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Well, I don't know how about you, but
whenever I start playing a new game,
I know I'm in trouble because I
usually get really excited playing all
kinds of games because I like to win.
And usually it ends
with me getting hurt somehow.
A couple days ago, I played a card
game with some other guys and
it was the first card game and we were
both the guy next to me and I were
aiming at the same pile of
cards and we hit each other's arms really
hard. So we're still in pain.
The next day it gets even worse
when I play the pinball machine.
I don't know if you know that feeling
when you see those those milliseconds,
when the ball gets closer and closer
to the flippers and, you know, it goes
straight through the middle and you
actually have no chance of hitting the
ball and keeping it in the game.
But nevertheless, you keep trying
and you push those buttons really hard,
trying to keep the ball in the game, and
then you hurt your fingers to punch the
machine.
Anyone who knows that feeling.
OK, good.
I'm glad I'm not the only one then.
Well, how cool would it be to have your
own custom pinball machine?
I mean, one where you can pick out your
favorite LEDs, we can build
your own design and everything.
Lucky for you, we got someone here
who's built his own pinball machine and
who can tell you exactly
what you can do.
He's a computer scientist.
He's actually right now doing his
PhD in computer science.
One of his favorite hobbies is pinball
machines. And he uses this experience
again. So playing pinball machines
to learn more about manufacturing,
HeartWare, game design and real
time software.
Well, I'm pretty sure if you're loud
enough now, he will
show us some pictures of his own pinball
machine and give you an expression
or impression of what your own
machine could look like.
So please welcome and
give a warm round of applause to.
Yeah, thanks.
Yeah, good afternoon, everybody.
My name is Sam Cantered, and,
uh, I actually
started building my own pinball machine
about, uh, one and a half year ago.
And I will tell you about
that. This talk will be mostly pictures,
a few bullet points.
Um, and
this will be basically our outline today.
So we start with game design,
so.
How do you want your game to look,
what kind of toys and mechanics
do you want in there?
And then we skip to what mechanics do we
need then?
How to control those mechanics?
Um, so
which electronics? We need to control
them then?
How how to drive the electronics
with software.
And then now we we theoretically
now how this works and
then we actually do the hard stuff,
building all the parts for it.
And at the end I got a small
lessons learned.
If we have time, I got a video of
our machine actually running a game.
And you can you may ask some
questions if you like, but let's
start with what what is what is
pinball? This is a pinball.
Um, it weights 80
grams and it's twenty
seven millimeters, uh, diameter.
So if you want, uh,
I would give some some uh, through the
audience, just just
to give you a feeling how hard
a pinball is and
just just turn it around.
Just.
Yeah.
And the side
and not everybody
had it yet, but you will notice that this
is actually more heavier than
you actually thought, probably.
Um, and
yeah, Femal is about shooting
this nice ball around
in the machine. So it's actually a
machine with all the consequences.
So, um, I'm a computer scientist,
so I'm not used to
mechanics and all that stuff.
I know a little bit of electronics, but
the mechanics are new to me.
Well, let's start at the beginning.
Uh, small, small warning, uh,
inside a pinball machine, there are high
voltages.
Just turn them off before touching
them. Maybe, um, then you could coils
and they can hurt you.
And if you drive them incorrectly,
they will also burn and they cannot burn
down your house.
And this is an expensive
hobby. Uh, and
it takes a lot of time and effort.
So maybe consult with your girlfriend
or better have before.
Um but but if you're fine with this
then then let's go.
Um, so I met
with a friend and we actually
decide what we want to build the pinball
machine. So actually at first we
were drunken and uh but
the next day we still remember that then.
And um.
Well how could it be.
So I made these beautiful drawings
here, uh and.
For God's sake, they're not no longer in
the work, but
we we wanted to make a machine, which is
for two players, not one player, but two
players.
So I had to have a pinball machine,
one player fighting against against the
other player, and we wanted to be good
versus evil. So this is obviously
evil. Um, and this is
maybe good.
Uh uh, yeah.
So so so we select a theme
and.
Yeah. Then some I OK, we
can do better our later.
Um then we wanted some medieval
theme for the music and
then we also picked the general color
scheme because you have to choose to
have a lot of uh decisions for
mechanics, for graphics
and, and you want to to make sure
that that you don't have to redo
everything at the end.
So we will also pick colors.
In our case, it's more blue
for for the good side and black for black
and red for the for the bad side
or from the other side.
Uh, and
the girlfriend of my friend
with, uh, whom I'm
doing is this, uh,
she's a teacher.
So so we started with this, um,
so it's full size Clayfield here
that the kitchen table, um
and we just started off moving
around parts.
So how do how should the
hospital layout look?
Um, you have to do one
basic decision at the beginning.
Do you want to have a standard for your
wide body machine is anybody
machine is 50 centimeters or
twenty 20 inches and,
uh, widebody machine is about
twenty five inches or sixty sixty
centimeters.
That's a general decision.
And if you closely look at different
machines, they play quite differently.
Only even if it's only 10 centimeters,
it plays differently.
Um, so we decided
to go with a standard size
and then we started with the Senate
lower third.
And the third is basically slingshots
here, some flip of fingers here trough
in the bottom and the ball's shot
here. So that's that's
very common on nearly every machine.
Some popcorn here and some
colorful REM's here.
And that's how we started off.
