(Topic ID: 172426)

ESCAPE! - A New Pinball Project

By jim5six

7 years ago

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220 posts
52 Pinsiders participating
Latest reply 3 years ago by SLCpunk2113
Topic is favorited by 102 Pinsiders

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Quoted from GotAQuestion:
Sorry to dig this far back in your thread BUT. Is there such thing as just a blank table for Visual Pinball that you can just layer items onto? Every time I try "New Table" it builds this shitty EM with junk all over it. VP has to be the least intuitive tool I've ever used. To the point I stopped using it and figured I'd just draw my designs on paper and then go to foam core on a whitewood - skip the virtual part which I really wanted to use.

Maybe you can take an existing DMD game and modify it. The game rules won't be in there (they'll be in the ROMS)... but you can script your rules much like Scott Gullicks (sp?) did for Wrath of Olympus.

You can remove all references to the VPinMame "Controller" object because that's what pulls data from the ROMS.

It might be a good exercise to grab something like an Addams Family, remove the VPinmame stuff (ROMS) and rewrite that game.

All in all these games are just

1) Events (switches)... you respond to switch events
2) Lights (you can program these to respond to events)
3) Coils (etc... same)

....

If you want better/different ramps, try bringing in assets from other VP games rather than trying to build them from scratch at first.

OP
Quoted from jim5six:
WORD OF CAUTION HERE: the measurements in VP are not accurate at all! i got frustrated very quickly trying to figure out why stuff wasn't lining up how i expected until I started checking actual size vs VP size. I ended up remaking almost everything for VP to match reality.

True. Many of the playfields are "re-created" by using digital photographs of the actual physical playfields; but there's distortion in there... and not just from VP placing the playfield in perspective. There's distortion because the camera lenses taking these photographs are curved (as all camera lenses are) and it is unlikely that the photographs are taken with the lens being perfectly perpendicular to the playfield surface. Any yaw in the camera angle is going to distort the image, no matter what steps are taken in Photoshop to straighten them out.

A playfield scan is much better, but still often off for the reasons Jim explained.

Shooting very smoothly. Seems like a friendly layout. Awesome ramps.

Hey Jim... you say DXF file (in illustrator) to Fusion360. Anything more to it than that in terms of modeling the ramps? I'll be picking up a 3D printer soon, and just assumed I could make the models in Blender work. But if you already have the process down.... I'd be interested to know how that's working for you.

Thanks!

Way cool, Jim. Always love the part where people start physically building parts and putting things together.

OP
Quoted from jim5six:
This was made from a piece of metal i had laying around, nothing special since its basically the mock-up, see if it will even work version. It's a little thin for final quality @ 1/16" which is why I made some corner reinforcements and double walled the coil mount section.
I started by basically sketching out my idea on paper, then taking a bunch of measurements off existing coils mounts and the 3d printed part I created. Then I cracked open Fusion 360 and drew it there as a flat sketch so I could get a good print pattern for the cut lines and center hole punch. I went ahead and "bent it" up in Fusion to get a visual of what it should look like when its done.

I was happy with this so I grabbed before mentioned piece of metal and stuck the pattern to it (I printed it on 8.5 x 11 Avery sheet so I could just stick it to the metal, no redraw...) I cut all the lines with a skilsaw with a metal blade, cut the circles with a drill press and beat the crap out of it with a hammer vice and anvil style bends... It not the most sophisticated way to attack it but I am pretty happy with the way it turned out considering.
I cobbled most of the coil parts together from my bin-o-parts, except for the ball stop rod, that I bought new but had to turn it down to a point so it would slip between the balls and not try to pop them up, like the lord of the rings ball lock is what came to mind as an example. We will see if that is true or not...
I got it mounted last night and the soldering done but ran out of time so I still need to get it working in the code so there has not been a test yet. fingers crossed.
Thanks,
-Jim

Amazing process. Love that you can draw something, get the model, and then hammer it out.

Looks great, Jim! I'm impressed. That's a cool behind-the-upper-flipper hole you got there

Seems to shoot really smoothly. Will be watching to see how the vacuum-forming goes with those ramps.

Congratulations Jim on all the hard work and accomplishment

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