(Topic ID: 157282)

Multi-bingo machine!

By bingopodcast

7 years ago


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#1101 5 years ago
Quoted from RyanClaytor:

When do you plan to stop animating and start play-testing prior to Allentown?

Available for play testing and loading. Let me know what you need.

#1102 5 years ago
Quoted from RyanClaytor:

When do you plan to stop animating and start play-testing prior to Allentown?

Likely tomorrow. I will also probably keep pushing through animations as I test. I finished all the Miss America games, put in a basic animation pattern for Miss California (to match Atlantic City). Determined that Miss Universe and Continental (18 hole) have an undocumented flash disc. Down to 19 Ballys that are documented. I think there are two with Youtube videos that I can do a frame-by-frame analysis on.

P.S. I am deluded. But will have to stop. Too much to test.

Quoted from zimjoe:

Available for play testing and loading. Let me know what you need.

Awesome! I will make sure that the game is relatively stable tomorrow, then I will be doing hard testing soon. Will absolutely let you know! Thank you!

#1103 5 years ago

I think I'm down to 10 documented Ballys. Woah. Lots of work today.

#1104 5 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

I'm headed to Allentown on Saturday only - 5/5

BTW: Is this a day trip up early and home late? I have cleared the time, but this would fit my budget best

#1105 5 years ago

I'll PM you zimjoe - details to be worked out. I was planning on single overnight.

I filed a new bug with full test suite for all games with full animations:
https://github.com/bingopodcast/bingos/issues/156

The issues that I have found are mostly related to problems caused by the new animation routines. Things like overriding replay step down animations, pushing the game into improper state, allowing odds to jump higher than they should on guaranteed advantages, stuff like that. Mostly because I had to modify swaths of code in order to remove hacked in blinks (in place of full animations).

I've also reshuffled my animations to-do to sort by types left and added notes for every game missing documentation. Some I can probably do, but I have a big list to try to run through today...

#1106 5 years ago

Just finished heavy duty testing of Ballerina and fixed a truly embarassing bug. Ballerina is an early Magic Screen game without an orange section...

My screen slats are numbered 0 (leftmost position) through X where X is the max pos.

When I search, I roll through the in-line winners, then hit the sectional winners, which is how the real games operate as well.

In Ballerina, since there is no orange section, the sections appear at position 1, and are fully visible once it is in pos 5. In other games, you have another 2+ sections. *sigh*

So, the embarassing part... my inline has a little bit of logic where it checks to see if the screen is only displaying sections or a mix of sections and inline. I was running through the inline winners even when the sections were displayed.

My 1-7/7-1 code was incidental. I was able to more easily replicate it with that feature active, because by the time you activate Screen 'E' on Ballerina, you typically have that feature as well.

Fixed! 47 left to adjust today.

#1107 5 years ago

33 left to review. The amount of testing required makes this a very slow process. Once I finish review, I'll push to the real hardware.

#1108 5 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

Just finished heavy duty testing of Ballerina and fixed a truly embarassing bug. Ballerina is an early Magic Screen game without an orange section...
My screen slats are numbered 0 (leftmost position) through X where X is the max pos.
When I search, I roll through the in-line winners, then hit the sectional winners, which is how the real games operate as well.
In Ballerina, since there is no orange section, the sections appear at position 1, and are fully visible once it is in pos 5. In other games, you have another 2+ sections. *sigh*
So, the embarassing part... my inline has a little bit of logic where it checks to see if the screen is only displaying sections or a mix of sections and inline. I was running through the inline winners even when the sections were displayed.
My 1-7/7-1 code was incidental. I was able to more easily replicate it with that feature active, because by the time you activate Screen 'E' on Ballerina, you typically have that feature as well.
Fixed! 47 left to adjust today.

I seem to remember a bug in "Ballerina" from this past York (I didn't attend, but my fuzzy memory is recalling a podcast update...or SOMETHING). Anyhow, was this the fix to the York "Ballerina" incident? ...or was the York "Ballerina" incident unrelated to this? (Wasn't it crashing completely?)

