No Good Gofers: Battle For The Green (NGG:B4G)
A Licensed “2.0” Upgrade Kit by Cardona Pinball Designs
Available NOW
MSRP $1999US

Includes everything you need to install No Good Gofers: Battle For The Green into a No Good Gofers Pinball machine.
• Speaker panel with (2) 4" Flipper Fidelity speakers, an industrial 15.6 inch monitor, and associated cabling.
• FAST Interface controller board (to be installed in the removed CPU location).
• CPU panel that includes CPU, FAST audio and accessory controller, and associated cabling (to be installed in the removed audio/video board location).
• Power Supply with fuse block and associated cabling.

Note: Interface controller offers the ability to add future expansion components such as shaker motors, RGB lighting kits, and the "Gofer Motion" Topper .

About No Good Gofers: Battle For The Green:
A wandering bear is head-struck by a golf ball and loses all his memory--even that he is a bear! Buzz, a mischievous munchkin of a gopher hates all golfers. When Buzz discovers the bear, he names him Bud and convinces him that he's really a gopher too. With Bud's raw strength, Buzz hatches a plan to take the golfers out and reclaim the course!

The music, animations, voice work, and sound effects follow this comical and cartoon-ish vein and were made to be accessible to all. Buzz tends to be critical and confrontational of the player's shots. Bud, on the other hand, is the comic relief of the team. He's a bear that thinks he's really an over-sized gopher. Let’s just say he’s a little slow on the uptake.

Resellers:
https://cardonapinball.com/products

https://www.planetarypinball.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=PPM-KIT-NGG-BATTLE

Questions:
Does your kit include side art or a new backglass?
Not in the kit, however, we have contacted an industry leading artist to create new backglass artwork and we plan on offering this as an upgrade option for those who want it once the artist is done.

Can your kit play the original game?
Yes. The NGG:B4G upgrade kit will not only play the new game but players can also select the original game from a menu. Additionally, in future updates we plan to add functionality to the original game where appropriate.

About Cardona Pinball Designs:
Cardona Pinball Designs is licensed by Planetary Pinball Supply to create 2.0 game kits for Bally-Williams titles and has been working toward this end for approximately four years. Our main expertise is software and we subcontract or partner with professionals for other specialized work. For example, FAST is creating our hardware and we also use several artists and voice actors for content creation. We expect to release another licensed title in 2023 and two more licensed titles in 2024.

Our titles receive heavy public beta testing. NGG:B4G has been at The Pinball Gallery in Malvern, Pennsylvania ( https://pinballgallery.net) and at the Delaware Pinball Collective in Wilmington, Delaware since September 2020 ( https://www.delawarepinballcollective.com).

NGG:B4G has also been to several pinball shows such as:
• White Rose Gameroom Show ( http://www.theyorkshow.com)
• PinFest (http://www.pinfestival.com)
• Golden State Pinball Festival (https://www.goldenstatepinball.org)
• Northwest Pinball and Gameroom Show (http://www.nwpinballshow.com)
• Pin-a-go-go (http://www.pin-a-go-go.org)
• Texas Pinball Festival (https://www.texaspinball.com )

cardonapinball.com contains the below links to videos of game play, installation of a kit, pre-installation steps, troubleshooting, and a demo video as well as manuals, flyers, promo material, and other documents.

promotional video

game rules

game play

installation video

troubleshooting videos

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SEE POST 264 FOR RULE SHEET
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/ngg20-new-code-for-your-no-good-gofers-2020/page/6#post-7061691

SEE POST 285 FOR LAUNCH INFORMATION AND PURCHASING INFORMATION AND COUPON CODE
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/ngg20-new-code-for-your-no-good-gofers-2020/page/6#post-7382362

Here is what will be in the kit:

Speaker panel with two 4-inch speakers, a 15.6-inch LCD screen, and associated wiring
Metal mounting panel containing NGG2.0 CPU, audio amplifier, circuitry, and associated wiring
Power cord(s) and depending on design, a three-way power splitter

Here is what will NOT be in the kit:

NOT included is a P-ROC pinball controller. You must purchase one separately in order for this kit to work. The P-ROC is manufactured by the Multimorphic company and I have no affiliation with them. You can purchase the P-ROC board from them at:

https://www.multimorphic.com/store/circuit-boards/p-roc/

Please note that Multimorphic manufacturers several different boards. Make sure you purchase the correct one. You do NOT want to but the P3-ROC; you DO want to purchase the P-ROC. The P3-ROC will NOT work.
Also, I recommend purchasing the P-ROC mounting plate for your machine to easily mount the P-ROC. NGG is a WPC-95 era machine so be sure to purchase the WPC-95 mounting plate for your P-ROC. Any further questions concerning the P-ROC or its installation should be directed to multimorphic, not me.

I uploaded the manual for the kit here:

http://www.jamescardona.com/NoGoodGophers2.0Manual.pdf

It is a big file. It is also still being tweaked as far as some of the explanations but should help you out with questions.

I just made this installation video today for anyone who is curious:

The kit is a completely new game with all new code, animations, sound effects, voice work, music, and game rules.

As you can see in the videos, it has a 15.6 inch LCD screen for the animations.

There are 8 different mini modes and 2 wizard modes. The basic rules of the original game were discarded and completely written from scratch. This is a whole new game!

