Alice Cooper!

I hope this is real. Just paid. If it is then I just grabbed one.....

I was wondering the same. It doesn't look familiar. Could it be the new pin just chilling in the corner there?

Is Alice Cooper worth picking up? I don’t like buying a game without playing it first. My wife loves AC and monster movies. I wish they would announce already what the next pin is. Hate to miss out on an AC if it’s worth it.

Not sure what you mean by RGP but my comment was in regards to being in the hobby longer than ones Pinside ‘age.’

I.E. I’m only one in Pinside years but I started playing pinball in 1976 … I was 8. And owned my first machine when I was in high school.

I enjoyed it, but some of the shots feel janky and it has the issue where sometimes the ball misses triggering a switch (lane(s) too wide?). So if you replaced those ones with the magnetic switches so that frustration wasn't there, it's a fun game.

He means rec.games.pinball group was the (unmoderated, sometimes explosive) hang pre-Pinside.

Ok cool thanks!

Absolutely worth picking up. I’d love to get one but I’m low on dry powder at the moment and waiting to see what the next Spooky pin will be. You won’t regret getting ACNC.

Appreciate your feedback. Thank you! Some awesome mods from medisinyl also. Love his Elvira house of horrors mods on mine.

Haha just looking for a bit more commitment - appreciate it

WOZ: Killer Corpse Edition

The coil pulse resolution is still 1KHz. I have improved the flipper feel with an option I call "Beast Hold" which is a complementary square wave pulse of both the high and low windings. We have tested this to appx 45 lbs of hold force so this is a great improvement over R&M.

What I image Stern does (based on their schematics) is simply run their solenoid node board microcontroller at a higher SPI poll frequency. This is an advantage of a multi-modal system (where you have more MCU's that do less stuff each) but their Node Boards are a complete rip-off and this is a good time to have as FEW microcontrollers in a product as possible We have.... Exactly 1 and it's super cheap.

Pinotaur (and BTW it's a Parker Dillmann-Ben Heck joint not just me) also has current sensing for MOSFETs and servo drivers. The system can detect and troubleshoot FET faults and there's a safety relay if something goes wrong. There's also a dual bank bootloader so if you need to update firmware and something goes wrong you can revert back a version by holding a button combo on boot - making it BRICK PROOF.

Most importantly to the end user this board is very cost effective (actually even cheaper than the original Pin Heck board) and the money saved is being put towards other improvements which I won't list as I'm not sure if Charlie has announced them yet.

If that corpse is a Hooker, that's not funny!

This is fantastic.

Anyone know why they keep saying "Stacked & Loaded"? This is the 2nd time they have said that EXACT quote. Here is my theory for the record... Only really thing that comes up on that for a movie IP when you Google "Stacked & Loaded" is this poster for "Machete Kills". The movie poster is described as being "Stacked & Loaded" by multiple movie reviewers. Per post #10009 from the Rick & Morty Pinball Pinside forum, Spooky feels like they missed an opportunity in R&M by not using Danny Trejo's (The Machete) voice for Pickle Rick mode. Maybe they had a connection with Danny in making R&M and pitched him the idea of a Machete pinball.

machete-kills-vergara (resized).jpg

Doesn't Disney own that property now? I would think Machete is a bit TOOO niche as well. Still waiting for Machete In Space!!! Make it happen Robert!

I do not own a spooky but I like how they represent the company and the people in it seem to have a humble, personable approach that is refreshing.

I am looking forward to the announcement!

It could be a reference to the theme, or just the game itself. The video is very telling that this game is gonna be “stacked (upper playfields) and loaded (tons of fun stuff)”. I can’t wait for the reveal! I have no doubt that whatever the theme…Spooky will nail it!

The hold result is great, but the thing I'm concerned with is heat. It seems like pulsing the high and low will increase the residual heat, especially for trap players.

You can't argue with success, though, and Stern's Spike sub-1ms duty cycle machine gunning in holds is EXTREMELY effective at keeping coil heat in check. Your bottom limit of 1ms (same as Proc3, I think?) is not great news. You've let me down, Ben. I'm sad.

Love all of this. Will it allow you to troubleshoot the exact bulb socket that has a short or is out, like P2k did 20 years ago but no one seems interested in doing now?

I prefer when you proclaim how cheap it is. "Cost effective" is so...corporate.

Looking forward to more features being revealed. Hopefully you revisit the duty cycle resolution of the new board. The answer for real-world coil hold heat management is out there now (from Stern, of all companies), and 1ms minimum resolution isn't going to cut it.

It sounds like Spooky has been listening, these changes sound like a solid step in the right direction.

Also very impressed that Bug let's his old man hang around his pinball company, very nice of him.

Kowloon walled city cyberpunk thriller pinball???

kowloon-walled-city-full (resized).jpg

I'm going to throw my hat in the ring and guess the teaser image: I think it's a tire tread.

I really like it.
Hard as hell, but really great and very satisfying when you get a good game in.
If pinball was billiards, then ACNC would be snooker.
It’s really about control and trying to be precise with your shots.
Pisses you off sometimes, but can also be very rewarding.
If you want to come over sometime and check it out, let me know.
Cheers
Kent

Yes coil PWM granularity could better. We are looking at hardware timer (not polled) solutions for the future.

But for now.... We only have to source one microcontroller per machine

please translate this to mortal language...
I am interested.

How many micro controllers if there are no flippers at all? It's a pinball machine - focus on the flippers.

My favorite Spooky pin to date! Best upper pf in pinball.

1 flipper confirmed! How do you solve the flipper issues? Don't have them. Nudge only!

Which means Spooky should be able to get games built and shipped while other manufacturers are still waiting on more microcontrollers...