And we started to to imagine the layout
and which toys we want,
um, and basically which
mechanics we need to achieve
the effects we want to have.
Um, then
we design a little bit more and
came up with this.
This is actually our first, uh,
design for the lights.
Where should the lights be.
Um, so we do this on paper
and yeah it's pretty similar
to the machine at the end and quite
you will, you will see later.
But just plan ahead because
changing stuff later with
real mechanics or hardware
is general expensive.
That's even worse.
And software changes just
are a lot of effort.
So to them early if you can.
And next, we did a whiteboard.
A whiteboard is a name for basically a
prototype playfield.
Um, usually it's done of wood,
but, uh, we decided
to go a little bit lighter.
And that's so we use a phone call that's
basically a phone
with two paper plates on top and then a
button bottom.
And you can you can, uh, cut
them with exciton knives.
You can hot glue them.
It's it's really, really cool.
Uh, and you can use gaffer tape
everywhere.
So we build up this,
uh, and
just we were creative
and just we tried a lot of stuff, rips
stuff off and put them put it
together differently just to see how it
feels. Good.
Uh, and then we went, uh,
sophisticated and,
uh, designed it in the cat program.
And the play looks like this.
Um, so
let me just walk you through this
machine. Uh, the players are here
and on the other side, those play fields
are identical.
Besides the artwork, uh,
we got to flip offering is here.
We got Slingshot here, which first ball
away. Uh, we got the shooter here,
but the shooter doesn't go into the play,
if you like, in most machines.
Instead, the shooter goes over to the
other side. So the ball comes back
here and stops.
Here is a post which stops the ball
and then we release the ball from
here into the playfield.
And after release one, we just shoot
another one there so that once
you lose the ball, you instantly get a
new one. So just it's it's
just a flow machine.
There's no stopping flow.
Uh, there's just flow.
You always got a ball until
you lost. Um, then
we got some ramps and two of them this.
Goes over to the other playfield and
the hard to see here, but there's another
one in the center,
also goes over to the other side, um,
and it comes basically back here from the
other side. And here's the lock.
So this can keep three bolts.
And once you're under attack from the
other side, there's a certain mode which
you can achieve and then it will release
up to three balls from this lock,
actually.
Um, then you've got this nice start
here. That will be some some
kind of best Hoya's figure in
one side and an angel on the other side,
some some kind of demon.
And you can you can shoot them.
There's a drop target in front and a
target to actually take it.
Uh, then we got one loop ramp
here, which comes from
here. So you shoot it from the right
forefinger and it goes back over this
wire to the left, flip a finger.
We got the same on the right side around
here, which goes here and to
the right.
So you basically can shoot from here to
this side. It comes back on the left
side. You can shoot from the left side to
the right and it comes back to the right
side. So you can switch such a feel
for fingers if you like.
There's an orbit
here which goes into a kicker
that can, uh, hold the ball
for a second and then release it into the
pressure.
And you can also shoot the orbit from the
other side. And it goes goes around the
of it comes back and
we got a scoop here.
It shoots just to the Thram.
That's basic, the basic layout we came
up with this after playing this phone
call and trying trying a few revisions,
so now
imagine we got this Ngarkat program.
What do we need to actually build
this?
And it turns out we need
mechanics because the ball won't
move on its own, at least not for
very long.
And the son in law third is basically
four parts flipper fingers
because his drawing here,
what you will see in the picture in a
minute, um, you got slingshot,
you got a trough which keeps the balls
and ejects balls and you go to launch,
which launches the ball into the
playfield.
Um, so
there was our first build,
basically the foam core.
Again, this is not real.
What the phone call, phone calls, ten
millimeter thick and
Istana playfield and pinball machines
a 30 minute. We just think so.
It's an unusual size in Germany
or in Europe in general because it's
inch. And
so for most mechanics, it
works fine. Nikolaou thought it
works, but for some mechanics
you just have to put another three
millimeters below.
Otherwise that would just stick out too
much, uh, from the pledges.
Um, this is a trough from
below. It keeps the balls.
This is a flip a finger.
Those are slingshots from below.
This is from from above the two blades,
which is and this is the
kicker. It kicks the ball here.
And those the flipper fingers, the
flipper bats on the other side, the
trough, uh, collect the ball
here or drain there and eject
here and the launcher just eject
to the playfield.
So then what? Our first built
trough. In case
you're wondering how this works, it's
pretty simple.
Basically, the best
flipper mechanics are always simple.
They work better if they are simple.
Um, so it got
multiple ball positions.
They just rolled down into the
trough, that two on the bottom.
And then for every ball, this one switch.
To detect it, there's a ball.
So it basically counts the ball
to you, and when you undress, once
it sits on the switch, we know that the
boy drained.
It has a here which
ejects the ball out to the to the
shooter.
And there's a special jam position that's
also usually an optical contact
to detect this, because it's very unusual
that the ball just comes back
because it's mechanical.
It's not 100 percent reliable.
And and you
won't then want to put this coil
a little bit less because otherwise both
balls will go out so that just
the other one kicks out.
Uh, this is how it looks in our machine.
This is the trough from above
with at least two boards
and this is the kicker.
Usually there's a spring
which you can pull and try to manually,
uh, launch the ball.
But in this case, we've only got an ultra
launcher because now machine the machine
will feed balls to the other side.
So it will be bad if you can,
uh, you can keep the balls
away from the other player.
