Faster than a speeding bullshit.
More powerful than a loco Montana.
Able to jump tall guns in a single bound...

What I'm saying is, I hadn't heard a peep about this myself before an hour or so ago.

Obviously I'd want a mechanically revised and refined Alien put back in the market; it would mean money for me, finally. But the confirmation point would be a deal made concerning my design rights to the game, since the work is not paid for. This has not happened.

Please do.

I haven't heard an official peep out of any such 'deal' yet. It's possible I've been out of the loop since my life has been a complete fucking shambles for a number of months, but that's my unpaid Alien design work we're talking about here.

I know that much of that two years' work has been to reduce as much unnecessary build cost as possible. There has been talk of the design being streamlined to fit into a standard body cabinet, but they would have had to simplify a considerable amount out to make that happen. The old design relies heavily on cross-playfield angles that intersect with each other, and layers overlaid over each other. Out of all the designs that were ever on the cards at Heighway, Alien was the most geometrically complex, and current owners like it like that. Weighing that up with the costs that a redesign would require, I can't judge which way PB would ultimately go with this.

And honestly, aside from the recent teasers they've kept the development of this iteration very much to themselves. I honestly have no idea what it looks like now. Which was the right call to make; one less source to leak. Kaneda could ask me multiple times "what's going on with Alien" and I'd reply truthfully "you know as much as I do".

This is what I can tell from the schematic alone. You're looking at the underside of the playfield, so the image will be flipped. Those big square areas will be the new circuit boards. Ignoring those and focusing on the positions of the t-nuts and the mechs...

The game is still a widebody, all four flippers are in the same places, and all the shots are intact. The drop targets on the right are still there, the scoop on the left is still there. I can't see the pops area so I don't know what's been done there. But there looks to have been a little shifting and refining so that all the revised mechs can fit, as well as the chief difference...

...They've put the second magnet back.

During development of the original, this was intended to snatch the ball out of the right orbit, and drop it into the chestburster area as a feed to the upper right flipper. It got dropped because the playfield sat directly onto the interior rails of the cabinet, and no mechs could clash with that space. We spent ages trying to come up with a decent workaround that would do the same thing, and eventually had to drop it altogether as a matter of cost - we were overthinking it and making any potential 'solution' way too expensive. But now that they've gone back to what looks like Bally/Williams cabinet interior standards, the edge restriction has been removed, and that magnet can go back in.

So what you're seeing here with the revision is pretty much the same game, minus the playfield screen expense, but with even more flow than the original actually has.

This has got me genuinely excited to see what else they've done, and I *DESIGNED* that original.

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Ferret was the lead coder. Quite frankly it was Ferret, David Thiel, Kelly the animator and the rest of the American side of the team that really saved the game, because they were too close-knit and too far away from Andrew that he couldn't push them around. The software and audio-visuals couldn't have been in better hands. And frankly that's another reason I'm glad the refined design appears to have changed comparatively little, because naturally PB would want to keep and reuse as much of that sterling work as possible.

Heh, even I'm getting the two of you mixed up into one entity, it's been that long.

Here's hoping Shadow Force Nova can see reality in some form, I'd still be pushing for that one.

I see opto ramps, but that's about it.

I have a plan in place - I'm covered if this actually happens. Without it, they wouldn't have the rights to use my design work either. But as Aurich says, it's important to keep that 'if' in mind, and everything so far has been on a 'need to know' basis.

Exactly this. I designed the sides to have entrance switch gates attached to them with overhead signs, but that was dropped. Nobody really liked the sign designs.

Early preview...

https://twitter.com/PinballBros/status/1339529011131805696

Physical ball lock. Along with the second magnet, the element I wanted most that was taken out before.

Because the whole point of the hypersleep chamber is PEOPLE SLEEP IN IT.