Speaking of the ramp - how do you guys deal with removing the ramps for cleaning up the game? I haven't actually tried it yet, but looking at how they go through the back wall, it seems like it would be quite a feat getting them off.

But isn't one of those screws in the lower right corner under the ramp?

It turned your Iron Man I to Lethal Weapon?

I wondered if a color DMD in sigma mode would look the movie clips look better or even muddier.

Original head trim IS t-molding. Really hideous gold with a black line down the center t-molding (that I'd like to get rid of)

And all of that adds how much gameplay? That's why I always have a hard time justifying dress-up spending.

Those yellow plastic protectors look really nice!

I put clear on mine. Don't like how it plays. But haven't made the effort to take 'em back off yet either.

They're too thick is the biggest problem. All openings get smaller because of the thickness, outlines, top lanes, etc. Plus they look crappy when they get pulled tight and the tightest parts turn opaque.

The whips are bright? Cripes. Is there an uncontained nuclear reactor under your PF?

*squints*

Man! Just had a really terrible ball 1 and ball 2 (like, shameful), but then on ball three the perfect storm hit. Had bogey running, started fast scoring, started war machine, stacked whiplash on top of that. Crazy go nuts! After that pile ended (bogey still running) I nailed Do or Die for 34 mil, then started 2x scoring and right into Jericho! Good grief! Lost it on a monger magnet throw to the outlane pretty fast there.

Still only ended up with 93 mil. But damn that was fun.

The thing I don't like about having the orbit post disabled is that during monger multiball it auto-raises the monger because a plunge results in a full shot around the orbit, so it thinks you made that. You don't actually have to make a shot to raise it yourself.

It's 2" on the right, 2.5" on the left.

The mech is motor lifted, gravity dropped. If anything stops it on the way down, it doesn't affect the motor/gears at all.

I have an original run Iron man with incandescent GI and Flashers, LED inserts + LED OCD, set as incandescent so the fading lightshow in attract is normal. Looks great, to me anyway.

Those are what I have too, but I left blue single LED bulbs in them, rather than the white OMG MY EYES plates that they shipped with. I put the crazy bright things in metallica instead.

Edit: Doh, noticed after posting that I'm late with 100% of this. heh!

LED OCD works great in IM because there are some fade effects that looks spastic on LEDs. The version of the code that came out when the VE did has an option in the settings for if you're using LEDs to prevent the bad fades by just not using them. If you have an LED OCD board you can turn that back the non LED settings for the better lightshows.

It's been done. It's a huge letdown though. Really not satisfying at all. This video shows it at about 22:21 or so

Dupe. My bad.

Anybody know how the bonus works in Ironman?

I'd love to know for sure if that's all it is. And what the points are. I guess I'll do some experimenting to see if I can verify. I'm kinda working on a thing.

Not really. Something in a different lane than that.

More like this:

Except that was a first draft, and it's going to be different than that. A bit. Larger Display window for full 2.35 video of the movie parts.

I can't distribute this one though. I mean, good lord the lawyers. Yikes. And it's not just a display, as usual, I have to rebuild the game, but the idea is to redo the game as exactly as I can. And maybe add a skill shot.

After some experimenting, I can confirm this. It's hella simple, thank goodness.

Bonus is (base value per ball) + (switches * 670 points)

The base value starts at 125k and goes up by 125k per ball. So, 125,000 then 250,000, then 375,000 (assuming extra balls continue this).

So on ball one, if you hit 1 switch and drain you'd have 125,670 -- hit two switches, it's 126,340 etc.

Ball two would be 250,670 and 251,340 respectively.

I tested a bunch of different switches and they all score the same. The thing I don't know is if major game events add anything to the bonus, and that would be a lot more difficult to test, but not impossible. Like, if you complete monger to raise it, does that add anything to the bonus above the switch count thus far? It might.

Here's a REALLY early peek at what I meant by changes in a second run at doing Ironman HD. The display ends up about 5.5 inches tall on the mounted screen, so I'll have to chop the hole open more.

The demo shows what I'm currently thinking of for the ironman targets, the early ramp shots, and then some clips I might use for the drone target hits, since I don't have any studio quality animations of standing drones exploding.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I'm going to take this thing to expo for the P-ROC booth. However far along it is.

The problem is that holding a flipper up will prevent the ball search. The game assumes you have one trapped (which you did) and won't search.

The only way to get the game to fix itself is to drain the other ball. Your alternate option is to hold the ball on the flipper, take the glass off, grab your stuck ball, re-assemble and resume.

I've had my IM a few years and I've never had that particular situation happen. The ball is wild, just roll with it.

Another quick preview of what the Ironman HD setup looks like. This time with the display in the game. My phone had a hard time with the light though, so the screen looks really washed out. It's not crappy in person. Come check it out in the PROC booth at expo. It may not do a whole lot by then, but it'll do something.

