I recreated the UFO guy and gave away my 3D file for free if anyone wants it.
https://www.printables.com/model/414199-foo-fighters-pinball-alien

Be on lookout for these toys coming soon from some modders. Hopefully they don't charge stupidly or I might step in and undercut them. If anyone can measure the length/width of the ufo and post or PM that would be great so everyone knows the proper size.

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Tons of experience, but first actual owned game. Pro coming tomorrow \m/

Local arcade has the Pro but they will swap when premium comes in. So I at least get to play the Prem. Bummer the price for Prem cuz that Upper PF and the deadpost are the features I thought were really slick. PM me if interested in Overlord replica toys for the Pro. I may start getting those out since I decided to buy the game, but will also post back if/when available.

Been thinking about different mods. There are purple spider robots on various parts of art. Thought about just clipping it right onto the wireform. My game comes tomorrow and will be trying to knock out some mods.

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I found it funny how many people said "don't care for" or "don't like" the band. One of the easiest listening bands. Not too heavy or soft. Even my 65 year old dad can get down on tons of 90's rock.

I have two potential Grohl mod ideas. Stay tuned.

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Just fyi I didnt see it stated. They actually do give you 2 rubbers in one of the plastic goodie bags. Take a look. Also a bummer I saw in FF Pinball Facebook group that some top acrylic on the left front ramp already broke for someone. I've seen this on all Stern front ramps (Mando, Deadpool etc) and you can no longer hit the ramp since ball will fly out. They should have solved this issue already. Well know and widespread issue. Several titles, decades mfg, fix it.

Surprised the modes don't list the goals on screen either at select time or after selection. I have to dig into the modes today, just got the game late last night. Didn't update from factory code yet though.

Hit me up if interested in overlord print for Pro. Will have limited supply. Mounts via robot legs (not shown yet).

High resolution photos here.
https://imgur.com/a/HtcsRru

Guess we shall duel in November.

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Got some Foo Grohl minis. Hit me up if interested.

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Also, just went to the local favorite Pinball Lounge in FL. Their left van ramp is busted already. Same issue they had there on Mando and Elvira. All these weak ramp tops on Sterns break and make the game unplayable airball. Be pro-active and extra support it. I'm doing it on mine right now with some 3d printed support.

Grohl Gun mini available. Get in touch. Foot will have a screw mount. 2 possible mount locations.

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Optical, no friction.

Only planning one run. $110 for set of 3, otherwise individual pricing.

A 4k tv watching at some distance x indistinguishable from a 2k tv. x + x/4 indistinguishable from 1080p. It really shouldn't kill your eyes.

Subjective what value it has to remove all lines. GTF is $9K and has printed toys in one color with very visible lines. Stern already offered perfect toys for $2500 extra, so some Pro people (like me) are cheap. I had someone offer me $25 for the Grohl mini which is not worth my time but that's how cheap of pricing some people expect mods and some people aren't spending $10k on games so it's a balancing of effort/time vs payout.

First Ufo prototype there is a definitely a little ugly but the Overlord is nearly flawless. Just stating that any imperfections are gone unless nose is on the glass, so for me while I play it looks great and even close up it looks really damn good. It's as far as I can take it. I was nice enough to give the file to the community here, so 50+ people have the Overlord file, some said they might try selling. Maybe they will pull something off. Highly doubtful, but I'd be intrigued to chat with them if they can pull off at scale overlords (10+/day) flawlessly, but any manual painting or some other method I assume is going to be very time consuming and I don't think I could sell at a price that would make my nights worth it. I don't know how many other customers than I already have there might be out there either. Again, I gave it away free so people could make/sell and I'd actually be happy to see it and cheer it on. For this one, I'm only running it for maybe 2 weeks.

"but those prints your making need a lot of work."
Yea I don't know, I guess I'd just have to disagree, but let's not derail the thread.

I think this looks pretty freaking good and only 65 including shipping.
https://imgur.com/a/6tDIbnP

The games are so bright, curious what the point of the glow is. I guess it would be nice when you hit the action button and it goes completely dark?

If it wasn't said already, the left outlane is a plunger 5Million "secret jackpot". Randomly hit that.

The rock-o-meter rollback or 3 drop target skillshots are 100k-500k from what I've seen. If you happen to plunge (use shooter rod) to get the ball into the far left-lane that would normally make you lose a ball, it was worth 5M points.

Ah, I realized the skillshots are in the rule sheet but that's in the online PDF only and didn't come with the game.

