From my experience with our TZ, the magnets are more than capable at throwing the ball around within this kind of space without having the ball sit below the magnets.

I've played both on our machine and my local arcade's machine and found the best place to activate the magnet is when the ball is right in the middle that magnet. Otherwise activating it when the ball is on the outskirts makes the ball a little wiley, but thats part of the fun with the magnets.

I'm not going to pretend to know how or why that works (magic probably)

no worries MRG not shitting all over it, constructive criticism and questions welcome. Answering in order

1. It's raised for 3 reasons. Reason 1 is the doors up front, we figured it would be a cool bash target or a neat game mode start. kind of like bash the doors 3-4 times to get them open, then shoot the scoop behind it to get a certain mode started, it'd be kind of weird if there was just doors sticking up out of nowhere. Reason 2, If you look at the photos there's 2 holes cut on the main playfield beneath. I haven't designed it yet but both of those cutouts would lead to a single subway. The front cutout behind the doors would be a scoop going down, the other would just remain a cutout to be fed by that upper playfields' trap door or the pop up post under it. Having the mechs under the main playfield they would be directly in the way of that single subway and it wouldn't be possible. reason 3.... honestly I just think upper playfields are cool if they're done well, kind of like a reward/challenge for getting up there.

2. I agree with you that they should absolutely be fun. Ours has a couple of things going on. The photo doesn't do a great job showing it because I'm not done designing, but the upper playfield would have the outer orbit passing under it in the rear. There would also be a pop up post that could sometimes come up to feed the rear cut out making it so that outer orbit shot could also capture a ball. So by my count there's 4 shots total coming from the upper playfield. Rear orbit pass through, rear orbit capture, upper playfield trap door, and finally the bash doors up front. I have no idea if its fun yet or not, but that's what the foam layout and prototyping is for lol.

3. completely agree. I even said that will probably happen. if its in the center it'll probably be a ball drain every time coming back which is obnoxious lol. more than likely it'll be moved to the back left... maybe. I have multiple design files going on at the same time. This file isn't apart of my playfield master file that the CNC work is based off of, instead I just started designing in a new file to figure out how much space it would take up with the mechs included. Once the size of this playfield is mostly worked out I can make it out of foam and see where this playfield might fit best on the real playfield and make shots on it. once its in a place I'm happy with, I can make a working prototype of the upper playfield to see if it then functions the way I want it to. Iterative design is a very long process and so much ironing out.

ALL OF THAT BEING SAID. I have no idea if this'll be fun or not, Id like to imagine it would be but wont know until we get a semi functional prototype going. if its not fun after trying to iron out all of the mechanical kinks that will inevitably be there, then I'm completely alright with scrapping the idea. Above all else, this upper playfield needs to be fun.

Brief update, I haven't had time to cut the foam layouts but since my 3D printer is dialed in and I was going to be out for a couple days It was easier to print a upper playfield and come back to it, especially since I have extra rolls of material. Unfortunely when I came back the very end of the print failed. Had some warping issues so it stopped extruding correctly which, kinda saw coming. But nevertheless this still works perfectly fine as a moc up so nothing lost in my opinion. 20220928_203842 (resized).jpg you can sort of see what I'm going for with the bands but the lower ones are 1-1/2 which are just a tad too big, so there's 1-1/4 ones on the way. Anyways flipping back over you can see what the mechs look like attached.20220928_203819 (resized).jpg im still designing a bracket for the trap door mech, so thats what its still pretty barren. Up top. The trap door may have to be smaller, honestly I just don't know. But I may have some free time this weekend to start actually plotting out the layout.

Worked some on the layout this weekend, but its very clear how little space there is for anything, especially with how big the "mini" playfield is. Theres some things that I think both I and my little brother would like to figure out. we know we want a ramp but just don't know how big, or where it goes.

I'm still pressing forward with the mini playfield idea for now but I've also got about 2 other layouts poorly sketched up that don't include that upper playfield, just in case.

With that being said I had another printed playfield attempt and it was successful. I was able to see the angles the bottom bands and posts have, they are just right so the ball will drain but not too fast. I have all the correct sized rubber. Already with this test playfield I've found about 6-7 things already i can do to improve the next one. One thing I've very happy about is the target bank moving up and down, it looks like theres no problem at all with clearances and the ball can roll over it no problem. Also don't worry, the final product won't be 3D printed but actually cnc'd on wood.

There very little to almost no room for lights on this thing. Besides the 3 little spots for lights in front of the target bank, theres basically none. so I used those star post leds again (which I have to say I'm liking more and more). But lights just being on and staying one is boring so I thought it might be cool to tie these lights turning off and on to when you use the magnet flipper on the top. So right magnet activated also activates the lights on the right.20221002_112206 (resized).jpg20221002_112239 (resized).jpg gives you feedback that you hit that side. Idk. Just a thought.