Backglass is looking great, serious improvement over your first draft, way more dynamic poses.

Got a chance to flip this yesterday and meet Scott, definitely an amazing project. Seeing it go from virtual to real was a great journey, he should be super proud of it.

As soon as Neo sees this he's going to PMing you asking if there's an option for a version with more nudity.

When did this thread start becoming a place to take shots at TBL? Whysnow started it long before the drama, and it's frankly really off putting.

If you guys think it's helping WOOLY look good then think again.

Nothing. It's when you do it with snarky comments about how everyone who was waiting in line for TBL was wasting their time that it's really unappealing.

You really don't want to start turning this into a comparison thread, so stick with being positive and leave other games out of it is my suggestion. That goes for everyone else, if you're truly interested in building support.

Just my two cents, ignore if you like.

I wonder if there isn't a middle ground.

What I would personally love to see from boutique manufacturers (and it's the model Spooky has used successfully) is this:

Company makes complete game. Code, sound, dots, art, everything is done. You self finance that. It costs however many thousands it costs. The more you can do yourself, or with a partner who's willing to invest time in return for a share, the cheaper. You're close to that.

Then you have a final game with a lot less unanswered questions to make your tour with. And you've got to hit the major shows. People want to touch the game in person. So that's part of the budget and time too.

But it's not hundreds of thousands of dollars either.

Once you've done that and everything is ready I think you can say "hey, this is the game, it's done, you can touch it, you can play it, you can hear it, and if you want it then we need to crowd fund. But everything is done, we're ready to order parts and start production now."

I simply can't support anything less than that at a minimum. It means risk and money on your side, no question. But before you can ask anyone to risk their cash you have to put yourself out there.

So if you don't get your 100 orders maybe you can take what you have, do those next steps, and try again.

Yes, I've seen it. Yes, I've played it. Two Expos in a row. Talked with Scott both times, wished him luck. I've followed the project since it was purely virtual. Ask Scott who it was who spotted the extra finger on the translite.

I'm purely the peanut gallery here, I'm not going to order the game. But I'm interested in seeing boutique pinball thrive, and my advice is meant to be constructive. People are understandably gunshy, and IMHO they should be, it's the smart attitude. I know I can afford just about any game I really want, but I don't have the kind of money where I can just toss thousands away without blinking.

It's my opinion that the sound needs to be finished to make the pitch. Or at the very, very least, the main theme, with a promise to work with the same composer to make the rest. I'd prefer more than that though.

Sound is just too important. It's fine to have Metallica and Tool or whatever in there for demo purposes, but it's not a great way to sell the final vision.

I'm not sure what the status of the callouts is right now, so I won't comment on that.

And then the project is greenlit, he goes to cash the checks, and a bunch of them bounce ...

Nice work man, that's a legit milestone that professional companies can't seem to reach before shipping.

I'm rooting for it, be very cool if it was made, but $8k is just too much money I think. And Scott hasn't been able to tour the show circuit to demo the game for people. I dunno where it was besides Expo, only place I've seen it, but fairly certain nothing on the Western half of the country has been covered. Pretty hard to sell an expensive game and ignore California, Texas, and the Pacific NW.

Even Spooky is struggling with that. I know people out here who want to try AMH so they can decide if they want to buy it, but it's just not easily available.

I don't know what's going to happen to this project, last update I remember was 50ish people were in, and I doubt another 50 have appeared since then. Be a pity if it all had to be scrapped, though I assume the Riot people will at least build personal vanity games for themselves.

This is just my opinion, but I don't think this game not being made is a failure for boutique pinball, or original themes. My takeaway would be that if you want to make a game you should really watch the BOM, not go for 6 flippers out of the gate for instance, and focus on the rules. Lots of great ideas on this one. And it's where Stern is the most vulnerable. Make a game that can sell for $6500 instead, compete at the Stern Premium level, and bring code for the true home collector.

And you've got to find a way to tour with the game. I'm willing to bet the bulk of the pre-order folks in this thread played it. At Expo or otherwise (was it somewhere else? I forget). It's gonna take money and time, but if you can't tour with it then it's a real uphill climb, because playing is believing for so many.

Best of luck to Scott and Riot, whatever happens in the next couple days and whatever decisions are made.

Congrats man! You should really start a thread talking about the challenges you faced, how you solved the, the various parts of the rules that were fun to implement, etc. Be super informative, but also a great way to evangelize the game.

No kidding. I don't want to drag this thread off topic, but sometimes it's good to remember it's only pinball. Heart goes out to France today.

