What are the steps? Do I design it up in something like Visual Pinball first or do I jump into hardware first? Is it best to start with a retheme project?
(Topic ID: 242448)
Muskego, WI
You sound like a guy who should be on the pindev slack. PM me an email address if you want an invite.
Really, you can do whatever works for you. Start with VP, start with a blank piece of wood, whatever you’re comfortable with. If you want to do it bad enough, you’ll figure it out.
Well... I installed both Future Pinball and Visual Pinball but have not gotten very fast with those. I'm comfortable with pretty much anything. Do some crude VB programming at work, torn down several games now... Just not sure the best place to start.
Get on the slack channels for sure. Pindev and fast.
How you go about it will depend on how you like to design things. There are guys that like to get the layout done in software.. vis Pinball or CAD if you’re good with that like swinks and some guys prefer to work it out on paper then go straight to a rough white wood. Totally up to your own style.
I'm curious about this too. I just cut a piece of plywood using an old BK playfield as a template. I'm starting to play around with playfield layouts. Looking for a donor machine
What is the general consensus in "custom" machines? Are there people actually taking donor games and revamping the layout, video, etc? Or is the only real way to make a custom game to use the homebrew stuff and create it all manually?
Welcome! The mission pinball framework (http://missionpinball.org/) has docs about the software side and parts of the hardware side: http://docs.missionpinball.org/en/latest/. In the dev version (http://docs.missionpinball.org/en/dev/mechs/index.html) we started to add part numbers for a lot typical mechs in case you are looking on how to buy them. We recently added support for virtual pinball so you can programm your game in MPF, test it with VPX and later run it on real hardware unchanged.
here is a index of homebrew builds from rethemes to complete custom start from nothing - lots of inspiration
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/homebrew-pinball-games-released-2016-to-current
Quoted from Mbecker:Get on the slack channels for sure. Pindev and fast.
How you go about it will depend on how you like to design things. There are guys that like to get the layout done in software.. vis Pinball or CAD if you’re good with that like swinks and some guys prefer to work it out on paper then go straight to a rough white wood. Totally up to your own style.
After poking around in Visual Pinball, I'm leaning toward the paper to white wood approach. That seems more inline with my style anyway.
Quoted from kcZ:After poking around in Visual Pinball, I'm leaning toward the paper to white wood approach. That seems more inline with my style anyway.
Yeah - it’s nice if you like to get to the part of working with your hands 
id day read they every homebrew thread on here to see what others have been doing (if you haven’t already) .. that’s a good starting place.
Reply
Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.
Hey there! Welcome to Pinside!
Donate to PinsideGreat to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!