Moar to fix(?)!

laugh-cry-gif-10.giflaugh-cry-gif-10.gif

#1109 5 years ago
Quoted from RyanClaytor:

I seem to remember a bug in "Ballerina" from this past York (I didn't attend, but my fuzzy memory is recalling a podcast update...or SOMETHING). Anyhow, was this the fix to the York "Ballerina" incident? ...or was the York "Ballerina" incident unrelated to this? (Wasn't it crashing completely?)

Yep, that was the biggest failure from the last York show. I did talk about it on the podcast, thanks for listening! Also one of the Miss Americas (Deluxe) had a failure to pay a red letter game.

Crashes are exceedingly rare in the Multi. I have to make a really bone-headed mistake. I did! Yes, this should fix it. For games with moving numbers (not sections) like Miss America, I keep the number strips in an array. This works very similarly to the way the real game functions. It basically does an array check for each strip, figures out which numbers are in which position and if their holes are populated on the playfield, then does a little comparator of the number of closed search relays to determine if payout has been qualified. If it has... then the game pays! I have some kind of combination on the red letter games on the Miss America Deluxe (and probably Supreme, since the numbers are shared between them IIRC), that fails to pay.

I fixed another failure to pay on Big Time. The arrays keep things relatively clean (I reference line3 position 3, for example, to determine the number currently shown in the center), but it is easy to make a silly typo. In Big Time's case, I had a four in a row on the bottom row, default card, and #23 was swapped for #25. The games are complex, and I'm also not at my sharpest when I write them, but, as written, they are remarkably stable.

In fact, during York, since that was the only crash, I forgot to even bring the keyboard in. I do not have a cron job to auto-start the game if not running because I want to inspect anything bad enough to crash it (since the errors are rare). I do not keep permanent logs as such things are not really helpful to me. I don't want to fill up a hard drive with non-events. I have that problem with both Raspberry Pis used to display score/instruction cards and it drives me nuts. I track plays through a physical counter, so I get a bit of permanence not available with other games.

I've thought about making a service menu that can show switch states, but the game itself can do that through the ephemeral logging I have turned on. No real need to go hog wild there, but may be something I add one day to easily test new playfields.

#1110 5 years ago

25 left, gotta sleep tonight. Double-Up gave me quite a challenge. My score selection reset wasn't implemented for non-red letter games. Odd.

Couple other weird race conditions with delayed display methods and large number of visible steppers during animations... but all resolved. I think.

#1111 5 years ago

18 left, more sleep needed. Tonight's issue was Galaxy. I closed out a bug related to the probability disc that would step all odds colors as well as provide odd jumps to the features, but previously, the probability disc blueprint was unavailable. Went ahead and added and tested that probability. I will say that the game is much less generous now than it was initially!

I'm hopeful that the last 18 go down without a struggle. Still on target for this weekend to test on hardware.

#1112 5 years ago

12 left. Tonight I noticed that Key West had an issue with odds step - too liberal! I went back into the code and realized that Mixer 3 odds step check wasn't implemented. Got that in place and it plays like I remember. Zzzzz

#1113 5 years ago

4 left outta steam. Time spent trying to replicate a Miss America Deluxe/Supreme Red letter payout bug that was observed at York. Was able to replicate once on Miss America Deluxe. Not repeatable. Will have to let that go for now.

#1114 5 years ago

Last four that I had generated animations for have undergone testing and are working nicely.

I also spent a couple hours tonight (since everyone was asleep) working on the first United game with the Flash disc animations...
I wrote a clean function per mixer that would animate the items attached to that mixer, but unfortunately, I think I will have to do a 'traditional' (for me) animation that will clear and then redraw on a timed basis. I just need more time to perfect that before having the public try it, so I switched out of that branch and back to the trunk.

