(Topic ID: 157282)

Multi-bingo machine!

By bingopodcast

7 years ago


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There are 1,298 posts in this topic. You are on page 22 of 26.
#1051 6 years ago

Twin Joker is complete.

In order to keep track of P1 after balls drop, I did_ end up having to implement the crazy number of trip relays. Otherwise, the cards would have disappeared when you switched to P2 (unless I stored the P1 cards in a list to reference on each display refresh).

I chose to keep it similar to the real machine, despite being a little more code.

Since each player can tilt, and tilt only disqualifies player, I had to tweak my tilt rules quite a bit. Works well, though!

Regarding ball return code - I just call check_shutter(1) to tell the game to push the shutter into startup position. Because it is in start position, when the first ball leaves the gate, the motor will push to close. Straightforward!

Twin Joker is the only card bingo I've actually played in real life.

I saved the best for last - next will be Williams Yukon!

#1052 6 years ago
Quoted from zimjoe:

I'm pretty sure everyone following this thread has seen the multi-bingo in person, but it is amazing.

Thanks @zimjoe! I believe I have some folks following this that are in other parts of the world. I hope everyone gets a chance to play this one day, though!

Quoted from zimjoe:

So much coding; so little sleep.

You can say that again.

#1053 6 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

next will be Williams Yukon!

Sweet! Some flipper-game emulation too!!!

yukon (resized).jpgyukon (resized).jpg

#1054 6 years ago

Yukon has an extremely complex search algorithm. I am very impressed with how complex it is.

One coin mech will enable lower scores (let's call it a nickel).
One coin mech will enable higher scores (let's say a dime).

You can score replays on:
3 of a kind
4 of a kind
K, Q, J, 10, 9 - Mixed Suites
K, Q, J, A, 10 - Mixed Suites
Full House
K, Q, J, 10, 9 - Same Suite
K, Q, J, A, 10 - Same Suite

These card games are comprised of all four suites. The number of combinations is staggering!

I've written all the three of a kind winners, and all the four of a kind. I am currently about 1/5 of the way through the K,Q,J,10,9 Mixed Suites setup and have already made about 30 combinations.

I would LOVE to see the docs for this game, as it must have a mammoth search disc. That, or Harry Williams had a great way to simplify the search that I am not clever enough to figure out.

Here's another thing: On this game, the center hole is the Joker. Land in the Joker and you can choose your card from one of six choices. The Joker is wild, as they say. Of course, this completely throws a wrench in the search algorithm.

Here's how I'm doing things:
There's only one coin chute in the Multi. To simulate the dual coin chute, I will accept a max of two coins/replays to start the game. Two nickels = dime, should work out. I am going to light a lamp on the backbox to help the player identify whether 'double award' is active.

As to the search, I am inserting the Joker card selected into the closed search relays where appropriate.

This may take me a few more nights to puzzle through.

#1055 6 years ago

Finished scoring item 3 - 709 combinations.

This -cannot- be how this game functions. I've been wracking my brain trying to think of how Williams could have implemented this in a cost-effective fashion. Nothing yet.

Now time to modify another 700+ combos for K, Q, J, A, 10.... ouch!

#1056 6 years ago

I finished item 4 last night, which is great. Now I'm working on scoring each combination of full house.

I think I figured out how this machine must work. A sequence relay must trip as you hit each combo. Highest scoring one will give replays after ball five.

I'm over 1400 winning combos so far...

#1057 6 years ago

Whew! 2009 different scoring combinations possible. Now to write the joker selection and then the graphics.

#1058 6 years ago

Joker selection and graphics are complete. Yukon, the final card themed bingo, is complete.

Yukon is a game that I've admired for some time. It has a really interesting rule set:

One coin mech will enable lower scores (let's call it a nickel).
One coin mech will enable higher scores (let's say a dime).

In my game, with only a single coin chute, I have implemented multi-coin support for Yukon - first coin gives lower replays and lights one oil lamp - second coin gives higher replays and lights the second lamp. Hopefully this visual cue will help the player determine what kind of moves they need to make.

