We already have the 6 month attempt, we can all see how that is going. I think, with a solid effort, a year is very plausible for a single machine, not 10 of them.

It really depends on how much time/money you are willing to invest, how often you work on it, and it's complexity/level of completion. You can get a game to flipping state in a day, just to test out shots. However when you've got shots dialed in, the programming of the rules are (in my experience) going to take a while. Depending on complexity, that can take anywhere from a week or two to much as several years.

So I'm guessing by asking how long it would take to make 10 of them that you want a finished and polished game that you could do a small run of to sell to people or something roughly along those lines.

As opposed to just getting something flipping and having fun with the process.

You haven't really given much info about your access to tools, abilities, can you handle music, sound, code, art, what are you outsourcing etc etc.

So I'll just give you a basic answer: if you want an actual finished game that you could put into small scale production don't expect less than 2 years.

I think it was under 2 years of active work but a lot of times I took month long breaks, etc made it end up taking closer to 3. If I had all the parts ready I bet I could build another copy in a week or two

Getting it flipping and the mechs working? Few months. Making it fun? A multi-year process.

Yeah. What kind of game are we talking about. A Gottlieb System 1? That's a one year project in free time. Less if you get on top of it. You wanna make a WMS like DMD game? Years.

Pinball is easy.
-Robert Mueller

I also have a full time job but building two Trilogy Brewing co pinballs took me over two years. That being said I was putting around 40 hours a week into them on average. The playfields are retheme so I had the layout done for me but all the inserts were replaced and the playfields were hand painted (which took me a while, I’m sure a professional artist could have done them much quicker) . The cabinets are completely custom though and figuring out how to make everything fit in them and build them was also quite time consuming. I also made many custom metal parts. But yeah over two years to build 2 games.

Pinball is hard. They are harder to build than you think. And as you do “back of the napkin” calculations you leave out way more than you thought. Even shipping parts for 10 games can be more expensive than you think. They will take more space to build than you were projecting. They will take more time to program than you were expecting. Your first playfield will seem solid, but then the 10 will delaminate or pool, or crack. Your inserts that you put in will react to the clearcoat you used and fog. The glue on the inserts will swell in the humidity, and then your foggy inserts will just pop out. The Backglass you had painted in the first month will drop all the paint after a year. When you finally open the box of machine screws, half of them will be rusted because you saved 2 cents on them but they were cheaper because of crap plating.

It’s going to be the unknown unknowns that sneak up on you. And at 10 games, you’re probably funding it yourself.

Don’t take that the wrong way. If you want to build a game, build a game. Just keep in mind there are a lot of pinheads with games they swear are 80% of the way there, even when they are only 20% complete. So don’t worry about 10 until the prototype has been to a show and people loved playing it.

I started in April, I believe towards the end. I had a flipping machine in a month, and had my working design within 2 months.

I’m probably 30% through the coding but have a playable game with most items working.

Could I build 10 in 6 months? Sure, with unlimited money and time. I would consider my game fun, even with the minimal items that are coded and working as intended. I expect it to take me about a year to have the game near 100% complete.

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I would also keep in mind that doing a one-off homebrew using an IP you don't have a license for is fine. If you start building them you're asking for potential issues. And it's a looot of time and work and money to suddenly get a C&D in the middle of it, even if it's just asking you to stop and not something scarier legal wise.

So with all respect to those who've made amazing games using themes like that if you really want to make more than one keep in mind there's no art to take or base things on. There's no video assets to use. There's no music to use. There are no sound clips to use. Your theme and all the assets are something you need to come up with, and that's the work of multiple people on a commercial product.

All the things you can lean on with a 'borrowed' license are gone. You either have to do it yourself, or hire things out. And even if you pay other people to do parts just the management of that is a whole other bit of work.

I am going to use a blanket analogy here and go with the just because you know how to work on something, doesn't mean you know how to build something. This holds very true in my industry, auto repair. Sure, could you order every available part and assemble a vehicle? Absolutely. But if you don't know how to set up that engine, program all of the control modules, mount all those body panels, wire it up and dial that thing in properly? Then you have a very oversized paperweight on wheels.

Lots of trial and error.

Cargument

For me at least that's why I even consider building my own machine, if I knew everything already I would probably never considered it. I guess it's the same with people trying to build their own cars. I probably wouldn't start any project at all if I knew from start what I knew at the end of a project...

