Planning to pm Scott for the update, but wonder if it there was a possibility he'd post a link instead ,,, or even start an official official thread that he keeps locked down from posting. It would be much appreciated as well as being a good resource. So you asked what reservations we had.

One thing that bothers me is theme. Have never really been into Greek mythology or Persian or Roman etc for that matter. Now if the pin were stylistically similar to the movie 300, I would have been on it already. Fortunately theme is only one factor for me, my bigger concern is coding.

Software is very important to many people and I could see a huge benefit to publishing the current rules and an explanation of the modes being developed and those under consideration. The reason is that people here have great ideas. Open the curtains and us all a glimpse, and solicit ideas. Heck, I'd love to see one of everything thrown into this game. Easiest to address them by individual modes. Stuff like reverse flipper mb, alternating left and right flippers, flipper "tommy blinds" mb, strobe mb, add a ball target, timed jackpot target, reverse scoring if you hit certain switches (to extent it could wipe out 25% of your score) ... There are infinite options so an accounting of the current and intended rules would be a cool way to convince me of what to expect. Otherwise, I would honestly need to play 20 games on a production model, before I dipped into the prepay model again.

My current opinion of the prepay model ...Fool me once - shame on you, fool me twice - shame on my bad memory, fool me three times - I am stupid, fool me a fourth time - it ain't gonna happen I may not be the brightest, but eventually I catch on. Would love WOOLY to become a reality, just can't support them with my retirement funds yet.

Speaking of payment options...if a portion of this money is fully refundable, as in it was being deposited it into a trust account, so that it could be refunded at any time, that would get my attention. Of course these guys don't want a bunch of fickle buyers jumping in and out but if $1k were non-refundable to cover purchase of inventory and the rest could be available at any time, would that not appeal to many of you? Nobody likes the non-refundable part but the comfort of knowing if cash flow gets tight, my money isn't gong to be spent willy-nilly until game is 100% developed and ready to be manufactured.

...but he was still allowed to play pinball, right? Just wanted to make sure he wasn't in hell.

Wow, that is a huge. You guys developed a complete game, with a non-licensed theme. WOOLY looks fantastic! with continued tweaks, game will only continue to improve. Looking forward to seeing a few high quality videos of the latest. Maybe the production of some (hint, hint) can be one of the options presented to the early adapters. That would go a long way towards building support, without the need to begin production yet. Be willing to spend some money - it doesn't have to be a lot, but probably $3k and you could get some interesting ones made. There are even some Pinsiders that could help.

I see no way of an lcd being implemented due to higher cost, and think a dmd is a great fit for this game. Agree that the the dots should be colorized, at a minimum. This would increase the value and make the game even more interesting. Same can be said of using controlled coloring on backbox and enhancing the sound system. Imagine the bom would increase slightly from these three upgrades, but if the selling price was held or even lowered to 7k through cost savings efforts, maybe we could get this train rolling again.

I feel a major stumbling block of WOOLY was the less than desired speech and music package. Both of these were being worked further as were the game rules. Can't wait to see some new vids that reveal all this good work. Help me, help you to put one of these in my house.

Once a game is complete with a bill of material , it should be easy for stern or spooky to price them. Maybe they would have a different perspective on what it would cost to make.

luvthatapex2 & gang can decide their risk tolerance and what price they would set for sales and service. All I am wondering is that maybe they expect it will cost $5k each to make a run of 1000 games and $6.5k to make 500 games and $8k to make 250 games. And suppose they estimate license, insurance, after sales support, office, overhead, IT & Legal support and profit and arrive at $2k per game for up to 500 games or for 1000. So they would want to consider offering games at $7k, $8.5k or $10k depending on anticipated demand. Now if they spoke with contract manufacturer and discover that it would actually cost $5k for up to 100 games or $4.2k per game up to 500 and $3.6k per game up to 1000 games. All of the sudden, the decision is really to consider a model expecting $5.6k, $6.2k or $7.0k. Furthermore this could present opportunities to handle admin differently possibly that could knock off $500 of overhead per game. Suddenly this game looks like a real go. Very enticing to move forward with the project. We will have to wait and see.

If I didn't love my met premium / pro cabinet so much, I would have been a serious customer.

Evidently ... building and coding the game was the easy part. Shooting videos is hard.

The situation has changed and the original plan of setting up manufacturing to build this pin was flawed. There are five manufacturers who would likely bid to build the game on a contract basis. Stern, JJP, Spooky, Highway and Dutch Pinball have navigated the waters and shown they can deliver. This will be the cheapest and less risky way to proceed. Maybe one day WOOLY will be made, but it will be one of the above who builds it. All they would need to bid on is a final version of game.

I was on the fence about WOOLY because of price. Having lived through ups and downs of pinball startups the past three year, I can see why the price for this pin needs to be 7.5k and am now willing to pay it.Someone build me a WOOLY for Christmas

The initial approach to building WOOLY involved building the pin themselves. It was a good try, but ultimately deemed not right by the community. Since then the software has improved quite a bit and the dots have been colorized - two big accomplishments. Instead of banging our collective heads against the table repeating," try it again," Riot should expect to need to change things up, in order to get the game made. One such suggestion follows.

RIOT could get a lot more exposure to WOOLY to build interest in the title while they work to make the game production ready by selling copies of the game. They could release the virtual game and people playing could see if it was something they wanted to play in the physical world. One way to accomplish this is lugging the game all over the county, but releasing a virtual game would allow thousands of people to try it out and would raise cash. Money that could be used to fund conversion of code to P-ROC. Start a gofundme and people donating $20 would get a copy of the game based on current software. Converting to P-ROC (open source with structure) is a benefit to RIOT because it would allow them the option of opening manufacturing up to others who could contract build the game or kit. Spooky or Heighway could be contacted to provide ideas for making the game easier to manufacture and to price out those services. I'll bet this could work, but this approach requires a huge leap of faith to turn over some control of the project to others.

Have you got a log file of your changes made by version? Last one I saw was impressive and a pretty good read.

What stood out was character narration revealed during play and that two were recorded. luvthatapex2 does that mean more will be coming and can you explain that part a little more?

WOOLY theme resonates strongly for me. Was on the fence about spending $8k(?) the first go round when 50 people paid in full and another 50 that were strongly interested, but wanted to play one first, so hadn’t put a deposit down. On reflection, I believe 100 pins would have sold quickly (magic number of sales needed). At that time, the rules were complete but not as refined nor had the color dmd issue been sorted.

WOOLY is an awesome game that is 100% designed and has six sample games built, and yet it sits mothballed. How little effort would it require to get AP or Spooky to build it? Choosing the correct price point is critical and then estimating expected sales is key to what a boutique pinball manufacturer does every day. You could interview for a job at Stern and let them produce the game, or just run it yourself after you make Valhalla.