One of the things about the original NGG that I always saw as a missed opportunity was the lack of use of the 6 balls in the trough. Why wasn't there any 6 ball multi-balls? Well no more. Of the 10 modes, 5 are multiball modes and they all have a variety of ball counts from 3-ball multiballs all the way up to 6-ball multiballs.
One of the 6-ball multiballs is called Thunderstorm. All of the playfield lights go out, including the GI and lightning strikes flash all the flashers. 6-balls are bouncing around and it is pretty awesome fun. That mode is a crowd favorite so far.

thunderstorm (resized).png

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another mode that you are going to like is short circuit. This is similar in idea to the original game in that bud is below the playfield eating wires. Different though is that the flippers are reversed. Hit shots and bud gets electricuted.

shortCircuit (resized).png

NGG2.0 is written 100% from scratch and not one line of existing code from the original game is in my code. No intellectual property of Planetary Pinball or Williams is involved here. I not only wrote the new code but also replaced all of the sounds and animations with new custom work that I either did myself or hired professionals to create.

NGG2.0 has a (hopefully) balanced scoring system divided into two different main objectives: completing holes, that is to say 'golfing', and mini-games (mini-modes). Additionally, there are two wizard modes. One is obtained after completing 18 holes of golfing and the other after completing all of the mini-modes. So then, each main objective has its own wizard mode.
For golfing, the player hits strokes which advance the ball to the green. Once on the green the player putts out and receives an award based on how far under or over par the player is for that particular hole.

There are eight mini-modes and two wizard modes. One wizard mode is lit after completing 18 holes. The second wizard mode is lit after completing all eight mini-modes. To complete a mini-mode, the player must not only start the mode but shoot the required mode shots enough times to complete it. Each mode is explained in detail below.

The golfing and mini-mode goals can be worked on independently or simultaneously in that progress toward the individual goals are separate. However, once a mode is started you do not accumulate strokes, for example, until the mode is finished. Additionally, modes cannot be stacked, that is, you cannot run several modes simultaneously.

As for balanced scoring between mini-modes, I saw pretty early that making all of the mini-modes have balanced scoring when weighed against each other would be a futile effort. My solution was to have the modes chosen randomly, that is, when mode start is achieved the player does not choose which mode is played. Once the mode is completed by hitting all the required strokes, gophers, flashing lights, etc., the completed mode will not be available to play again until after all modes are completed and the final sorcerer mode is played (more on that later).

The exception to the above is the ripoff mode since it is started by captive ball hits.
Also unlike the original game, there are no progressive shots. In the original game, a completed jackpot, for example, was worth more each time it was hit –thus, progressive. This was the main culprit, I believe, in making the game imbalanced. In my code, jackpot shots do not increase in value. In fact, no shots increase in value just because it was hit more than once.
There are other ways to increase a shots value such as lighting super jets or earning 2X by completing several cart path loops. Again, more on that later.

THEME

Most people described NGG as an unlicensed knock off of the movie ‘Caddyshack’ and I didn't really want to go in the ‘Caddyshack’ direction as licensed assets would need to be paid for. Instead, I stuck with an unlicensed theme and story-line which I created. The story behind NGG2.0 goes like this:

A bear wanders onto a golf course and loses his memory when hit by an errant ball. Buzz, a gopher that hates all golfers, discovers the bear, names him Bud, and convinces him that he's really a gopher too. With Bud's raw strength, Buzz hatches a plan to take the golfers out and reclaim the course as his own.

The music, animations, voice work, and sound effects follow this comical and cartoon-ish vein and were made to be accessible to all. There is no profanity or anything vulgar here. Just like the original though, Buzz tends to be critical and confrontational of the player's shots and says things like “miss it,” “hey hotshot,” “get off our turf,” or “you're holding your putter wrong,” and will most certainly laugh when the player drains.

Bud, on the other hand, is the comic relief of the team. He's a bear that thinks he's really an oversized gopher. Let’s just say he’s a little slow on the uptake.

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Got a few questions in a message:

How much do you think this kit will cost?
Do you know off hand how much the PROC board is?
How long will this be available?
Will you continue to make them on a demand basis?

the kit price is $975 plus shipping.
I am going to give free shipping to addresses in the continental USA for the early adopters. That is, the first 25 kits. If you are outside the USA, I'll deduct the difference.

The P-ROC is not sold by me and you have to buy that separately. Maybe you already have one? You can pick one up at the multimorphic store and maybe some other places. I think pinballlife used to sell them also.

As far as availability, I am gearing up to make a bunch of these right now. What the future holds? I don't know. Hopefully, I don't get hit by a bus.

Sorry, I cannot use william's intellectual property so nothing from the original is used.

One of the things you might notice that is different than anything you may have seen before is that the character speaks directly to the player. At least I've never seen that done before in pinball.

At the start of every game, bud pops up and says something. The speech is coordinated with the animation. That was tricky to do and took me some time to figure out how to do it.

bud's opening lines goes a long way to explain why he thinks he is a gopher.

Thanks for all the support from Delawarepinball and first state pinball! You guys are awesome!

By default, all random awards are the same for all players all the time with ngg2.0.

Ball save time is adjustable.

Single ball mini mode timers are adjustable.

Number of multiballs in mini modes is adjustable.

There are two different wizard modes in NGG2.0.
Sorcerer wizard mode is obtained after completing the 8 modes -- very hard to reach this, but very lucrative. This is a 6-ball multiball mode where different shots are lit and the lit shots move around the table over time.