Uh, so this is also a little bit more
reliable. We switched mechanics.
We had another one before
then we got some more mechanics.
We need, uh, very basic.
And you can
find those in nearly every pinball
machine.
This is a vertical kicker or a scoop.
This is, uh.
This is a scoop.
But it's also depending on
the naming, it is it's a
vertical up if it kicks it up
to a ramp, if it's a scoop, if it kicks
it back to the playfield and
it's a kicker, if it
doesn't fully go in.
So basically, those are all the same,
but just with three different names, um,
and they work by having a switch like
this. And to just to notice
that there's a ball and the coil, you can
see the shaft here, which just
kick the ball out here.
It actually falls in.
Also switch and shoots the ball
into the ramp.
It can also just, uh,
pull to coalesce and it will go back
to the playfield.
I thought, um,
then we got very, very
calm mechanics and they make those nice
noises of the machine
and that's how they look from
above and this is how they look
from below.
Basically, this is a this is
a switch, um,
plastic of the plastic.
And this actually moves here.
This the shaft here, which triggers the
switch.
It's kind of complicated, but it works
fairly well.
And then you got this coil
which pulls down this metal ring
here, which pushes the ball away.
American mechanics, you can buy them
and usually they work pretty fine
and you can see that we
include another three millimeters of foam
here, otherwise the switch is
just not fit at all.
So but this still works on a phone call,
so no need to to make what so far
for prototypes.
It's really, really good.
I would totally recommend it.
But there are other opinions.
So some people say, well, now just just
do it in wood initially.
But I would recommend a phone call.
Then you add some other mechanics.
Um, this is simple as just
a light switch with some green plastic
on top.
So this is a of targets and you
can see them everywhere in the machine
and you drop targets.
Drop Target is,
um, a plastic shaft here.
And once you hit it, it goes down
with spring.
Um, and there's a switch to detect this
and the coil, that's one which
just can pull it up again to
the reset that and software the.
And those are very typical mechanics you
can see in a lot of machines, and
we've got one special mechanics,
which is basically a diverter.
Um, I showed you this this
playfield, uh, before.
And what happens if one
player constantly transports.
Then at some point, there will be no
balls in the trough of the the other
side, so we need
some mechanic to to balance the troughs.
And this is done by this
nice mechanic here.
This is basically a diverter.
It's a flap flap.
And we shoot the ball over and
we can just enable a
which is below here, which will push
the flap up and
the ball would just jump up and then it
drains on the Trouville.
Basically, uh, in the normal
case, it would just drop in here and
we will hold it with this post, which
we go up.
So this is basically a lock which
temporarily locks the ball.
And once we need it, we will release it.
This is the other lock which is fed
from the ramp in the middle.
So it comes over from the other side.
Uh oh, sorry.
It come from you.
And then we got three positions
with, uh, Optos here
and again and post, which can just go
up and hold the boards and
we can release them
even one by one.
So we don't we don't have to release all
of them.
So.
Whether you have those mechanics, so
obviously you could you could take a
machine and just strip them out
where work, and it's it's probably
also the cheapest way to do it.
Um, but those would be all mechanics and
you have to clean them and and so on and
not everything may be available.
So so it might be better to just
buy them. And it turns out that's that's
totally possible for most mechanics.
Uh, just check out the manuals
of the machine where the
mechanic you like is in
and they're part numbers and you can just
all of them.
And in general, it's good
to to order assemblies,
which are just a collection of parts,
because usually, for example,
a flip a finger that's 15
to 20 parts.
And if you order them, um,
separately, that that would be expensive
very quickly.
So all the assemblies, if possible, and
there is one
shop which actually sells mechanics
and they build them on their own also for
for very old mechanics.
So look, what they have is usually
a good idea to just check what they have.
And those are very
well priced. Usually it's Pymble life.
Um, and you can also write them an email.
And if you are lucky, they will build the
mechanic for you. Well, yeah, it takes
half a year and then then we have to
have it and then it's makerspace
specialties.
They got everything like really
everything. But usually only one
or two and old stuff,
but they got I don't know, maybe ten
thousand parts. And so they got really
everything and it's, it's
a lot of high priced usually.
Um then you can go to just to
distributor. If it's a recent machine
at the largest pinball manufacturer
and they, they sell replacement parts,
it's usually not that expensive,
but it takes a lot of time to get those
and sometimes some effort.
But they will I guess
they will even produce those parts if
you if you were willing to buy them.
So those are your options.
You can also build mechanics like we did
on the Deepwater, but I showed you the
third revision, so that took some
effort to try to make it reliable,
because that's sometimes not easy, at
least not for a computer scientist like
me. Um,
so now now we got mechanics
and we bought them. And while they're in
there and yeah,
now we need to control them.
And I'm working on an open source
project, which is called the Mission
Pymble Framework.
And it's it's a framework
which can control all those mechanics.
So you can say, well, that's that's the
flipper mechanic.
This is a button and this is a coil
enabled. And it will do all the magic in
the background.
So it contains a lot of building blocks.
It works on Windows, Mac, Linux and for
example, the Raspberry Pi, um, which
is also Linux, but with some special
limitations.
Uh, then you need a pinball control
system which usually
interfaces with USB to your computer
and they are three three major ones that
fast pinball machine, morphic
proc and the open pinball project,
which is actually open hardware and.