For the "speakers sound bad" audience. I find it so strange that no pinball companies make actual speaker boxes. I did a deep dive last year watching people build various speaker cavity designs on Youtube for massive changes in bass+general speaker quality, including air vent holes/labyrinth cavities.

I have a couple Grohl minis left. https://i.imgur.com/mgLZdIz.jpg

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snaroff If your balls are draining too fast to your liking, did you install the extra rubber rings on the outlane? Mine only came with one so I still have to get a rubber on the left outlane.

So are you saying that Stern has their own chosen fans pre-installed by Meanwell? Or talking about the standard fan? That would be interesting because I don't see them going the other way and taking OEM fans out and throwing them away and replacing at cost, considering on video interview Gomez said optical spinners were too expensive to put in all their games. Optical LED's costing under $1.

I'm doing another run of my mods since people have been asking: https://pinside.com/pinball/market/shops/1519-foo-mods

I now added a limited run middle finger overlord to the mix as well.

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"You should try a resin printer to take these up a notch in quality"

Had no complaints thus far. Take a look, this is the latest print quality. https://i.imgur.com/7XOWNqm.jpg See if it changes your mind. If not no big deal. Tha'ts at 6" away high rez photo. After 12" in real life it doesn't look 3d printed. Cheers.

Anyone discussed rotating the flippers back a bit? Compared to Godzillas steep right ramp which I really never had issues hitting, the Foo ramp is much harder for me to hit.

Could go in any thread, but I'm curious how often you guys have "throw away" ball 1's? Many times it happens when I'm around 5M or so as a threshold and if ball 1 drains I just reset the game and start a new game. Stern counts that as a game played sadly. I know some people list "Plays" when re-selling even though it's not the true quality of the machine. I've been playing my game a ton more lately and I throw away a ton of games and it definitely is significant to crank up my plays over time. I'd guess 15% maybe more of my plays are resets. Just curious how often others do it on any variety of other machines.

Maybe that software accounts for detecting some error for public machines in arcades or something? I loaded a new game, plunged and reset. It added +1 to plays in the audit menu.

I'd bet their wifi code doesn't ping the server until the end-game screen to notify IC that a game has completed.

Hold left flipper + Start button. It's a feature I learned from arcade operator when kids add 4 players during free play mode and play a few balls and walk away on ball 2. It resets the entire game. Not sure if other mfg's adopted it.

Hmm. Well it's triggered by an electrical event? Is it linked to the flipper mech? If so then you are getting drag on that mech and reducing power of flipper. Also, the pro's code I believe will eject a new ball right after the rollover switch hits, because it doesn't anticipate that ball ever coming back into play. So isn't this going to just eject a new ball, giving you multi-ball every time?

" I am still learning the game, but maybe best solution is disabling left outlane switch"
The overdrive is a 2M bonus and it goes up in value. Makes no sense to disable it.

Those wireforms are ghetto. That sucks. While waiting you could wrap them with some tape for protecting the balls.

I just looked at mine. They aren't as bad but similar. Maybe they always did it this way. When you spot weld it heats from both ends of the weld joint so they have to clean up after. Those pics are much worse than mine though.

Started playing daily a lot more. I had read the rules a while ago and had some good runs around 300-400M in a 20 game run I had but I had no real idea why I scored that high. Wish the game gave audio feedback of what jackpot I got that was so good. Now I'm doing way worse and opening the rule sheet again. I saw a video of Eric Stone destroying the game to 3+ billion, some shots putting up 60M points for him, and decided to deep dive with the glass off yesterday and do a complete analysis. No conclusions just yet, but I'm curious if anyone knows the key to the stacked 60M jackpot points? Dude was banging 20-60M jackpots left and right.

200 plays and this ball is cracked and raised up. Guess I need to be more diligent in checking. Not sure if wireform welds or other metal edges caused.
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Yea it's the 2x/3x playfield which isn't super called out. Which is crazy because that is the MOST important go to shot if you have it up. I tested all the drop target upgrades, they help but they aren't that good. Whats going on with Eric Stones video if you saw, he has a TON of upgraded extra time on a mode. Final mode shots are sometimes time based hurry ups. So if you got 100 seconds on mode clock from mass upgrade, your final collection could be like 40M+ to hit the overlord plus x2/x3 playfield (over 100M for single shot). The score upgrades on drop targets only add about 2M per jackpot, not multiply so they are cool but battery is the shot to hit.