Scott - I hope you're still building a couple prototype machines for personal Riot use. Build a couple for yourselves and all your work, and then throw a party and invite people to come play. Definitely need to get it into front of more people if you want more people in.

Speaking personally music and sound are a huge part of pinball for me. And it's obvious even a big, experienced company like Stern can't always get it right.

"You can change it yourself" is definitely not the answer. I'm an experienced amateur recording/audio engineer, working with sound doesn't intimidate me. But

A) It's just a lot of work. For $8,000 I expect someone else to do that work, end of story.

B) Where exactly do these callouts and music come from? You can grab songs you like, though integrating them with the game won't be simple, but callouts? Are you paying a professional? That's just nuts. Recording your own, and having different crappy amateur callouts? Does everyone own a decent mic, maybe a pop screen, some audio editing software, a decent quiet place to record, and the experience to edit that even if they think they have voice acting chops?

C) As noted, integration is key. For instance, yes, you can replace the music in Metallica. All the loops are broken so it sounds glitchy, and the audio cues for all the modes are going to just randomly pick a place in your song, very difficult to get it to line up perfectly, unless Riot let you change all the cue points. Which while cool, would go back to A, work.

Audio is simply a core part of the game. Maybe Scott has plans for something great. "Maybe" is tough for $8k. There just isn't much slack for uncertainty with something like this with people now.

I'd like to see WOOLY succeed, but I think it's good to have these conversations about what's realistic. It's not trolling, it's healthy.

I think shows are important, but Ben is the voice of experience here. Build it and they will come and all that. Good luck Scott!

Personally if I'm paying $8k for a pin (and I'm basically not, it's just too much) it's gotta come with the modern bells and whistles. That means color display instead of mono DMD, and RGB inserts. This project just had some unfortunate timing in a lot of ways. Pre-order boutique is dying, and the state of the art expectations have changed. It's a tough sell.

On top of that an original theme is just harder to sell. People say they want it, but I'm not sure they really do. They just want their own pet project in their mind, not someone else's.

It doesn't sound like the project is dead though, so maybe some creative thinking will give it a second chance.

Heh. I mean, everything is a matter of opinion, but I've played both, and I wouldn't say that. There's nothing to be gained by comparing the two, so I won't drag this off topic, but beyond the license issue I would say the lesson from Lebowski that Riot could learn is that polish goes a long way. Heart and passion and dedication take you far, but polish gives people confidence.

There's obviously excitement and dedication for this game, both from Riot and the people who go them half way to their goal. If I was Riot and I still wanted to see this game happen, I'd take this opportunity to add that polish. Refine the pitch.

Definitely a strong strength is here is a finished rule set. A sore spot with everyone! A day or two shooting video and putting together a strong presentation of how the rules work would be a great start.

I'm going to just exit this conversation before whysnow's little childish downvotes make me stop being polite out of deference to the hard work that Scott has put into his game.

Good luck Riot, hope you're able to make your dream work out for everyone.

Is it actually adjusting the length of the loop for the new music, like searching for zero points and beats? Or is it a fixed loop length?

Huh? Even Stern LE models are cheaper than WOOLY, why are you limiting it to just Pros?

Riot's costs and prices are what they are, I have no insight into them. But if they were able to sell their game for the Stern Premium $6500 pricepoint I bet they'd have reached their pre-order goal.

$8k is just too expensive for a lot of people.

Keep in mind though that the $7600 price includes shipping. I presume the $8k WOOLY price doesn't, unless I'm wrong about that?

So we're really looking at more like an $800 difference. And this is from a Stern LE, same gameplay is available for $6500 for a Premium.

I'm not trying to bag on WOOLY here! I'm just saying, the landscape is what it is. IMHO $6500 is already damn expensive for a game, it's just hard to keep climbing past that. Obviously not everyone feels that way, but a lot do, and it's a tough thing to sell.

I love Spooky, Chuck is great, Ben is great, I support what they're doing. But AMH is selling because they were able to price it reasonably. Ben and I talk a lot, I'm pretty confident he'd have zero argument with saying that AMH would have been a failure at $8k.

IMHO these are just the realities of the market, and small companies are just going to have to challenge themselves to work within that pricing structure. If Riot can come back with a new pitch and sell 100 games to people for $8k then more power to them! But that's a tough road.

I don't think it's accurate to say the project evolved like that, it was clear before even the first whitewood what it would be, since it's based on the virtual pin game. It's just that virtual games don't have BOMs, and in the real world when you have 6 flippers and an upper playfield etc it starts to add up.