Working on War Machine Multiball today. It's coming along ok, but of course everything is subject to change.

If anybody in the IM club is really good at making sweet looking metal stuff in photoshop and wants to help me out, let me know

Shouldn't have posted the WIP video so early in the day I guess. This is probably about what it will look like at expo. I fancied up several of the display parts, and flipped the 'start' and 'ready' animations because they make more sense in this order.

And, I know that the laser spin is really the 'end' of the battle and would make sense for the super, but it's war machine's multiball, so I gave him the glory on the super jackpot.

Did you guys know that any_ shot to the WM kicker during the first 20 seconds of WM Multiball will add a ball -- not just once? I didn't.

More tales of trying to work out game logic after the fact. Like the bonus, the "Super Pops" has a mystery number that I have to work out. I'm sure you're all aware that you get to the super pops by shooting each orbit and the center spinner to light the pops. After that, super pops begins and each hit is worth some value.

Here's what I've got so far: The value starts with a base of 20,000. Any hit to the center spinner switch adds 200 to that value, so the absolute minimum the value can be is 20,200, because if you start a game, and hit only the left and right orbit switches and the center spinner switch 1 time, it's 20,200. If you start a game and hit the left orbit, the center spinner switch twice, and the right orbit, the value is 20,400 -- extra hits to the orbits do not add any points. Similarly any hit to either side spinner switch adds 300 to the value. Also figured out by process of elimination. The problem is, I've seen values for the super pops that end in 50 -- and I can't find a switch that adds 50 points (or something that ends in 50 points) to the value.

TLDR: FYI, the spinners jack up the super pops value, bros.

It is not. At least not on some details. Martin says that the super pops score is 1/25th the jackpot value - but that's not accurate. I did a lot of manipulating those 2 values (super pop value and jackpot) and am positive they're not tied together.

The jackpot value builds with every pop hit until the super pops start. It builds the jackpot by the value of the pop. Unlit pops are 5k, first level lit pops are 7.5k -- and if you manage to survive through super pops and re-light it, the pop flashes and is now worth 10k (max).

The super pops value is built by (at least) the spinners -- but there may be other things that add to it.

I had not noticed that the super pop value can still raise DURING super pops though, so reading through his analysis was helpful. Thanks for that!

It's not a video mod. I don't know how you could fully do that with all the dynamic elements. I'm rewriting the entire game. The intent is to replicate the gameplay as best I can. However I do have other ideas about how some of the video is handled, for example the first time you do the WHIPLASH multi ball, it uses video from the race track. But on the second round in the same game I'm using the stuff from the end of the movie with full-metal WHIPLASH.

Really, what I'm doing is stupid. It's a monumental amount of work just to make the display look different. It makes no sense. I just like making things.

Well damn. Time to eat crow on this one. Martin is actually right on the 1/25th of the jackpot value. The jackpot value is hard to track because it's not always show when it's increasing.

The spinners add the current value of their associated pop bumper to the "super pop value" - so on an already lit pop, they ad 7500 per spin to the jackpot and on the first shot when unlit, they add 5000. That was the difference I was seeing in the side spinners vs the center - I was hitting the side ones after lighting the pop with the orbit, so they were more.

I am not seeing the drones adding hits to the super pops though - but that may be an artifact of an older software version.

Pssshh, like I'm not going to add a better skillshot.

Wrapping up the package for Expo -- come by and check it out! It's no where near complete, but it will hopefully be at least playable without too much crashing and weirdness.

If only it was just a display. Then I wouldn't be buried in code! Working on more of the missing parts now (Jericho, Shield awards, etc)

I definitely plan to add an alternate 'hold the flipper' skill shot, an extra ball you can earn somehow, and at least adjustments for making DOD multiball easier. I'm not sure what video would be good for DOD multiball though.

Jericho is actually a little dull, visually. Every shot is the same clip - just because there's not much to work with from the film, really. But at least it'll be pretty.

I'm working on the "Ironman Scoring" right now - man what a waste that mode is. It's a huge let down after double scoring. I think I'll probably change it up. Make it "Hulkbuster Scoring" and tweak it so you can actually get big points out of it. Like ramp shots multiply the shot value and add some time, or something.

Screen Shot 2016-10-22 at 9.29.04 AM (resized).png

First, and most importantly, I'm just building this for myself. There's no way I'd ever get through the legal maze and expense of making it legit to give to other people. I'll take it to shows and whatever, but I can't make it for other people. No interest in taking on the Disney machine.

The 'end' of jericho is the full clip of the launch/missle/detonation -- if you complete all the parts and hit the final shot. It's all the interim shots that are boring. There's nothing else to the scene, so every shot uses the missile jets starting up.

