a 5" screen up there too if we wanted. It doesn't necessarily need to be cut into the playfield, it can be above it (like Space Base), maybe even above the playfield glass if the cabinet we design allows for it.

FEB 8 (8) (resized).JPG

CNC machine's still not running yet. I've been really busy lately and hadn't had much time to put toward ICB or CNC unfortunately. I was able to sit down last night for the first time in a week or so and continue assembling the CNC, but I wasn't able to complete it. I'm probably about 80% through the build now, and after that is going to be calibration, which I'm expecting to be another huge hassle.

I understand that. Sorry it's been taking so long. I think I should be less busy with work/personal life and at home more after next week, but something always seems to come up. I've also been having issues learning Fusion 360. For all of the things that are really great about it over 3D modeling packages I've used in the past (constraints!), it's not quite as intuitive as I'd like in some ways. Aside from that, I've learned it's more difficult to measure out a cabinet if you can't take it apart.

If you'd like to build a makeshift stand for your playfield at the proper incline for testing, it is tilted back 5 degrees from vertical, and the gap from the playfield to the glass is 0.75".

I agree. The software is already at the 80% solution, at least for vanilla ICB; it'd be playable if connected to the hardware. There's little reason to keep tinkering with the software until we get test cabinets built so we can refine it properly with the hardware.

What still could be done in the mean time is figuring out the complete circuit for the Arduino and the IR emitter/detector break beam pairs. Wiring up one sensor/emitter pair is straightforward since there are tutorials specifically for that, but I'd like to see a breadboard wired up with all ten pairs functioning as expected. I don't know how to calculate the resistance for all the diodes in the same circuit or if a capacitor is needed, etc.

Sounds right to me.

As is my typical luck with big electronics purchases, I found out earlier this week that Inventables released a new version of the X-Carve less than two weeks after I received mine, and discounted the model I bought by hundreds of dollars. I emailed them to find out what I could do about it since my machine was ordered so close to the update; I hadn't even finished assembling mine yet and it was already out of date. The options were either partial credit toward the upgrade or returning my unit for a refund. Unfortunately the partial credit wasn't high enough for me to accept (it's about half the amount that my model's been discounted by), so I decided I would be returning my machine and then ordering the new one. Instead of spending my nights in CAD recreating the Ice Cold Beer cabinet, I've been spending them taking my mostly assembled CNC machine apart and repackaging the pieces into their original bags and boxes to ship back out.

At least they offered you the ability to return.

Yeah, definitely. I don't have any animosity toward Inventables; they didn't have to offer me anything but they did. It's just my bad luck on timing.

I love drinking ice cold beers and playing games. Not DIY, but BYOB please.

I don't have anything to offer yet, but I just happened across this website. Someone else has already started building an Ice Cold Beer clone months before us! I haven't had a chance to go through their site yet, so I don't know how far along they are. This could be a great resource for us:

http://www.everythingmaker.co/project-goal-zekes-peak-arcade-knockoff/

Edit: Just took a good read of the site. I was a little too excited and should have read before I posted. He's still in the preliminary stages, but he's done some cool things already. He's doing a mine shaft theme and is going to use physical gauges and maybe nixie tubes for score display. Sounds awesome!

Another suggestion would be to use a Current Mirror instead of a resistor. I use current mirrors for most of my LED projects because it allows me to control the current thru each LED from one node. Very likely overkill for this situation; but it may help with some of the overheating problems seen with WPC ball trough and opto resistors.

That's pretty cool. I really like the gold mine theme too; you're bringing gold out of the mine on a mine cart. That seems to mimic the ball on the rod. The ball could probably be gold, which would add to the theme. The longer it takes the more gold falls out of the cart. A bit of a stretch, but it could work. Your goal is to collect as much gold as possible. During normal gameplay your target hole is flashing yellow. There could be random callouts of "Fire in the hole!" then have a red/orange flash in one of the non-target holes along with an explosion. I really like the whole wild west theme that goes along with this, think: crazy prospectors, outlaws, shootouts, saloons, poker, rattlesnakes, runaway mine cars, cave-ins, gold strike, dynamite, "Fire in the hole!", "There's gold in them-there hills.", "Eheheheh!", "Rootin'-Tootin'", etc.

Then there is always this western trope:

MODE EXAMPLES

Standard Gameplay:
For added variety, I still like the idea of having different paths for the basic game. In this case those could be different gold mines. Perhaps each mine has it's own bonus game mode. I'm thinking something like Shaker's Cavern (Cave In); Gamblers Gulch (Poker); and El Dorado (Gold Strike). These paths would play basically like the original ICB. The most notable exception being that after X targets completed there would be a bonus mode. Of course those seeking a more traditional experience could turn off the bonus modes.