Well I don't want to discount all the work that went into the code, at all. Time is money. But the actual design of the machine is pretty similar to the original virtual one.

That's all I was getting at. I have no idea if they didn't figure the BOM right, if they added some expensive parts, or if they're just trying to get some of their labor time back. $6500 would probably have gotten the game made.

Obviously they're not giving up, we keep seeing sweet code updates! I really admire the approach to the options on this one, lots of features that are aimed straight at home users, and that's refreshing.

LCD screens are cheaper than DMDs, but you have to have hardware that can drive them, and assets that are designed for it. So it's not a trivial swap, but there's no reason why you couldn't save on the BOM with one if you did it right.

Outline is much clearer now.

Is there still a plan to try and bring this game out? Or are you just coding up because you can't help it and the prototypes will play with lots of deep code?

If they could sell it for $6500 I think you'd see people line up. The price point is just tough.

It may not be realistic, I have no idea. I'm just saying, Ben lists 5 things that are attractive, but without #6, "game is competitively priced", it's a tough sell. That's just the reality of things. They would have probably made their 100 pre-orders before if that was true.

I wish Riot luck, they've put a ton of effort into this.

Post some videos, give people something to discuss!

I've flipped the game a couple times, but I honestly can't remember the shots and feel well enough to read a list of rules and put it all together in my head.

For me the biggest "hole" in the WOOLY presentation was the music and sounds. That's something so key to a game, and it wasn't done when it was being shown.

Actually, that's the second hole, the being shown part. I was lucky enough to see the game two years in a row at Expo, but the truth is you really gotta make the rounds. That's expensive, and takes time. But hands on time is how you'll win enough buyers.

That's awesome Scott, congrats.

Why would Stern buy a game if they can't even get 100 people to commit to buying it?

Not a diss on WOOLY, just saying, they need to grow this themselves now, I can't see a company swooping in until they've done that. Frankly Stern is just as likely to buy up any stock they find of the "rare part" and keep a competitor off the market instead.

That's why it's smart to not share it. Don't think people won't play like that, because pinball history is full of it.

I guess that's your take on it. If I wanted to diss WOOLY I would just do it, but I don't; I'm very proud of Scott for what he's done. I've followed his project for years, since before there was a singly physical part, I've talked with him in person about it on multiple occasions, and I wish him nothing but the best. Said that to him to his face, still feel the same way in the forum. It's an awesome accomplishment to even come as far as he has, he didn't pick an easy first project to tackle.

I don't have any competitive feelings here. I'm not a Heighway employee (Alien is a one off contract job to be clear), I'm just a pinball enthusiast. Obviously I'd love for Alien to sell well, but it will or won't based on how good a game we make, not on whether or not I trash talk someone else's game (which I wasn't doing). I didn't even bring Alien up, you did.

Here's the reality: people need to stop looking for Stern to swoop in and be a pinball angel. They're not going to just build WOOLY. Riot has to do their own work. And if people want this game they need to step up and support indie pinball, not wait for some savior. If that bothers you then I'm sorry, but that's how it is from my perspective. It's not a diss. It's saying if you want this then work for it, don't wait for it to fall from the sky.

Stern is much more likely to do what you're accusing me of, and that's try and crush competitors, not welcome them with open arms. Does anyone doubt that if Scott revealed the "secret part" that a certain someone at Stern wouldn't happily buy up any they found and toss then in a storage room? That's how the game is played, that shit certainly went down in the Bally/Williams era. If we believe Jack (and I'm not saying I do) he claims that Stern has tried to bully suppliers into not giving parts to him.

God you are a complete j*****s sometimes.

I mean, what are you basing that on? "12 Pinsiders have this game in their collections."

I'm sure they sold more than 12. Pinside isn't the be all end all. But we don't even know if they sold 100. Just no public numbers.

I'm personally really into boutique pinball selling well. Contrary to the assertion above I'm not threatened by WOOLY doing well. I'd love to see it! I just think it has to do so on its own two feet right now. Stern playing angel factory feels unlikely to me.

In my opinion the mindset needs to be "this is our thing, and we're going to do it ourselves". Partner with Spooky for sure, that was a great plan. But if you need to sell 100 you've got to figure out how to get those 100 people. New sales pitch, touring all the shows, lowering the price, whatever. It's going to be work. And not easy, and not for everyone.

Hey, hopefully the 4 people who have it can help share it, and be the front line evangelists. I think that's a smart plan, it's how I'd do it myself (and I've thought about it!). If I tried to build a pin I'd expect myself to be held by the same realities.