You can score replays on:
3 of a kind - 2 or 3 replays
4 of a kind - 20 or 30 replays
K, Q, J, 10, 9 - Mixed Suites - 2 or 4 replays
K, Q, J, A, 10 - Mixed Suites - 2 or 4 replays
Full House - 4 or 6 replays
K, Q, J, 10, 9 - Same Suite - 30 or 100 replays
K, Q, J, A, 10 - Same Suite - 50 or 100 replays

I'm excited to play this on real hardware - I think it will be quite challenging. I've played and enjoyed Twin Joker, but I much prefer a game that I can use to work towards a goal.

Note that in my system, this will score like a Bally (for now) - meaning, I implemented the largest multi-clutch search disc ever made.

In real hardware, if implemented the way I programmed, it would require 41 search discs serially chained. Obviously not the way the real game works - I figured out partway through implementation that Williams probably used sequence relays (much simpler). And, in fact, they probably scored immediately instead of based on number of balls played. The curse of not having the paperwork and being too cheap to buy it.

I will go back at some point and reimplement the searching. It will drive me crazy otherwise.

#1059 6 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

In real hardware, if implemented the way I programmed, it would require 41 search discs serially chained.

*dies*

...and everyone thought bingos were heavy. Just wait until the 2018 Bally "Baldridge" hits the scene with its 41 stepper units. *LOL*

P.S. Congrats on programming that monster.

#1060 6 years ago

Bad news, my primary development computer bit the dust tonight.

I prefer to develop on one machine and pull code to the real game. Unfortunately, this'll have to wait for a few weeks. I have checked in all the card bingos, so this gives me a chance to slow down and finish wiring Robo-Frenzy and the new alternate playfields.

#1061 6 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

Bad news, my primary development computer bit the dust tonight.

Oh no! I hate when computers die.

Get some sleep too while it's down

#1062 6 years ago
Quoted from zimjoe:

Get some sleep too while it's down

+1

1 week later
#1063 6 years ago

I haven't slept, but I did have my chief in-town playtester over (thanks @zimjoe!) to give it a go.

Having him over also allowed me to button up a couple of small issues on several machines, including the Multi.

He tried out Bright Lights for a bit, then I had him move to Ballerina - I wanted to observe a bug that a great playtester at York found with that game specifically. It has to do with the 1-7 7-1 feature. After using that, depending I think on how quickly the next ball is shot and whether all balls are settled, the game will bug out when you search.

The way this function works is a little complicated - there's a relay toggle to change the state as there is in the real game. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of seven switches to handle the changeover. Instead, I introspect the list of playfield holes that are filled and swap with their lower/higher equivalents.

So, for example, if my playfield has balls in 2, 14, 16, 18, 5 - to the software it looks like holes = [2,14,16,18,5].

Once you hit the toggle switch (B or A depending on how you're changing it), it will change to holes = [14,16,18,6,3].

Toggling again switches it back to [14,16,18,2,5].

Now, again, as a matter of timing - the game has to introspect the list in order to see where you have balls in the playfield and based on the toggle of the relay, ignore what's physically present at the time a ball leaves the gate or any time the backglass is re-rendered (anything that changes the state of the game).

Something in there is confusing the heck out of it.

Also found a section scoring bug in Sea Island.

The Ballerina one has been very hard to track down. It's existed since the beginning, but I can't reliably reproduce it.

Sea Island is a dumb typo, I'm sure.

My new development computer comes this Friday, and a special delivery is supposed to come today!!!

#1064 6 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

Having him over also allowed me to button up a couple of small issues on several machines, including the Multi.

By that he means that he works while I talk. Luckily, I enjoy talking and watching him work.

The Robo-Frenzy game looks really cool. I'm glad I get the occasional front row view of the process.

It is also official that I stink at Bingo. I still haven't earned my 4 in a row key chain. Luckily, Nick lets me keep trying. .. and I keep dreaming.

#1065 6 years ago
Quoted from zimjoe:

Luckily, Nick lets me keep trying. .. and I keep dreaming.