Cave In:
A survival mode where a random holes starts flashing red once per X seconds. These represent cave ins. You can repair them by putting a ball into the flashing hole. If there are ever X cave ins at any one time the entire mine collapses, with a cascading light show, ending the mode. Perhaps have the mine become increasingly unstable by slowly increasing the rate of the cave ins.

Poker (Video Mode):
I kind of like the idea of being able to gamble with your gold. Perhaps there could be a video mode that's simply jacks or better draw poker. Having this programmed into the game, could allow users to play it as a standard poker machine, an added bonus.

Gold Strike:
All target holes flash yellow. Collect as many as possible in X seconds. Make one and the hole illuminates solid and X seconds are added to the countdown. Targets could be assigned a value of gold, somewhat randomly. For example, the easiest targets would be randomly assigned 100, 100, 50, 50, 0; the middle difficulty targets would be assigned 150, 150, 100, 100, 50; and the most difficult targets would be assigned: 500 (Jackpot!), 250, 200, and 150. This would add a slight element of luck which might be appropriate for a gold strike, although perhaps the jackpot award should always be in the most difficult target.

Practice Mode:
Choose any target hole and try to improve your high score. Tracking a high score for each target is an improvement over the original ICB that will add replay value.

You're really good at fleshing out the themes and conjuring up game modes!

I have to admit that aside from general busy-ness and the disappointment of having to disassemble and return my CNC machine, I've been pretty demotivated on the slow, grueling process to CAD the ICB cabinet. It's been a pretty frustrating experience, to be honest, because I still don't quite understand how to use Fusion 360 very well and spend too much time fighting the program or Googling around to figure out how to overcome strange obstacles that I face. I end up spending multiple evenings to produce simple pieces that I know I'd be able to recreate in my normal 3D modeling tool in an hour or so. It's annoying to have a skill in a sort of similar kind of tool and not have it translate to that other tool.

At the back of my mind as I sit at my computer or stand at the ICB cabinet with a ruler is that there's very little ROI for the amount of work I'm spending collecting measurements. Sure, if the CAD was complete then people would be able to reproduce Ice Cold Beer cabinets for their original games, but that's not my end goal for this effort, and a lot of the measurements are unnecessary or would need to be heavily altered for our new game since we're changing the internals, like not using the vacuum-molded backer and having a different PCB mounting configuration.

I suppose my problem is now I'm seeing this huge CAD recreation effort as an obstacle to progress on other things that could be done instead, like designing a new cabinet for our game. I think it would be easier for us to create a new one from scratch than for me to accurately measure out the existing one.

cabcad (resized).jpg

cabback (resized).png

cpmount (resized).png

Unfortunately that's going to be my best way of contributing because when it comes to the programming, I'm going to be pretty useless. I'm decent at building, but to be perfectly honest you guys are more perfectionists. I'm more of a measure once, cut twice type of guy. For this I'll probably just take a monkey see, monkey do approach. I also do understand that some of my ideas; like the video poker mode might be too hard to program, but I figured I'd toss it out there.

I woudl 100% suggest making a new cabinent. The original and tatio ICB versions are a complete waste of space. Too tall, too deep, and just plain too much. It is wasted resource and cost, plus added wasted time to recreate.

Make it better I say.

There is no reason you cant make the entire thing as a wall mount unit to take up way less space and material.

Keep in mid the original was purpose built to stand out and bring in people. Teh world has changed and as I understand it you are building for your own home and cuold likely cut 50% of the size when redesigning.

That's plenty, I assure you. Programming help is nice, but it's important to also have people that can think up fun new ways to play the game.

Yeah, I'm getting this way after burning myself out on these measurements, haha.

Yeah, might as well. If an idea seems really fun, maybe we'll be inclined to put in the extra effort to try to make it happen. Or maybe something that seems like it would be hard to program actually isn't.

Yeah, I don't think either of us have a choice but to separate the top and bottom due to the sizes of our CNC machines. I looked back and saw that Le Chuck also cut his cabinet in two pieces because his CNC bed wasn't big enough either. In the end he covered the seam with laminate so you don't even know it was there.

This will be easy: the incline is 5 degrees. The glass is made parallel to the playfield by two 0.75"x0.75"x38ish" pieces of wood resting against the playfield, one on the left and one on the right.

This is another example of the cleverness of the original game makers. There is nothing holding the sides of the glass. It's secured in place by the top and bottom. It's not apparent, but in the second image on my CAD post (#480) you can see the glass in place (it's the darker gray part). The glass is only supported on the bottom from the left and right edges. The third image shows the key components to holding the glass in place.