For anyone that didnt read the rules or didn't realize. Hitting the upper right battery when active will add a rock-o-meter empty inlay. You collect the inlay by rolling over rock-o-meter switch. Collect all 3 for the increased scoring. That is the key shot to keep an eye out for. I'm not sure yet what causes it to allow collection again once you lose the 3x playfield. Seems like some amount of time after your prior 2x/3x playfield has ended.

Probably just do a deep-dive ruleset video here soon.

Someone smarter than me that can explain the Combotron? I had the glass off the other day pushing balls all over combo spots that were flashing. I didn't understand the scoring at all. I see the 8 different points of the pentagram thing, but one of those is the left mode ramp so to light all the pentagram points, it starts a mode on the left ramp and erases all combotron progress. That inlay was never lit before the mode inaly was active, so I could never collect that point without invoking a mode. The text in the rulesheet below, like the little card that says "Collect Foo Bot" seem very bland and useless information. With the glass off and as many combos as I could trigger, repeated shots, I never once got a red combotron inlay that is suggested. I never received any amazing Million+ jackpot, just basic low scoring points.
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What do we pay Disney execs for? In the day of social media they rarely speak with their own customers and let us know if anything is being worked on.

jetmechinnc The best thing for the action button is to save them up for when you start a mode. By default the best shot it will grant you is the right ramp starting at about 600K and going up. It will advance the area51 multiball, but I think it's much better used in modes to suck out ez jackpot points. If you go into Roswell with 2 action buttons available, you get like 6-8Mil on the first two shots since the jackpots there are 3x value. EZ money.

The more I right flipper into the left ramp, there seems to be a 10-20% it bounces off the lock and comes right back down the ramp. Can't even select a mode and I have to play while the game is 100% dark. About to 3D print a stop part so its a one-way lever. Anyone else? Seems like a basic thing to catch during pre-production and make that switch one-way.

Don't know what else to say, this is like 1/4 velocity or less. I think the flipper hits 10x faster. Design flaw. Should have been a one way lock, even if nobody ever got it, it's a failsafe. I checked the coil has a sleeve, so I don't know what else it could be. The post has quite a bit of flex when I hit with the ball. It rubberbands it right back towards the entry. Unless this is a seriously a 1 in 1000 defective post, but that seems strange to me.

Yea it doesn't view embedded, if you click it it will take you to YT. Let me see if there is some new YT embed setting(?)

I'll pull it out later. In the up position if I grab with my two fingers, I can wiggle it a bit (tip moves 5mm or so in any direction). Not sure if it's supposed to be 100% no movement/flex. I'll check the entire assembly later.

There's the assembly. Coils sleeve black line is just grease, not a crack. Everything looks spot on from factory. Guess you guys are just lucky.

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Yea, I right flipper up there, that ball just slams much harder than the video of me pushing the ball by hand, and during gameplay it comes right back down. My fix is just make the gate not allow the ball to get back out. Always curious to learn what the actual problem is though. Only way is next time someone takes the glass off, roll the ball like I did and see how much bounce you get. Only thing mfg wise is maybe there is a different coil sleeve? The plastic part of the plunger has like 2mm of slack around it, so I dont know if there would be a sleeve that goes up further and holds the plastic post portion from being allowed to wobble. (The plastic tip is thinner diameter than the metal part of the plunger causing wiggle at the top).

6.5. If you watch the video the ball barely has speed to it and getting massive bounce, so being off 1 or 2 degrees, I don't know will introduce significant gravity force to counter. Most times it does work, but it always bounces to about where the switch is located and falls back into place.

Coil sleeve slack for reference to what I meant on plastic wobble.

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I'll +pitch and run some gameplay tests.

These are 30 year companies with full-time designers. I can't believe things like that are overlooked. There are many other examples. I also hate looking up for information and it doesn't exist because of a cut-scene being on top of all information I need to know.

I hear you, they are minimal in overall priority list, but it's been 200 days since release. The process to make the machine is over. Writing down and subsequently recording a list of very small sentences is like a 1-day task. I only had a few callout complaints. One of my pains is during modes when jackpot shots switch during the mode, every single light is flashing while my ball is coming down the inlane and I have no clue where the next jackpot is to think about aligning my shot.

I've memorized a ton of the rulesheet, but I'm never going to memorize every shot order in all the cities even after reading the rulesheet. I think still having a way to know the next shot (including for the people that play at the bar and don't own/read the rulesheets) is a good idea. Tons of jackpot hits are also random during multiballs, so I'd say it's hard to know what the next Roswell mode jackpot is after 2 random jackpot hits. On top of that, you have the modulator drop target shot that advances you forward in modes, so it's hard to know or remember what the next shot is.