This is a little bit of the basic, but
also works, it's not the cheapest option.
Um, I got I got them
all here. So if you want to have to go
and have a look later, just come
by and you can show them.
And then you need obviously pinball
machine. You can retrofit an old one,
you can build your your new one, whatever
you like, and
then you drive about those usually come
with this control system
and they even in traditional machines,
they're typically separated from the CPU
because those are the boards where
the power is actually, which
even may burn in some machines or
cause damage.
Then you got the hassles fÃªtes,
which drives, uh, the quiet
and those sometimes burn.
For example, if you got a charge in your
car, then those might burn and you have
to replace them.
They also got input protection.
So you use, if you want, burn once
you have one to connect
your input to power, for example,
so you can buy those
or you can put the open more
project, however, which I can
charge, which looks like this.
So that's that's the cheapest
option basically was barely 40 bucks.
Um, but you have to soulet on your
um.
Yeah. Then obviously you have to wired
up. This is how this look for
the third, those are the control boards
here and
yeah. You think enough wires because
coils carry a lot of
current at least initially.
So don't, don't take too thin wires
otherwise they were just blown away.
Um yeah.
Then, yeah, I talk a lot about
Coyle's, so I figured I
need one slide about Coyle's, they use
basically everywhere because they
achieved their reliable and
they fast.
For example, you could you could use a
servo, but it will go out
and it takes a lot of time and
it's it's expensive compared to
a coil.
So usually they're driven this way that
they initially pulled for
five to 20 milliseconds
something and then they hook up with,
um, so they enable for
one millisecond disabled for six
millisecond and everyone and so on.
Um, because otherwise
you won't have enough power.
You for example, you want to kick a ball,
you need a lot of acceleration
in the beginning. So you need a lot of
but of count there.
So usually they got the importance of.
Four to eight ohms, a little
bit less so
they carry a lot of current, although
they're there and they can
burn, obviously.
So if you just connect them to your
to your PC, they will
they will burn usually.
That's why it's important that you
picked, um, them and do not.
Unless you know what you're doing, do not
just enable the coils
they were burn.
Try it, try it once, but
do not do it through a machine
and they can hurt you.
Actually, they actually have a lot of
force. So you probably
all, uh, tried the bone
by now.
It can shoot this ball pretty, pretty
fast and it can also shoot your
your fingers, for example.
And that will hurt.
I can tell you.
Then you want to know where
the ball is, actually, and this is done
by switches, so there are two
traditional approaches here.
Um, one is those
blades, which is the simplest and
most reliable switch basically ever made.
And this will basically
always work. You can have a target here.
You can have a button here if it's
possible. They usually go with those
switches and
new machines.
There are also those micro
switches, usually from Cherrix, like like
a new keyboard, uh,
and for example, with this
custom custom blade here.
So this goes through the playfield.
This is basically a rollover switch.
If the ball rolls around along there,
it will get noticed.
And the control system, we got
this, uh, pulse and
tell the software about it.
Then we got Optos.
I showed you some before.
Um, so the most
common ones are those.
Those are the Williams or Stern Optos.
They're about 30 millimeters thick.
So you need a lot of space here.
And we forgot about
that or we didn't actually
know in the beginning.
And a lot of places we didn't
have 30 millimeters.
So we needed to come up with
another solution.
So we 3D printed this part,
which is a side LCD.
This is, uh, one not six millimeters.
And you see it connected here to a one
millimeter steel, um, ramp.
That was the first design.
So it worked pretty well in the
beginning. Um, but then
it turned out vibrations are
are bad for this and
it clips through the hole here,
but it's not enough.
Sometimes they were they were just fly
off. And so we thought
we redesigned it like this so that the
energy goes in from here
and you can screw them into into the
rack. So we cut, uh,
threat there and then you can screw them
in.
There was the final design, but it took
some iterations.
Um, so
now you know, and you can do better
hopefully.
Uh, next Nexxus.
We needed to connect those optos to the
control board.
This is a control board here for the
inputs.
And we designed those breakout boards
here, one for power, for the
current limiting system, because
every Optos basically naledi
and in its current current limiting
resistor, uh, and you
don't want to solve them into the line
for every single opto.
Uh, so we designed those parts and
one for the receiver side, you could
just crimp those receivers out here,
but then you could never disconnect it
again because there are two wires from
the OP2 and they go down and then you
got eight Aptos on the bank
of this control board and this
is on the bottom and the on the top,
you will never be able to disconnect.
So we went with,
uh, little small connectors and then you
can watch them pull them out
and then we need lights.
And today everybody wants Ajab.
Right. You know, those blinking light
people, it's it's boring
if it's just one color.
So, uh,
you got two types of lights,
basically the inside lights,
which are basically those things
here which are plastic
and light below.
And you got general illumination guys
which are below the um,
the rails and everything on a side
just to to light to play it from the
side. And those we use
those nice Christmas lights for the
General Emanation and those
uh us twenty
eight, twelve LEDs which come in this
nice picture, uh to screw
them from below. We did another playfield
which is from Kurgan, uh
just for the light just to test light
shows and uh
not not we didn't build it in our
actually actual prototype.
So next we need a display
so that different options that you can
use an LCD display if you like,
but then you need high definition
graphics and it gets a lot
of, uh, it cost a lot of
effort and game design and graphics
rendering and video rendering
and those small displays which
are basically DMD dot matrix this
place, they only have, uh, one or twenty
eight x thirty two pixels.
