Dennis, I'm surprised at you! How could you forget?! Just kidding, it feels like it was 100 years ago. I had Long Beach in there before York last year. The Keeney's were added shortly thereafter. I am always on the lookout for higher resolution backglass photos of these rarities, though. Ideally with the original name intact. I've seen a few Keeney bingos in the PA region with the name scraped, not sure how many survived intact. I've never seen them outside of that region. All were 'Venus' games.

Anything you'd like to have photos of I can get you - not sure if I can get them tonight, but will be happy to provide. Do you want a separate photo of each? I did basic touch-up of the S/I cards (things like ensuring the coloration was consistent where possible, stuff like that). If there was a supplemental SI card, I added it to the display. If I recall, I left out alternate toppers, though I may have added an edited version to the instruction card display.

It does! To allow for the backglass art to appear properly, I have moved the history lesson below the backglass, changed the font to be more consistent with the backglass itself, and removed the title of the game from the history to save space. It appears for every game. I give a little tidbit about what makes each game unique or similarities between another game, etc.

Pressing the 'R' button will 'turn on' the game. Holding Left+Right and pressing R will return you to the menu.

There is a knock off button located below the cab.

Just means you're remembering important stuff instead. That's what I tell myself, anyway. I can't remember what I've had for dinner last night either.

Thanks @spirowagnew - yes, it's fantastic! But looking at that photo, all I can think is 'missed opportunity'.

RyanClaytor is amazing.

I had a discussion with a programmer before lunch today about how I was handling the blinky lights now - he suggested that I -should- be able to do my full-frame renders with a few optimizations. I thought I'd give it a try, since it would save dozens of hours of development time.

Unfortunately, it didn't work - I have the same problem, though less frequently. Occasionally a switch hit will get missed. Not a big deal normally, but a HUGE deal when it's the switch telling a motor to stop.

So I am going to pull that out when I get home and do it my way again. I think I've really cracked this nut. Initial experiments proved very fruitful.

I've come up with a couple of optimizations and fun tweaks on top of that, too. Things like: rendering a fraction of the glass with each blink then rendering the fraction with the glass off will simulate the blinky effect without adding a 'double lamp' halo effect like I initially wrote my 455s to use.

Another thing would be a generic method that removes the illuminated area by rendering the backglass underneath. I should be able to write one method and blink any number of bulbs. This goes waaaaay back to an initial kernel of an idea that I had - make a Bulb class that can be on or off and poll that - rather than class bulbs, though, I just have a method to turn them off - turning them on is handled in my main display method. We'll see, but I like the concept.

Dennis, I haven't forgotten you, but I didn't have a chance to take photos at lunch.

Yes! That's basically what I'm gonna do. The library I'm using is a raster renderer - you can stack stuff up, but you can't take away. So if x == 1 draw thing 1 else draw part of thing 0 corresponding to the size of thing 1.

The funny thing is that I've been re-reading on 6502 assembler for the first time in many many years for a different project that I don't have time for, but I think it inspired me to do it this way.

That further reinforces that I'm on the right track. Thank you!!

Hey, guess what? It works. I'm excited.

IMG_20170810_194356 (resized).jpgIMG_20170810_194402 (resized).jpg

Hey, guess what else? I finally took the photos.

The weird polarization is caused by 3 screens - the card screen, the glass and the camera lens. In reality, it looks crystal clear(ish).

Little video about 455 emulation.

Question for bingo folks - my 455 blinkers work. I'm working on adding my first animation sequences!

Do you think I should emulate the GE style fast blink rate, or the Eiko slow blink rate?

I'm a fan of the faster blink, but I've had some feedback that I should match more modern bulb blinkers. What do you think?

I wrote my first animation routine for extra balls on Acapulco - why Acapulco? It was the first game alphabetically that had them.

I think it may be too slow. Not sure. I do allow pre-empt so it won't get stuck in an animation loop. I'll try on real hardware tomorrow.

If that works, I'll work on offs and feature animation.

I came up with a pretty good way to handle it:

Take the starting rivet, spin the spotting disc, take the movement amount, then hold two counters - one increments up from start, and one decrements down from the movement amount.

For each repetition, clear unused lamps, then draw the next rivet up from the start since the last repetition.
Next, decrement the movement amount, then recursively call the method again.

This gives an animation speed that seems a bit slower than it should. I think I've optimized it as much as possible, but tomorrow may bring another idea.

Fixed speed issue - looks great outside of the cab - I'll see what it looks like in the cab tomorrow!

Acapulco eb animations working on the actual hardware. Wow. This is another giant improvement.

Not a problem - tone it down a little?

Ooh, that's a question - did they come from the factory with blinkers? I made an assumption...

The good news is that it opened the door for all other animation, regardless of if I leave blinkers turned on on the names.

The idea was more of a factory appearance.

Haha, well, asked and answered! That actually simplifies things quite a bit. The math and techniques used to develop the 455s are underpinning the spotting disc animations, so no wasted effort. It also simplifies the code in each game a little bit.

Thanks everyone.

I am very excited for York.

My gosh, has it been that long? It feels like we were just talking away the days and playing games a couple short months ago! It was such a gift to be able to talk shop with you and get your feedback. That was only a month after York last year! I must be nuts.

Thank you for your kind words - I hope it lives up to the hype.

I can't stop staring at my computer screen - I have added all the correct animations for Acapulco. It's incredible to watch the design of the coin flash. Very neat.

I can't believe I have that working, along with the flash for select now (that I detailed the math for on the last page).

