Thats exactly what I was thinking.

Nah, the reflections are right. I'd even say there was a window in there.

It's not like he doesn't have the hardware to do it. Working and triggering may be a question, but the video hardware seemed to be solid.

Yeah that’s clearly not photoshopped

There is definitely a window there you can tell by the reflections on the wood and can see like a very minor bevel to the window at the bottom, its freaking clear though LOL, don't they usually have some plants decal around them though? But still needs to be a video of it in action to tell if the mod works as advertised or not.

I get the distaste for the OP, but c'mon. The pics are obviously NOT photoshopped and it has a new window on it with no decal. The window is easy to see... you can see the mounts and there is no view of the laminations on the pf that are there when the window is not installed. You can also see dust on the window. It's not anything unusual. I have a new window and it photographs even better than it looks in person.

And the OP doesn't need to photoshop. Those are just static images on a screen. As others have said, that isn't a huge technical feat. The images look outstanding, but I still doubt this ever is commercially available and bug free.

Could be a new window; I used to flame polish mine, I bought 2 replacements, they were all cloudy. Flame polishing made them super
clear

I also thought they might be faked but they look legit.
He was right there also, had all these nice videos made and the hardware working just needed to throw it in the game he recently got.
I think he didn't post the coup de grace here as a "fuck you" to all the people endlessly harassing him in this thread for 100 years

Keep sitting on a "project" for that long... and someone is bound to swoop in an take the business from you.
Not that I have ANY plans in the work... as I don't have a Creech.

He does not post here because he has been called out for his shady practices by many many people (not that any buyers give a F**K, they would still buy it if it was hand assembled by children in a small African village for dirty drinking water) Once its ready (hahahahaha) He will be back to try and sell as many as he can.

They gotta get their dirty drinking water somehow

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

I would at least give them clean drinking water if it was me

You think that this thread can't get funnier anymore and then it even gets better.
Meanwhile we have already arrived at conspiracy theories.
Thanks a lot guys you saved my day again.

Personally, I think that All the Hardware Louis presented is fake as well. The circuit boards he „developed“ have no function at all.

And even Louis himself is probably fake. I think the government is behind all this and they just want to distract us from the really important things like their Failure In the fight against Corona or the desperate attempt to declare a valid presidential election invalid.

But Louis will soon prove it to all unbelievers. He will come back from the ashes like a phoenix , presenting the one and only video in his filthy creature with the crystal clear window and thats the moment where we all have to admit to ourselves....we were all wrong.

At this Point i normally wake up and Realize it will never happen ....
Sorry Lous, please come back to us, we are only kidding!

LOL WTF!!!

I’ll have what ever he’s smoking please

The FB page has a screenshot of the video of the mod in action being edited!!! It’s gotta be close now! Right???

Here’s 10 minutes of photoshopped video for your all to complain and fight about, he even got the off angle camera view photoshopped in there perfectly:

Delete post

Holy shit, that video of the mod in action is awesome! This is going to make it feel like a kinda different game.

Looks great to me. I will buy one if he ever gets it done.

Ready to purchase, looks very close to a finished product to me. It will put a whole new look to game play. I'll put my name on the list.

Sigh... you guys...

here`s another video

Videos look good. KISS bothers me with the K always in the foreground, but that's just me nitpicking.

I will never be a buyer as the price is out of my range, but I would still like to see a video with actual game footage. What happens when two videos are triggered within a second of each other or when a mode overlaps with another mode?

Looking goood!
Nice to see this thing will finaly happen!
But like Fifty said what will happen when playing a fast game, will multiple triggers be overriding or will all vids cut short?

Good to see it sort of in action 3 years later but unless you play pinball extremely slowly and cradle the ball after each shot and wait 5 seconds I’m not sure how it will work in a real world game. Need some proper fast game play videos to see how it stacks / queues these videos and how fast it can trigger them. But at least it’s a glimmer of progress.

It’s just another attempt to promote this bloatware
One can clearly see that the videos are triggered one after another because prioritizing still doesn’t work.

This is what I've been wondering all along. You hit different switches so rapidly in this game, what's the queuing and cutting from video to video like? For instance, if you hit the ice cream target, and 1 second later start the "Move Your Car" mode, will Mrs. Ice Cream Cone continue to dance 5-10 seconds over the Move Your Car animations? If not, will there be a hard cut to the Move Your Car animations, a fade, or what?

Exactly this mod is not simply playing a 10sec video off a simple trigger. For it to work correctly it’s a bit more complex it needs to be able to queue and prioritise the videos correctly much like the machines dmd does.

Need some decent game play videos to see this in action if it even exists yet in software. Most likely will be released without it and a promise of adding later which will never happen and there will be a lot of disappointed buyers.

Agreed, jumped the gun maybe too early, but was just excited to see this in a game working finely. Just need to see how it works under normal game play and see how the different videos play against each other.

And... the weakness of his intercept model plays out as expected.

Those playing along... notice compy is monitoring the data bus to the av board while pinballsp monitors the playfield. So pinballsp is doomed to have to try to blindly replicate game logic without enough points of reference to really get it right. It is a loosing battle given all the different features he wanted to tap into vs sticking to the subset that are easily isolated.