The bottom image shows a piece that I call the control panel mount. This piece has the clips screwed into it that are used the hold the control panel into place from the underside. There is a notch in the top left of the image that is 0.25" wide and rotated 5 degrees. The bottom of the glass (which is 3/16" thick) rests in there. The rest of the glass is supported along its sides by the two 0.75"x0.75"x38ish" pieces of wood, which are also inclined to 5 degrees. This way they provide the necessary support to the glass and keep it parallel to the playfield spaced by exactly 0.75". These two pieces of wood are also lined with some sort of thin padding to protect the glass from the wood. The back edge of the control panel is cut at a 5 degree angle to act as a continuation of that 0.25" gap from the control panel mount notch.

I didn't render the top of the cabinet so you're not seeing how it secures at the top. The cabinet's "ceiling" panel has a 24.5"x0.75"x0.75" piece of wood screwed into it. It is positioned just so that the playfield glass cannot tip forward. This is sufficient to keep the glass in place without moving.

Another important feature to point out on the control panel mount is the grove to the right of the 0.25" notch in the top left of the bottom image. I'll explain why shortly.

To remove the glass from the cabinet, remove the control panel, then push up from the bottom of the glass and then pull the bottom of it toward you. The space at the very top behind the glass is empty to allow the glass to pivot for this action. Next, set the glass into the groove I pointed out in the previous paragraph. This will lower the glass enough to reveal its top edge. Now you can grab the glass by the top and bottom to move it somewhere away from the cabinet.

To place the glass into the cabinet, set the glass into the groove on the control panel mounts, then lean it against the playfield (really, against the two 0.75"x0.75"x38ish" pieces of wood). Now push the glass up from the bottom edge and make it flush against the playfield, then lower it into the 0.25" notch in the control panel mounts.

The explanation might have been overly elaborate, but if you can visualize it, it's pretty simple. I'll take some photos when I go home to show the notch and groove in action.

There was nothing wrong with the machine, just my timing ordering it. A newer model was released before I even finished assembling mine, so I emailed the company, asked them what I could do to upgrade my system since it was such a recent order, and the option I chose was to send it back to order the new one. That's the gist of it, but I talk about it a little more in post #473.

Here are the photos, as promised.

This is the ceiling panel on top of the cabinet, showing where it and the block in front meet the glass:
a (resized).jpg

This is the control panel mount, with the glass resting in the notch at its top.
b (resized).jpg

Reaching under the glass to push it up and toward me.
c (resized).jpg

Glass out of the notch and moved into the groove.
d (resized).jpg

Top of the glass when lowered into groove, showing empty space behind its normal position to allow it to pivot when removing.
e (resized).jpg

Glass removed, showing empty control panel mount, and how it, the long spacer piece of wood, and the playfield are all touching each other.
f (resized).jpg

One more shot showing the playfield, spacer wood, guide rail.
g (resized).jpg

Very cool!

No updates on my end either. I still haven't heard a peep about my refund since my X-Carve kit was delivered back to the company. I'm sure they've had their hands full, getting their flood of orders for the new product out to their other customers and my return has been on their back burner. Their refund page said they try to process refunds within one week of receiving their returns, but it's been three weeks now since UPS delivered it back to them. I don't intend to order the new X-Carve until I get my refund back. I can't say it hasn't bothered me trying to be patient with this, because every time I think about ICB, I think about being out $1500 and a CNC machine. I'm going to email them tomorrow to check my status.

In the mean time, I've decided for sure that I want my personal ICB project to be based on the '90s X-Men cartoon. I bought all the DVDs and watched the entire series to reacquaint myself with the material. (I also then watched the entire 2009 "Wolverine and the X-Men" series, which I thought was actually better, but I'm making the '90s theme for nostalgic reasons.) I also roughed out a custom design for the cabinet, started figuring out some lighting features, and trying to map out some gameplay elements. I'm pretty excited for it.

We are probably at a point where we should make some decisions for the open source project.

Do we want to design it as a bartop, wall mount, or free-standing cabinet? Like Whysnow said, it could have a shallower depth if you don't need to worry about tipping it over, so a wall mount would be thinnest. If it's free-standing, we're definitely going to need to design it to with a separate top and bottom, since neither winteriscoming or I will have a CNC machine big enough to allow us to cut the entire height in one pass, and assuming we design for it, it gains the benefit of being able to break down to move and transport easier. If we go bartop, should we consider scaling it smaller?

Aside from the depth, the upper half of ICB's cabinet is already surprisingly about as small as it can be without either removing holes from the outside edges of the playfield (unacceptable) or reducing the ball size. If you switch the 5/8" ball for a pachinko ball (11mm), then you can scale the machine's size down by 30%. So if a full-size ICB bartop would be, say, 25" wide by 40" tall, then a bartop using a pachinko ball might be 18"x30". Potential problem then is that the game will feel completely different, and probably be harder with a lighter ball.

