(Topic ID: 191056)

Smokey and the Bandit Re-theme ~ pics and vid

By schmoo

6 years ago


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54
#1 6 years ago

After several years of on-again off-again, I am finally closing in on completing my Smokey and the Bandit pin.

Started off with a Bally Hottdoggin. Not a bad game actually, but lost of wasted potential on the playfield.

I don't have the skills to rewrite software and change game rules, but I did rework the playfield and added/changed a few things.

1) Changed 4-target bank on left side into a 3-bank with a gate for entry into the Coors Beer Depot.
2) Changed the inlane drop targets so that completing them now leads into the upper rollovers rather than ending at the saucer.
3) Replaced a standup target in the top playfield with a captured ball ( always liked captured ball features )
4) Replaced another sstandup target with a ramp into Snowman's truck
5) Added an "escape route" on the right side that allows the ball to bounce back into the shooter lane rather than the outlane
6) Replaced wire inlane guides with lighted acrylic guides

I had to raise the sidewall of the cabinet a couple of inches to accommodate Snowman's truck. That was a pain.

Of course, what the pictures don't show is the custom sounds. There are two mp3 triggers ~ one runs background music which is activated by the "Road Closed" gate in the shooter lane and the other trigger runs the 17 sounds activated by the various targets, slings, rollovers and pop bumpers. There is a button on the front of the cab that lets you scroll through different background songs from the Smokey and the Bandit soundtrack, or you can turn off the music altogether. I should really post a video.

The displays are from an LED conversion kit purchased from acebathound. I think they look really great and allowed me to make use of some existing display boards.

I'm still working out some of the kinks. And there are a few cosmetic items still needing attention. The centre 3-target bank will not be red, white and blue but I'm waiting on 3 black targets. There is a 1977 police car that will go at the top of the saucer as well.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with the way the backglass, plastics, playfield and cabinet turned out. It was a long road.

So please have a look at the pics and/or the video and let me know what you think.

http://s1228.photobucket.com/user/schmoo08/Smokey%20and%20the%20Bandit/story

20
#4 6 years ago

I thought people might appreciate the photobucket pics instead, but I will gladly post a few here. Here goes :

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#19 6 years ago
Quoted from Dayhuff:

Wow, very nicely done. I'm impressed !! There's got to be a way to run a looping cassette tape of the theme song when your playing the game ??
Keep up the great work.
John

Background music is triggered when the ball passes through the "ROAD CLOSED" gate at the top of the shooter lane. It starts off with "East Bound and Down" (instrumental version, of course) but by pushing a button, the player can scroll through a number of other songs "Orange Blossom Special" etc., or can turn it off altogether, in case they want to hear nothing but playfield sounds.

I will shoot and post a video tomorrow. The sound is definitely a big part of it.

#20 6 years ago
Quoted from FunriseGuy:

How did you do the back glass and the playfield?

Designed the playfield, backglass and plastics in Inkscape software. Had local large media printshop do the playfield in adhesive backed vinyl and plastics and backglass in 1/8" acrylic.

#41 6 years ago
Quoted from RonB:

I'd also be interested in how the vinyl was laid down, and is there a clear coat on it or is it durable enough on it's own?

I put a few coats of water soluble clearcoat down, I figured the ink would eventually wear away otherwise.

#43 6 years ago
Quoted from cottonm4:

That kicks some serious ass !!! And how, tell us, did you make the inserts. Are they screened or decals? I love the material you used to construct your ramp into Snowman's trailer.

With so many inserts, and being my first time having a pf overlay printed, I decided to cut out the inserts later and apply decals. This way, I didn't have to worry about being 1 mm off with the printing process. Having the inserts as part of the original artwork would have been preferred, but so hard to guarantee perfect alignment.

You may recognize the ramp leading into Snowman's truck is a set of rails rail taken from underneath the metal apron, then bent into shape.

#47 6 years ago
Quoted from aingide:

Awesome job!
Would you mind going into more detail about the printing? Things like how you aligned the art, how you laid down the vinyl, how they printed on plastics, etc.

