"murdered out" ye olde flipper bats today to match the plastics + orange protectors from lazeriffic.

\m/, ,\m/

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Did you play it? Or just dress it up?

Yes.

I bent mine to aim down more and they do a really nice job of lighting up the middle section of the playfield away from the GI. I really like the difference it makes.

Another Metallica project, eh? Do tell.

Rats!

Yeah, Yeah. I know.

I'd be happier with mine if I could get Monsters Premium for not too much. Don't really like the Pro version.

Black bats with orange regular flipper rubber.

Not pinball related, necessarily, but Metallica related -- St. Anger completely re-recorded with a regular snare and normal production. Also somewhat shortened. It's pretty awesome.

Indeed it was. I'm not a fan of music with singing in pins, I'd rather have just music.

There was a "Metallica The Instrumentals" album in 2012 that I found online. Not sure what the origins of it are, but it's really nice quality of a good portion of the songs in the game. The rest I scraped off youtube videos - and I substituted sanitarium for unforgiven, I think. It's been a awhile.

It was the left side that was a problem for me most often. A left orbit shot that it supposed to hit the post, then drop into the pops when released would just rebound off and come back down the orbit.

Haven't noticed any increase in rebounds on the right orbit with the metal post.

What good does it do to have it return down the orbit? Seems to me the design intent was Left orbit -> hit post & stop -> post drops -> ball rolls in to pops.

A few great scores on a game and you're done with the game forever? Do you do that with every game?

Two separate normal square targets.

I have those. Except I got them in orange, because it makes a lot more sense with the art on the plastics & playfield in that area.

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Yeah, Joe at Laseriffic, I just asked him if he could make the Metallica set in a different color and he did.

I don't see them, but I know Joe can make them. Maybe just shoot him a PM and ask?

I borrowed an idea from BangerJay and did a similar thing on a much simpler basis than the pinduino on my pro. Just 2 strips of RGB LEDs along the upper part of the back there, with the green of one connected to the snake flasher, and the red of that same strip connected to the ramp flashers. Then the other one wired for full white on one of the sparky flashers. Cheap and easy, still looks pretty nice - just not as fancy as a full on controlled show.

This is why Randy doesn't like to announce what's being worked on ahead of time.

There was a PMD Metallica at TPF, not sure if it was fully finalized though.

ColorDMD's Metallica is still a work in progress at this point. They haven't given any indication of a timeline, we just know they're working on it.

I'm only in if someone at stern sneaks code in for them on the pro.

How it changes it is that it smooths light lights on/off to look more like a real filament bulb -- it's a great improvement for any pin with LEDs in the inserts, period. If you get into the nuts and bolts of it, you can adjust the brightness of any insert and set the arc for the fade in/out. The videos kind of show you the effect, but it looks even better in person. A local that had us over to play recently had the LED OCD board in his Twilight Zone and it looks fantastic. Looking forward to doing my games whenever funds allow.

It's not just the ghosting/flickering/whatever - it's the sharp on/off of LEDs too. Maybe I'm just picky.

Gotta have the tongue sticker for the snake to go with the fangs, too.

Well then your question seems ridiculous. Don't have one in another stern you could just move over and test out?

They do a nice job of lighting up the center of the PF if you aim them down a bit.

Why not just leave them on? So you only get to do S&D once in a game, big deal.

I really wonder how pinblades done with matching dirty Donnie art would look.

<Off Topic = Metallica>
If you find a material that's translucent, but still able to take a pounding without snapping, it'd be awesome to get some CC targets done since they were supposed to be that way to begin with. They just had too much problem with them breaking.
</Off Topic>

The CC design is slightly different due to being held up with only a patter pulse on the coil. Easy enough to alter the model though, I'm sure.

Isn't that the 'blown pistons'? Each pop hit drives it's associated piston closer to 'blown' - when blown the light by the fuel lane goes on?

/I'm actually not sure.

Does anybody know if a 'mantis style' (inside the rim) protector for the mystery hole exists? I'd rather do that than the full collar cliffy style.

Sweet. Thanks much for the link.

It protects the inner rim of the opening, without wrapping up over the edge. So it doesn't leave with NO WEAR EVER OMG like a cliffy does, but I'm ok with that.