I think we're ready to nail down a theme. Likely the theme will have some influence on the cabinet design to some extent, and having a decided theme could help everyone brainstorm game modes and get the artists thinking. There have been a lot of good theme ideas offered so far. I skimmed through the whole thread and collected the ideas presented below:

(I messaged Ben back when I made this post and never got a reply back. I'm going to assume that means the assets do not have a license that will allow us to use them in our project.)

I'm so in if this becomes reality!

I don't really have any strong feelings about the design, other then we should stick with the original size ball. That probably only excludes a bar top. Either a wall mount or full cabinet would be fine. As for themes, my top three would be: Gold Mine, Firefighter, and Ice Cold Beer: Next Round. I think my favorite was that last suggestion of Gold Mine. It's a fun western(ish) theme where the base game makes a lot of sense, bringing gold out of the mine, plus there are a lot of special modes that could be programmed to add variety.

I see what you did there. I just noticed that there is a mobile game called "California Gold Rush". I've been watching a few youtube videos and we might be able to get some inspiration from that. Personally, I kind of like their menus and music.

PS: I'm perfectly find with a stand up.

The ideas I've liked most so far have been the gold mine and the treasure hunter.

But if we were to go with the gold mine theme, I think it would only be right to expand to general Western/cowboy theme rather than just completely biting the other builder's idea. That way, gold mining can just be one component of the game rather than the whole thing. There's plenty that can also be done with a Western theme: street shootouts, quick draw, bank robberies, cattle herding, railroad building/train hijacking, bounty hunting, dying of dysentery, rodeos, saloon fights, etc. It'd be the perfect theme to integrate the HORSE and poker modes people discussed early on.

The treasure hunter theme would allow for a lot of color variety and interesting opportunities with artwork, with hidden temples, jungles, witch doctors, etc. You could easily integrate pirates into a theme like that.

Either way, I like the idea of going campy/funny with it rather than serious.

I've been following along and will definitely try to put one together towards the end. I'd offer to help, but not sure what my time commitment could be, but I'd be more than happy to help with software if needed.

Western theme sounds fun, for campy you can always take a look at cactus canyon or Blazing Saddles for inspiration.

From an open source perspective, at a minimum, someone should be able to take the instructions/parts list/wiring diagram and implement an existing marble game like Zeke's Peak or ICB. But ultimately someone should be able to take the framework and expand it for any themes/modes they want, and then implement it in a standup/tabletop/wall mount cabinet if they so choose.

We've already done that. The basic Ice Cold Beer game has already been programmed in Python and works on a Raspberry Pi with servos and switches. We're at a point now where we want a new, polished game vs. a complete clone of the existing title.

Why don't we reach out to the other builder? My fear is that without a very specific main theme we will end up over-complicating it. For the base game my preference is to keep it simple. We create different routes of target holes. Each route is a different mine, with it's own unique theme and corresponding bonus game. Some ideas: cave-ins, robbery, drinking, gambling, flooding, haunted mine, runaway train, cowboy's and aliens, etc. Basically you can incorporate any of the western tropes, but do so within the theme of that particular mine and bonus mode. Have the options menu so the players can choose to play the "story mode" or instead select to just play their favorite bonus games. If you want to toss out a troupe idea, I can brainstorm an example.

PS: I might have already said this, but if there is any way to have multigame achievements like in modern home console games that would be awesome. So after you collect 100,000 gold nuggets it unlocks that achievement. I think small things like that would greatly add to the replayability.

How about a Midnight Madness mode? That might be a way to work in a crazy trope like Cowboys vs Aliens. If your playing at midnight the game goes dark and the ball and lever return to the starting position. We see a flashing light and hear a loud crash. Our prospector is awakened, perhaps rattling some moonshine bottles in the process, "What in tarnation is goin' on out there!" He exits the door yelling and firing his shotgun into the air, "Ya bandits better not be tryin' to steal my gol...What the fartnocker!" He discovers the crashed UFO. Aliens use a ray gun to brainwash him to mine uranium to refuel their ship. Perhaps during this mode there is no penalty for dropping the ball in a non-target hole. It's all about collecting as many of the green target holes as quickly as possible. When finished the UFO flies away and the game resets itself to the previous mode. Just as that normal mode restarts our prospector murmurs something about a bad dream and needing to lay off the moonshine.

EDIT: Another mode that might work for Cowboys vs Aliens would be a type of "Space Invaders". Lit target holes start at the top of the playfield. Every X seconds there is an advance and the next lower holes are lit. Like in the video game, these are the ships that are advancing towards the bottom. This becomes faster and faster. The goal is to survive as long as possible by shooting the ships before they reach the bottom. The animations on the screen could be our drunkin' prospector firing his shotgun wildly at the advancing ships.