Aligning the art was a matter of taking measurements from the original playfield and then plotting them in Inkscape according to the measurements. After a while, I would get a full size black and white printed for $5 and put it over the whitewood to see how I was doing.

The vinyl came with an adhesive back, so it was pretty easy to put down. Used a little soapy water so I could move it around a little, but that was about it. Quite simple, really.

The printshop supplied the acrylic. I just sent them 3 files ~ cmyk, white backing, and a cutting guide. They pretty much did the rest. Had to reverse the cmyk layer so that it looks correct when viewed from the top.

19
#48 6 years ago

Finally got around to doing a video.

Will probably do a better one when the game is 100% completed ( hopefully in a couple of weeks ), but this should do for now.

Enjoy...I hope.

#53 6 years ago
Quoted from swinks:

well done the music and sounds make a big difference in adding the characters in the game.
question - how did you do the switching for the sounds, linked to back of existing switches or separate switches?

For rollovers, standup targets and drop targets, I piggybacked onto existing switches. But for the slings, pop bumpers and any custom switches, I had separate switches. The drop targets are the trickiest because you have to make it so that the original switches stay closed when the target is down, but the mp3 trigger switch has to close then open, otherwise the sound would just keep looping.

You've probably seen the video from the guy who turned a Flash Gordon into a Ghostbusters and he does a good job at showing and explaining the mp3 trigger switches.

I should do a video showing the inside of the cab and underside of the playfield for those who are interested.

#57 6 years ago
Quoted from Arcade:

While I would have chosen different quotes for things, that is awesome. Thanks for sharing.
It would have been super cool if you could do separate sounds for each inline drop.
The first one could say "Give me a Diablo Sandwich"
The second would be "And a Dr. Pepper"
And the third of course " And make it fast, I'm in a got damn hurry."
Then the drops on the left could have done either the driving the forklift lines or send bill to Big Enis lines.
But with only one sound per drop I can see the limitations.

Well, it's never too late to change a sound. I can just use a sound editor to isolate anything from the movie, copy it onto the micro SD card, and there it is. However, a lot of the sounds from the movie that you think will sound great are actually unusable due to the amount of background noise. The "Diablo sandwich" for example, has a lot of background noise and music in it. It's pretty hard to find interesting dialogue that is clear and has no background interference.

I am also limited by the number of triggers. It doesn't take long to burn through 18 triggers, especially with so much stuff on the playfield.

However, I'm definitely open to suggestions.

#68 6 years ago
Quoted from swinks:

also another advantage of the WAV trigger is up to up switch sound effects can run at the the same time in overlap, and like the backing music can all be on one switch.

I did consider the WAV trigger board but went with the MP3 instead primarily because I was more familiar with it from having used it in an Angry Birds machine I made a few years ago. Presently, I am using all 18 triggers on the one board and 4 triggers on the other. There are only 16 triggers on the wav board, so I figured I would still need 2 of those. For me, with my limited understanding, I see the polyphony as useful in some respects but not in others. Do you necessarily want 2 or 3 sounds overlapping, along with background music ? Also, the only way to make 16 inputs work would be to tie several features together on a single trigger and have the sounds randomized or advance forward each time. I believe I can do that with the MP3 trigger as well, but I think I like each feature having its own unique sound as opposed to doing something different each time. Maybe that's dumb. Perhaps the sounds will get old fast. I'm not sure. If I had the energy to do another project, I'd probably look more closely at the wav trigger.

#69 6 years ago

Yeah. A classic case of just too much going on. So many files over the years. Tweeking, saving, deleting, tweeking again. Only after printing did I realize some files had not made it to the final draft. The captured ball plastic for example, had a black outline around the text that somehow got deleted and then overlooked. At one point, I definitely Googled whether it was "sites" or "sights", that much I promise you ( I'm not a fan of linguistic laziness ) but the change just never got made, or the new file didn't make it to the printer. Not sure.

The "good" news is that there are a couple of plastics I'm not happy with, so I am doing a partial rerun. That will take care of the "sheriff" and "sites" issues.

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