In 2 years or what it will take me I will probably say I were stupid to even consider building my own machine. 2 years is a very positive estimation.

I HAVE NEVER MADE MY OWN MACHINE, but was looking seriously into making my own Weird Al machine before Multimorphic announced. I figured out I could get something flipping and decent for $7,500ish in 6 months. This was a bare bones retheme of a El Dorado Pinball machine. Paint the Drop Targets as "Weird AL", get a cheap local artist to do a custom paint job on everything for $3,000ish. Custom plastics designed and built through CPR along with a translite. Some basic magic to get a different weird al song to play at the start of every game.

This was going to take inspiration from sixtyfourbits excellent retheme https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/my-poor-mans-indiana-jones-eldorado-city-of-gold-retheme

A retheme is something most people could do. A Homebrew touches on so many skill sets its not even funny.

Edit: This could be done much cheaper. Most of my theoretical budget was in good art.

A dedicated pinball professional, devoting full time to the project (40-80 hours a week), with an unlimited budget... Maybe less than two years.

Whenever I consider these kinds of things I remember a quote from Mark Mandletort (of Marco Pinball Parts).

He said:

"If you are a billionaire who wants to be a millionaire, start a pinball company."

That having been said, High End Pinballs has done some very serious projects re-theming existing pinballs, and probably has more experience doing that kind of work than anybody in the country.

If you've got a serious budget... (and you shouldn't even consider this unless you have a serious budget), you should pay High End Pinballs a consultant fee. Nobody else I know could better guide you through the process.

I built a fairly simple homebrew pinball- and it was far from simple. Everything takes a long, long time. If you do it all yourself, it will easily take 2 years. Just creating, printing and/or stenciling the art on the cabinet will take at least a month.
I happen to be off work for 6 months, and really worked non-stop on it and it still took 2 years.
That all being said, it was really fun and I learned a lot.

For those who never followed it in real time it's helpful to see how the dates worked out on TNA.

First entry:

https://www.scottdanesi.com/?p=604

Index:

https://www.scottdanesi.com/?cat=15&paged=4

Elf took 3 years. I am trying for 18 months on my current project but it's going to be tough.

Just do it, if everyone hesitated because they thought they might be way over their heads we wouldn't have homebrews.

Personally I'm happy it won't be done fast, makes it easier to spread the cost because what I realized is that it's rather expensive... I already knew it would be expensive but it's way more than I anticipated, living in Europe and with a weak currency (expensive $) over here doesn't help.
With my electricity bill probably going over 2500$ in just december pinball isn't a prioritized cost, it will take the time it takes even thou I have most mechanical parts needed already.

Living in Europe I feel it isn't that easy to get everything needed, guess it's easier if living in the states. For me it adds to the time. Planning is crucial. Would be a lot faster if I already had most parts from the start.

It doesn’t have to be done in a year, 2 years, or even 5 years. It should be fun, and sometimes that means taking a few breaks. You also don’t have to go all in with a modern game with lcd and ramps and tons of mechs.. going that route for many people means a huge amount of time and effort and a lot of people quit after an initial gung -ho period it seems.

I’m at 4 years, though I’ve taken several 1/2 year breaks so I guess technically 3 or so years when I find time after work. I’m finding now that coding is taking a huge amount of time, as to me it means sound editing, image and video editing, text and image animations, light shows, and finally bringing that all together with the ball, mech, and switch logic. No surprise really because every piece of this took 5x the time I thought it would. I figure I’ve got 2 more years to be near 100% if I keep at it.

It’s a commitment but everything about it is really satisfying if you like building and learning new skills. Just getting flippers going and experimenting with cardboard and foam core is a ton of fun.

It all depends on your beer consumption and your addiction to questionable food products.

I think you might have that a bit backwards. It's the beer addiction causing the consumption of questionable foods.

Yes it's a lot of work. But it's a fun and rewarding hobby.

You will learn soooo much and have such a different perspective on pinball once you start trying to do it yourself. It requires a wide range of both technical and creative skills.

And keep in mind you're building it for yourself. You get to decide the scope and what areas you wanna focus on/have-fun-with.

I would highly suggest doing it, I've always tinkered with stuff and this has hands down been the most rewarding thing I have ever done hobby wise.

For a shameless plug, I also sell homebrew DIY kits on pinside (Trident Pinball) that come with everything to get flipping quickly, along with coding, computer, etc. If you have any questions (even if not getting a kit), feel free to shoot me a message.