It's a programmable interface board between the lights and the game that interprets things the game is doing for light cues -- NOT a rewrite.

I just stuck it down centered and used an x-acto knife to trim out the magnet after the fact.

Subtle change Sunday.

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joe at laseriffic. I just asked for a set in orange instead of green.

Further adventures of subtle change Sunday. I have no justification for how much this bothered me, but it did. And now it's better.

Before:
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After:
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What?
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I just use ablaze premiums from pinballlife, but I added a second socket to each insert.

Thread: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/a-smart-person-would-have-used-double-headed-flex-leds

The smoke/flames having an orange tint didn't bother me as much, and a circle was really easy to make

7/8" spade dril bit. The points on the edge were enough to get through it coming from one side and then the other.

Yeah, like this one, but in 7/8" size:

short-length-spade-bits-393.jpg

I put the protector on top, marked the center of the eyeball as best I could, then drilled it over a block of wood until the main meat of the bit started hitting the plastic, then flipped it over and used the center hole to re-align and cut from the back.

Yeah, I used a hand drill and went pretty slow for the most part. Had no idea if what I was doing would work when I did the first one, but it went pretty smooth. So did the second. Can't say it'll work great for anybody else though. Drill at your own risk, or whatever.

Yeah, I took the fire in the art on the lower playfield as a cue and ran with it. Works better than the neon green, IMHO. Black bats with orange titans, just changed out all the clear plastic posts on the slings and sides for orange. Etc.

I've had pins since the mid 90s, and never was much of a modder. I liked 'em as they were built. But I sure can't stop messing with Metallica. Including so many little details nobody else would bother with or care about.

Subtle change Sun.. er ... Saturday!

The stock lane dividers are red. The whole top end of the playfield is blue. It bothered me.

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So I fixed it.

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While I was at it, I put the huge flat top LED things that came with my Hooked Iron Man pop caps in the pops for more ... MORE.

I did a similar thing. I put strips of LEDs up under the backbox above the PF pointing down that are tied in to the snake and ramp flashers. Floods the whole back end of the game with light rather than just the ramps. I'm not a big fan of all the visible LED stuff people are adding to ramps these days. To each their own of course.

The "LED PRO" with the new style backbox has always had the decal. The original PRO models that came with regular bulbs and the old back box never did.

New phone case is relevant.

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I just shot a picture of my game in lamp test and had it printed at getuncommon.com

They do the Galaxy S5 and the S6 I think -- and yea, they can print whatever picture you upload on to a case.

There's wording on the uploader/customizer thing about not using images you don't own -- but I've not had anything rejected so far. Granted, I've never tried to print like a coke logo or anything.

Here's the one I used from Pinballlife. http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=3591

Same part number.

Made a huge difference on mine. Would almost alway bounce back on a left orbit shot, now rarely ever does. Bummer that it didn't help yours out.

I can't believe Stern doesn't crank these out at quantity so people who want a second one to try painting or just want it as decor could have one. Seems like easy money.

I want an LED OCD for me MET just so the Crank It Up pulse on the 4 big inserts will look nicer.

I might have a problem.

Maybe I should just put colored incandescent bulbs in those inserts.

Small update on this. I tried putting colored incandescent bulbs in. Even with my double bulb per insert setup they were pathetically dim compared to everything else, so that's out. Wah.

Anybody else take the sneeze guard off the right ramp? I took mine off a few weeks ago and have had fast ramp shots end up in the shooter lane, so I guess I'll put it back. Wish it wasn't so fugly.

That's designed for the premium, isn't it? Pro doesn't have the right mount points from what I remember.

I think having it not carry over is possible with a setting. Did you get the game second hand? Any chance somebody set it that way?

Oh, yeah - the bonus count up at the end shows you "hits per item this ball" - but that isn't necessarily your totals. The instant info (if you hold the flipper) should show you actual totals, so you could check on ball 2.

This just makes it seem like they're using the same underlying system/test code for Sam and Spike.

Yep - that's the fix. Mine was doing the same thing (sporadic lack of activation) - quick adjustment and it's been fine since.

I can't imagine the amount of time it would take to redraw all the assets in Metallica, there's tons!

