Its Friday and Kingpin should be there! We want video! We want video!

For the love of god, VGC - edit the topic title to put a space after the !

They only had one space left and they used it on the LE art so we could have "King pin"

Just joined Club Translite

#116 here I can’t wat

#24 here

was on the original Gene list and now snagged a signed translite - #160

Well done. I'm waiting for them to reopen the ordering for these, hopefully sometime soon.

#98 YEAH!!!!

#143

#128

Looking forward for this project and will be in for the pin !

#88

#65

#140. I'm curious when it arrives here in Austria.

that would be cool, if era appropriate - hard to tell what sort of gun is on it there in Gene's images

I just hope the game gets made. I'd take one with a gun trigger or plunger . . . not sure about a push button start though. . .

We haven’t looked at the options for the plunger yet, but the original had only a launch button. The play field would need changes in that area to change it to a manual plunger, so that is less likely than a trigger of some sort.

Same size.

LTG : )

#81

Thanks for the update Paul. Any estimate on when the next batch will be posted for sale?

thanks heaps for the update Paul, truthful communication is the key and with that people are patient and happy

and thanks heaps as a key fob is a nice bonus

Not until every one of the original orders have shipped and we have them available for immediate shipping.

My guess is the first week of May we will turn sales on again.

Paul

Thanks for the update ... forget my PM

Just ordered my translight. Keep up the good work guys.

I posted this in the other thread, but all orders from around TPF have now shipped, so we've opened up the orders again for the remaining translites with quick shipment.

http://www.circusmaximusgames.com/product/kingpin-signed-limited-edition-translite

Paul

I just got mine #169

#167 arrived on Tuesday...bring on the game!!!! Excited....

Mine arrived also well after 3 weeks in German customs ....
Looks nice but the material looks more than a vinyl print than a translight.
Very nice collectors item for decoration !

I got #171!

#125, can't wait!!

Maybe I missed it somewhere in between the two threads about the new Kingpin, but have the Circus Maximus guys figured out the slot machine opto mechanics and coding? I know that was a sticking point for vegemite_nick who was building his Kingpin from scratch...

We have it mechanically the same as the original. Even using the exact same motor, etc. The opto works fine. It's not perfect yet, but it does work. Right now it has to do with the timing between the emulation and the original roms since all of the CPU timing and data bus timing were guesses originally when the Capcom emulation was done so many years ago. We've been hooking up scopes to an original board set to get all of that tweaked and set correctly.

Luckily the original emulation was done by a friend of the project, so he's been helpful filling in the blanks when Jimmy has questions.

Paul

Speaking further to Paul's point, which was extremely well made, the emulation side of things has been trying at times and a complete blast at others. When I had a call with the original emulation developers, I was really surprised when they said "Yeah, for a few of those timing cycles we guessed and tweaked until things looked good."

I am really amazed at the tricks that the pinmame crew has had to pull out of a hat in order to get emulation of so many platforms working as well as it does. The Capcom system has an FPGA on the board whose functions are largely unknown. Many of the interrupts between the various CPUs are managed directly by that FPGA, and the original pinmame implementation had to double the emulation speed of the CPU so that the DMD frames appeared at the correct speed. In adjusting these interrupt timings and completely reimplementing parts of the emulation stack for MC68000, we've been able to get the emulation speed back to the original CPU specs. This has all been the result of us setting up test hardware from original games so we can see how the timing works between the boards. The system was far far ahead of its time, and has been a fun thing to emulate.

Once we get everything tweaked, we look forward to giving these optimizations and enhancements to the PinMAME team so that the emulation as a whole benefits.

Referring to the slot machine: VPin and Future Pinball completely fake the timing of the slot machine. The slot positioning is sensed by a series of opto interruptors printed on the reel strip. The motor spins at around 30rpms, and the timing slots are extremely tight. As such, if there's any delay in emulation or if the timing isn't right, it doesn't take much of a skip for the computer to just lose its mind as to where the reel actually is. We've had to make several code adjustments to compensate and auto-correct in the event of something happening. In talking with the Pinball Arcade team, they've had to do similar things, so the pain isn't just ours thankfully

</Nerdery>

-- Jimmy

What time is the KingPin lecture this weekend at the SFGE?

I didn't see it listed on the schedule.

Thanks!

New updated e-mail sent out this evening:

Saturday morning from 10:30 to 11:30!

#179 arrived this morning! Looking forward to the opportunity to own a complete game.

Thanks for the input Compy and @pkiefert. I can say from playing an original many times over the years that I'm not sure that the slot machine opto stuff was ever fully nailed down from the get go. On the one I've played, when it's the girl asking you to "Shoot for the Cherries, Kid" and you get back to the hotel saucer, there are times when the reels spin a few full rotations before it finally stops and the game reacts, with DMD animations and everything. There were even times where the reels would stop on a different symbol than what the DMD animation and callouts would display.

An interesting idea that was mentioned at TPF was having two versions of the game installed. One an emulation of the original and the other a new version based on the original but with added rules, animations etc. If that were to happen I’m sure at least for that version the slot could be made function much better.

Hardware emulation can be challenging, It’s too bad it not as simple as hooking into the programs call for say cherries then having a seperate slot api just handle it as they were never designed that way. Ya gotta instead try and trick the original program into thinking it’s dealing with original hardware and it’s not going to tell you what it’s going for ahead of time.

Anyway... also getting more and more excited for this game. Such great callouts too, love that whistle!

Yep, we see the same thing on ours. Sometimes it will sit in the saucer for a very long time, but we see the switch get passed to the emulator, so it is the original code that is doing it.

We did get it to happen less with some of our timing tweaks, but it still happens some.

Jimmy has been pretty creative with a bit of a hybrid of emulation vs controlling it via our bridge software, which helps some too.

But we have some cool ideas for the Hotel Lex area to really kick it up a notch, but it will be a couple more months before we reveal any of that.

Paul

I may have been wrong, as it's now listed as 11:30 to 12:30 I think in the app and in the SFGE newsletter that just went out. In either case, they will likely have it posted on the schedules around SFGE too.

Paul

Our enamel pins arrived just in time for SFGE. Check these out!

We will have these in our booth at the show and up in our storefront shortly.

Paul

kingpin-finished (resized).png