Pretty videos... just always going to be glitchy

Agreed.

I’d also add that Luis is a hardware guy, and from what I can see a fairly good one. But I’ve been around a lot of software development over the years, and it’s just super rare for someone to be that good at hardware and be good at software, too. Hardware guys always *think* they’re good at software or that “it’s just software, that’s easy”, but that’s not the way it plays out. Given how most of the software on his other projects is stuff that he stole and modified and also given that how the promised features have never been done on the other projects but how he always says “it’s just software, I’ll get to it”, I just don’t think you can trust that part.

And he’s even had offers from talented software people to help him with his projects and he turns them down because he wants to control everything himself (except these videos, which for obvious reasons you can outsource). Add all of this up and it’s a recipe for a lot of potential that never gets realized.

—Donnie

I agree reading the audio commands is far far easier then trying to decipher a lamp matrix which is constantly changing state. The audio data bus is literally telling you what the state the game is in and easy be read with a interrupt. raspberry pi can easy do this, no external super processor needed (this is not even needed to read a simple switch matrix)

Pretty sure the MikeD mod reads switches too?

Probably does and that’s where pinballSP copied the idea from lol. He never thinks what might be the best / more efficient solution at the time but just copies someone else and makes out it’s his own idea.

Yes, it does. I checked the source code and that's the reason why the mod is limited in some situations. MikeD knew that but communicated that clearly, and until today it is still one of the most outstanding mods.

Well then it seems this mod could be no worse in function than MikeD’s, which I have, and works well.

One mod keeps within the limits of the methodology... another... did not.

My MOD intercepts signals from the lamp matrix. Using the audio board would have been a better approach, just didn’t think to do that. Keep in mind the MOD was originally intended to just replace the hologram, which is why I started with the lamp matrix. The hardware was 90% designed before we expanded the video capacity.

We tested the switches, but found the RPi to read them inconsistently. However, we built the MOD with gen one boards.

Looking good.

Thanks for confirming, Mike. This is -significantly- different from reading the switch matrix. Reading the switch matrix basically requires emulating the game logic in parallel to the CPU. Not super simple. And fraught with overlaps.

There is a new official release of the software for Creature that might effect this mod. It would be awesome if it was planned for, since I expect most of us are planning on upgrading to it. In the Creature forum someone has reported after installing it the Mike D holo mod did not work:

Creature From The Black Lagoon
Revision 5.0

Summary

Broken features within the modes Multiball, Big millions, Snack attack and Move your car are fixed.
Random elements within the modes Multiball, Snack bar and Playgound can now be set to run in patterns.
Two new feature adjustments.
The never used left inlane scoring indicators now have a purpose.
Upgraded lamp procedure.

Improvements

Fully suitable for competition play.
Supports LED lamps.
No playfield indicators left for incomplete usage.

More from the updated Williams rom thread, this is from programmer Soren:

"Regarding the MikeD mod for Creature. A quick read up shows that it takes input from the lamp matrix. I will assume this is why it is acting different with rev. 5.0 now this is update to the "LED friendly" procedure 2.

I will be back later with an analysis of this and documentation for how it works now. And I have to say, that it should not be a problem to build devices that can interpret the lamp signals correctly regardless if the game software is running procedure 1 or 2. So I hope my documentation will make it straight forward for somebody to update the MikeD mod to run stable on all games. If I have understood it correctly, the original designer of the mod has abandon the project. But it is now maintained by somebody else in the community."

The original MikeD mod is affected due to timing changes to eliminate strobing/flicker in the new LED code. The mod software would have to be modified to detect timing changes on the strobing signal. I can publicly say that we did reach an agreement to license and re-run MikeD's mod on our new control system (unaffected by software upgrades) so that CFTBL owners could have a replacement. We have displays sourced, brackets made, cable harnesses designed and boards en-route.

However since PinballSP is so close to launching, getting good pinball press coverage and his videos are top notch... combined with the fact that we don't want to launch scuds and start a race to the bottom, we've deferred the launch of that product depending on the needs of the market.

-- Jimmy

Compy any possibility for a patch to existing MikeD mods to accommodate the new ROM code? I'd pay a reasonable amount for that, assume other owners might as well.

Jimmy the way you conduct your business needs to be commended, not only are your products well thought out, designed and manufactured, you take time to respond to queries both online and via PMs, you show respect and offer assistance to other mod creators and have even donated to Pinside 5% of sales on your TZ backboard mod done through Pinside. And now you are holding off launching your own product to allow this one to come out and not to compete. In this modern world of dog-eat-dog you stand tall and are a shiny light. Well done mate and thank you!!

If the strobing code could be turned off in the menu (as an option), wouldn't that solve the problem? I have all incandescents in my pin, anyway.

Update: Soren said it would not be realistic to do this and that he has an idea of how to address the issue. Looking forward to the fix.

Well, so ends the PMD CFTBL MOD..... RIP.

Real shame you can’t license the videos off pinballSP. I do hope you don’t wait too long as could be waiting a long time for this mod to actually be released working in a finished state.

Where do we purchase said upgraded software?