I'd take Octo up on his shameless plug, or at a minimum if you can get a blank lower 1/3 from him if you prefer sourcing the parts and/or going with a different board set. He's a good dude doing an awesome service for homebrew.. it's like a big jumpstart to the first really fun part of homebrewing - playfield design.

So I've never done a pinball machine before, but in August I started what I thought would be a "retheme", but the whole machine was ruined, waterlogged, full of mold, and rotted out.
So it was a wash, and lead to me to now, my first homebrew... no knowledge, no prep, no homework, just dove in.
Then I find all these sites nowthat I'm way too deep, learned hard lessons, dropped a nearly completed playfield, and broke it, more hard lessons, but keep pushing forward.
Best thing you can do, is start somewhere, take risks, put your hands an something you can learn with.
You'll always find reasons not to do it, but go.
Biggest thing to prepare for is the damage your wallet will take... this is not a cheap endeavor.

First homebrew takes a while to get going. With the tech I have setup and honed over the years, I can have a flipping 1st pass white wood in less then 2 man weeks. Most of that work is cad and construction. My software is setup now so it takes minutes to make a wired playfield playable.

You also need to come up with some sort of hoax cover story too when you find out you are over your head, 4 months into your build. LMFAO!

Well, according to you know who, it was the plan from the start to never to actually build it so I’d say that was fraud but enough about that!

As to a homebrew, I always thought that I would like to build one when I was retired but then I think do I want to devote a good 4-5 years or more to to do it right. I have done scratch builds of MM, CC, MB & AFM years ago, the first one took me just under 2 years to build, the next ones just over a year as I learned a lot after the first build but building a game from scratch is a whole different ball game!

On a side note, I built all of the above while working my full time job but now that I am finally retired, if I were motivated to do one more scratch build, I know I could do it in 6 months if I dedicated 50-60 hours of work a week to it and no beer or pre-packed meals!!!

For years I have been wanting to take a Gottlieb/Premier Rock strip it and do a total retheme of KISS- Creatures of the Night. I don't know if that is really a homebrew, but I do know the time involved is much greater than 6 months.

Well, it depends on your goal. If you want to make a "purely mechanical" pinball machine with limited artwork, you could probably make one of those in less than 6 months.

On the solid state side of the coin... I think your experience is extremely relevant. I'm assuming for this argument, that you are strictly a "one man show" and also have a full time job? If you have to start "learning it all" from day 1... one machine would be challenging, no matter what your time frame. I would investigate the different hardware and software possibilities and choose what makes sense for your project.

It took me a while to really understand and grasp what is happening with the "pinball software" side of pinball design. I know the most about the Mission Pinball Framework [MPF] at this point and it's Python based. If you have any experience with Python, that can really speed up the software side of that learning curve and save you some time as well.

Open Pinball Project, fastpinball.com, Trident Pinball and a few other resources might be some good starting points to help track down what resources you need as your "partners in crime". In fact, very recently, Trident is offering some crazy cool things like taking your drawing/design and actually cutting the playfield for your project for you.

Just because you are a one man show, DON'T FEEL LIKE YOU NEED TO "REINVENT THE WHEEL" UNLESS IT'S ACTUALLY REQUIRED FOR YOUR PROJECT. Plug here for the Yoppsicle LEDs. They will save you a LOT of time... https://www.cometpinball.com/products/yoppsicle-led-stick

MANY others have not only created homebrew machines, they have cleared a path and laid down a road for you to already follow. They have made 1,000 of mistakes ans assumptions that you don't need to also make. So, spend some time researching solutions and documentation of completed hamebrew projects and mimic the shortcuts and helps that others have found.

That will really give you a kick start in the right direction and help you decide what SOFTWARE and HARDWARE "clicks" for you and makes the most sense for your project.

Also, I should mention that if you have ever made a MAME cabinet or even a "virtual Pinball" table, that can help tremendously with some of the cosmetic aspects and DIY resources for "common part" things like playfield support, coin door access, cabinet design/hinges and other aspects of your machine/project.

Heed this: If you are not mechanically inclined, don't like to soldering, have no idea how to troubleshoot basic pinball problems like "why exactly does this not work", and you hate making wiring harnesses from scratch for hours until your fingers hurt, then a homebrew pinball machine is probably NOT the project for you.