Been a while. Busy with a lot of things. House stuff, work stuff, and also trying to also trying to get the second draft of the story done. However, I did make some important progress on the game. Hmm, where should I "START" with this?
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Cabinet wiring is mostly done. There are a couple more things to finish up on it. One is audio power. Had a lot of trouble with this after the rework on Undertale, where the amp was for whatever reason heating up super hot (even at idle) when powered by the PC power supply. For some reason, I thought I would have different luck here. Granted, this amp wasn't overheating - made me think it was going to be fine. Unfortunately, when I reached the point of setting up the computer and putting that irregular load on the PSU, things got very noisy. Amazingly, I had the foresight to put the audio amp on its own dedicated Molex connector to the PSU. Fixing the issue can be done as easily as mounting a new 12V 3A supply, and plugging it right into a short power harness that's all set up to go already.
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The amp sits in the background, with the tilt bob nearby. I ended up not having space for the tilt in the usual spot (more on that later) so I mounted it on the right instead. Just needs a plumb bob to be truly complete. The cable management keeps the wiring out of the way of the swinging pendulum. Everything is nice and modular and installed on plugs down here. Cabinet buttons are solidly soldered to their cables, then each one has a single Mini-Fit connector for super easy removal if necessary.
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The other side is a slight bit of a mess still, but will be tidied up once the coin door wiring is totally done. The coin switches on my decent-but-slightly-incomplete door don't seem to be working, based on a meter check, so I decided to hold off on finishing the wiring until I have switches that work. The door is also missing the slam switch and any valid place to mount the operator menu buttons. So I just installed those buttons on the front cabinet wall instead. I discovered that the cabinet is bowed slightly inwards on the left, so the piece of angle iron bolted to the left side is to help straighten it. Ahh, the things you find after you've finished the paint job. Even with the correction, there will be perpetual damage to the interior paint from raising the playfield.
Aside from the flipper switches - which get wired back up to the three flipper drivers on the playfield - everything in the cabinet is controlled by the final aux solenoid driver board. There is one playfield solenoid (left diverter) that it controls, and the four remaining drivers are used for the Start and Extra Ball button lights, the knocker, and the shaker motor. The shaker doesn't seem to work yet, not sure why, will have to investigate further.
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Everything is tested out on the computer, with some keyboard inputs for manual solenoid operation and a realtime updated page of switch diagnostics. "Reflex Devices" enables flippers, bumpers, and slingshots. "Selected Lamp" lets me toggle through every single lamp in the game, using keyboard, and turn it on or off. The "Attract Mode" keyboard command fires up a light sequence script. Lamp functionality and blink pattern handling is mostly taken from the Undertale code, but with some minor improvements. I will need to modify the lamp code further to work with the handful of RGB lights. After which I will never use RGB lights in a build ever again.
And finally, a running under-playfield shot.
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Not all lights are lit up, due to this photo being taken during the attract mode sequence, but all of them turn on when told. A little below right of center (just above an orange status LED, between a bundle of mostly purple wires, between the slingshot coils and straight back), you can see the head of a radial cap. The resistor/capacitor fixes on all of the satellite boards are a bit ugly, but they work, and I've learned some valuable lessons for future designs.
Across the bottom (besides the uncut zip ties that I'll deal with eventually), you can see the Plexiglas shield that protects the motherboard and power supplies from falling screws. Between shield, side brace, playfield hangers, tilt switch, and operator buttons, everything is unbelievably tight together. But amazingly, everything was able to fit!