I was actually thinking about using the drink case as the extra ball animation -- still not sure what to do there. Might use the clip from age of ultron where he steps out of his suit and looks at it in sokovia.

For whiplash and war machine - I've already got what you're talking about. Whiplash has 5 jackpot clips and 2 super jackpot clips, and on top of that, a second run through whiplash uses the 'iron whiplash' from later in the movie - all the jackpots (again, 5 and 2) use the video from the last battle in the dome. It's pretty great. War Machine also has many more jackpot clips, 3 double jackpots instead of one, and a longer super jackpot. Stern only had the trailer of the movie to work from when they made the game, that's why Whiplash and WM are so limited.

Maybe DOD could be replaced with the battle at the end of IM 3 with all the IM suits in a big battle -- haven't dug through that to see if there's enough useable video there or not. There's a decent amount of Iron Patriot in IM3 too, that could maybe be farmed for something new -- but I'm not really thinking about too much new yet. Still trying to build the original game.

There's very few clips that are really useful from the hulk buster battle (clean shots of IM getting a shot or hit in that aren't too short) - but it works pretty well to replace the IM scoring stuff, as there's an easy intro, and a nice "firing" shot (IM scoring uses a single firing shot, too).

Edit Update:
Now that I've cut apart the Hulkbuster scene, I actually got a lot more out of it that I can use than I expected - so that's probably a really good candidate to replace DOD multiball. So maybe I'll use the end of IM3 for Ironman Scoring instead.

I didn't know there was any way at all to kill it. Several of my games have tournament stuff in the attract because I had to run a tournament to capture the screens for colordmd work. Was really bummed when there was no "display tournament results yes/no" in the settings.

Yeah, it's almost comical what a letdown it is. When I was working on the colorDMD and triggered it by hand to record I was really bummed with what it actually is.

Get another one, mount them as side art.

They're electro magnets. They don't really weaken. So this is weird.

But with the standup targets you get that awesome little 'doot-doot' noise and some paltry points if you hit an already lit target.

Spicey. I’ll fix that.

[ some sort of burn the heretic animated gif ]

The LCD ramps the levels of brightness more evenly, so you can see the difference better in the darker shades. The LED brightness levels get closer together the lower they get so details get lost. I'd always recommend the LCD for movie clip Stern games (Batman, Spiderman, Ironman, Indy, GOT, etc)

In my notes from when I cataloged all the IM sounds when I was working on IM HD I have 0084 as the war machine kicker. Try that one.

Yeah, probably 0x84 - since 0x just means 'all zeros until' Pinball Browser saved out the filename as 0084.

Possible they tweak it some (pitch/speed) with code to make it into the kicker noise? Could just be the wrong one, I was just going through and trying to identify them by listening to them and making notes about what was what.

No.

Also; never.

Yeah, he's been tinkering with it for some time. I really hope this means that gets released too.

Just a 'in his spare time' kind of thing. Nothing official, at least so far.

Yeah, Lyman agrees - there were just some small fixes he was planning/doing.

He's had BangerJay's on loan for like a year.

I don't know if you've seen any footage of it, but DOD multiball is, well, a 'dud' -- it's got one display screen of text and all the shots are worth big points. Other than the "I did it!" there's nothing good about it, and by making the requirements easier, even the "I did it" wouldn't hold as much water.

I'm guessing it couldn't really be changed without having to go through approvals about assets and display and such, so he just left it alone, and since it's not very cool anyway, making it easier to get to doesn't really make sense.

Just guessing, but I'd expect if it wasn't in the ROM already, it didn't go through approvals and there's not anything cool in the rom that didn't get used.

Edit: There's 2 new clips in Whiplash (that may have been in the rom already) - so it's not as locked down as I thought.

He did punch up Whiplash multiball and made the requirements to get it easier - which is more in the category of "shit people will actually see", so that's fun.

Yeah, but it'll take me at least a few days to fix up the new bits.

You can actually turn on switch 8 and put the USB in before you turn the game on, then it will go straight to the USB update menu.

Working on it when I can. Just have the new video bits to do. Maybe by this weekend.

Coloring the menu is an immense rabbit hole it's better not to go down.

Big, ball-reactive goo-gah dead center of the PF, outstanding audio, theme they like/are familiar with - makes a lot of sense.

I would expect the 2 Vault editions are the same. If you can find an older one in nice shape for a decent price , you’re not losing anything.

The OG is incandescent bulbs and the older wooden speaker panel, the magnets without the protective metal ring. Not much point in reaching that far back. Now.

I setup the 'mark' inserts on my OG Ironman to go : red, red, orange, yellow, white -- which isn't proper for arc reactors at all, but looks nice aesthetically. The blue insert thing is just weird.