About a year ago i started work on a life long ambition of mine: to build a fully featured pinball control system for early bally and stern games with the goal in being able to produce a board set and software framework for other like minded people to modify and create new games from old playfields. I also wanted to be able to create new rules and sounds for a game i made back in the college days some 25 years ago.

I developed a double board set and had some protos made. 1 controller board and 1 driver board, that are designed to work together, and replace all other bally boards except the power section on the old power driver board.

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I wanted to create a board set that would work together and include additional options on the boards so that people could add extra features to games should they wish, but also be a direct plug in to the games original wiring. The main features of the board set are:

- Control Original Segment Displays, or use low cost serial Led displays
- Control Original Switch Matrix
- Control Original 16 Drivers plus Solenoid expanders
- Control Original 64 non-matrixed lamps
- Additional 16 mosfet drivers for flashers, motors, magnets etc
- Additional RGB Lamp Control for extra lamps
- Large SD card sound/music storage capabilities
- Multiple Channel Sound with background music
- Sound line out for connection to external amps/audio setups

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The hardware is one side of the project, but the software framework is the other. I have been working on creating a pinball library framework which people can use to get their own project off the game in conjunction with this hardware. The framework is made up classes for all the major pinball items, so lamps, switches, drivers, displays and sounds. The game itself then has various other files including feature modes and base modes to make the game playable. I have based my design concepts on the work of other more complex pinball frameworks, such as pyprocgame. This is the framework that i use for my rewrites of Indiana Jones and Whirlwind (see my other blog posts). Without the ideas from this software i wouldn't be here.

The framework is all written using the arduino code language and C++. I am making sure that you can still use the standard arduino ide to modify the files to create your own game from. The framework is very modular and i'm pretty happy with it so far.

Here an example videos of the attract mode with all 64 lamp being controlled along with the displays

Here's a vid of me explaining some of the rules that i am recreating using my framework and api and showing them working on the game

Here's an earlier video of some game play, before i got the 2nd channel (background music/sound) working

Please get in touch if you are interested in creating your own game from an Early Bally or Stern game and would purchase my board set.

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I'm working on pricing it at £199 plus shipping, so that would work out at around $300. That will buy you the full board set and access to all my framework, libraries and game code. I've been developing this system with low cost in mind so getting new game rules, features and sounds on older games doesn't break the bank. Of course there are compromises, but i think i've built up a decent solution and one that doesn't need external computer power/brains.

It is designed for all early Bally and Stern games so there's plenty of great games to rewrite rules for. I also realise that this could be used to replace boards from a dead game so I will continue to expand the software framework and maybe work on other rewrites in the future. One of the best parts if you are wanting to create your own game, or rewrite an old game is you aren't starting from scratch you can use the code i have already written as a starting point and all the basics are taken care of within the software framework.

You only need to replace 2 boards - the mpu and lamp driver. The new controller board handles all game control, displays and sounds. The new driver board handles all lamps and coils. You just leave the old solenoid power driver in there to run the 5v and 12v supplies. The old sound board can be left disconnected.

Fear not, i won't be including any copyrighted names etc. The boards will be populated with the name 'Custom Pinball Controller'. The name you see currently is just for my own prototype testing boards. They work on old Stern games to, so the name should be more generic Also, i should point out that putting in new hardware and running your own game rules, sounds etc probably voids your warranty from 1979

Yes you can and i included an ATX d-type power plug on the controller board (see pics above) for just this type of eventuality. For me personally i like to use as much of the old game as possible and just plug into existing connectors, but this option is certainly another possibility. I forget to mention that on the original thread, so thanks for the question

I have added to you to the 'interested' list

Yes, as mentioned you will need some coding skills for this type of adventure, but as shimoda says I have created a framework with a library which makes things alittle easier and allows you to stay within the arduino code sketch files for writing your game feature logic. Of course you can go deeper should you want to and do whatever you like.

You would also be able to use my high voltage/ future spa game code as a basis for your own game to, so you could use the bonus feature, or the kickback mode code etc etc, or use the extra drives to add a motor, some flashers, or a magnet somewhere.

