I'm still surprised at how underpowered the Pinheck is, given the processors available today. Seeing programmers talk about limited resources and finding space in 2016 is very retro.

TA uses PD-LED boards which are direct drive - ie. they control each LED individually. They aren't serial chains like in WOZ.

I'm pretty sure TA holds the record for the number of PD-LED boards - eight I think? Don't kid yourself, TA would be as expensive to build as a multi-level game. But I think a run of 100 would be possible given the current market.

I don't really understand how this is cheaper than just going P-ROC. So many revisions!

Pretty sure Longhorn doesn't work for Spooky - Macrofab is a third-party as well.

Looks pretty complicated to me - game rules on a microcontroller, graphics on a third-party Linux PC running separate software...

Well, actually *quite* different than Stern - SAM ran for over a decade unchanged and totally backwards compatible. Spike was a failure, hence Spike 2, and look at all the compatibility issues they're having.

That seems like a plus to me - every game has the same boards in it, or backward compatible ones. Instead you're saying it's good that one game's board won't work in another because it's missing I/O lines or coil drivers? You're saving pennies - literal pennies, a IRF540 is like 5 cents in bulk.

I dunno, to me, offloading the development and manufacture of pinball control systems to a company DEDICATED to the task seems like a smart move. They will ALWAYS be more efficient and cheaper than you doing it yourself. Lesson number one in the startup world is "outsource everything but your core competency" which in this case is designing and building pins.

You’re right, they’re not 5 cents, they’re only a penny.

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/-MOSFET-IRL540N_60677370236.html?spm=a2700.7724857.main07.25.796571eaHBMEOs

Just block me because I dare question?

Look, I really like what Spooky and Charlie are doing - he’ll, he’s personally helped me on my custom game project - but sometimes I get a little tired of the “Spooky can do no wrong” fanboy parade.

I think it’s healthy to ask questions and wonder why things are being done a certain way that might not make sense on the surface. Yes, obviously I’m not party to all the inner workings and I have enough business experience to know what doesn’t appear logical might actually be logical when you see the whole picture.

Yeah, that Alibaba link wasn’t meant to be serious, obviously you want a higher quality source, but I posted it to prove the point that making decisions about pennies often costs dollars later. In the software business it’s called “Technical Debt” and this is one of the clearest cases I’ve seen.

Anyway, this isn’t really the thread for this discussion, this is about Alice. I just felt the need to address the downvote brigade since I’m actually a Spooky supporter (I was in on RZ and now I’m saving up for a TNA).

Why continue to expand and redesign a control system with limited capabilities, going as far as to leverage a completely separate computer for display purposes, when a mature, proven and well-supported system has existed for years? That was the question. It was never actually answered, I was just downvoted into oblivion because "reasons".

Now they've spent years and who knows how much money to get to an end-of-life design that isn't backwards compatible. On the surface this seems crazy, so I was asking "why" and none of the reasons I was given - "in-house is better", "keep the number of transistors down" - make any sense.

I suppose I should have known better than to try and reason with people's emotions. Emotion always trumps reason.

I've been involved in game design and production and know plenty of people in the industry, both back at Williams and now, but don't let that get in the way of your cute little jab. Don't you have a name to drop somewhere else?

That side art is amazing.

I really like that playfield art, a lot. Cabinet and playfield are excellent, but I'm still a little "ehh" on the translite due to the text treatment. But I'm super happy to hear it's P3-ROC based over Pinheck, that alone makes it future-proof in my mind. I look forward to a walkthrough and maybe a chance to play it myself.

Congrats to Spooky, looks like another hit.

Ooo, mixing italic and non-italic is a super no-no...