Personally my take is simple: we all win if there are more pinball machines. More choice. More indie options trying new things. I can absolutely say that I'd take more games being made as a great thing even if it meant some of them took away from Alien sales.

Andrew might not share that view. Pretty sure Gary doesn't either. But I'm a fan first. Alien is a passion project, and I've freely shared that I'm paid purely on a royalty basis for it, I see nothing if it's not made, and less if it doesn't sell well. But I'm not doing it for the money. Frankly even if it sells well it will be a pretty shitty return on the time I'll invest in it, against my own business.

That said, I don't think that means we should automatically stop questioning things. It's good to be skeptical. Solid projects can withstand some doubt and questioning. It doesn't mean we don't like Scott or that we're jealous. It's just the smart thing to do, and one of the reasons we're here, to talk pinball.

It would be a boring world if everyone always agreed with me. Wouldn't be much to talk about, we'd all just upvote each other.

Looking forward to the Wired cover story. "One man's incredible years long scheme to make $6,000."

Good idea. Take your time.

Agreed! Last couple years I've had a chance to flip it and talk to Scott, but only briefly. I'll have more time this year, don't have to double book Expo with meetings like the last couple years.

So I was talking with Ben today about WOOLY and I realized something. Even thought I've played it twice, and chatted with Scott, I don't actually know what the theme really is.

So what's the story? Are you a mortal fighting the gods? Are you a god, trying usurp other gods? Like I obviously get the broad outlines of the theme, but what's the narrative about?

See above, I've played it. I'm not talking about the tactile experience, I just wanted to know the setup.

I'm curious to see the RGB setup Brian from Mission Pinball is bringing to Expo for sure. Be cool if that was a possibility for WOOLY. And backwards compatible to the existing ones, as far as fitting the hardware.

Well it's Scott's game, he can obviously do anything he pleases! But I think it's going to be increasingly hard to sell a game with a traditional DMD now, at least at that price point. Color would be a great way to help generate interest IMHO. Assuming the original assets are in color already and it's not a huge project.

You know, I really think you're right. Pretty sure I said the same thing in a Hobbit thread, that $7500 I could maybe justify, but $8000 I couldn't. It's just a bridge too far for me. I guess it's a common psychological thing.

Now for something really limited or special that's one thing, I get collectors paying $10,000 for some rare thing. But once you're making 100+ that doesn't count in my book. And it not a judgment on the game! I think TBL is incredible for instance. But it's too expensive for me.

Surprised there hasn't been more talk about the music, I thought having an original score was a huge improvement to the vibe of the game. Is it still a secret who did it or are we allowed to talk about it in public? I assume it's cool, but don't want to say something I shouldn't.

I just don't want to say who did it in case it's supposed to be a secret. Scott, illuminate us!

This is what I was waiting for, an official okay to mention it. It sounded great, really made the game click.

2StepsFromHell or however you write it. Same people who worked on music for Hobbit (along with David Thiel).

Depends on how it was layered. My Alien playfield file is 4 gigs, but only because of all the layering. If it was done as vectors it wouldn't be anywhere near that big, and when you export them for printing they're likely flattened, so again not too huge. These are good things, I had to upgrade my machine to 32 gigs of RAM because of how my playfield file was ballooning.

300 dpi is more than sufficient to print a great image too. The printing method starts to matter a lot more than the resolution.

Scott, you gave Spooky an RGB file? How was it printed? Is it a direct ink jet that uses more than CMYK?

This is the 3rd year in a row I've seen WOOLY at Expo. Every single year it's looked better and better. And this year it wasn't just that it looked better, it's that it sounded better. The original music really elevated the whole package up.

What I discovered after upgrading my RAM was that it wasn't the file size that was causing a lot of the problems, but Photoshop was starting to choke on the number of smart objects I'm using. All of the inserts are done with smart object vector bases and rendering them all was making Photoshop an unhappy camper.

Agreed to both. I thought the voices weren't bad, but they sound a little homebrew still. I think it's harder than people think to sell a character through voice acting. Especially someone like Hades, if you could find the right baritone to really boom out some of those callouts? Something with more bass, with the Two Steps From Hell style music? Would be bad ass.

I've looked into paying for voicework, for pinball stuff it's really not that expensive. Even a game with a lot of callouts still isn't a whole lot of material. It would be a cool indie game topic actually.

The music is so kick ass now, I'd work on getting the vocals up to the same standard. I don't remember the rest of the sound package, hard to hear in a noisy expo hall. But sounds are so important. We're working on a plan right now to up the sound game on Alien, and I'm really happy about that, I think it will go a long way towards getting the atmosphere right. I also really can't wait to hear Hobbit in a home setting, I suspect it's going to be amazing sounding.