I added animations for Variety as well, and went through my testing there.

A reminder that my to-do list for animations is here: https://github.com/bingopodcast/bingos/issues/152

You may notice that I sorted my Bally games. I have only a handful left.

United still shows most of their catalog. There are quite a few games that are in the 3rd mechanical era that I can animate. I'll try to run through all the Bally games and then move on to the Uniteds.

I cannot guarantee any other games will be animated before Allentown (it's getting close). But I am (driven? manic?) enough to try another few.

#1115 5 years ago

Great news - I have heavily playtested quite a few games, looking for and fixing problems. My bug list has grown, but I have mostly minimal problems.

The most concerning problems (to me) are those that are not easily repeatable.

I have revised the portioning for many early games, I have fixed some Magic Screen bugs, some scoring issues, and am now working on my lamp code for the rollovers. Some games will flash them many times in succession during an animation sequence... which is not correct, but certainly draws the eye!

Bally also changed the rollover colors at some point in the history of the games, and during development I got totally turned around on some of the games. I am righting those wrongs.

Games that use an alternating cam to light first one, then the other rollover are also getting attention. My code was mostly correct, but for some reason would lose the latch that held the lamp on while putting in coin.

This is a difficult thing to test as I have to have the rollovers feature enabled, then review behavior. It is easier to fix the flash lighting. My current approach is a 40ms pulse to the lamp, which is too much (and causes that neat strobe effect). The default is 20ms I believe (which is too little to see) so somewhere in between is going to be the sweet spot.

One baffling decision I made on Big Time (of course, the most complex of these) is that I did not include a center animation step - when you press the button to simulate the knob being turned, it has to go through the default position to go through to the other side. I just jump center->top->bottom. Why? haha! Oddly, I believe I have that correct on the other Magic Line games.

I'll correct that, but likely after Allentown.

I love playing the games with correct animation. It really makes a difference. Ava joined me this weekend to playtest for a bit, had a lot of fun.

#1116 5 years ago

Tonight I resolved most of the new bugs. I have the alternating rollover lamp fix left, but need to review during gameplay in the real cab.

#1117 5 years ago

Working through and testing physical rollover lamp flash and latch on every game - made it to Folies Bergeres last night and had to stop. Should make it through another 1/3 tonight.

#1118 5 years ago

All games with improved animations playtested, rollover lighting 100% correct on all of those games. This includes the 20 holers and other games with alternate playfields. Will save me a lot of heartache when I pop in my 20 hole playfield.

I've updated my Flash todo issue on github, separating machines by era or feature set to make programming a little easier for the remaining games. I -may- end up coding another few games' animations before Allentown, but I need to be careful about that. If I do, I will likely focus on the remaining Ballys.

There is something really special about watching the coin flash, then playing a game, having my lamps blink telling me to make a choice before lockout, dropping the ball into the trough to replay, and having the blink behavior work absolutely perfectly as the real games do. I am really excited to hear longtime players' opinions of the game (as well as new players, of course!) now that some of these tweaks are done.

The alternating rollover games were all challenging, but not terribly. I was prepared for a mighty struggle, but each took about 15 minutes to fully test.

#1119 5 years ago

Had a pretty stressful day - this time of year is rough at work, which is part of why I don't usually go to Allentown... what better way to unwind than complete another games' animations? I finished Roller Derby last night and tested on my development machine. Will push to real hardware and test this weekend, perhaps.

#1120 5 years ago

Finished Sea Island as well (what is wrong with me?) and gained a new appreciation for that game in playtesting. My portioning for the screen feature was waaaay off, so the game almost never stepped beyond step 7 (Letter D). Now the portioning for that is much easier. It's interesting to see the effect of such a change on odds steps. I only have one more 'screen' game to complete. The Twist is not a traditional screen game, but I happen to enjoy it quite a bit.

I hope to get coin flash working in that machine as well soon.