It is designed to work with all bally/stern games from roughly 1976-1985. All the ones that could use the altek replacement mpu board or the AS-2518 mpu.

Yes, Globetrotters would be a great game to use with my board set.

Quick Update: I made a tweak today to the display controller framework to solve a small ghost issue i was having with the displays. The previous digit was ever so slightly visible in the next digit along on the display. This was tracked down to the digit enable lines being turned high before the binary number was latched in to the decoder. Swapped those 2 events around and now the displays are really crisp I've also made improvements to the score methods in the game code and scoring is working really nicely now to.

Thanks, it was to have more room for the shots and orbit higher up and also I wanted an upper playfield. At the time I made it whitewater just came out, so my launch was a nod to that and I had a load of Zacarria games at home to play on which often had an overhead launch

Update: I've been working on a few new items in the framework and game code. Firstly the bonus count up sequences that you get in nearly all early Bally/Stern games. I've added some extra code to the bonus 'mode' game file and the game will now count up the triangles on hv that you have collected at the end of the ball along with multiplying each count by the games multiplier level. The game will also remember when 'panels' of triangles are complete and count them up to after the current 'panel' is finished.

Here's a quick video with some voice over by me explaining how it works so far:

Also, I've done some more work on the display controller and shot a quick video to show the response between switch events and display updates by using the spinner in game. Interestingly i had some debug statements in the update method previously that were causing a slight flicker on the displays as they were updated. I now have debug turned off and the display are smooth and solid during a score update. (Any flickering/pulsing in the video is due to the speed of the camera lens)

Cheers

Something like this perhaps?

I thought i'd change a couple of the sound files on my current setup to show what could be possible with a flash gordon game. I had a few spare mins today I created a quick background music file and a new speech call of 'Gordon's Alive' then copied them and the other sounds to a new sd card, swapped the cards over in my setup and shot the quick video. Just to show a starting point for a FG game really and how a musical bgnd track sounds with sound effects overlaid on it.

Update: Sounds back to normal now Was fun to have a switch calling out 'gordon's alive'. Anyway, Now looking at some fine tuning on some of the framework. First up is adding the flashing display to the active player that is present on Bally games. This will be a tweak to the display controller library which will perform some timed blanking out of the display whose id matches the id of the active player. I may add a setting to that can turn this feature on and off.

Hi, thanks for the comments. Yes, the custom pinball controller board handles all game control, logic and sound creation and delivery

Just to explain my thoughts on reverb and echo. On my other sound board projects for Bally games such as the S&T board, i am producing a new daughter card which plugs onto the J2 output connector to add these effects. I included the same connector on my custom controller board so we will be able to plug this daughter card on here to and add the same effects

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Hi, Thanks for the post and questions. Been a little slow to reply (for obvious reasons) recently, so sorry about that. A very strange week in pinball!

So the idea is that people wanting to create their own game get access to all the code i have written via a github area which includes all the framework and libraries, but also all the game code from my High Voltage/Future Spa rewrite. So you will have more than just the basic shell game. You will have bonus count up modes and kickback modes and spot number/letter modes etc etc. I also aim to keep expanding the code base with more modes and features that can be reused/ used as a starting point for other games. Also, if other people also want to add their own modes etc back into the code base then great. I have created it in a modular way so each item is its own file and the library is very much class driven. I will start to show some examples of how the code works etc soon to

The main concept for this board set and controller was to make a system that can run older 80s games at a low cost that doesn't need a pc type computer to run the software from. This is the primary focus for it. However, there may be ways to expand its use should you wish and i am always open to new ideas and ways to use things. I am not into limiting peoples creativity. I did spend along time creating the driver part end so that it wouldn't be too hard to hook up other systems. For example the driver board connector is compatible (to a point) with the wpc driver setup. There are some changes as the lamp system is not a matrix one on these games, but this could be a starting point for a MPF hook up should you wish.

Update: Been working on sorting out the flashing display for active players. Just about finished this up. Also fixed some issues with multiplayer scoring and am working on the match code to replicate the features seen on games like elektra. New video later today hopefully