For those of you with one of Jim's boards, I've posted a link to my F2K15 source code over on the mypinballs 'slack' in the example-code channel.
For those of you with one of Jim's boards, I've posted a link to my F2K15 source code over on the mypinballs 'slack' in the example-code channel.
I think I'm going to put a small display down on the apron and drive it from a small Arduino which I can slave to the main one on Jim's board (which has some spare outputs). No full blown video or anything like that, but basic status information like "All hits score double value" or something. I've got something similar planned for my F14, see this post :
So, been debugging the code that I wrote offline over Christmas. Found some more mistakes in the Stern manual for the game, in the list of which lamps connect to which lamp driver. Some of them are wrong, need to get the list right and then sort out my driver list.
Also, the left bank of drop targets will reset (raise), but seems like I can't drop them back down individually (they can be controlled from software). Code is doing what it should according to my debug output, so I guess I have a wiring issue somewhere. Or maybe that bank has a separate fuse. Something for tomorrow
Making good progress, more video soon. The drop target issue turned out to be my inability to RTFM.
I've also got the power-on ball search working. If there are not 3 balls in the trough at power up, then the missing ones will be up in the ball lock area somewhere, so I've added some code to continuously pulse the walker and the other kickers up there until the trough is full, just like the original Stern code does.
I spent some time extending the supplied test mode, to allow testing of individual lamps (which allowed me to pin down the 2 mistakes in the F2K manual, grrrr) and also completed the switch test.
Now I've got those lamps nailed, I can properly put the multiball build-up together, something for tomorrow hopefully.
Another quick (badly shot) video to show where we are at the moment. At power-up, there is a ball up in the lock area (quite common), you can see the game process the ball out and down to the trough before game play can start. The original game does this too, and it's important since the ball lock area has no switches in, so when starting up the game can't detect if there are balls there or not, so kicking them out is the only option.
The multiball is now working more or less as it should, although there are a couple of things to fix. I've also got hold of some of the voice samples from the original machine and loaded them onto the SD card which this setup uses. You can hear that when the drop targets are knocked down, amongst other times.
This video shows the setup for multiball, and then multiball starting. I think in terms of re-creating the original F2K game play I'm probably around 95% of the way there now. Still to do in this "original version" :
- the multiball set up is not quite right, you have to drop the 54321 targets once too often, should be an easy fix.
- some extra lamp effects when things like multiball start
- stop playfield objects from scoring during the ball search at power - up
Cool, I don't know the original game (well, I played it once a long time ago), but great accomplishment having the original rules reprogrammed. Should be cool to go on with new rules from that point.
Getting back to this after some time off. Can play the game now, but there is a bug in the code somewhere handling what happens when a ball drains, related to working out if the ball is over or not (it might be one of the balls in a multiball, in which case need continue play and not end the ball). Only happens sometimes, so trying to work out the sequence of events that causes it. Getting close though
After some discussions with Jim, I'm making the source game code for Flight 3000 (not 2K16 any more, don't want to commit to a final date!) freely available under the GNU license. This basically means that you can do what you want with it, provided anything you do with it is also made publicly and freely available under the same license.
Please note that the framework code which actually interfaces my game code to his hardware (for switches, coils, displays, lamps etc) is not being generally released; that along with more example code is only being made available to those purchasing his controller hardware. My game code is based on and expanded from that example code.
This code is being revised fairly often at the moment as I chase out the last few bugs, but if you want to see what I've been up to feel free to browse! Although you can't use it without his libraries/framework or hardware, it might inspire you (or put you off completely!) diving in and having a go at a machine of your own!
Here's the link to github for this project :
Managed to spend some time chasing down a few more bugs, and I also spent some more time playing the original game on my tablet (on Pinball Arcade) to clear up in my mind how some of the original rules worked.
So here's another video of progress at the moment. First ball drains quite quickly, but ball save is still active so I get it back again. Play a full 3 ball game and starting multiball. You can also see my laptop on the left, which is connected to the main controller Arduino in the backbox. The Arduino is writing a lot of debug information to the laptop screen, so I can see what is going on behind the scenes.
Still a few bugs to iron out, and a switch or two to adjust, then we'll have the current F2K code base to build on for some new features!
Quoted from Snux:Still a few bugs to iron out, and a switch or two to adjust, then we'll have the current F2K code base to build on for some new features!
Great work, keep it up!
-mof
So, priorities have changed and I realistically don't have the time to carry on with this one. It's going to someone else that hopefully will continue the journey, but whether or not they post here I'm not sure.
Life is too busy at the moment to give this any focus, but the plan is to blow the cobwebs off my F14 soon and get back on that project. Thanks to those of you that followed along, maybe see you in the F14 thread again soonish
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