Just joined the club on Saturday. Pretty sure non-club members would find me insane for paying to ship a Hook! My 4yo son is sure glad I did though.

I'm very impressed with the layout of the playfield. I feel like the shot layout is reminiscent of Cyclone in the center and right scoops (flipped from cyclone), ramp placement and skillshot, plus the location of the pan book shot feels like the skeeball shot from comet.

I haven't had the game long and I know you guys didn't want to be critical BUT, I must say, when your shooter lane feeder coil is intermittent, that skillshot tune and speech call can get grating very quickly. Whoever thought putting speech calls in service mode was a good idea!?

Anyway, I'm glad to be in the club, and I hope I can get my coil issues straightened out quickly!

Man, if you bring your insane sculpting skills to, say... Skull rock or that crazy plastic on the left hand side of the cabinet (what is that thing supposed to be anyway!!?) that'd be great!

Glad to see someone put normal star posts on the slings. That was going to be the first thing I did after adjusting the leaf switches on the slings. Glad to see they fit without problems. These black posts look sort of ...budget.

Adjust your spoon switches?

That looks great. What paint did you use? My legs and lockdown both need a good once over.

You should consider switching to star posts for the slings. I prefer the way it looks.

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I'm still planning to do a P-ROC project on Hook that's a full color DMD. Lots of projects on the burner but the P-ROC and Sys11 driver board are pretty much ready to go. When I finish my latest round of upgrades to my framework (native Sys11/DE support) I'll probably switch to working on this instead of T2.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/custom-hook-p-roc-project-ideas-about-rules#post-1856991

I'd say Hook has more potential but F-14 is already there. Plus if you're going to P-ROC one of them you can just run Snux's code. I say do it...

I was tempted to sell and leave the club, but a play test when getting it ready for sale has seemingly brought me back in.

I have a an issue that hopefully someone can suggest a solution for: the scoop on the right kicks the ball out at crazy angles, sometimes weak, sometimes strong enough. From underneath, there's certainly some play in the hole that holds the kicker arm and unfortunately, the way this was built, I'm not sure how to compensate for the slop short of replacing the "kick big mounting bracket sub assembly" (which provides the stud that goes through the kicker arm pivot hole). http://cdn1.bigcommerce.com/n-63unu/mgfr9h3/products/2360/images/2381/515-5521-00__75162.1396386755.1280.1280.jpg?c=2

Any advice out there?

Thanks!

Wow, my Hook was messed up!

I discovered that my left ramp "made" switch hadn't been registering and I don't know for how long. Looks like the switch wire had come lose from the actual switch and previous owner tried to fix it with heat shrink tubing ...and only the heat shrink. When I got under the windcoaster ramp I found both GI bulbs were burned out and the rubber on that side was disgusting. Took the opportunity to clean the area.

I also tracked down a bunch of lamp issues including a bad column driver and two different GI problems (one was a bad contact on a prior plug repair, the other seems to be a bad solder joint up on the p/s --that one I still haven't done yet).

Man, Hook is Fun when the game is actually working. Shouldn't be a shock that not having the payout for the left ramp really cripples the game, and yet I'm still somehow surprised at how much more fun it is now.

Keep on hating Peter Pan, everybody!

I picked up a small bag of plastics for my Hook at Pintastic. Which Skillshot plastic is correct?

Thanks!
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Thanks. I'll probably go with the dagger since my circle one is cracked.

Also, it pays to replace your PPB J5 header and pins. Now: GI is back
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I agree completely about the art on the playfield. I was fixing an issue with my windcoaster and pulled off the "book" plastic in the back left of the playfield. Behind it is that reflective mirror and a really nice reflected view of the VUK shot and the art leading too. I didn't put that plastic back on.

Another example is how the rocks plastic under the skull looks nice, but is almost completely obscured by the wireform mount point. Haven't figured out how to expose that yet.

Keep us posted!!

Looks like your white/yellow GI wire to the upper playfield region is out. I'd check J5 pin 6 on the PPB. It's connected to both the playfield and the coin door. Mine was out too. Really shoddy wiring, burnt connector, and cold solder joints galore.