It'll happen one of these days - I need to have you over more frequently so your skills stay sharp... or you need one of your own machines...

My special delivery didn't arrive yesterday and the USPS hasn't updated since the 25th... uh oh! Hope everything is ok.

Computer should still get here this Friday, hopefully. A thought occurs about Ballerina: perhaps the problem is a physical one, and that is why I have such a hard time reproducing it. Maybe it has something specifically to do with the balls settled in holes. On my test rig, there are no actual switches, just keypresses. If I'm not holding the key down, it doesn't accurately simulate the reality.

I also thought of a good way to handle my menu loading slowly.

Right now it takes a goooooood 30 seconds to load the full menu. I have plans that will include adding more games to the menu soon... it will become untenable soon.

Right now I am actually rendering the entire game in the menu, which makes the game itself load instantly, but it has to load the assets for every single game and read through all the positioning and etc. stuff to render the menu. It's a tradeoff, and one that worked really well when there were only 16 games. We're a bit beyond that now.

The advantage of this approach was that I could do neat things like store the prior state of the backglass, and with the game off, the screen or squares could be in the same place. Also, if I updated underlying graphics, I wouldn't have to recapture an image.

But I think the speed gain will be absolutely worth it. In this case, I'll take a capture of every game rendered, but off, and then just push that onto the screen.

I may also add a generic function to change the S/I cards in the framework rather than limiting that to the menu only. This means that the S/I cards will be auto-updated even if there was an initial transmission problem or whatever. It's not like those computers are really maxed out on processing time anyway.

3 weeks later
#1066 6 years ago

I've paused work on Robo-Frenzy whist I acquire some new (?) parts. That means I'm back to the Multi to do some cleaning up.

Thanks to Phil and the folks that contribute paper, photos and scans, there is now more information available for some early games, including Surf Club (one of my favorites). I will revisit and touch up areas of the code for those.

I also want to improve the menu loading speed. My original vision was great, and I think it was a good idea, but having so many games available makes it very impractical (to save state between trips to the menu).

I have a lot of coin flash animations left to write - dozens and dozens of games, in fact. I'll begin by chipping away at those.

#1067 6 years ago

Looks like I stopped after Bonus-7, and I think I know why.

Bonus-7 is a later 20 holer, and has one of the most complex light shows (due to the number of features). I think I burned out on manually positioning every rivet (lots and LOTS of math) for that game. Haha!

Ok, well, rested(?) and recharged, I'm ready to tackle the next one... Border Beauty.

#1068 6 years ago

Finished Border Beauty last night, and have begun work on one of my favorites - Bounty! I have a video of Border Beauty in action on the podcast Facebook page, for those interested.

#1069 6 years ago

Bounty is also complete. I suspect that more of the complex animations are pushed towards the front of the alphabet... but I have a long way to go.

I took another video of Bounty, but it doesn't show off the EB animations nor the skill shot selection animation. Both are present. Also, I added the appropriate blinking under the letter in the Magic Screen - Bounty is one of the only games without an indicator arrow (because of the skill shot feature).

Next up, either Brazil (the first United with animation alphabetically), or Broadway. Since Brazil is the later style of United, I'll probably go ahead and tackle that.

#1070 6 years ago

Keep up the good work, man! Looking forward to all the flashy lights at York this year!!!

#1071 6 years ago
Quoted from RyanClaytor:

Keep up the good work, man! Looking forward to all the flashy lights at York this year!!!

Thank you! This year should be better than ever (as always)!

#1072 6 years ago

Finished Brazil the first United alphabetically, now working on Broadway.
Found a bug in my implementation (or a shortcoming). Spot 2 or 18 is a feature used in several Magic Squares games. Without a relay, in Broadway specifically, there's no way to flash the appropriate number. Will add. I've already done Big Show, curious if that has the same issue?

#1073 6 years ago

Oh yep - there's an issue there. Thankfully I haven't done all the Squares games.

