You can't really compare a PS4 programmer to a pinball programmer. Also a new game is probably about $60. If you had to buy an entire console with it maybe another $350. A new pin is $5,500 plus so it's comparing apples to really really expensive oranges.

I know a few guys are doing it, but there are a ton of pinball machines both DMD and pre DMD that could really benifit from new code. It would be interesting to see what those guys could do with a real pin.

I have a P-roc and ID4 that I'm writing new code for. I am just getting my feet wet with programming but ID4 is the perfect example of an excellent shooting game with very shallow rules.

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In the PS4 industry the story line, game rules, art, etc are not even performed by programmers. In the pinball world the programmers take on both rules development and coding of said rules. For example, I've suggested that Stern use Lyman to help flesh out rules on all games rather than have him only involved in every third game, but the pinball industry even beyond Stern still tends to use one person on both roles, and as a result games are hit and miss. To be clear I'm not asking that Lyman write the rules for all Stern games, but he is better than most at fleshing out details that can make or break a game.

This has to be a troll...

In AAA video game land there are a lot of times 100+ people that work on the development for a game. In pinball there's a lead programmer, maybe 2 and some times a couple others assisting (sometimes just one person total!).

Also, the type of programming being performed is completely different. Take Pinball FX2 for example, dozens of programmers working on digital tables yet many have boring rules compared to what guys like Keith Johnson, Ted Estes, Lyman Sheats and Dwight Sullivan can do on their own.

This is pretty key, if pinball companies want to be more serious about the their game design then they should hire people to be dedicated game designers, not just playfield designers and programmers.

If you don't want to be a troll, don't insult pinball programmers without offering a shred of analysis.

It's also silly to compare PS4 software that sells millions of copies with pinball software, which sells maybe 2000-4000 copies. I think what the Stern software engineers have done while moving to Spike is pretty awesome, actually. Like changing the wheels on a fast moving train.

Is it possible that the software development tools for pinball just suck, and hence make it take a year to do what can be coded in a month for a gaming console? I have wondered why it takes so long to make pinball code changes because relatively speaking it's not hugely complicated.

In my industry changes often break other things, and testing takes allot of time. The next gen gaming industry is giant compared to pinball - lots of these games cost tens of millions to develop.... I don't believe pinball has near those resources.

In video games you have extensive libraries at your disposal. One line of code might use a library function that took 2000 man hours to develop. I have no idea what the situation in pinball coding is like, but I suspect that very few libraries exist and everything is done from scratch.

i highly doubt it. They have repeating functions that they use on all games. Everything common like plunger switch detection, slingshots, inlane, outlanes, top lanes, orbits, drop targets, spinners, magnets, pop bumpers, through and ball detection etc...

Now what they don't have is how one hit will affect the other variables and that is where the can of worms opens up (Has user hit target 3,4,5..? Yes, ok then multply score by 2X, but if he has also hit target 8,9,10 increase it by 10X but only if locks are lit)..

swampfire got it straight away. When you are making 1000 machines - allow $300 each for initial code - $30K

Allow another $100 for updates - another $10K

Peanuts and not enough to get any programmer worth having even interested in getting out of bed.

Purge.

I said it in a previous thread. This guy is Kaneda-lite. Diet Kaneda!

OP's posts are a waste of bandwidth on this site. I'm shocked he hasn't bragged about owning 10 games yet

Programming a pinball machine with 50 switches and 100 lights is not rocket science people. Get real.

Complex software is Artificial Intelligence, shooting a missile from a submarine to a 3x3 pinpoint 1200 miles away, programming a self driving car or how about bionics?

It takes these guys longer to program a simple game than for Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel.

I took Lawler almost as long to create DI as Egyptians took to build a pyramid by hand.

People think that these designers are so overworked. Please dont tell me that Lawler worked 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 46 weeks a year and for 4-5 years and come out with this pinball. Ritchie used to come out with multiple games per year and now it takes 3 years for one.

Negotiating a pinball license? This is entry level legal work compared to what corporations negotiate on a daily basis. Stern and jjp are milking people for every penny they can like politicians do.

Let's see these programmers build new routing code for the internet or send a probe to mars and I'll bow to them.