If SmartDMD expands to being able to replace assets on the fly for re-rendering with higher detail art that will be baller. Squared.

Edit: Oh wait, you may just be referring to the fact that you re-drew it all for color via SmartDMD and not hinting at glorious HD.

Actually, the post he quoted was the first one, with the ColorDMD pictures. Not the followup with the SmartDMD.

It should be level to prevent damage to the PF. There's a screw on the bottom of the mech you can use to adjust the height.

I replaced all the stock songs with instrumental versions of the same song ... do I get in line for ass kickery too?

Quick, somebody test if he wired up the spinners in the pro code and just didn't mention it.

Thanks for this! Very much appreciated.
E

The post: http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=catalog&mode=search&search_in=all&search_str=A-17986

You guys and your "oh no, I can't lose the record of the score I got that one time!" crack me up.

To load an updated colordmd ROM, you put the downloaded file on the USB stick, plug it in, and then hold the button closest to the USB stick until the screen blanks (then it will program and come back on). There are some new display changes in the Metallica 1.7 code that will not be detected and colored right if you don't update the colordmd ROM -- so you should update both, the Stern game ROM and the ColorDMD display ROM.

Or just look at your key before you do any update and write it down. Then if something goes wrong, you can just re-enter it. This would work for any display after they started shipping them with sigma installed. For the early ones, you still need a key, I believe, but you could get that pre-emptively before doing anything with the display.

If something goes wrong/glitches during the rom update process, sometimes the key can get blanked and need re-entering -- even on roms that aren't spiderman. It shouldn't be common, but it can happen.

For displays that were made/shipped before they started shipping with sigma on them, you have to get a key to be able to load a different rom onto the display because the key isn't readily apparent in the older original roms -- but in those cases you can request a key before you try to flash anything so that you don't have any downtime.

1 - If your new song is longer it gets chopped, and if shorter, you get blank space. So, yes, should be the same length. As close as you can get.
2 - You can edit in game strings in pinball browser, just search for the name you want to change and edit it. Make sure to change any occurances you find.
3 - Depending on how the masking is done in the colordmd, this answer can go either way. The song selection screen at game start is probably not going to be affected by changes, but very often changing text strings CAN affect the color (like changing "BONUS" to "BONER - tee-hee)

I swapped in Sanitarium in place of Unforgiven on mine, so I know the song selection color part stays fine. Can't vouch for anything else.

Macs are notirious for adding ".txt" to downloaded file types they don't recognize, and depending on your settings finder won't show the extensions.

This is my preferred solutions as well.

Some people put a dab of hot glue on the front edge of the bulb/reflector to hold it. Easy enough to crack off if the bulb dies, but should hold it for vibration.

Holy crap do I want this! I have a red molded translucent one in my ironman and was already wishing I could get an orange one for metallica. Will order immediately when available.

What this here?

I'm in the hammer hater crowd. It's a big ugly blob, IHMO. I got the sweet color GI upgrade from TimeBandit, so I don't have to be envious of that LE feature any more. I do really wish the spinners were actually supported in the code on the pro, though. I won't do the addition just to wire them to the pick targets, but I would in an instant if there was a setting/adjustment for "Have spinners" that would actually enable them. Stern should sell it as a kit! Oh well.

It's an intercept board that watches the switch and lamp matrix data to know what the game is doing, and then has logic to recreate the Premium/LE GI lightshow. The kit comes with new GI strings to add the red and blue bulbs that the Premium/GI has.

Always good advice. There are videos of the TotalLightshow on youtube that demonstrate what the kit does. An interested party could watch those and make their own opinion/decision.

But along the line of "I don't agree with others feedback" ... the large majority seems to love that 'creeping death' side art and light bar kit for metallica and I just don't get it. The art doesn't match the game and the big light structure looks bad to me, so it's not my thing at all. Most people dig it thought, which is great for them (and the guy who makes the kit).

Just for the record, I have seen the kit in person and played games with it installed. Still not a fan, personally.

I had balls fall out of that passive stop on several occasions where it didn't flip into place fast enough. Gave up trusting it after a few times.

The printed skull insert thing does this same function with about 9000% more style.

The eyeballs on the sticker take up most of the room - you'd have to adjust the holes to be bigger and lined up with the art.