The 19th hole wizard mode is obtained, obviously, after completing 18 holes. A single ball timed mode that can be lucrative if you are good at getting the ball onto the upper playfield. Hook, slice, cart, and hole-in-one shots are huge points.

sorcerer (resized).png

nineteenth (resized).png

for anyone who is interested in ordering:

send me a PM and I will send you my paypal email. I didn't want to post it here because, you know, spam bots.

every mode is different and the scores for each mode are independent of what is going on in other parts of the game. I have been in enough tournaments to understand that if there exists an exploit, people are only going to do that and only that. That is why people "only" shoot for gopher multiball who play the original code of NGG when playing in tournaments or playing for points. This makes the game one-dimensional and I wanted to get away from that and give players multiple things to go for and add in opportunities to create differing strategies. Hopefully I was successful.

So yeah, the 19th hole wizard mode doesn't take into account the stroke count for the first 18 holes. I like that idea, though, and wish I had come up with it. Having said that, at the end of every hole there is an over-under par bonus so you are kind of already being rewarded quite nicely for shooting good golf.

code updates can be done through the utility menu just like all other modern machines. Insert a memory stick into the USB and download the update.

Appreciate all the feedback.

"Everything can be fixed in code"
At least that's what one of my professors used to say.

Part of the reason for the Saturday live stream is to get a bunch of eyes on the game for feedback toward a goal of perfecting things.

I'm dedicated toward making ngg a great game. If I wasn't, I would not have given up so much time to it. So again, feedback is appreciated.

Really hate to get off on a tangent here, but I think I was pretty upfront that the code on DM wasn't finished. I actually released it for free in hope that someone else would finish it, but I am still waiting on that. DM was really just a hobby/experiment thing and was built on the freeWPC engine. The work done by others on freeWPC was good for what it was but after the main guy who built it got hired by Heighway, he stopped development on the engine, so yeah, it still had bugs. I don't fault him for that and in fact I count myself as super-blessed that he did what he did by giving the engine away for free for people to play with like myself. I tried my best to both write the game code for DM and fix bugs in the engine as I found them, but after a while I gave up on it. It was just getting too time-consuming and with a full time job and 3 kids in the house, I couldn't continue to justify it. The source code is on github. Feel free to pick it up and play with it as you like.

I hadn't planned on continuing after the freeWPC experience until I saw the work done with both the P-ROC and P3 and with games like TNA, Oktoberfest, Houdini, Cactus Canyon Continued, etc., all being built on variations of this new excellent engine. NGG2.0 is also built on that same core and so far has proven to be extremely solid.

So I played a bunch of games today and paid special attention to the fonts, font sizes, and readability of the text. I guess maybe the videos don't look as good as in-person because the top info bar is completely readable (for me) when playing in-person. I do agree that some of the fonts are small, particularly on the Nap Time Mode so I am going to fix that for sure.

I am planning to institute this along with all the comments and changes I receive from the playtest on Saturday that we will be live streaming.

By the way, the two videos previously posted were filmed in November 2019.
Someone mentioned that the colors looked washed out so I need to check into the video camera. Maybe the iso is not set right and I need to check that.
Also, I just filmed another so as you can see from the new video I changed a few of the sound effects and also added the total score to the mode screen.

Thanks for the positive comments, Josh. By the way, for all of you who are following along, there is a reason his name is listed in the credits of my game: he is one of the great, selfless individuals who have offered me help and advice in developing this kit and it has been truly appreciated.

There have been a lot of comments on my code in this thread and I have taken your passion to heart. This hasn't been built in a vacuum. Far from it. I have had people looking it over for some time, however, seeing it in person is different than on a youtube video so many of you have different suggestions than I have heard so far.

Here is what I have done in the last few days, based on some of the comments here:

Reduced the length of time for the putt out hole award animation chooser by about half. Player can still skip it by hitting flipper buttons.

Greatly increased the font size of the "player # xx up" indicator that plays for the first few seconds of each ball on a multi-player game.

Made it so that the player's score who is up to play blinks.

Doubled the size of the score fonts at the bottom of the screen. Also, made allowances for extremely large scores, where the font size will shrink to fit the box if a score is > 100,000,000. Or shrink even more if > 1,000,000,000 like when Bowen is playing.

Added in some golf terminology to the putt out score awards as follows:
5 under par -> double condor
4 under par -> condor
3 under par -> albatross
2 under par -> eagle
1 under par -> birdie
par
1 over par -> bogey
2 over par -> double bogey
3 over par -> triple bogey
4 or more over par -> infinity bogey

Changed size of nap time title and score fonts to be larger. Now they are more in line with the font sizes of all other modes.

Added a difficulty setting check to all modes to set the ball save time. Previously "base game" ball save was set in the menu, however, "mini mode" ball save was set to 45 seconds for all mini modes and 100 or 120 seconds for sorcerer or 19th hole wizard modes respectively. Ball save during base game is still set by "ball save time" in the menu, however, ball save time for mini and wizard modes is dependent on difficulty setting as follows:

all mini modes
if difficulty = 'EASIEST' ballSaveTime = 45
if difficulty = 'EASY' ballSaveTime = 45
if difficulty = 'MEDIUM' ballSaveTime = 30
if difficulty = 'HARD' ballSaveTime = 15
if difficulty = 'HARDEST' ballSaveTime = 8

sorcerer wizard mode
if difficulty = 'EASIEST' ballSaveTime = 100
if difficulty = 'EASY' ballSaveTime = 100
if difficulty = 'MEDIUM' ballSaveTime = 75
if difficulty = 'HARD' ballSaveTime = 60
if difficulty = 'HARDEST' ballSaveTime = 45

19th Hole wizard mode
if difficulty = 'EASIEST' ballSaveTime = 120
if difficulty = 'EASY' ballSaveTime = 120
if difficulty = 'MEDIUM' ballSaveTime = 95
if difficulty = 'HARD' ballSaveTime = 80
if difficulty = 'HARDEST' ballSaveTime = 65

There are more changes yet to make. Not sure if I will get to them before saturday's live stream.