#1121 5 years ago

My chief playtester (and youngest) Sophie helped play test yesterday. She got a hit for 96 on the blue section on Sea Island, then a red letter hit on Riller Derby. She also found a bug which cannot be replicated (my favorite kind).

#1122 5 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

She also found a bug which cannot be replicated (my favorite kind).

NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO

#1123 5 years ago
Quoted from cait001:

NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Oh, it's not the end of the world, but something I'll be poking at pretty hard. What I assumed was a flaky trough switch may still be, but I am going to debug the heck out of it to see. My extra ball lifting is acting up - happened at York, and seems to happen more as any game gets played. The ball count and trough switches are involved with the lifter logic. Of course, I just can't seem to get it to happen when I play.

Something is sometimes not getting reset. I am looking hard at the red letter game start - it runs through the same method for regular_play() and somehow isn't resetting something appropriately... the ball count for the normal red letter game and portioning for EBs is working appropriately in the red letter game, but somehow isn't triggering the lift code, though I call it all over the place (check_lifter_status())

#1124 5 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

Of course, I just can't seem to get it to happen when I play.

because you are playing correctly

#1125 5 years ago

Hey zimjoe you did it. That little note lead me to watch a video I took of Sophie getting the red letter hit on Roller Derby, and noticed she pressed the r button before holding it.

I have an implementation of the search index relay... Which prevents pressing the r button until it goes through the search. Unfortunately, the Multi searches in a fraction of a second vs the approximately 5 seconds for the real thing.

So I tried pressing r about 30 times in a row, then holding. Bingo. (so to speak). The ball count unit had one extra ball. This bug was masked when I played because a ball count reset is called during the red letter game, but when the search index was engaged, it caused the ball count unit to step before lifting the first ball, when it stepped again. Due to my lifter code using a combo of ball count and trough switches, you still got all five balls, but the lifter code Freaked Out when you got an extra ball.

It didn't freak out very hard, just didn't lift. I modified the order of operations, tested the same way, all good! Also, I adjusted for every red letter game.

Bug squished!

#1126 5 years ago

OK, likely the final checkin before Allentown (unless I really lose my mind). I added animations to "The Twist", a rather unique and odd game, and the animation routine is also unique and odd. I find this game to be a lot of fun to play, but the quirk of this game is really its downfall.

All advantages are guaranteed. A big panel lights up and tells you what the next coin will buy. Interesting concept, but coining up goes from mysterious (like the other games) to tedium (this one). Regardless, the animations only use two rows of rivets on the spotting disc, and only half of those - so you get about 1/2 to 1/3 of the animation of a normal game. Nowhere is this more odd than the extra ball animation, which is completely different and nonsensical compared to the standard pattern.

I still love the concept of the Magic Cards, and wish they had made more games utilizing that feature... maybe someone can do something about that... ?

As part of the animations, I ported the blink_letter method from Bounty over to Twist - these are the only two games that flash the currently displayed card/screen position - and added some extra polish to the method. Now it will flash during the timeout sequence (8 steps on the timer unit), and cut off, just like the real games. An R button press, which resets the timer unit, will also reset the blinky function, just like the real games.

These little things really excite me - it feels more and more like I'm standing in front of the actual game. Perhaps no one -but- me (and a select few of the hardcore numbers folks) will appreciate these touches, but I think they are important to document, nonetheless.

I have another day or two of playtesting and cleaning before Pinfest. Looking forward to it immensely!

My "Flash todo" issue on github is dwindling fast. So very excited. I will, at some point soon, add bugs for each remaining undocumented/invented piece of cosmetics (such as score/instruction cards) and badger folks that I know with games until I have them (and I'll make sure they are captured on bingo.cdyn.com as well). I've tagged some of these final items as milestone 1.0. At some point soon, those are all the issues that will remain.

#1127 5 years ago

Playtesting went pretty well last night - I even got some moving pictures on my Youtube of it running. Found a payout bug on The Twist - should've known - only these games and Miss America can have duplicate numbers on the same row.