Machines cost more today than ever in history. The big manufacturers are building these machines for lower cost per unit than ever before as well.

This industry is not rocket science.

I'd be really good at pinball programming and would pursue a career in it, but I don't want to move to Chicago/Jersey.

Maybe I'll make my own game and take preorders to fund the production??

I don't think anyone is disputing this--at least not me. However, when you look at a AAA title console release, be it on the Playstation, Xbox, or Nintendo, you have legions of programmers that only work on physics engines, another group just for foliage, and a group just for facial expressions, etc, etc. Plus debugging and refining for each console's unique specs.

The market for pinball is several orders of magnitude smaller, and you might have a couple guys looking at code on, comparatively speaking, a shoestring budget, all working congruently on different pinball machines for code updates and such. It's impossible to compare the two industries--other than the fact that they're both designed for entertainment.

Not to mention, these games are all meant to be vended, and I doubt that the average player in the arcade is really looking at the breadth and depth of the machine's code.

Maybe you should stick with the ps4?

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"Programmers that only work on physics engines". "Only"? These guys are among the most brilliant people you would ever run across on your life. I work with guys like that. Take it back Mr. Armchair Quarterback.

There is a LOT LOT LOT LOT LOT more to programming a pinball machine than probably anyone in this thread has even the slightest clue about. Seriously......I'm astounded at how little people understand sometimes.

If the few of you who think it's all so easy, please come and work for me and see how you go.

I programmed a pinball game on pc many years ago, and I was a video game graphics programmer for many years as well (Playstation 3/Xbox 360, etc) before switching careers. Making the table logic work on the pc pinball game was fairly easy, it was one coder per table and it took me maybe 2 months to finish it. Sure it was a simpler table but still, the basic idea is the same. That's why I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious as I haven't programmed a physical pinball machine. The basic idea is all the same whether its a software pinball machine or a physical one, so there has to be something different. I know budgets are different but it's not like you would need anywhere near the manpower to code a pinball machine. Like others mentioned, maybe the software libraries are woefully incomplete on the physical side but are there other issues? Like what is the debugging process like. It's a breeze on pc or console but how is it on a physical machine? Do you have to burn fresh roms with every software change during the development process? Do you have to re-upload new code every time at a brutally slow speed to check updates? Can you even do realtime debugging? Is the debugger crap? Does the dev envronment crash alot?

I ask because for reference when I worked on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, the same tasks would take significantly longer to do on the PS3 version and would be far more difficult to implement because of it's at the time far more primitive dev environment and hardware limitations. So it makes me wonder if the dev environments are just really primitive for physical pinball. Given what low volume pins sell at, maybe the dev environment just hasn't been a priority. This was the case during the Playstation 2 era where the dev environments were horrid, but Sony has a monopoly at the time so they didn't care and left the burden on the developers to sort it out. They had to rectify that when the Xbox 360 came along with its far more polished and desirable dev environment. Stern kinda has a monopoly in the physical pinball world which makes me wonder if it's a similar situation that perhaps they don't put much effort to fixing their development tools simply because they have no pressure to do so.

'Easy' is definitely a misnomer, but I think writing C++ for a game physics and writing C++ for a microcontroller are on a similar level in terms of difficulty. I actually think 3D graphics are a bit harder.

Programming for a physical machine has some other difficulties and you can actually harm the hardware. For example if you are ejecting one ball from a scoop during a multi-ball while handling what the second ball is doing you could over-fire a coil. I might not be wording this right but I think you get the idea.

Ah! Please don't think I was undermining their abilities! I suppose the tone of my writing is lost through text.

What I'm saying is that development of games on consoles is orders of magnitude more complex than developing code for a pinball machine, and that they sometimes have teams of specialists that focus only on certain tasks. I agree with you. Those who develop any sort of code, especially those on consoles, are brilliant. Hell, I could never do it.