Anyone care to guess the problem with this statement?

if s.game.magic_squares_feature.position < 6:
if 2 not in s.holes:
dirty_rects.append(screen.blit(bg_gi, (330,653), pygame.Rect(330,653,29,30)))
if 18 not in s.holes:
dirty_rects.append(screen.blit(bg_gi, (381,653), pygame.Rect(381,653,29,30)))

#1074 6 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

Oh yep - there's an issue there. Thankfully I haven't done all the Squares games.
Anyone care to guess the problem with this statement?
if s.game.magic_squares_feature.position < 6:
if 2 not in s.holes:
dirty_rects.append(screen.blit(bg_gi, (330,653), pygame.Rect(330,653,29,30)))
if 18 not in s.holes:
dirty_rects.append(screen.blit(bg_gi, (381,653), pygame.Rect(381,653,29,30)))

02e401b20bed4fd587577cc8ed359f5f76ec3853 (resized).jpg02e401b20bed4fd587577cc8ed359f5f76ec3853 (resized).jpg

#1075 6 years ago

Haha - ok, I'll give you a hint:

The s.holes variable is what I use to keep track of which numbers are lit on the bingo card.

The dirty_rects are me actually drawing something to the screen in the animation sequence. In this case, I am drawing the backglass with GI (bg_gi), wiping out an illuminated element. But the important part is the s.holes...

#1076 5 years ago

Oh boy - guess what? My existing implementation -does- work! Haha! Took a fresh set of eyes this morning, but there is no way for the relay to trip without that Squares Feature unit being in position #6. I still have a (minor) problem in my flash for Big Show/Broadway, but it's pretty minor.

#1077 5 years ago

Broadway and Can Can are complete.

The third major hardware version of United games are undocumented for the flash disc, so until I can get someone to trace a few wires, Cabana, Havana, Rio and Tahiti cannot be completed. Bug filed.

Working on Caravan now.

#1078 5 years ago

Was hoping to see a video. Anything you can share?

#1079 5 years ago

Yep! Will work on posting them here today. Mike G pointed out some missing lamps on the spotting disc for Broadway, so I'll try to return to that one.

#1080 5 years ago

- Border Beauty

- Bounty

- Brazil

- Broadway (missing ABCD indicator lamps - will fix this weekend)

- Can Can

#1081 5 years ago

Fixed Broadway ABCD indicator flash issue.
Added United Caravan
Added Carnival Queen.
Just figured out Circus' flash circuit without a diagram of the flash motor. I am assuming (from the schematic) that the flash motor has 24 positions (as with Cabana). The difference is the circuit for Circus actually lays out the flash sequence for extra balls, which led me to really inspect the feature flash process on the schematic.

Then I understood that the flash is completely laid out on the schematic...

Which caused me to re-examine the flash layout for Cabana...

And now I think I can make an assumption on the patter for Cabana and the other early United games (era 2/3). I love that I am still learning new things about the circuit design for these games.

#1082 5 years ago

Added Circus Queen last night, as well as County Fair.

Working on Cypress Gardens, then all the Cs will be done (for Bally).

#1084 5 years ago

Double Header and Double-Up are complete. I will post videos here shortly of all the progress, but spent the remainder of the night figuring out an accurate way to calculate the flash pattern when the spotting disc is not documented. First experiment will be Dude Ranch. I feel like I have a good handle on this, but we shall see. I've been filing bugs as I go (to gather more documentation from game owners), but this would be a lot simpler, while still being reasonably accurate.

In order to do this, I have to have at least one video of someone playing the red button and yellow button. The United games I can figure out because mechanically they did not change much in the 'undocumented' generation. That was the key to unlocking those.

For Bally, unfortunately, the basics of the flash pattern were consistent within generations of games, but the pattern itself is quite different from game to game. Some are sweeping effects, others are more spotlight-y.

#1085 5 years ago

Dude Ranch is done - the first of the games where I had to do a frame-by-frame analysis and make some sort of educated guesses. Looks similar to the real thing, anyway... it'll do till someone takes theirs apart.

Also finished Folies Bergeres - the same flash pattern as Beauty Beach.