With code updates, hard to criticize if nobody knows the team task allocation. Hard to hold them to the fire if we don't know the extent of the updates or how much time is being invested. I'm enjoying the game as is.

Likely there for easier functionality vs aesthetics. Much easier for arcade access when hoping games. There's already a lot of art on pinball machines.

I heard there were possibly some other older games that use the same overlord ball lock to hit the ball. Anyone know what games use that same mech?

I never re-pitched my table, which is just a little under 6.5 deg. This happened the other day however. The wireform shifted and the ball got stuck from falling. I moved it back in place and I haven't had the ball bounce off the post and back down the left ramp during mode selection just yet. I guess if the ball was slightly off the intended path to the post, it could have been hitting it different.

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No hope for code, I just decided it would be faster to make Foo from scratch the other day Demonstration purpose only, so I won't be able to release the executable, (unless Stern would allow it) but it's pretty cool/satisfying to see all the loop shots work. I got a small vacation so I can't finish it for a bit but I need another ~2 days to record movie clips on my phone and drop in and then program the modes and playfield multipliers.

I've heard this before. Stern dealers play a few games and call the game used to sell below MSRP. But dude that price.........is pinball economics crashing????

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Maybe/maybe not? I browse sometimes but a release from 8 months ago priced down $2,000 some dollars? I don't think that's typical.

Installing .98 right now. For some reason on .96 I can be holding the left flipper before the ball even rolls over the outlane switch, hits outlane switch while overdrive is lit. I get no overdrive bonus. This is on a Pro.

Unless you have to hold it AFTER the rollover switch but I feel like this never happened before the latest update. Sometimes I am not getting overdrive points and I get pissed.

That's a really hard nuance to explain and I've read the PDF, but always thought left flipper would always save overdrive even going back to the original youtube pre-launch trailer. From the quote, it then sounds like if you are already performing a left flipper hold you need to release and hit again. They might allow a small 1/2 second allowance for holding before it hits the outlane switch.

That shot is a 5M skillshot on new ball.

Once you know it's pretty simple to understand. Sadly my best score 430 Million was somehow shooting mostly up the middle and not paying attention to modes or anything. I have no clue what happened since I didn't know the rules and there is not log of game events/points.

I might run a really small batch of Overlord mods for the Pro model again. Message me if interested.

Small thumbnail to not clog the forum. High resolution in link: https://imgur.com/a/u0WTcqo. $70 USA/$105 international (includes shipping).
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I also might be interested in doing some more Dave Grohl minis again if enough people want it, but these are annoying and time consuming to hand paint so price is up from last run. Same price as overlord.

https://imgur.com/a/jAVBv4m

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Maybe I'm dumb. Every time I play Los Angeles, the 3rd jackpot seems to play a doorbell sound. Months back I literally got pissed, drained a ball to go see if someone was at the door. Learned my lesson, but the SFX is still there. I always hate when I listen to a couple songs (Megadeth) where they put cop sirens in the song and it makes you think while driving. Anyone else get this? It's not a high score, it happens really early in the mode it seems. Is it a sound for granting some reward? I hate it either way.

SFX are important. "You got the extra ball" means you got the extra ball. "Ding dong" means nothing.

It takes a while to learn from either flipper. I will say that backhand with the left flipper is the way to go. I'm not scared to use the right flipper either, as I no longer really get the rebound down the middle due to timing. I usually can backhand it 3x in a row. I pick LA mode a lot so I guess I practiced that left jackpot. Give it time.

BrokenChair

This tells you how to start everything. Watching YT player would take longer than just reading this.

https://sternpinball.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Foo-Fighters-Rule-Sheet-03232023-compressed.pdf

I've been banging on the premium a bit at local arcade and my biggest complaint is that they should have inclined the upper playfield more to make it faster. It's kind of boring.

And yea it's a terrible design decision on Stern/others for decades to place rules cards like "Build the Foobot for FooBot Multiball" and "Shoot shots to build Combotron", and NOT put in a note that the full detailed ruleset can be found on their website or a QR code link to it. They don't make it easy for new players

New players also includes first time owners, which I was one of them after playing for 4+ years. Foo is my first home game. I was not aware on some random website buried down at the bottom of a page there was the actual way to play the game. I've linked that PDF so many times (20+?) across pinside and FB group. It would help if Stern linked the ruleset on the apron, and let a home buyer or a person in an arcade decide if they want to deep dive into the rules or not. Around 2-3 years in the hobby, I played my first tournament and didn't know deep rule sheets existed. So I wouldn't be so quick to think new player = 10 year old kid who is only going to play pinball one time.