And now that there are RGB LEDs on the playfield, if there was a color display it would add up to a package that would go a long way towards justifying the price more in people's minds I think. The DMD is just toast now, we're just waiting for Stern to kick it to the curb too.

Obviously this all easy for me to say! But with all the time and money and work you've put into this, would just be awesome to see you take the whole thing to the next level.

What kind of PC is powering it? Do you have the horsepower to push full rez graphics to an LCD screen if you wanted to do all that work or redoing it in high rez color?

All I remember was Hades. It's not like it sounded bad or anything! I just didn't think it was quite as polished sounding as the great new music.

No offense intended, but all these people who are saying "just build it!", did you commit to a deposit when they asked for people to step up?

It's easy to armchair quarterback, but the reality is that they put together a business plan to make it happen, and people didn't support it. The community could have had it if they really wanted it.

Congrats to Frank and Scott, color really brings things to life.

And neither were enough other people, and so it didn't happen.

You weren't around as you mentioned, but that was the plan, and there weren't enough buyers.

This isn't on you, or anyone else in this thread, it's just sort of irritating to see this chorus of "hey you should build this game" when the opportunity for just that existed and people didn't actually want to pony up. It rings hollow now.

I have no doubt from the kind of dude Whysnow is that his hospitality would be second to none. I owe him beers.

Agreed. And nothing but props to Spooky for being in a situation where they could handle such a project. It's a testament to the company that Charlie has built.

And it's who Scott was going to use if enough people had committed. It's always been the obvious choice. They shipped 150 AMH. It didn't take Rob Zombie to prove Spooky could make a game. Who the hell else has done that? You can make a long list of people who haven't.

Making pinballs isn't easy. I speak from direct experience. And the more I've learned about making games from the inside the more respect for Spooky I have.

No one would love to see Scott and Frank have their game built by Spooky more than me. And not because I'd even necessarily be a buyer, I'm honestly not in the NIB pin market these days, but because I'd love to see their success.

Scott's a smart dude. I see him at Expo every year and we talk, and if he makes a call one way or the other I'd back it being because it was the smart play. Maybe a color LCD screen could attract enough people, who knows, it's a solid upgrade IMHO, but if it doesn't happen it's because he knows the numbers better than you do, that I believe.

Regardless of the future, I tip my hat to the Riot boys for building a complete game, from scratch. It's an awesome accomplishment.

Guys, read this part again, and really think about what's he saying. Scott is sharp, he's done his homework, he's built 6 games, he knows WTF he's talking about. Get on his level.

Very few people here have any experience actually designing and building games from scratch. I have some now, but still only a part of what Scott has already done himself. I really believe you have to experience the process in real time to really grasp it. The revisions and interdependencies aren't always evident in the end product.

When he talks about this stuff it's because he knows the real world realities of building games. It takes capital is dead right. And that capital needs to be large enough to multitask the needed expenditures.

For example: You gotta have your toys worked on at the same time as your ramps, at the same time as your scoops, guide walls, plastics, all the mechs and lightings and just the whole thing that can't come together as your game without it all being there.

Oh, did we mention playfields and cabinets? All the P-Roc hardware? Or how about how many if the parts are more cost effective if you order 100 at a time, up front. Managing costs like that is vital. Keeping your BOM towards parts, not taking savings means spending more for the same thing.

That's cash money being spent, and if there's tooling involved you have big up front costs too. And you can't stagger it, you need it up front to pay everyone to work in parallel. Unless you want it to take forever.

Assembly is only the end of a long process, it's not a part that's that difficult to solve even. The costs and work to get to the point where assembly is even possible is the iceberg under the water. And Scott has crunched the numbers, and we haven't. So anyone who says they know what it will cost who's not Scott is guessing.

//

And I understand how much work Frank has done too, solid code is a real undertaking, it's more than just knowing how to program rule logic. The real art to game programming is making it all come together right, and if you really pour yourself into the game it's going to come out better.

And the work of coloring the game is so worth it, great job man. I don't mean to be negative, but Wooly feels a little dated now with a red display. So does Ghostbusters, any game that's not in color just looks old now even if it's new. ColorDMD as the solution is so awesome though, because I love dot art still, but the colors just bring all the detail to life.

In my mind it's a more compelling package if it comes with a color display. Every DMD pin I've owned has had a ColorDMD, and I still love the look, even with games upping the HD ante.

You should definitely shoot a new video, capture some gameplay and music and lighting and sound and animations in color and see what people say.