So it's a lot easier to make graphics for
them. So we went with those and
because we are head to head, we need two
of them. So this is in software.
We got you have the 2D and one is on
every side.
And this is actually the
Matrix, uh which, which we bought.
And this can then actually show
the same thing which is shown here.
And so, uh,
they use power.
And usually in
older machines, you have 70 to 80 volts
with those nice, uh,
transformers here, but
not a.
I would recommend switching power supply
with four walls that work
fine and you can you can buy those
for 50 or 60 bucks.
We went with the old one because three
years ago they weren't readily available
when we bought those.
Then you need to afford for four switches
for.
Yeah, for the switches on
the playfield and five bolts
for all your lights.
So if you go with severe LCD
like we did in a lot of power
on the Five-fold, so we went with an
86 power supply.
But there are cheaper options for this
and we went with the transformer.
But, uh, switching
power supply would be better probably.
Then you get all
the basics, so now you know everything
to do it on your own.
But we didn't actually build much.
Um, so let's get started
with this.
Um, you need to playfield, which
is, as I mentioned, 13 millimeters
thick.
And at the end, it's Batek Birch.
And in its Senate, 230 millimeters,
because if you glue in those inserts,
then you have to to, uh, send it down.
You've got you can decide between Senate
and white body
and you can make it between one meter
six and one meter, 16 long.
But it doesn't matter much.
As far as I mentioned before, the with
actually Medoff, it's
a lot at feels a lot slower if it's
if it's wider.
Um, yeah.
I showed you the prototype in phone call
and now the option would be to handwrote
it in wood and the final
version would be
you would do it with with a with a city
machine.
And just as a reminder,
that was the first machine we built in
phone call that even the Rams,
everything from Kahir Works
works fine. Sometimes you just have to re
hot glue stuff because
this ball is heavy.
It would just shoot off stuff.
But yeah, it's that phone call
and I can fix everything.
Uh, and then we went
more professional and
we used the machine to
put the playfield.
This is actually where we cut our
playfield, took about 15 minutes
roughly.
But at a professional manufacturer there
is one in Germany actually which which
does playfield.
Um, and he did this for us.
Yeah. Then afterwards he usually
glued the inserts and you send
it flat, then you print
it at the end as coating.
It's like coating but
a lot more layers.
And you probably do not want to
do this on your own unless you're a
professional painter or something.
Then maybe, but otherwise you, you do
not want to do this.
And at least we decided
not to.
This is how the woodworm looked,
so we didn't do inserts at the beginning
because it's expensive with
all the coating.
So we took the simple words and just put
the same playfield again with.
With what?
Uh, so it looks a lot cleaner now.
So this is all the the the low side
with all the electronics
and this is the upper side with the
ramps.
And next.
So we're currently doing an X version
which we hope to have
it finished for Congress here.
But but it's not finished yet.
It will be finished in January.
Um, but this is the cat
drawing basically with also insert
whether they should go.
And, uh, this is actually how it's done.
That's a nice, nice robot which can glue
the insert for you, at least if you if
you if you do more than maybe
10 plates.
Um, so for professional, um,
personal machines, it's done with the
robot.
It just sucks the insert here
and just puts it down and then
it's then it's glued.
Uh, we did some work.
With Photoshop, my colleague
is actually called Phillips, so
Photoshop, Philip
is probably a German joke, but.
So,
yeah, this is what you came up with.
It's not a final version, but I think you
get the idea. This is probably too light.
This may be too dark at some
point. Too much contrast between the two.
But but you get the idea.
This is the obviously the evil side.
This is the good side.
But the inserts are the same.
And obviously the hood for the mechanics
are the same, just different
from print. And the software would just
drive it differently.
So now you know, all the hard stuff.
So like metal.
So let's build some rails.
So at the at the edge
of the play for you, tell those rails,
because if you should orbit the boschert,
slide around and not just go to
the top fold up.
And so those are typically made of steel
and we initially just got
two millimeters. Three is still banned
from Amazon, was
pretty cheap and then we raised
screws to it.
That's where where you can see here just
press screws. So it doesn't look pretty,
but it will work for a long time.
And later we will have
them. I can show you in a minute,
um, this is when we mounted
this handmade
prototype rails and
we had them for quite some time.
They were pretty very well.
Afterwards, I designed them
and cut again with the sheet
metal tour with all those nice
letters here.
And then we
basically unrolled them for
this. And that's what our manufacturer
sent us five, five weeks
later.
And then we bent them by hand.
It's one millimeter, um, steel.
Stainless steel, and
this is how one Ray looked like,
unfortunately, they do not have a nice
picture without the ramps on top,
but I think you get the idea this is just
the rail around the orbit here and it
has some nice letters where you can
scroll to the playfield.
Yeah, so next, we need we need some
REM's.
So you get different options for Ms.
One is plastic, you can just print them,
but they're large.
It takes a lot of time and probably
filament, but it works if you want.
You can do this, um, later,
you would typically draw
them.
It's also doable at home.
And a lot of people do it.
We didn't we went with metal.
That would be this should be solid,
solid.
And so first we actually
cut them by hand and
at the end we lay them again.
And you could wire arms, which you
usually use, where
a metal ramp would just hide too much
stuff of your playfield.