Obviously the best programmers out there are not going to go work for a pinball company. In essence, this industry has remained unchanged for 30-40 years or so, as far technology. Hell, we finally got LCDs in games even though they have been around for decades! With that said, there is only so much that can be done with a mechanical game like pinball, unless we see games like p3 taking over the industry. Coding can only do so much. Games like zen pinball are cool because they do things that are impossible in the real world, as far as characters talking, balls magically disappearing and zapped across the screen, etc. Most pinball players will never see most of the code involved in a game to begin with. The future as I see it is getting the player more involved with the game through the LCD screens, explaining what they are doing and why. Story telling is not strong point at all in pinball, but it needs to be. When you walk up to a machine, wouldnt it be cool to know why and what you are doing, without needing a book to understand when you start a mode in aliens why you are shooting the lit light on the left ramp? Why not say "They are starting to breech the door, shoot the left ramp to close it, etc".

It's Greek to me. Love to play, can barely change a burned out light.

Sigh.

As pointed out before with video games you also have economy of scale. Millions of games sold every year translates into 10s or 100s of millions $$ for coding along with fancy libraries that were developed over decades. In pinball you simply don't have the numbers on your side. There's only so much one or two programmers can do in 3-4 month.
Also the development and debugging might be significantly more complex than on a PC or console. Recompile, load into the debugger, fix stuff, rinse and repeat. In pinball this process could be considerably more complex with the potential of blowing stuff up if your code sends the wrong signal.

Its been a few years, many, since I have written code.
My apologies if these are sounding ignorant.

What language is Stern using?

In another language, is their greater efficiency in code?

Would anyone be OK to post a paragraph of code?

According to other threads it's C++. There are higher level languages that by themselves could be more efficient but when combined with hardware might not be the best choice. I don't know what else their tooling supports though. Probably just C++. I programmed 2 separate home made pins based on Arduino. One took a month and the more complicated one took 2.

Ideas are easy... implementing them when programming can be a chore sometimes. Devil is in the details.

This guy knows whats up.

Lots of armchair developers in this thread for sure

I forget to mention that the ones I programmed in those smaller time-frames were because the language used is high level and enabled me to do so. The rules for one was basically sea witch "light" and the other might be closer to a system 11. I could easily see stern taking longer since they'd have to have a more complex setup

why would we need more complicated games?
sometimes a simple but affective code just does the job and is fun.

i like a story in my pin, but i dont need an adventure of 20 hours, cause then i need a way to save at a savepoint and play again later from that save point so i need more balls/buy in.

i dont think a pinball on location needs this, waiting in line for someone to finish ?? maybe for home use we could use more updates and longer codes , so start writing you programmers!
lets write our own story's for home use and someone can code and do the graphics for dmd and burns these roms !
now that would be cool!

Exactly how many people do you think have turned their backs on playing pinball because the rules/displays just weren't doing it for them, and gosh darnit, if it just had better software they would be ALL IN.

I've got a pretty good guess.

Zero.

If the game is fun, people who get into pinball will have fun playing it. Sometimes software helps that (TWD, I'm looking at you) sometimes it doesn't much matter (giant piles of older games).

I thought Stern's main customers are collectors not operators now?

It would be nice if it was easier for end users to modify (we see how the sound music adjustments are well received).

I believe even minor tweaks could improve some games.

Plus, could you imagine if a game like IM or Tron was completely re-done with more advanced rules like TWD?

Not saying Tron or IM are badly done but the code is something that can be altered and could make the whole game play differently such as for example JD has two different starting rules.

How cool would it be for IM to have different rules for each different movie? Or for IM to have more meat to the rules like Metallica?

There are a few different issues in play:

1) You have companies like Stern who don't allocate the proper resources to code. They used to, but at some point they decided to cheapen out a bit and not finish games. Not programmers fault, company management/buyers fault (for buying incomplete games in the first place).

2) You have games which were promised to be in production 2 or 3 years ago but the software still isn't done. TBL is a prime example. I have no idea why it's not finished at this point. Alien was supposed to be done like 2 years ago and it's not finished either, but I think a large part of the is because they didn't have a machine to work with (not programmer fault, they should have been provided with resources a long time ago). There are factors going on where it's clear something should have been done a long time ago but either nobody was working on it or didn't have the resources.