Can't believe I'm in the Fs!

Did another analysis of Frolics, but I don't have video of extra ball play. Gonna have to guess!

#1086 5 years ago

Frolics and Gayety done. Realized that I didn't have the spotting disc from Gay Time! I either fudged the feature spotting or mapped it from my own game. The lamp spotting is a lot harder - may end up documenting that and contributing back to bingo.cdyn.com or, hopefully, Phil H. has a blueprint for W-623!

#1087 5 years ago

Fingers crossed for a blueprint for ya.

#1088 5 years ago

Unfortunately, no blueprint, but this just means a chance to help others out.

That will take me a bit of time, unfortunately, so I am going to keep knocking out these games while I can.

I am in the Ls now, with Laguna Beach. Very straightforward to implement (similar pattern to Circus Queen). Some of the other games have been interesting.

Let's see... Golden Gate, Hawaii, Hi-Fi, Ice Frolics, and Key West are done. Wow, that was a lot of work for three days.

I'm skipping United games for now as I need to review my flash motor implementation. Will circle back and do those at the end. I'm excited to get through the Ms... there are a lot of intensive games in there.

#1089 5 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

Unfortunately, no blueprint, but this just means a chance to help others out.
That will take me a bit of time, unfortunately, so I am going to keep knocking out these games while I can.
I am in the Ls now, with Laguna Beach. Very straightforward to implement (similar pattern to Circus Queen). Some of the other games have been interesting.
Let's see... Golden Gate, Hawaii, Hi-Fi, Ice Frolics, and Key West are done. Wow, that was a lot of work for three days.
I'm skipping United games for now as I need to review my flash motor implementation. Will circle back and do those at the end. I'm excited to get through the Ms... there are a lot of intensive games in there.

You will be rewarded in Heaven Nick.

#1090 5 years ago
Quoted from DennisDodel:

You will be rewarded in Heaven Nick.

Thanks Dennis.

In case you or anyone else wants to follow along, I've made a bug report of the games left to animate here: https://github.com/bingopodcast/bingos/issues/152

#1091 5 years ago

Oh, also! I neglected to mention that I used my new-found powers to redo the Galaxy animations.

#1092 5 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

Oh, also! I neglected to mention that I used my new-found powers to redo the Galaxy animations.

Sounds like a line from a science fiction movie.

#1093 5 years ago

Three tonight: Lido, Silver Sails and Laguna Beach. Another 1/3 of the way done, but it is one of the hybrid solid state 20 holers, and will likely take me all night tomorrow to complete.

#1094 5 years ago

- this one has a bug in the video for ABCD lamps, corrected after I rewatched it.... whoops!

- this one had a blue section bug that I also fixed... after I filmed it. Double whoops...

#1095 5 years ago

Good mercy, that's a lot of work. Nice job, man.

#1096 5 years ago

Thank you, Ryan. There's more to be done.

Finished London tonight - officially in the Ms! There are quite a few complex games in this letter (all beginning with Miss). Hopefully they are similar flash patterns. There are 10 of the remaining 32 Bally games in M.

Couldn't quite finish two tonight and have a service call tomorrow. We will see what I can do.

#1097 5 years ago

Came back from successful service call last night, and finished up Magic Ring, fired it up and... it's backwards! Doggone it! That was the same problem I had with Big Wheel. Just have to mirror all the rivet numbers and it will come out fine, but an annoying setback.

#1098 5 years ago

It's slightly more official! I'm headed to Allentown on Saturday only - 5/5. I'll be set up in Free Play all day. Please come by, say hello and try the game.

#1099 5 years ago

Pushing through some more games, let's see - Magic Ring refactor, Malibu Beach, Miami Beach and Miss America ('57) are complete. I'm working on Miss America '75 now, and I think that while there are some similarities in flash (same wire colors for all flash animations), the pattern is slightly different for feature lamps. I'm curious how the later games in the Miss America series will work.

#1100 5 years ago

When do you plan to stop animating and start play-testing prior to Allentown? Just curious if you have dillusions of making it through the entire list.

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