Acapulco should be done, saving any bugs. Will test on real hardware tomorrow. Since I don't have 455 emulation to worry about, I can just jump to games that have time trees or advancing odds or magic number motors.

Basically, I wrote a function that draws only the illuminated flashing bulb. Once time has passed and it needs to turn it off, it does so by drawing the tiny sliver of the backglass which was hidden by the illumination. This saves quite a bit of processing time as it needs to push only about 100px instead of 1280x720+100px*x number if lit elements.

The blinky function only concerns itself with that one piece and doesn't bother at all with the rest of the game.

Bahama Beach manual and schematic do not agree. There is no wire 80-7 on the spotting disc to light the triple lamp. I'm guessing the repetition of wire 80 is wrong. Going to check the schematic with the payout hopper and see if the wire colors are different.

...or I'm losing my mind. One or the other.

Bahama Beach is pretty much done. Couple minor bugs in the display stuff. It's really exciting to watch the game come to life like this. Acapulco and Bahama Beach have identical display patterns for extra ball search. I fully expect all mystic lines games with double scoring to have the same pattern of flash as Bahama Beach.

Ballerina is also blinking properly now.

Thank you, guys.

Some family came over this morning and pinball usually comes up "somehow" during the conversations.

I showed them the stenciled cab and backglass and the newly blinking lights, explained what everything did and why it was so complicated. Instead of glassing over, they remained engaged and impressed and wanted to know the difference between what was happening on the screen and the mechanical units. I think I have a winner here.

I'm even more excited now.

The extra ball animations are exactly the same between Acapulco, Ballerina, Bahama Beach, and Beauty Beach. Interesting! I wonder if it carries on through all the remaining games? The odds/feature animation is quite different between Acapulco and Ballerina, for instance, but I am curious about how similar Ballerina and Beauty Beach might be.

Beach Beauty is done! On to Beach Club (or Beach Time if Beach Club is undocumented).

Beach Club is undocumented, but the wire colors are the same, so I am going to take some liberty and assume that, like the other early games, Bally used the same animation routines for extra balls.

Once the Spotting disc is documented on Beach Club, I'll be able to add the odds/feature animation.

Beach Time has almost the exact same animation pattern for odds that Ballerina does. I say almost, because Don Hooker changed a total of 7 rivets. That few. The attention to detail in the design is really astounding.

It's worth noting that Beach Time also has an error in its manual regarding wire colors on the spotting disc. I suspect that the animation functions were just deemed less critical than others. In the handful of games completed thus far, I've found about 5 wire color errors. That's quite a bit compared to the entire catalog of game logic and portioning...

I am loving learning this stuff. Hope you all don't mind me sharing it before I forget it.

OK, I spoke a little too soon. I started pulling the thread and realized that there were multiple errors in that section. Five of the seven rivets noted were also errors.

Two rivets were changed. That's even more incredible.

Beauty Beach is done - almost exactly the same as Bahama Beach. Interesting to see how they handled the extra positions on the odds discs.

Just found a critical error in my portioning for Magic Squares for Big Show. Also, Big Show is done.

Big Time too. Lamp portioning is done for Big Wheel. I have to write the function calls within the game and test. The next game is Bikini.

What a fight! Big Wheel is done... but I either read the schematic backwards or my spotting disc suddenly started turning backwards... (it didn't).

I'm working on some of the low-hanging fruit now just to feel a little further along.

I finished up a bunch of six cards and other games with fixed positions - I also just finished Bikini! On to Bonanza.

Bonanza has some really rough documentation - none of the wire colors on the flash disc match any of the discs in the manual thus far... yikes.

Edit: Figured it out - been a while since I've been this deep in one of these late-model games. The docs require you to look up the rivet identifier (unlike every other game to this point) then match that. You cannot use the wire color to find it.

Hi @rufessor!

Yes - the backglass and many of the mechanical items have been replaced with solid state. I have a system that allows for playfield swap with 10 real physical bingo pinball playfields, and the system will automatically restrict game choice to games played using the features of that playfield.

There are dozens of different 'main' types of bingo pinball, and within there are many differences.

I have implemented 138 separate bingo pinball machines within my system - all playable using the real playfields I mentioned earlier. These are all of the U.S. produced games except for a few duplicates - 4 'Single Coin' games and one called 'Having Fun', which I may end up implementing. I'd like to start making my own in the style of a mid-50s game. This was an era of great innovation in both flipper and bingo pinball, and it would be fun to extend those ideas with some from the early-mid 60s.

There are electromechanical units within my physical game - a bell, a knocker, a replay register, various relays and motors, kickers, coils, lamps, and more. I have gone through each game, and where possible, mapped each wire for my computer code to drive the game. This was a big challenge.

Now I am doing a sort of 'victory lap' and implementing the coin flash - with each coin inserted, the game will flash a semi-unique pattern of lamps to attract/tease the player. I am also doing this rivet for rivet and wire for wire for each game.

Each of the four U.S. manufacturers had different (and usually two or three within each manufacturer) methods for portioning and mechanical units. It's been really fun to learn how they were implemented and quite the challenge to figure out a standard method for moving the virtual units.

I have a public show coming up at the end of September, so I'm really trying to do about 4 or so games a night.... to leave a minute or two for testing.... we'll see if I make it to 100% animated by then.

I'd love to hang out and play some bingo with you one day - it's a very cerebral experience, and I love the games quite a bit.

My gosh - Bonus 7's flash sequence is really complex. Just lots of features to flash. It's done.