The main thing is I wanted to feed back to this thread that I am listening. That does not mean, however, that I am going to code in every single person's idea of how the game should play. It is still my creative work. Still, if you have something to make this a better pinball, please share it. In the end, you all will be the ones playing it and I want you to enjoy it.

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okay, hopefully my last post for today. I have a bunch of fam stuff I need to take care of.

I spoke with Rick from Planetary Pinball today and we are working through some of the details of an arrangement. I am not going to detail exactly what that is at this time. He needs to speak to his lawyers and I need to do somethings on my end, but I am optimistic we can come to some sort of agreement.

During our conversation, he wanted me to stress to you all the need to respect the Williams Intellectual Property and Trademarks so that people don't think that I am somehow stealing Williams IP and nothing is done about it. The fact is that we are attempting to come together on this and if other developers are out there who want to do something similar, I can recommend they do the same.

By the way, this is a good place to reiterate the following statement from the manual:
NGG2.0 is written 100% from scratch and not one line of existing code from the original game is in my code. No intellectual property of Planetary Pinball or Williams is involved here. I not only wrote the new code but also replaced all of the sounds and animations with new custom work that I either did myself or hired professionals to create.

got everything packed up. excited for the live stream. I've been changing fonts and minor look-and-feel tweaks the last few days, but won't have all the updates in for the live stream that I wanted to make. Should have all of it done in a few days, though.

For now, I've made all the fonts much bigger and combined/eliminated a few of the information lines such that the notifications will overtake the bottom stroke line for a few seconds when they pop up. i think it looks better. Not sure if I'm sticking with the current color scheme. Looking forward to the feedback from tonight.

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As to some of the other comments over the last few days, I have done some research and have a question for the potential buyers.

Some people have said that they wanted something like BOP2.0 which has a dual boot feature. I checked that out and observed that BOP2.0 was a 2000$ kit. It doesn't appear that they sold that many. Maybe 100?

If I put in all the work and purchase the licenses from PPS to make NGG2.0 a dual booting game, it is obviously going to raise the price of the kit substantially. A few were already balking at the price I am asking (that's another subject), so the question is this: how many additional people would actually buy it with those considerations?

Yes, yes, yes.

Sorry, I didn't want to make it sound as if you were assisting me in the creation of this. To be clear, all of the NGG2.0 code is my own.

One of the wonderful things about the pinball development community is that it is so small that many of the folks writing code for machines, designing playfields, and doing pinball art all know each other or at least know of each other. With such a small community, many help each other out with answering questions and the like. I wrote NGG2.0 and the credit or blame should be directed at me. Still, I listed a "thank you" page on the attract mode of NGG2.0 and Rosh is there along with a bunch of other names. These are all people who answered questions or gave me pointers when I was learning and developing and I wanted to acknowledge that.

Would I have figured it out on my own? Sure. I have a CS degree. But they saved me a lot of time. Eric, for sure. Gerry and Michael O, obviously. I tried to capture everyone who gave me assistance, but I probably missed a few.

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I'll update the screen

just sent out the next update to the beta testers based upon the feedback from the live stream. Here are some of the changes that affect game play:

Added a text display of points and new sound effect when a skill shot is hit.
Made hole-in-one and cart hit to be skillshots.
Made all three ramp shots trigger the lowering of the slam ramp during skillshot timer.

Added a replay on coin play if a special is made. On freeplay, special still awards points.

Added an option to turn off auto-launch in menu. This also turns off ball search until the first switch hit is made. To make this happen, set "autolaunch" to 0 in the menu and
"skillshot timer" to 0 in the menu.

Changed the super jets logic such that if super jets is lit and ball is shot to the putt out, it does not count as a water hazard and ball always goes to jets.

Made hole-in-one worth 6 million and changed end of ball bonus to reflect actual under/over par instead of a set value (was 1 million/500,000 previously).

Still working on the social media aspect of all of this. I think, in retrospect, I created this pinside thread a little early and should have waited until I had more social media in place. What can I say? I'm a coder, not a marketer. Anyway, here is my facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Cardona-Pinball-Designs-102869057961683

The plan is to post NGG2.0 stuff there that might not make it here and additionally information about other projects I am working on.

manual has been updated:

http://jamescardona.com/ngg2manual20200208.pdf

weekend update:

getting close to another code release with requested tweaks and changes. Should be out early next week.

Also, I am working on getting the code installed at locations in the Philadelphia/New Jersey area and currently have two locations interested in doing that. Should be cool to get some pinballers opinions on it so I am excited about this development. I was asked to not release the names of those locations until the machines are out on the floor but expect it to be soon.

As far as the discussions with PPS, that is ongoing and we are awaiting lawyers so I do not know how long that will take. In the time being, I will continue to work on the dual boot option and maybe that will happen.