I reflowed the solder on my power supply board, changed the J5 connector on the PPB, and built a new wiring harness using the box style trifurcon pins. Here it is half way done (J5 pins replaced, plug not yet replaced). Look how hideous that wiring was! I think someone "repaired" that before me, too.

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I finally fixed this issue, thought is post here in case anyone else ever needs this info: I slightly moved the kicker arm mount so it rotated ever so slightly, as it looked like the side of the kicker arm might have been binding against at another piece of metal down there. I also replaced the coil sleeve. Once it was ejecting freely it was smacking the ball into the wireform above it because the scoop angle had clearly gotten out of wack. Some mild bending and now it's totally fixed.

I also found a slew more blown GI bulbs under the plastics in the upper left section of the playfield (under the windcoaster). Man those are a pain to change but so worth doing.

I also put some yellow flipper rubber on instead of the super bands I had on there. You don't realize how differently they play until you take them off.

would depend on price but I'm interested

On my machine, I have a spot for a center post but none is installed. Is a center post standard on Hook? I just noticed a bunch of Visual Pinball tables of Hook have it in place.

Thanks

Are you sure the protectors are stock on the MNF ramp? I suppose they are but seeing the regular bolt holding it on makes me wonder.

Also, in the SoF ramps thread, it was discovered that the length of the metal protectors used were different on prototypes and early run machines relative to later ones.

Left the club... but all that means is that someone else is joining it

They sure didn't hurt! They really do look great when they're printed out. If anyone out there is on the fence, get off it and print a set of these.

Now to see if you have ones for Monopoly...

I had a pinsound board in my hook and it was not the easiest title to replace the sounds on.

The issue I faced repeatedly is that several of the sound samples, at least to my ears, sounded as though they were exactly the same. I wasn't exactly sure which ones were being played when.

One thing I considered was replacing all of the wav's with my voice calling out a number so I could figure out when which sound calls were actually made. Another option would be to create a PSSREC file directly on the machine while I took a video with the glass and hitting all the switches to figure out exactly when the sound calls were being used.

Fundamentally though, if you wanted to do something /very/ different with the sounds, but the game's programmers used the exact same sound call in multiple modes at different times, you're stuck. You could add multiple wave files in that folder to at least randomize which sounds you hear, but you need to make sure then that you choose a sound or set of sounds that are applicable for both modes. Tricky stuff.

Sounds like it could be a pinched wire on the left hand side. Any chance you had the playfield up recently?

http://arcarc.xmission.com/Pinball/Stern%20Service%20Bulletins/sb/sb37.pdf

Sorry. Looking back in my email that came in the day before I left for Expo... Things were a little hectic

It's possible to re-write everything, today, with a P-ROC and one of Mark/Snux's System 11 driver boards, but it's not clear if you'll be able to drive that tiny DMD. The Data East architecture for these machines had the dmd data stored on a ROM on a board connected to the DMD itself. You'd have to bypass that board to draw to the stock display, or figure out the signal timings to be able to trigger the stock display animations and text. That's why swapping out the display is so appealing. You could easily drop in a new speaker panel and house a full size dmd and run that from the proc easily, but you'd need to get a custom translite. Several folks told me it would be possible to drive the small dmd directly, but I never tried it.

Display issues aside, programming a game is not for the faint of heart. I've been working on a framework that makes it easier to program a game from scratch, but you have to be committed to the project, and to a learning process that can be frustrating at times.

The MPF guys are working on their framework to make it possible for anyone to make a game relatively easily, and they claim without any programming. A lot of the functionality you would need is very bleeding edge for them (supporting the AC relay, for example).

Regardless of the platform you chose you have to be committed to finish a project like this. It's wildly rewarding and a great learning experience.

In service mode-switch test: are all three trough switches reporting closed and is the shooter lane reporting open?

Wow. What an awesome idea. Triggering new sound call outs + adding a PinSound board would /really/ add new life. Serves me right for selling my Hook