3) Sometimes, the programmers aren't up to par or are over their head. One really good programmer can outproduce 5 to 10 average programmers, no joke. It's not because he can type faster, but when problems come up he can sometimes find a solution in 1/100 the time the other people would, plus when he writes software that problem probably wouldn't have come up in the first place.

I write embedded C code that does complicated IO for a living, so a pinball machine isn't very far off from what I normally do. A lot of the problems that some of these startups have is that they don't realize the cost in making things from scratch. Making your own boardset = expensive unless you have the exact right people to do it like spooky did. Otherwise, new board development can be a huge time/resource sink that could have been avoided altogether by just using a P-Roc or something. Making your own boardset just extends development cycle that much longer and can do in companies that don't have the finances to go that long.

And I would agree with the above that making a modern video game is likely a lot harder than doing a pinball machine. You have graphics, AI, UI, controls, online play, etc. Different set of problems, but a much larger set.

A number of years ago when I ran development for a software company we would always muse over the fact that the discs we just burned cost under a dollar, yet sold for 7 figures. What we were selling was software. Therefore, you invested heavily in people and development environments and tools to optimize the development processes, from design to test to release mgmt. This is the same with video games.

Stern, JJP, etc, are selling lights and bumpers, furniture and art, sounds and magnets. When the bean counters look at the numbers, the big numbers (and therefore greatest opportunity for savings) are probably in things like cabinets and coils. When the marketing people look at the business, they are probably focused on theme and art. It is easy to see why software development could take a back seat.

You know, there are plenty of projects which would let you do exactly this sort of stuff. Grab an old SS game with some fried controllers(or just a playfield), add your microcontroller of choice and have at it. OPP(https://openpinballproject.wordpress.com/) has boards you can build. I'm using an Arduino Mega/Raspberry Pi combo for my projects. Once you have the driver system done(note, this is actually never done, you just finally get it good enough to move to the next step), you can add whatever multimedia components you like. If you have room to build a 3d printer and a 3d mill, you can pretty much build a system from scratch.
As a programmer, I have programmed both systems level and low level code. It's not easy, and the corner cases can be maddeningly hard to diagnose. But there are a lot of projects that people could be contributing to if they wanted to make the pinball world a better place(after all, there is nothing keeping Stern or any boutique pinball maker from using quality open source pinball code in their games, depending on the licencing of the code of course).

The entire point of the thread has actually been missed. Pinball did explode at one time when there were no programers! It was during the non flipper machines of yore all the way to the EMs These machines arw what drew people to the machine and made it grow and live for how many years? If im not mistaken werent some of these models made in larger numbers then The Addams Family? Pinball can explode if it is in the public eye period. Once again why no advertising in NON Pinball Markets? Advertise in magazines such the Hobbs Report or Car and Driver etc and or used on more game shows as prizes? Just about all Pinball advertising is directed at Pinheads and only found if you are actively searching information on Pinball machines.

Programming wont make pinball grow, being seen is what will make it grow. Simpler rule sets for the every person to play and have fun on location would help it grow. One way programing might help is to have settings where once you achieve certain goals features are unlocked as they are in video games. The Video game public of today has grown up understanding that ladder this way a game can be both simple for 1st timers and more difficult for active players. Programmings strength is in keeping return customers/players more than it is to draw them and make pinball explode. Pinball must be seen as with anything out of sight out of mind.

My landline phone was in my public eye, but I am not inclined to get another one when I have a software enabled smart phone. Landlines kept telephone "alive and growing for how many years"? All we need to do is advertise them!

Even Whoa Nellie is smart, but supposedly an old-school EM.

This is very true and would be awesome to unlock features,etc over time. The p3 is going to have this capability and I believe even the first release (ll escape from earth) may have some achievements based on play over time. Future released probably for sure. This is def. possible with traditional pinball releases as well but better/easier to execute (imo) via the p3 platform and LCD screen. There's a modularity inherent in the dynamic nature of the Playfield screen itself that screams for this kind of coding for unlocking features and power ups.

As a Software Engineer working on console gaming I had to give you an up vote Let the downvoting continue..

Added over 7 years ago: Disregard everything else in this thread by me.

"If the programmers [salaries in this industry] were better then this hobby will explode!"

Fixed that for ya.