So those coming down
from the top, those are a wire.
Ms.
And you can read them again or you could
or address them.
So this is, again, the room set up.
So those those will be firearms because
they will this will hide too much of the
play. You just want to see the inserts
and the nice artwork below.
Um, and this would be,
uh, steering's basically.
So first we
went again with a cat program and then
we did this nice prototype out of
cardboard and you may
laugh, um, but
this works for some time
until until this this flies away here
because, um,
until that point we work
for for prototyping.
It's fine. It just just put them in the
hot glue them and we work everywhere.
Then we cut them by hand.
Doesn't look pretty
but it worked even better, especially
was faster there and
and then we went more professional.
Uh so the bottom one
that made one and the top one
was professionally made one
uh which we
didn't bend by, by, by hand
because we missed to to cut
them here and
then we did again.
And uh, like a lot of things, we did
a lot of iterations.
So we can only do the fourth
iteration of our arms, the third
iteration of the playfield and the
fourth iteration of the rails also.
So this is what we did next.
The game where we got from, um,
manufacturer, we just
lay that out, the the
bending the bending slots,
uh, so you can bend them at home with a
small bench.
And that's what we did.
And they looked like this.
We got everything, everything twice
because two sides and then you have to
build everything twice.
Should have thought about that earlier,
but well,
you learn from your mistakes.
And then there were attempts basically,
and there will be a new approach next
year. So,
uh, then we reassess
and we decided to go with, uh,
pressing, um,
with a civil
severe hot load at in German civil
bress alloy opinions.
And you just use
a torch and put the silver
to to the to
the metal and then it connects is pretty
stable.
So we didn't manage to break
it until now.
So it's easier to break it here and
break this.
So that's pretty.
OK, this works.
I mean it doesn't look perfect,
but it works for quite some time and we
still have them.
And this is actually before
with all those, uh, foam columns
and afterwards with wood and all
the real ramps and the
and the YMCA.
So you see that we
still have a lot of focus here and
hot glue and gaffa
tape for just connecting stuff
because you need leches everything,
everywhere, and you need holes to screw
stuff. And you tend to forget this.
And we didn't
we didn't notice until we got this.
That steal the
V for a steel is actually really hard.
And you cannot easily just
just just drill a hole.
It would just go
and then we'll look pretty
anymore. So we just went, well,
let's let's do it again.
Put in all the holes and doing that new
revision with all the mistakes you had
made and fix them the next revision.
So
now, you know, there's a lot of open
space like here and what the we do
it. We just fall in and then stay
there.
And since there's no mechanic to put it
to put it out, well, it will stay there
forever.
And that's the problem,
at least if you put the glass on
top.
But but it's not good.
So usually you got plastics
and in the beginning you just cut
them out of foam core like everything and
do them. Um, and then we went
to the 3-D printing.
That's what you look at.
You can see here.
And then as usual, let's face reality
and
there's always something missing.
So there's some manufacturing tolerances
that there are some tolerances when
you benter the drums.
And yeah, even if you just screw
stuff, everything is tolerances.
So make sure just
to cut a little bit, a little bit of here
and leave the latch here
and and.
Yeah, yeah.
And then we did it again.
So like everything
you learn from, from doing so created a
prototype. Everything.
If you, if you can lay that out from,
from cardboard.
We didn't have a laser so laser would be,
would be handy. So just lay that out from
cardboard and try it out.
It would save you a lot of time.
Then in its software I talked about the
mission Benmore framework
and basically it's a framework
in Python. It's a Python three.
You can install it wire pip,
just pip install Knopf
and Mission Padmore framework
and then it's basically installed.
You need working open, open and
too.
So that's why we listed the Raspberry
Pi before, because the Raspberry Pi only
has this EGL, this limited
mobile implementation.
So we support Windows, Linux, Mac OS and
the Raspberry Pi.
Um, and it's
this framework has two processors.
One game process was actually runs
also logic
and um, the media control
process which renders or the graphics
plays the videos because
your your game should be
pretty realtime.
I mean, it's not not important that
everything reacts inside one
millisecond in the game framework,
because what it actually does is
it pushes the rules into this hardware
controller.
So it says, well, if this split up
button citya puts this coil
for 50 milliseconds, so
the hardware will take care of that.
But still, if I hit the target,
the game is to say, well, now
light this light and this shouldn't be, I
don't know, two seconds.
The player will notice everything over, I
don't know, 50 to 100 milliseconds.
So this should be pretty realtime.
And the media controller stuff usually
is not very good.
So a loading a video may block
everything, uh, involving I
o on this may block.
And this also renders the DVD,
which is connected to the game process
again. So we.
Events to the media controller,
renacidin, did we get that
out of jail and then we
sent it back and then we sent it to the
hardware, because
if you you do not want to
do everything pixel wise.
So we actually render a MPEG
video on an open viewport
and then just get the right pixels for
the DVD back just to
make it easier for our developer.
This is a gentle sequence, um,
how the software works.
It launches initial start up,
initialize everything.
Then you go to the track mode where you
flash all the lights and tell the player,
well, give me a coin, uh, play me.
And when when they play it us, the game
starts sequence,
uh, where usually some sound play
and the ball starts.
The play or something, the ball ends and
repeats until the players know no
balls, then the game ends.
In our case, uh, we got
30 lives so you can lose 30 balls
on every side. And whoever loses 30
balls first will lose a little bit
different.