I think one of the things Ben mentioned before, and you can see in the video but they don’t say specifically, is that this will be serial RGB lighting.

The pros is a reduction in wiring. Everything(?) will be lamp boards with a I/O for power and data line daisy chains. I think they’re avoiding those large custom lamp boards so you only need a couple of this extra boys if you did have an issue with a lamp. The large unique and custom boards are cheaper than the single board, but it means less custom stuff for the owner (and Spooky) to deal with. They’re even on connectors instead of soldered on like the individual bulb boards Stern uses in spots.

The only major issue with serial is if one of the points in the chain breaks, all the stuff behind it can fail too. But again, easy to replace the one where the chain breaks compared to more unique boards. They can also have some issues with EMI. But that can be designed around.

JJP had a lot of issue with serial RGB lighting in early Woz runs, but Ben sounds pretty confident about his new design in reliability and cost.

Yeah wait a few weeks I guess? We will be making a video discussing the Pinotaur in detail as well as having API documentation for developer interface.

PWM = Pulse Width Modulation - it's controlling the length of the power pulses to the coils (in this case). 1Khz frequency is is 1ms, which is the smallest pulse Ben's new board can deliver and that limitation is essentially the same as the Proc3 Spooky is using now. Stern Spike is doing microsecond pulses (1000 microseconds = 1 millisecond) that are fractions of 1ms so they have much finer control over the length of the pulses, and by extension, residual heat building in the coils when held. The Stern/Spike results achieved with this finer microsecond PWM granularity are impressive, to say the least. Blew me away when I left a coil held for a half hour and it only went up a degree or so. On SAM or Whitestar that would have likely blown a transistor and maybe torched the coil.

Ben can smack me if I'm wrong, but I believe he's saying that he's exploring using external timers to turn on and off the power because maybe that timing circuit offers finer granularity and it would be a simulated way to get to pulses below 1ms with his existing Pinotaur board without changing it.

Seeing that edition numbers were not discussed, Im hoping they will let the market dictate how many CEs and how many BSs.I’m sure company’s in the past (depending the pin) have both wished they lowered numbered editions as well as raised .Why make a decision before you see what the market is .I’m sure they see what’s happening on the second hand market .

That would be awesome!! Would really appreciate it!

I know the Pinotaur will be MPF compatible. Is the next Spooky game built on that?

Looking forward to it. This stuff is neat. Just consider it a few questions and talking points for your video.

I really liked seeing all the feedback that Spooky addressed in today’s video.

Just trying to think what theme makes sense with multiple upper / lower play fields:.. The one game that really comes to mind is Back To The Future...

So bottom main playfield can be 1985

Another playfield can be 1885 “Wild western themed”

And another playfield 2015 “The Future”

bttf.gif

Good theory!

Do I also get to smack you if you're wrong about our boards?

Actually you're *mostly* right in that the smallest pulse length of an existing PD-16 circuit used with the current P3-ROC firmware is 1ms. One of our other boards, the PD-LED goes down to 1us for beautiful hardware-controlled LED fades, even when used with the P3-ROC. So if somebody came to us and wanted a solution to drive coil circuits with high PWM frequencies, we could do so pretty easily with a new driver board. It's one of the advantages of the modular system. Until R&M, all production games using P3-ROC used dual wound coils, which don't build up heat the same way single-wound coils do when holding the flipper up. I still recommend dual wound to people for lots of reasons unrelated to PWM and heat buildup, but if somebody really wants to use single-wound coils and also wants high resolution support, it's a business case away from being available, and there'd be essentially no software changes.

As always, I'm happy to talk about this stuff with anybody who asks. In the meantime, back to "The Next Spooky Pin". I'm as eager as the rest of you to know what it is, even if it's now officially confirmed they're not using our boards. Best of luck to Spooky and Ben with it. Can't wait to play it.

- Gerry
https://www.multimorphic.com

Not if you're talking about LED boards when the conversation is about coil drivers. "Yeah, you're right" is fine.

Hopefully you're working on a next-gen board already that has microsecond granularity for the coil control. Something like the diverter coil on GnR that gets over 200F from all the holding it does shows there's a need for this (even though JJP isn't using your system, just an example).

I didn’t mean any disrespect.I was just meaning for me it was RGP forums everyday until I discovered Pinside.I think we’ve been playing pinball for the same amount of time we both played the pointy people pinball machines

What we are considering is a secret

In the meantime I think Beast Hold will work well. BTW the API has 3 options, standard single wound, double wound and double wound Beast. You can specify whether to switch to hold after X ms or upon EOS closure.

End of the data that's all quite literally under the hood. Hope you enjoy the game itself. The artwork is SIIIICK!

I don't know the details around that feature or how it was designed, but engineering should always be a conversation between machine designers and the component designers or by working around the various constraints of any part that is locked in. Things that aren't working well can usually be improved by changing any one of many variables. I hear you; you're choosing to focus on the PWM rate, and you're right that that's a solution. It's not the only solution, and there are always tradeoffs, many of which make bigger business impacts... like using dual wound coils versus managing another part number. Pros and cons on both sides.

- Gerry
https://www.multimorphic.com

Well, I would love to agree, but I seem to be at a disadvantage at present. Hopefully that changes soon. Juneteenth being Federally recognized didn't even take this long!

Thank you for your feedback. Appreciate it.

But dual wound isn't the end-all solution to heat. If it were, JJP wouldn't have heat issues, too. Stern has shown the way, and it can apply to dual wound, too. Finer grain control of the coil circuit power (single or dual wound) is the future.

But thank you for confirming that 1Khz is the floor for P-Roc3 coil control currently. I'm never sure if there's an undocumented feature that can offer additional control.

Boo! That took 155 years

This already feels like 200.

Release the Kraken, Spooky!

Probably still faster than Deeproot...