Also, I wanted to give a big shout out and thank you to Dutch Pinball who provide me some code fragments from their dual boot code so that has saved me a lot of time. Again, not promising dual boot will become a reality, but maybe it will. I also want to reiterate that dual boot is going to add substantially to the cost so keep that in mind.

Happy Valentine's day to you all.

If I get the approval for the dual boot, I am going to have to pay a licensing fee for the williams assets so I need to charge for that.

another update:
just sent another batch of tweaks and changes to the beta tester team. Here are some of the improvements:

Hole-in-one skillshot now also counts as hole-in-one for the current hole on the scorecard (does not grant wheel award)

Cart skillshot now also grants a cart letter toward starting mini mode

Added voice callouts to various skillshots and and also at game over (only if no high score entry)

Changed skillshot scoring as follows:
hole in one skillshot = 8,250,000
cart skillshot = 1,250,000
captive ball skillshot = 250,000
middle target skillshot = 250,000
top or bottom target skillshot = 125,000

if a player is added after the skillshot timer has started counting down, the skillshot timer now resets

Created an extremely simple "game over" animation that only plays when a player did not get a high score. If a high score, the high score entry animation plays instead

as far as the location spots that I had posted about. One is waiting until the currently running tournament is over. The other has the game but is working through a pre-existing problem on the power driver board. I am hoping to be able to post about one of the locations soon. If you are in the Philadelphia area then you may have already seen and played the game but I am not advertising it as yet because I don't want people to be disappointed if the owner shuts the game off to work on the pre-existing problem.

Also, we plan to have the machine at the next Delaware Pinball Tournament event, in addition to more live streams on the delawarepinball twitch channel.

As far as permissions from PPS to dual boot their code, I am still waiting for the go-ahead just as you are. When I get the nod or the shake, I'll post here so stay tuned.

I'm pleased to say that I received permission from Multimorphic and Scott Danesi to include their data sheets and manuals as attachments in the NGG2.0 manual.

The updated manual can be downloaded here:
http://jamescardona.com/ngg2manual20200220.pdf

The same reason Dutch Pinball licensed the Williams code for Bride Of Pinbot in BOP2.0.

There are two choices here. Either license the code and use it or do not license the code and do not use any of it. I initially tried the second path and the consensus from the posts here was that people would be willing to pay more if they could also play the original game. This is why I am following in the footsteps of Dutch Pinball and licensing the code. PPS has been gracious enough to work with me to make this happen and it looks to be moving forward. We have not signed any paperwork as yet but I am optimistic.

spent the last week trying to get a linux version of pinmame working and it is not looking to my satisfaction.

I think at this point I am going to go in a different direction as far as the dual boot. Idea is to rewrite the existing rules into a subset of NGG2.0 such that if you hold down a flipper button while you push the start button a menu will pop up allowing the player to choose to play NGG1.0. If this option is picked, it will play the game using the original rules of NGG with the original sound set. I do not as yet have this working with the original DMD frames as I am having a hard time finding a set.

If any one has the ability to extract the DMD frames then that would be much appreciated. Also, if anyone has a custom colorized version of the frames they would be willing to share, then I would certainly put them in.

Oh and the agreement with PPS is verbal so far and now they are waiting on me. I just wanted to get this working 100% before committing the funds.

Ngg2.0 is live at the pinball gallery in malvern, pa. Actually it's been here about 2 weeks.

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some feedback for those who have their games on power strips and use the strip to turn on and off their games.

NGG2.0, like a lot of the other modern computer-based machines are relying on the service outlet to properly shut down the computer. You should not turn off the power by effectively unplugging the machine. This probably applies to several of the other new machines, but I won't speak for which ones.

another live stream of NGG2.0 going on right now

https://www.twitch.tv/delawarepinball

The beta testers I am using are so great. They typically get together once every two weeks and play my game code for 4 to 7 hours straight. Really been tremendous at finding bugs and suggesting tweaks to the code. I think this kind of thing is a must for making a great game.

Not really. I understand a lot of the people who watch the videos or look at the pictures have focused on that and made funny comments and I have no problem with people attacking or making fun of Bud, "the bear". He actually doesn't mind either. He's kind of nice like that.

But actually, the people who have played it have been making gameplay recommendations and suggestions. And I think that is as it should be since, in the end, it's really all about the kinetics (IMHO).

We have so far fixed some small bugs and made many 'look and feel' tweaks along with a bunch of changes to scoring, in an attempt at making it more balanced.

One of the things that seems difficult to get right, for example, is the hole-in-one shot. Initially, I made hole-in-one worth much less because we wanted to make combos more valuable since it is hard to chain a bunch of those in a series. So we wanted to reward excellent skills and a good combo score is a prime example.

Still, the hole-in-one shot is difficult so the testers wanted it to be worth more and we made that change a few weeks ago.

Now, we are discovering that we made it worth too much so we are now dialing that back, but just not back to where it was.

It is certainly an iterative process and such a process takes playing a lot of pinball.

My system uses the danesi power controller. But that doesn't help if someone unplugs the machine from the outlet

I am an essential worker as it turns out so I have actually been working a whole lot more hours than normal so unfortunately, coronavirus has not given me the opportunity to work on this. Quite the opposite, I've been spending way to many hours away from pinball and can't wait to get back to development.

there were some streams on delawarepinball on twitch. I also had a few videos on my youtube channel that I took down because they of the beta code and I wanted to make new ones.