But we just overloaded some classes here.
And then then this.
Mechanicsburg, this
is all software side works.
Uh, you got the virtual deemed here.
You got to state of all your devices
and your software here and you got
the the rectangle ones are
switches. You can click them and they
activate virtually and
the the round ones are alive.
So you can see your light shows and you
can play with all the switches you say
about war when he attack and
then the software knows that it's here
and it will it will carry on with this
as has some limited, uh, simulation
like if the blogosphere and
disqualifiers, it knows that
it goes to the playfield, for example.
So that's what it does, Will.
And those are our to play for you to
relay to them, not hit by head, but next
to each other just because it better
fits the screen.
So this is how this
actually works from our perspective.
You got the computer which connects
by USB to the controller,
one next to us here to the left is
the DMD, our USB,
the control about our USB.
Then we got a lot of node boards which
just basically just break out boards
for the coyotes and such as Chamoun
below the playfield and modern machines.
And then you connect the switches and
optos and quoits to not
pass as a general hardware
architecture that this
is how it looks. And in reality,
our game runs here.
Transformer, the the control system
and some mechanics and the LCD
connectors.
This nice can be bought from other
fruit.
Um, we need a cabinet
and we do everything from kwassa.
We did this in from quater.
Um, this is a cat model
actually how it's supposed to look.
This is how it actually looked.
Um, and the other some foil
on the glass. But it's actually believe
me, it's glass.
Uh, there's our black box which
is different from normal machines.
It's just up on top so
you can see your opponent and
um, mostly
the steam. This is my fault for the
observers.
Most players do not look at them
during during the game because
especially in our game, where you always
have a ball, you don't you don't have
time to look up.
Otherwise, we we we packed up,
um, we did sound I
did this. So
it's well, it's
music.
But if you seriously listen
to most machines, the background sound is
so simple, it's just I don't know, it
repeats after 20 seconds and it's
it's simple. So
it works. Uh, it may improve in the
future. That's why I won't play it now.
But you can you can play that hope you
like.
Uh, they need to play sound.
So we build our professional
sound system with a sixty dollars,
uh, China amp and
uh a large subwoofer like, like
every chiet.
So it's actually audio stuff because it's
cheap. This is about 90 bucks.
And uh, yeah, we got basically one
one speaker on every side and the DVD
we here basically is not in here yet.
Uh, it's from the bottom, the big
box from the bottom.
And this is, uh, the cabinet
from from top.
Yeah. That plays pretty fine.
It's loud enough.
It's nice.
So.
What does it all cost
so and it turns out this is pretty
expensive for our machine just takes us
by two because we got everything twice.
Uh,
somebody should have told us, uh,
and this is basically just for the final
version. So playfield, including
print and everything, is between 800
and 1000 years.
Um, if you if you let if you leave, uh,
if you go to some manufacturer and let
them produce it for you, the cabinet,
including printers, is about five hundred
thousand, um, for, for a nominal
copy that you can just buy one and then
print it for our cabinet as I showed you
that one work, um because
of head to head.
But usually I would buy it
then the control system, depending on
which one you choose, a commercial one or
the homemade one, it's between two
hundred eight hundred euros, including
the pursey.
You've got some electronics depending on
if you got silver or gold
and wires and what strength
and what, um, piezo,
um, 100 to 500
euro.
And then you got the mechanics
and it really depends on which mechanics
you buy.
If you've got more mechanics, that will
be obviously more expensive, but
took between 1000 and a thousand years
for just the mechanics, though,
those that are the part which would
really be a lot, lot cheaper.
If you produce maybe thousand machines,
this would be maybe a tenth.
But, uh, we can do
it. We have to buy basically replacement
parts. And that's why it's why it's,
uh, expensive
then metal and plastic parts, depending
on how many you do and how many you buy
to trade on it.
And the typical retail price of a machine
is 8000 to 10000 years
recently. A little bit more, you know,
um, and then you
can see that this this quickly adds up.
And building a machine
is not actually very cost efficient.
Uh, if you factor in your time, then
I'll never, um.
So we've got some lessons learned before
I show your last video of our machine.
At the end, though, manufacturing
is hard and expensive and it takes a lot
of time, actually.
You go to a manufacturer, said, well, I
want to build this. And I say, well,
yeah, we can do it
in eight weeks to get it.
And yeah, I mean, that's an obvious it's
fine probably because I do not have
unlimited time to build my machine.
Uh, but still I have to
wait a lot of time that have everything
and cut if possible.
And it's nice to notice that
parts hit each other before building
them because then,
uh, OK, which one do we throw away
happens. I mean, most
most times it's hard to fix.
And then what we learned is the shot
with if you do a ramp to be between
five and 10 centimeters, about
twenty seven millimeters in diameter.
So theoretically that will
work already, but practically you will
never hit it.
So five to ten foot range above
ten, it's far too easy and you
always, always make the short
and below five.
It's really, really hard.
Then prevent jumps,
prevent jumps because if the ball jumps,
uh, it will go somewhere
and then it gets stuck.
I mean we get stuck anyway.
Everywhere.
If it can it will
at some time.
So do not make jump ramps like
this.
Yeah. The ball will just go on
and just fly over the ramp.
Yeah. You learn that by prototyping.
Um, and finally
for me as a computer science, a computer
scientist, you cannot fix physics and
software, so.