The way the game sorts them, it trashes duplicates, but I need to allow a carefully curated set of duplicates to score.

In Miss America, I am able to do so fairly easily as each magic line position is a gateway to telling me which numbers are visible.

On The Twist - the entire card is always visible. This changed the dynamic a little bit and I had to do some quick thinking to get it to score properly.

By the way, the scoring routines I have are a digital representation of the actual hardware. Without those, I -never- would have found the bug. Ok, not never, but it would've taken way longer. I really like being able to troubleshoot the games' code like they were actual games...

Tonight is cleaning and re-rubbering, etc! Getting very exciting indeed. Tomorrow after work I'll be headed up to PA!

#1128 5 years ago

sending some Ottawa peeps to come find you in Allentown and try it!

#1129 5 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

Hey zimjoe you did it.

It's like a super power. I often get some credit while doing almost nothing...

#1130 5 years ago
Quoted from cait001:

sending some Ottawa peeps to come find you in Allentown and try it!

Awesome. International! Hope they enjoy it. Cleaned, waxed and re-rubbered tonight. Disassembled the button drawer and tucked the balls in the coin box. Ready for loading up tomorrow night!

#1131 5 years ago

Played the Multi-bingo at Pinfest 2018--it was certianly a highlight of the show for me. The amount of man hours poured into this thing just amazes me.

Thanks for making the trip, Nick!

#1132 5 years ago

Thank you spiroagnew - it was a pleasure to meet you. I'm very glad you enjoyed the game!

Thank you for all your help yesterday, and I hope your new game brings you many hours of enjoyment.

#1133 5 years ago

Short writeup of my experience at Allentown --

Allentown went extremely well. I managed to introduce an Extra Ball lifting bug in OK games by fixing a lifting bug in Red Letter game start (whoops)... but I got to introduce the games to a whole new crop of folks. Had a lot of six card players come through - Dixieland was the most popular, followed by Miss America series, but a lot of Nashville and High Flyer played. When I gave tutorials, it was typically on the Magic Screen games or the earlier single cards. A wide variety of games were played, but all Bally - no one chose United games. At York, the United games are more popular.

Everyone who played was extremely complimentary -

"This is incredible."
"I'm speechless"
"This is the best game here (6yo)"
"Hands down the best in the show (not a 6yo)"
"I came here to play a bingo and was disappointed there were none at the show... until I could play them all!"
"I had no idea these games were so complex"

... and other ego-boosts and head swelling compliments... but by far the most frequently uttered comment:

"When does it go into production and how much is it? Put me on the list to purchase."

I guess I'm doing something right. I get these comments at York as well, but Allentown was a different crop of folks, for the most part.

It was great to see some of the folks from York - Jim Holder came by and brought me a big bag of Jones Plugs - thank you, Jim. Mike and Butch Glauda stopped by and brought me a United ABC playfield I've been looking for for a few years - thank you, Mike and Butch. But the vast majority of folks were brand new to bingos or brand new to the Multi.

Folks from all over came by to play the game, and it was great to see their faces as the complexity of the games washed over them (and the scale of what was done on the Multi). Adding the coin flash animations I think was a very good thing.

I snuck away three times during the show: once to scope out the flea market for parts, and twice to try to play another custom game at the show (the beautiful "Nightmare Before Chistmas" https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-nightmare-before-christmas) and teach that creator about bingos in trade. I was asked if I was worried about leaving the game alone, and my response was that I wasn't, but I prefer to be by the game to teach people how to play if they like. I came back to the machine and there were two children that were playing on a single coin over and over - they did not understand the game, but they were trying to see how the balls bounced. It was interesting to stand back and watch them. I gave them a little advice about how to win the game, but they were having their own fun.

I really enjoyed meeting all the new folks at Allentown - I may try to make this a regular outing. I was very pleased to meet all the folks from Canada - their kind words about the game and their interest were very flattering. I was even able to meet a Canadian contributor to the Multi, and he was able to play a few games and we got to talk shop for a moment in the madness.