But then... I got coronavirus and was incapacitated for over 3 weeks. I am just over it now and just getting back to work now.

But of course, trying to buy any equipment to either stream or record video right now with all this going on is nearly impossible. Coronavirus and the flash popularity of zoom meetings has all the equipment totally sold out. Hopefully, once this is over I can get what I need and record a few videos.

Delaware Pinball has one of my kits installed as they are on the beta tester team. They periodically stream gameplay of different pinball machines. I believe they should be streaming NGG2.0 sometime this week. If you miss the stream live, then you can also view it for a number of days later.

https://www.twitch.tv/delawarepinball

stream was last night:

https://www.twitch.tv/delawarepinball

you can watch it again for 14 days before it falls off

added a new gameplay video

here is another video of game play of NGG2.0

I watched a lot of twitch and it seems with pinball, the game sounds are generally too low so you can hear the people speaking. I tried to reverse that for these videos so you could hear the actual game.

pinball gallery is opened back up and they still have a ngg2.0 on location so for those in the philly area, you should get up there if you want to play it

one more game play video for now.

Here is an instructional video where I talk about some of the playfield shots and some of the scoring opportunities.

making progress on the dual boot functionality. There are yet a few details to tweak...

thank you. I will check that section of the code. That is part of the core, so I didn't write it but I will check. I thought I had disabled fast reset, by the way.

ectobar, thanks again for pointing out this little bug. Believe it or not this was not something I tested. It is weird to say but I never restart games! This is why I try to have as many beta-testers as possible because everyone has different play styles and finds different things.

So, in the next update this will be fixed. Additionally, I added the a disable option to the service menu so you can turn off fast-restart so you don't accidentally end a game if you don't want to.

I will be getting the new code rev installed at the two test locations in the next few days, hopefully all will be up by the end of this weekend.

so the last code revision post was nearly 5 months ago.

I have still been feverishly working on code during all that time but due to COVID and Pinball Gallery being closed, I decided to not post here since no one except Mike's crew was going to see the updates. I will list the updates from that period so as to get you all up to speed.

20200225 - beta test release to testers only

Added a check to the attract mode to verify all high scores are strings just in case there was some data corruption. This is a guess at what was causing the game to crash during attract at about the time of displaying the high scores (only happened once so an intermittent bug)

Fixed the bug that caused occasional crashes in nap time mode (let's hope - I tested it about 40 times)

Decreased the amount of time that the sand trap holds the ball for base mode

Decreased the amount of time that the water hazard holds the ball

Changed a bunch of scoring multipliers that applied during modes. Each mode has a certain focus that the player is supposed to shoot for and that target is big points, however, the non-target scores were quite small previously. Now, the non-target scoring takes into account if 'big spinners' or 'super jets' was lit at the start of the mode and besides those two specific quantities, non-target scoring is larger, in general. The non-target multipliers for various modes are as follows:
mulitball mode: non-target scores = (base mode scoring * 3)
single ball timed mode: non-target scores = (base mode scoring * 7)
sorcerer wizard mode: non-target scores = (base mode scoring * 15)
19th hole wizard mode: non-target scores = (base mode scoring * 45)

Changed hole in one shot during 19th hole wizard mode to 20 million. Note, this shot does not actually grant a hole in one during this mode.

version 20200306 - beta test release to testers only
Decreased the amount of time the sand trap holds the ball for all modes (last rev change only for base game mode)

Fixed problem where some animations were not being freed properly at the end of Sorcerer mode

Changed the asset loading screen at boot up to reflect '2.0' and also added the software revision number to the asset loading screen

Fixed a typo on the attract mode 'thank you' page

Changed 'Hole in One' from 6 million to 5 million. Changed 'end of ball bonus' for 'hole in one' to 2 million. 'End of ball bonus' used to award the actual under par value which was usually a lot more than 2 million.
Changed 'Hole in One skill shot' from 8.25 million to 6.25 million

Made warp score the par value (250,000) instead of the previous hole's score, which was typically much larger

Made ball save when exiting the putting green to be 4.5 seconds (was 3)

Fixed a problem where getting 'Thunderstorm Champion' high score would neither update nor ask player to enter initials

Fixed a problem where if service mode was entered during a flasher sequence such as the 'high score flashers', the flashers would start back up after the service mode was exited.

Fixed a problem where the previously player's score could be displayed just after the skillshot is hit.

Rewrote the logic for the ball save light. Previously there were situations where the light could be on when ball save was inactive. Also, the light now goes out about 2 seconds before the ball save ends, so there is a 'grace period'

Fixed the 'completed' text positioning on all modes

Fixed a problem that occurred when a special was hit, the points were added after the animation which could make a person think the points weren't scored since a drain was happening there too. Made it score before the animation.

Changed the putt out logic such that if more than one thing is lit at putt out, you get both. For example, if 'putt out' and 'mode start' are both lit, you will be awarded the 'putt out' first and then the mode will start. Previously, you would only receive the higher priority item, such as 'mode start', then after the mode played you would need to reshoot the putt out to receive the second item. The above also applies for hole in one.