So, yeah, that's that's basically it.
So our current playfield, one
of them looks at this from below.
This is all the electronics now and
all the lights. And then it's then it's
full. And so
there's not a lot of space left.
This is how it looks from from top.
So one player here, one player there,
uh, here with phone
decals.
And yeah, now we show
video and at the same time
take some.
So thanks for listening.
Yeah.
So it's all here, one was released
and a new one came.
Any questions?
Now's your chance.
Yes, oh,
like
you said, you had two computers,
basically one doing all the mechanical
stuff and one controlling the
whole playfield and the
displays and stuff, but in
your price calculation, you already you
also had the third system, like a control
system for two hundred to eight hundred
euros. What's that's the part
the 200 to 800 are your PC,
like a Raspberry Pi and your control
system.
This is basically just the
note boards and the control board.
And we consider them. And then you add
the electronics, which are the cables
and the power
supply.
Yeah.
And maybe the lights.
Yeah.
If you if you are too much hot glue.
I
think I have a question from our online
viewers.
I guess we do, um, the Internet
wants to know, are states that pinball
machines have been around for a long
time. And aside from modern
manufacturing technologies like planning
and bowling with cat and Cam, uh, making
things easier, if have actually have
gameplay mechanics been modernized
over the years?
That's right, um.
I mean, the
difference between.
Old machines and machines is that
the rules are much deeper.
So before I was just shoot this target
20 times and every time you get score
and the the
main objective was just to get an extra
ball or
extra credit some time.
And in modern machines, it's like, shoot
this one five times and we fleshless
insert there, then shoot this one.
And then the other player gets the ball
and you get a nice animation
and insert here lights up and you can
start another mode.
Basically, a mission is the most
important pinball machine.
Uh, so the rules are a lot,
a lot deeper in modern machines.
And that's basically because we have
better CPUs and our machines.
The question over there, OK, well, first
of all, thank you very much. This is
totally awesome.
Thanks.
So obviously, the physicalness of the
machine, that's that's great, but did
you ever consider simulating
not unappeased? I mean, to build
a real scale model and project
CGI render and project the entire game
instead of building the mechanics
that this, um, this virtual
pinball and you can play
all the old games to just take a 42
inch TV and put it into
a cabinet, actually fits and add
some buttons.
You can you can buy this for, I don't
know, about 1000 bucks
and then you can do this.
And there's actually one machine, which
is some somewhere in between.
It's called the P3.
Um, and it actually has a TV on
in the playfield, but it has a real
fluffiness on top.
And the play the flipper fingers on top
of the of the
of the TV antennas, the
upper third like this part and
you can see those so you actually can
swap your games.
It's the development.
But I think you can preorder like, like
you can preorder everything five
years in advance and pinball, uh
but eventually it will be made and I
actually played it. It's, it's pretty
fun, but it's different a little bit
because the contrast is different
here. You got the light which actually
emits light. And and there you got
the whole play for you just slide up
because of the background light and the
ball is looking somehow black
if it goes on top of the TV.
But still it's a nice machine.
They're questionable, they're.
OK,
any more questions now is your chance.
Could you go up to the microphone,
please?
Can we start on the left side?
I think this is the first to
play a pinball machine I've heard of.
Do you think this could become a trend if
your machine is fun to play?
Well, the actually two or maybe
three machines, so, um,
they are smaller, but they're from
nineteen ninety roundabout, so to no
longer produce for twenty five
years, but they still exist,
um and they do not have deep roots.
The problem with our machine is actually
that it's really, really large.
I think long, it's two meters long and
you need basically three or four meters
room for this.
So you need a long wall on your
living room somewhere where you can put
it. So this will be
a problem in the market, probably.
So maybe we could make one hundred
machines and sell them, I don't know,
but probably not a thousand.
So I don't think it will be totally
mainstream.
Can we have time for
two short questions?
Yes.
Yeah. How are you handling the tilting of
a machine? Because I imagine it's quite
difficult for to play a machine.
Now, we've got two to accelerometers, uh,
on every side.
So actually, because you told them on
your side and, uh, then you can
measure the acceleration there
and then you can see that direction.
Actually, if it goes this way, then then
you can see that the play on the side,
uh, to do that actually.
And we just we just remove life
as easy. And if you talk too much, then
you will have no more life.
OK, last question.
Um, could you give us a time frame from
first idea to the first game you actually
were able to play?
Now, if we started last year in April,
so it's one 1/2 years roughly, and
we were able to play in before
Congress. So I think in August,
September, somewhere after camp.
After camp, definitely, um,
but mostly because all this orange stuff
took about three months.
And my colleague Phillip, um,
he did all the sourcing and stuff and
getting stuff from Canada and the US
and getting it through customs.
Uh, and it took a lot of time.
Um, so when we actually
got the stuff and we had everything, the
first build on phone call,
I did the software before and then
we connected and it just worked after two
or three days. So that was pretty fast.
But you could just shoot the ball
up and it comes down and shoot up again.
It's not that much fun.
So sorry, we cannot hear
without a microphone.
So you talk about the demand or even
the short just the short
list. OK, so you talk about
the dimension, but what about the
inclination of the field itself?
It's typically six and a half degrees.
So what, you can go between six
and seven so much then at
a six and a half and.
Yeah, but just work best.
OK, thank you very much.
Thanks a lot, John.