Most of the day, there was at least one person waiting to play while another was on the game.

Many people thought it was a restored older machine - when I explained that it was a brand new game that could play 142 different machines... it was fun to watch their heads explode. 

Huge thank you to zimjoe for keeping me awake for the lengthy drive and for helping move some heavy machines.

#1134 5 years ago

I would definitely pay for one of these ready to go. I would want the main unit, no legs needed, an external output for a screen to plug in. It would be able to travel so well. Even if I just had one type of playfield and stuck to those series of games.

#1135 5 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

Huge thank you to zimjoe for keeping me awake for the lengthy drive and for helping move some heavy machines.

It was a blast, but I can't take those hours

Quoted from cait001:

I would definitely pay for one of these ready to go. I would want the main unit, no legs needed, an external output for a screen to plug in. It would be able to travel so well. Even if I just had one type of playfield and stuck to those series of games.

It is neat. I kept thinking it needed a folding head to make transport simpler. I fear it would take away from it's bingo-ness and make it too WPC .

3 weeks later
#1136 5 years ago

One day of play at Allentown - 1,688 plays. Forgot to post.

This equates roughly to 150 games played. Not bad!!!

#1137 5 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

One day of play at Allentown - 1,688 plays. Forgot to post.

This equates roughly to 150 games played. Not bad!!!

Nice, people were all over it! Are you already getting ready for York?

#1138 5 years ago

Not yet, but I am more than ready to get ready.

Trough #8 switch is not working. There is a broken wire at the plug, I'm thinking.

I have lots more animations to write. Plus at least one big surprise (if I have the time to make it).

I've had an insane few weeks working solid for work since the show. Hopefully it will calm down soon.

3 weeks later
#1139 5 years ago

I have to say.
I want one of these!
I hope in future there is a small production run, or even bigger dream, someone picks this up and makes a run of 300! (Spooky/AP?)

#1140 5 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

One day of play at Allentown - 1,688 plays. Forgot to post.
This equates roughly to 150 games played. Not bad!!!

Do you keep a metric of "credits added"? I'm the lady at the bingo machine dropping in 20-40 nickels trying to get a huge array of features lit up.

#1141 5 years ago
Quoted from Ericpinballfan:

I have to say.
I want one of these!

I too am in. Would even consider paying someone to make me one if it was done up as a kit.
I've mentioned it to Nick before, but I just want the bottom bingo chasis and a monitor output on it. Could slide it out of storage, plug it in to a monitor, and away we go.

#1142 5 years ago
Quoted from cait001:

Do you keep a metric of "credits added"? I'm the lady at the bingo machine dropping in 20-40 nickels trying to get a huge array of features lit up.

I do it the old fashioned way - with a coin meter! I take a photo of the meter before loading in for an event and on unload and manually subtract the numbers. I don't track them digitally.

...and $1-$2 a game sounds good to my wallet!

Thank you both - having people ask me about a production version is the highest compliment I can receive. It never gets old, but remains surreal.

#1143 5 years ago
Quoted from bingopodcast:

and $1-$2 a game sounds good to my wallet

I would have zero problem with $1/credit, provided I trusted that you would be honouring my 5-line payout!

1 week later
#1144 5 years ago

Gigantic work project finally wrapping up (which has consumed all my evenings since Allentown). I took the night off and decided to work on coin flash animations! I jumped back in with both feet and did the other '7' game, Super-7. I've got all the routines written, and am still in the process of verifying rivets. Once that's done, it's positioning each lit element, but I've already bugtested for basic functionality. I will hopefully have time over the weekend to finish Super-7. Then it's on to the rest!

I also announced another big project (can't keep away from them, it seems): https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/multi-races-the-multi-one-ball-horserace-game

Excited to get rolling on that, I've got a lot of work ahead of me - but I wouldn't have it any other way.

