I think the only person to ever retire from pinball is John Trudeau.

Yeah, but that was underwear duress.

Wayne Neyens has been retired almost as long as he was making pins.

Lonnie Ropp has managed to program them like he's already retired.

Must’ve gone to Deeproot then.

This news about the best pinball coder ever only rates one line buried in a story about someone else?
Lyman Sheats leaving Stern deserved it's own article.

Sounds like people that know what happened have essentially confirmed it.

And the CGC "he doesn't work here" could still be just a carefully worded truth. For example, maybe he's working on Ben's game that Spooky is doing with CGC. So not technically CGC, but still CGC, essentially. Or maybe he's employed by Planetary Pinball, but working on stuff intended for CGC. There are a lot of ways to slice it.

That's what I find amazing about all this. With the number of people on this forum, someone must be able to just ask Lyman to set the record straight.

From Pinball News:

"Lyman also left Stern Pinball, in his case at the end of last year."

Those who know him respect his privacy.

I just want him to know he’s awesome and wherever he ends up - or doesn’t - I’ve appreciated (and owned!) every game he’s worked on.

He hasn't been on Pinside since Feb, so I doubt he'll be posting updates himself.

This. Nuff said.

Rob

Honestly, it is sounding to me like we should be praying for his well being, not arguing about which company he may or may not be working for.

And that’s 100% consistent with what I’ve heard from people who know him as well. Burn out is a real thing and I can only imagine the pressure he was under. He has the reputation of being one of the best coders, and how many Pinsiders have said that he is the only one that they would trust with code at Stern?

“In Lyman we trust” has been a common saying here for years.

Yes it is. I know myself about 11pm, after 12 or more hours of tech support. I get punchy. That is usually when my posts get funnier, my release valve.

I hope Lyman gets the break he needs. And at some point moves forward on things good for him. Mentally and physically. Even if it isn't coding pinball. His well being is more important to me than his next pin.

LTG : )

I'm sure Lyman put unbelievable pressure on himself to make each game better than the one before. He did an amazing job and commands the utmost respect from the entire hobby.

If he's on to a new challenge in life I wish him the best. "In Lyman we Trust".

Not sure there will ever be an equal talent rules/coder wise in pinball although Elwin/Neagle and team are kicking ass thus far.

Whatever helps you sleep at night Lloyd

Maybe he has retired, is now a private contracter, or is possibly sitting out a non compete clause. Will be interesting to find out where and if he reemerges someplsce.

It shows when he invests a lot of his own personal time into his games. I don't think you can down play the external pressure, though. Pinball fans can be extremely demanding for code updates and expectations for Lyman games are sky high. If he needs a break, he certainly deserves it without people hounding him. If he gets involved in another project, pretty sure we will hear about it soon enough.

Well said. My god, after spending just a couple days on Pinside I’d never want to work in this industry! Love for the game has to be the only reason everyone puts up with all this. Or does the sensible thing and quits Pinside! I’ve never heard anyone say anything negative about Lyman, but it doesn’t matter. People are dunking on Steve Richie now! It’s ridiculous

I will say it is rude of us, considering how incredible he had been to pinball. I havent seen anything super bad outside of saying his last few games sucked. I know him saying how dimpling is normal in that video rubbed people the wrong way. But I dont feel people are being huge ass holes about him, necessarily.

I feel he has drifted away from his former self. He made many advancements and improvements to pinball, but his last 15 or 20 years hes just been on repeat.

I’m just amazed Steve still wants to do this full time. The man is 71 years old. Maybe JJP has a more relaxed schedule.

I think “underwear duress” was literally one of the charges brought against him.

Pinball magazine says Lyman left Stern last November.

One of the all time greats.

He only came out to post after it was said he releases games "bare to the bone" back to the B/W days. He wasn't having that and posted to correct it.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stern-stranger-things?tu=sir_tankalot

Yeah just look at how many games JJP has designed in its history vs Stern in 18 months. He'll get at least two years to work on a game, probably longer if they don't bump Eric's game back.

Yeah, I mean that is kind of BS. "bare to the bone"? Even Monster Bash which is lighter on the rules is a killer game

The code for the stacking alone in that game has to be bonkers. It's near-TSPP level stacking, but 15 years before TSPP. Is there anything in that game that DOESN'T stack short of no advancement of modes while in the mini/wizard modes?

Stern games people. And I still feel horrible about that. But it was an accurate statement. All stern games from Lyman are amazing but took a long time for each to get to the finish line. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Every coding lead does things differently.

It wasn't an accurate statement back then because you didn't qualify it by saying Stern era. You just said 100% of Lyman's games are released bare to the bone, which was wrong. His B/W were essentially complete (and VERY complete by Stern standards) at release except for some very niggly stuff.

I got an upvote from Lyman for defending his record by correcting that assertion, before he posted himself, so thanks. Small miracles.

Oh my gosh, who cares? It seemed pretty obvious that he was talking about Stern games. Would it have made you feel better if he said "other than those released more than two decades ago?"

But congratulations on your "gotcha" post.

It shows sir_tankalot has 48 pins in his collection. I hope is enjoying them and thanks for the great games!

I wish I knew he wanted an Argosy. I would have sold him mine

Exaggeration in a factual conversation bothers me. It's a character flaw of mine. I drag it in real life when people make "absolute" "all" or "100%" statements, too, and it drives the people that know me insane.

We were in a stern only thread talking about stern games. All BW games were released complete. I mad a bad assumption that everyone would know I was talking stern. The initial question was what sterns coding cadences are. In a stern thread.

Also I think i was his first and only downvote. Haha.

We both accidentally got into rarified strata! I certainly wasn't expecting it, and likely neither were you.

It looks like he has a total of 16 posts on Pinside, and almost half of them were in that thread.

Well, you do drive me 100% insane. Well, 98%. My wife absolutely owns all of the final word. So….yeah…

Had little to do with it being B/W or Stern. It had to do with technology at the time. Everything gets released unfinished these days because of the ease of patching and rushing things out because of the 'we'll fix it later' mentality.

Most things prior to 2005 were released mostly complete and mostly bug free...and if they did have bugs...you lived with it most of the time.

Lyman is the best on rules my Spider-Man never leaving and many Williams games

This seriously dismisses the difference in code depth and size compared to the old Days.

It was much easier to release games “fully finished” In 1995 because the code was tiny and shallow compared to now.

It was also MUCH more difficult To update code. You had to burn or buy rom chips and install them.

It’s a pretty apples and oranges situation. People want “complete code” at game launch? Start insisting upon drastically shallower rule sets, and insist that LCDs are retired and we go back to dot matrix.

I'll give you that code is deeper these days.

(as for the rest of what you stated, that's basically what I was saying)

It doesn't change what I said though. Rush rush rush is how it goes. I think the hoops people had to jump through with the limited space was just as difficult if not more difficult than today.

I'd give you 2 thumbs up if it were possible.

Probably should be its own thread, but was generally considered the deepest B/W game? TZ, TS, or was it something else?

They also did location testing, which clearly helped A LOT. That isn't done anymore during development, and it shows. The customers are the beta testers now.

Honestly didn't know they didn't do that anymore, but yeah, makes sense.

how about insisting companies begin working on the code earlier and with more programmers so its done on time.