6/21/2015, New video

Don’t have much time tonight.  I tossed up a new video.  Things are starting to come together.

Backglass lighting is finished (uses LED strips to provide a very even light.)  All of the modes have been walked through.  There are a few bugs here and there, but the functionality that I want to show is done.

Many games have been played, and the game is stable enough that I could run it easily with the glass on.  Biggest reason that I haven’t is that it is much easier to get it into modes if I can simply hit the target that I need to hit.

A couple of the rollovers aren’t adjusted quite right, but I’m slowly working on them, and fixing them up as I find them.  There are some light sockets that have issues, and when the pop bumpers hit, they shake the playfield enough that a lot of the lights blink.

Boot-up sequence is not as easy as powering on a pinball, but since I will be at Pintastic on Friday/Saturday mornings, it won’t be an issue.  I will keep working on that, but it isn’t a top priority.

Scoring is too low.  There are times in the game where you can’t easily get many points.  I think that I need to add a reset of the drop targets to allow more scoring targets.

I’m giving a seminar at Pintastic on 7/10/2015 at 3:00 pm.  It is basically on the making of the SharpeShooter 3 game.  The talk is not specifically on the OPP hardware, but I will have to describe it during the talk.  If you can’t catch the talk, I’ll be around all day Friday, Friday night, and all day Saturday, so stop me if you see me and say hi.

I can see that I will be adding rules and modes for quite a while on this game.  It is another example of never quite finishing a project, but I think that I can say that at least it is a playable machine.

After Pintastic, I need to take a vacation from pinball.  Too many hours trying to get this machine up and running so it is as good as I can get it in the < 1 year time frame.

6/9/2015, Initial rules up and running

There are lots of bugs still there, but the game is up and running and playing.  The goal was to get the playfield back  together by 6/11.  Finished it last Saturday, and spent some of Sunday working through the initial bugs.

I fixed one small issue with the Pinball Framework where updating the solenoid configuration was overwriting the initial configuration.  This meant that update configurations based on the rules file were not happening properly.  Two lines of code fixed it, but it took me a while to find.

There are a good number of issues that I just didn’t notice when I was programming in simulator mode.  These include issues such as hitting a drop target, and having it continuously score points until the drop targets are reset.  All easy fixes, but I just have to get around to fixing them one at a time and keeping a bug list.

I continue to need to work on the backglass.  Right now, I need to zip off an extra half inch because it doesn’t fit into the backbox.  Haven’t had the time to take it to the hardware store to get them to cut it.  The speaker panel is ready to be installed, and it is really going to help the game to have sounds coming out.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do about callouts at this point, but I may try fiver to get somebody to do a Western voice for me.  I have about two pages of dialog that I need.

Last note for the nights is to mention I’m giving a talk at Pintastic New England.  The talk is going to be on the SharpeShooter III restoration and the challenges.  Choices made, etc.  I think of myself as the Josh Kugler of the East coast.  I’ll be at the show all weekend, so if you get a chance, come on out and enjoy some great pinball.  (You can also vote for SharpeShooter III to win the restoration contest.)  If the machine gets any monetary prize, some of the money is going to Clay for all of the great information that he has provided the pinball community.  (His restoration tips are back up on the web which is great to see.)

Here is a link to the youtube video of the current status:

6/10/2015, updated with new video that fixes sound/video stuttering issues.