#1145 5 years ago

Super-7's animations are complete. The animation pattern is the same as it's sister game, Bonus-7. This was also the most complex game I had left to complete. I managed to get another started earlier today, might be able to finish late late tonight. Little by little.

#1146 5 years ago

Safari is complete, and I went on a bit of a tear this evening and wrote all the ancillary/cleanup code for each of the remaining Bally games that I can currently write animations for - shown here: https://github.com/bingopodcast/bingos/issues/152

I have begun the actual animation routines for Venice. Should have those done tomorrow.

#1147 5 years ago

Venice is complete and Safari tested. Venice was much harder to complete than it should have been because of how the spotting disc is drawn. Hard to read those interior rings!

#1148 5 years ago

And Orient is complete as well. This was the final 20 hole game! I'm excited to plug in my 20 hole playfield and see the fruits of my labor in the actual game. On to the next!

#1149 5 years ago

Stayed up way too late last night working - Showtime and Sun Valley are now fully animated. I know I've mentioned it before, but it's so wonderful to see a game snap to life with the animations.

My list grows ever shorter. I am almost done with the Bally games I have enough information to animate.

At that point, I will start working on United games - I have a way to transpose the mechanical movement to computer code, but I haven't quite figured out how I will handle the animation. It's something that is right on the tip of my tongue - and I just have to speak the right word to make me realize how I can get it done.

The United games are divided into three distinct eras. The first era has no animation, other than lighted scoring. Those are done.

The last era is extremely similar to Bally. I still have Playtime to do, but otherwise all are complete.

The middle era is the trouble spot - United used a combination of the flash motor and various relays to handle the coin flash. It moves in a way completely unlike the Bally games - the heartier mechanism makes a flash which is beefier(? ok, struggling for words here) than the smooth, sweeping movements of the Bally spotting disc.

I'm excited to dive into that challenge.

Other items I would like to address:
Sound - I would love to record the sounds from a few United games - replacing the Bally sounds for those games where appropriate.

Animation - I haven't figured out a way to get smooth rotational animation for, say, the Magic Squares. I know I've mentioned before, but I'm not a good programmer, and I'm absolutely not great with animation. When I was a kid and needed to animate something on early home computers, I would just brute force it. I want to think of a more elegant solution. I'm using pygame, and I'm sure that rotational effects exist in convenient form, but will they look the way I intend?

Otherwise, the game is nearing completion. I have a small handful of parts that are still needed to allow play of every game (the biggest being a Tahiti playfield, and a Hi-Fi bump cradle - those only prevent play of two games total).

I will have more to announce once I've finished the coin flash, and that day is coming soon.

#1150 5 years ago

When you least expect it...

I think I just figured out a way to do smooth rotation. And it's pretty straightforward, and basically what I was expecting to need to do when I started the project.

Isolate each of the numbers that rotates. Since they are presented to the player in the same orientation, regardless of rotation, built-in rotation methods won't work.

I then take those isolated numbers and quickly blit each of them at once in a new position. I've done some really basic stop-motion (clay) animation, same concept. If I do this enough... it will be smooth and seamless.

I will need to add a relay to prevent calling the rotation method twice, or set a variable (decrement counter) that must be zero before it can rotate again. The hard part is that, because the illumination of the lamps is decoupled from the (fake) mechanical unit, I will need to ensure that I ONLY call the unit stepup/down if the rotation method is in process. The real game turns off the lamp as it is rotating (thank goodness!) so this can be completely generic. I will need to add positional arguments to the rotation method so that I can handle the spacing of different backglasses.

In this way I can also override the built-in stepper class sounds as well.

This will be fun to play with.

Assuming that this works, I should be able to do something similar with the Magic Screen, and of course, the roto. The Magic Lines I would do last - they are much less problematic than the animations missing for the Squares and Roto. It's jarring to see the unit 'jump' into the next position, but of course is totally playable.

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