Just be thankful the action button makes 1000x more sense than Venom. In 2P game I was smashing my friends button while they played and watching the LCD screen. Literally nothing happened on several games. At least the UFO shows you the score you get and dims the lights so that you know something happened.

For some reason on the previous code before todays update: I was noticing that if I slightly got close to the ball lock, it would go up and stay up without a ball in it. The mechanics worked since the ball lock would come down after the ball in play drained. That's some weird code. If it happens again I can test the opto, but the code dropped that solenoid knowing there was no ball in there immediately at end of play.

Will see if it happens on latest and maybe report to Stern.

Venting:
I got worse. My first 30 games I was able to peak 450M somehow without reading rules. I think I've played 300 games now. My strategy was mostly shoot the overlord and that somehow got me up to 450M. Ever since reading rules I sadly get into the 100M range most of the time. Haven't broke my original 450M. I hit 200M-300M every once in a while. With the new update it's nice to have the default van light remain on. I finally got to play around on Austin. I wonder if they send telemetry back to see how many people/machines hit certain modes. I'd really loved to have seen the scoring audit on how I broke 450M just slamming the overlord in a short game 7 months ago.

I just played a game and on Seattle with 2x playfield I managed to get 160M on that mode. The issue: I have no idea how. With no van upgrades I think it maxes out at 40Million. 2x playfield = 80Million. I hit one jackpot, then it put it at the overlord final shot and I hit and got 160M total. Van upgrade scoring is per shot and it maxes out at like +2million(?) I only hit 2 shots, so I assume I had some shots spotted. But it doesn't grant those shots, just advances. So why for so little work did I make 160M? We can all guess, but a factual score breakdown from the machine would be nice.

Just annoys me, I usually bust ass in a mode to get 40Million and here I hit 2 shots and get 160M with no idea how to repeat. Also I never wanted to mod the game to feel like cheating, but this post design is so bad (photo of my mod). I finally removed it and replaced with a super thin rubber. Almost every time the ball rolls back down, it catches that old fat rubber and makes the ball drain down middle. I hated the design so much I decided it had to be removed. Ball has smooth rollback now and hits left flipper.

Anyone else feel like shot repeatability is tough? The leftmost crossover ramp and the right area 51 ramp are wide, tip of the flipper shots that are not easy to get above 25-50% hit rate. I was playing Godzilla the other day and I can nail pretty much any shot I want with around 50% accuracy.
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Believe me, I'm aware I read the rules. I also have never been good at nudging much and I find it harder with rubber protectors on my tile floor. Might put some felt on the bottom of those so it can slide a bit.

I was going to adjust the flippers back a bit but my allen wrench can't torque enough so I have to get a longer one. I was curious to see if changing the back angle will give better play for these wider shots.

For about a month I was using the chrome polished balls from ball baron and I feel like those had way too much slide/spin. I had no ball control and put the originals back in.

Everyone has the issue. I think it's just bad placement design. Flipper tip should align to the hole as posted. I was going to try adjusting it back further but the screw on the flipper is super tight. I need a longer allen wrench to get more torque on the flipper screw. Iron maiden is another game that has a right ramp fairly close in position and I can hit that at 100mph. Foo is the slowest ramp I know of off the top of my head. 100% perfect shot will roll up there super slow.

For the spring missing, you could try finding a spot to attach a rubber band there so that it pulls and holds the target forward like a spring would in the mean time. Get you up and playing. My advice would be tie the rubber band to that tip there, and that little hole, feed a paper clip through to create a ring that can hold the other side of the rubber band.

Anyone else having issues where the post is stuck up during gameplay? It's not an opto issue or other, as when I drain a ball, it immediately drops the lock. The system knows the lock is up. Unless this is a gameplay feature now(?), then this should not be a bug at all. The post is up with no ball in there. Unless the game automatically engages that coil at the end of a ball.

I put the rubber inlane post on from game 50-500. I played about 100 games with both inlane rubbers on. I prefer them with no rubber after taking both off today. Ball glides down inlanes smoother and less bouncing. Seems counter intuitive because it makes outlanes smaller with them on, but I get too much bounce leading to other ball control problems.

You should have put a link on your website to this page. Took a while to find price.

https://cointaker.com/products/voodoo-laser-cut-speaker-panel-preorder