Added some new flasher effects to thunderstorm and short circuit modes

Added some new lighting effects to several base game triggers, such as: drop ramp, raise gopher, gopher hit, kick, cart path loops, and a bunch of others (11 total)

version 20200318 - beta test release to testers only
Added a 3-second delay to tilt-drain to verify the plumb bob is no longer swinging before allowing the game to continue. Every time the bob hits, the timer is reset and it continues counting. This is done in order to prevent a 'tilt-through' to the next player at ball start. Also changed the tilt display to give more information to the player. It now indicates what it is waiting for, either ball drain or plumb bob settle, and how much wait time remains.

Shortened the time delay for ejecting the ball from the putt out to the pop bumpers

Shortened the time delay for ejecting the ball from the putt out to the flippers

Shortened the time delay to recheck the putt out for a stuck ball after the ball is ejected from the putt out

Changed the instructions font for the following modes to the default font: gopher hunt, nap time. The original fonts were not so readable for those two modes. The custom mode fonts still exist, however, in the mode title.

Fixed warp so that it awards par value during a bonus.

Changed the wording of the extra ball and special awards at putt out to "light extra ball" and "light special".

Changed captive ball hit display to indicate number of hits remaining to start ripoff.

Fixed a problem where the drive light just below the newton ball was not always lighting due to a timing issue.

Added a 1.5 second delay to the slam ramp status check for hole-in-one on base game and skill shot. Basically, if a hole-in-one is made, the software verifies that the slam ramp was just down to prevent spurious hole-in-ones if the ball somehow slams into either the putt out or under the center ramp. The added delay after the slam ramp pops back up is so there is a space of time for the ball to make it to the hole-in-one switch.

Changed the way lock search is done at mode end to prevent a relay race with putt out. Basically, if a player is one stroke away from putt out and then plays a mode then when the mode ends, the player hits the final stroke and putts out in less than 2 seconds of the mode ending, the game could previously get confused because some of the end-of-mode clean up logic was checking to make sure the putt out was clear. This confusion in the logic no longer happens and when a mode ends, its logic clears up immediately. (this was Brian's '0 hole score' problem)

version 20200814 - beta test release to testers only
Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause a crash during fast-restart. Also, added fast-restart to the disables menu in the standard settings screen so it can be turned off.

Changed the high score enter initials screen's "back" character operation to be more intuitive.

Changed the shots needed to complete a mode to be the exact number of letters of the mode. Previously it was 1 shot past the exact number of letters.

Added a 3-second ball save at the ending of Short Circuit mode if the flippers were reversed since the player might not realize to switch their hands back immediately.

Shortened the puttout recheck time on short circuit mode. Previously, if a ball was ejected from the puttout and the player immediately reshot it into the puttout, the game would think that a misfire happened and not credit the shot. The delay time was shortened by 1 second.

Fixed error that was not adding the average mode scoring or number of starts for the 19th hole mode to the audits.

Fixed a typo in attract mode display.

Changed the algorithm that determines when characters speak for pop bumpers and spinners. Now they speak less if there are a lot of spins or pops in a row.

Fixed a bug in the sound algorithm that was allowing SFX sounds to play on the voice channel, thus delaying the playing of voices until the SFX audio completed.

I will be at pinball gallery tonight with the new code. If anyone wants to stop by and chat and play a few games, that would be super cool!

http://pinballgallery.net/

if extraball is set to off in menu options then an earned extraball awards points instead.

I just checked the settings file and by default eb is off. I think I did that because at the time I was taking to a few tournament directors and that is what they recommended. It can be turned on, though.

built this menuing system today. During attract, hold the right flipper button down for 2 seconds to pop this menu up and select which version you want to play. Still finalizing the different versions that will be available to play.

game selection menu (resized).png

Thank you for the feedback. I was not aware of a 1.2 in the wild. I only found 0.6 and 1.3 on ipdb here:
https://www.ipdb.org/search.pl?any=ngg&search=Search+Database&searchtype=quick

If someone can supply me or point me in the correct direction of a 1.2 pinmame set then we can include it

It is true that options can be changed once in pinmame, especially in the home environment, but that requires access to the inside of the coin door.

My thoughts were to have a few different settings files and then each boot to a different version of the pinmame would allow a different experience without having to change all the settings each time. This is still fluid, of course.

In any case, the menuing class includes a launcher that carefully shutsdown the p-roc then launches pinmame and hands over control of the hardware to pinmame in the process. At the exit of pinmame, the hardware control is passed back to the ngg2.0. All of this is done asynchronously and took some work. It is a shame that I can only show a picture of the menu here as the nuts, bolts, and gears behind it are where the heavy lifting takes place.

yes, that was the plan.

got the 1.2

will be testing it tonight

playing it today...

20200819_192850 (resized).jpg

nope. the original processor was super slow by today's standards. I guess if I was using an embedded processor like maybe one of the older model rPi then that might be an issue, but I am using an Intel quad-core nuc with 8gb ram. No problem.

what has been taking me so long with the pinmame implementation is other things, though.

If you were following BOP2.0 when that came out, those folks had similar issues. The pinmame code is great for mimicking the processor, but less so at sending proper signals out to specific discreet hardware that may exist on only a single machine. From what I remember about BOP2.0, they had to write some custom code to interface with the helmet lights as well as the alpha-numeric display. There might have been other things. I am just going from memory.

For NGG, pinmame does not seem to be handling either the slam ramp or the wheel motor to my satisfaction. They both currently work, but the slam ramp bobbles a bit and the wheel doesn't spin hard enough. This is going to have to require me to rewrite sections of pinmame and I am writing that code now.

for those of you who have a NGG please give me a hand because I don't want to have to go back and install the original boards.

What I need to know is how long exactly does the slam ramp stay down when it fires. I am thinking it is about 3 seconds but if someone could time it with a stop watch then that would be helpful.

another thing: I was digging through the pinmame code and in there it says that there was also a pinmame release of ngg 1.0

I currently have p0.6, 1.2 and 1.3 but was thinking to include 1.0 as well if I can get my hands on it. If you have it send me a pm

this is an interesting position. I don't know if I can agree or disagree because I do not have enough time as yet with pinmame running on a real machine. However, I understand that others have done it. I am wondering if they think it is so buggy?

Also, I was under the impression that all of the CGC remakes were using some form of emulation similar to pinmame. Maybe it is pinmame or maybe it is an emulation they wrote themselves. I don't know, but I think emulation can be done well. The question you seem to be raising is whether or not pinmame does it well.

wanted to give a big shout out to a fellow pinsider tomlogic who has given me some great pointers on the inner workings of pinmame and then has helped shoo me in the right direction. Awesome time savings for me which is much appreciated because my time is at a real premium right now. Any time savings I receive helps me to get more code written and this project done faster and hopefully these kits into your machines.

so it has been a few days since I posted. Here is what is going on for those who are interested.

my initial thoughts were to run NGG2.0 off the boot and the have a selection menu from within it to be able to play pinmame. That turned out to be not an option as when pinmame exited it some shenanigans occured during the hand off of the p-roc socket.

So the last few days I have been writing a 3rd program which is a loader program. Now the machine boots to the loader and you can choose your game there. If you choose ngg2.0, it will boot from there. As far as load times, the machine itself boots much faster as the ngg2.0 code is not booted until selected.

Having the game boot to a loader is how BOP2.0 works from what I understand. So if you are familiar with that then this should look similar.

I am probably going to put a 30-second timer in place so the game doesn't sit too long on the loader screen

besides the loader menu stuff, the last item (I hope) is hammering down the coil timings for the slam ramp. This gave me a bit of a headache when doing NGG2.0 as the 3 different test machines all seemed to have differently aged coils. They all worked fine, but I was trying to get rid of the hum on one of them. I think that one had a pretty old coil.

There is certainy a balance between just-enough-power to keep the coil down and not enough. Of course, I could have just put a lot more power to the coil, but I was trying to be less wasteful there.

In the end, I added coil strengths to the options menus of NGG2.0 so people could tweak, if necessary. The original pins didn't have that so I have to hard set the strengths for pinmame so I am being a little more judicious in my experimentations there.

yeah, there's like 1000 pinmame forks. I'll add another fork when I get everything finalized, but I don't really see where the point is. My code changes only apply to real hardware that only exists on a real NGG machine. If you are running pinmame emulation on a virtual pin or computer, it already works.

alrighty then. I finally broke down and took the time to put the old boards back in so I could figure out the exact coil pulse timings for the slam ramp. For NGG2.0 there was no need to do this but, I wanted to get the pinmame emulation as close to original as possible so there you go.

This was the last thing I had on my plate before sticking a fork in it and calling it done.

So how did I fugre out the coil timing? I hooked up test leads to the coil and ran them out of the machine to a little device that measures voltage over time, called a timed event recorder, or recorder for short.

20200902_184154 (resized).jpg

the recorder has a screen that shows the waveform. This particular one was set at 25mm/sec and 5mm/div so for every 5 red division lines is 1 second. The initial pulse that pulls the coil down is the huge spike then after it is down the coil is pulsed on and off. We call that a patter. The question was this: what is the length of time that the coi needs to be set for patter on and patter off? Using this trace, we can see exactly what williams set the coil to.

20200902_183636 (resized).jpg

20200902_183957 (resized).jpg

So now that the kit is finished, my next step is to finalize the contract details with PPS for the license of playing the original NGG code and then I can sell these.

Again, if you are new to the thread, originally the kit was only going to play NGG2.0 but since so many people said they wanted the kit but only if it played the original code as well, I spent a few months developing that and also negotiating with PPS.

I should have that done soon so if you are interested in purchasing please contact me so I can reserve your spot.

please don't contact me if you are not serious though. I will need to secure an amount of licenses in addition to all of the parts so there is upfront cost to buying these in bulk. I don't want to buy parts and licenses that will never be sold, obviously.

My thoughts are to follow the model that Dutch Pinball used when they sold there BOP2.0 kit so these will be limited and I will not be making these forever.

a number of posts requested the ability to play the original code so I took that to heart and wrote code to allow that to happen. Additionally, I had to formally license the use of the original works from the copyright holder so for those two reasons there was a bit of a delay. I think the wait was worth it! Now it is possible to play all versions of the game under one system!

Here is a video explanation of the menuing system. I have the game volume turned down so you can hear the explanation.

I have to say that I, myself, was not convinced that having the ability to play the old code was such a big deal but now that I have it I am thoroughly enjoying it. It is such a blast to be able to play the old code. Especially what is cool, for me anyway, is the ability to play previous versions that might have slightly different rules.
I noticed this right away when I loaded the 1.2 or 1.0 versions as the triggering of the slam ramp comes off the ramp switch not the inlane switch. There are other differences as well.

One more post as a reminder to get in touch with me if you want to be on this first batch of kits I will be producing. I need to pay for the licenses in advance as well as order all of the parts. I am looking to make a list at this point and am not taking any money until I am ready to send out kits.