286 replies to this topic

[antropus]

Time to rename my project for the second time...

Pacific Rim is an awesome movie and I'm proud of the work we did on it, but now I got two sons, James and Mathias (Jam.Ma ... got it? ) and this machine will be theirs one day, so I'll FINALLY name it after them.

I got some exciting updates to show. I should post something over the weekend, if time permits. Rest assured that the name DOES have to do with the updates!

 

Cheers,

-Kris

Edited by antropus, 23 January 2014 - 07:34 AM.

[Pinball999]

Thank you very much for this!!

[The Loafer]

Jam.Ma, yes I "get" it. . Good luck with the project, looking forward to see what you will come up it

[PinLover]

Wow, nice work with the cabinet, and your 3D modeling for FP (you got sucked in!). Hopefully you have time to play it.

I was wondering if you have/kept a list or spreadsheet of parts, where u ordered from, and possibly prices. Im surr you'd have some buyers remorse after seeing the overall pricetag, but if you enjoy it then where's the harm in splurging for yourself now and then! I'm just curious where you got all your components.

I may have a lead on some real, empty cabs (yay!). I was told i was a few months too late in quite a few others that got burned (RIP pin cabs). I dont have the space to build one from scratch.

Thanks again for your attention to detail. You really set the bar high for my build. No name or theme yet, but that may come if i can get that real cab.

[antropus]

I didn't quite have the time to make a video yet (family life), but here's the add on I built from scratch using mostly spare parts (the spinner and USB hub are brand new, UltraStick360s and buttons are not).

With 8 suction cups it's rock solid, firmly stuck to the glass and in terms of fun, I cannot even describe how cool this is. I mean, I thought about the horizontal angle killing the experience and all and even raised the back of the machine a bit, but man, within 10 seconds playing you totally forget about the angle, I swear! It looks so damn tight

I'm in fact playing more arcade games on the pinball cabinet then I do on my actual arcade machine. Everything is so handy, being able to play Future Pinball, Visual Pinball, Pinball FX2 and ARCADES in the same cabinet is just too cool. Worth all the effort and it just works.

 

I installed a single USB 3.0 port under the cabinet, symmetrical with the on/off button and I installed a little 3-port USB 3.0 hub inside of the very compact control panel. This way I only need one single cable coming out of it.

I normally keep the control panel on top of the backglass box so every time I feel like playing a little of everything I just need to stick it to the glass, plug the cable underneath the cabinet and go. Very simple and clean setup.

 

I hope you like it and if you decide to go for it, I assure you this is a TON of fun

 

For the emulator, I'm compiling my own no-nag+hi score+mamelayplus+UME64 emulator (which is the merge of Mame and Mess emulators). The mamelayplus diff is awesome. It adds this virtual bezel and marquee and it looks awesome. I tweaked it to add more resolution among other things and also created some Photoshop action scripts to generate the preview images automatically from regular snaps, re-scaling the images to HD and adding fake scanlines to them. I made other two action scripts to automatically generate missing marquees and backglass images from Wheel images. Now all Mame games got personalized images.

 

 

-Kris

PinLover,

 

I got a bunch of the receipts somewhere and my record on Amazon can tell a lot about where I got most stuff. I still have to find time to put a documentation detailing components. I got a box of spares because I was trying things out.

Some day I'll put that list up

 

-Kris

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Edited by antropus, 03 February 2014 - 07:53 PM.

[freneticamnesic]

Well, that's too epic for me. I quit.

 

But really, I desperately want to play Ikaruga on my cab but it's not emulated yet

 

Thanks for the pictures, and your MAME set up is really clever...

[PinLover]

That is an amazing little controller!  I was planning on playing MAME games on the 32" that will be in the back panel. I didn't think about doing it on the playfield TV. I have an X-Arcade dual stick that will sit nicely on the glass (i'll add suction cups). I will have to download MamelayPlus and try it out. I first want to get my pinball working though! Just got my GeForce 660 today! Now I can mess with things to start configuring the layouts on the 3 screens.

[Pinball999]

I love the pinball buttons on the controller's sides

[antropus]

Ha! They were not designed for pinball action though. The control panel is pretty compact, so I added the 1 and 2 player start buttons to the side of it

[lolo33]

Well, that's too epic for me. I quit.

 

But really, I desperately want to play Ikaruga on my cab but it's not emulated yet

 

Thanks for the pictures, and your MAME set up is really clever...

Gamecube version on Dolphin emulator work fine.

And btw, the Ikaruga PC version will be released on steam soon.

http://steamcommunit...s/?id=183195387

[vampirolatino2]

I love it, great pictures too!

[antropus]

Thanks a lot!

I'm back doing some artwork for it now. I think I'll finally have something more neutral for the kids. I'm trying to combine part of my two sons names, pinball and arcade elements into the artwork.

I'll post some ideas in a few days.

 

Cheers,

-Kris

[antropus]

Here's the progress on the artwork for startup/backglass. The artwork covering the cabinet will also be based on this concept, which is a merge between pinball and pixels.

 

Here's what I got so far:

 

Donkey Kong Mario 3D pixel art:

 

 

3D Pixel art from some of my favorite games:

 

The 3D logo in closeup:

 

Close-up on the rendered image (work in progress):

 

Full startup "table" image (work in progress):

 

-Kris

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Edited by antropus, 19 February 2014 - 10:35 AM.

[Pinball999]

Number one dad!

[antropus]

[vampirolatino2]

Great! #1 dad indeed!

[webby]

Hi antropus,

That is amazing. Couple of questions for you, if you wouldn't mind;

1. Whats the estimated spend of your pinball only build?

2. Have you found your fans enough or too much?

3.The Belkin power board, does this power on TV's if the PC is in the control socket?

 

Thanks,

One thing to improve your cab, if possible, see this: http://www.ebay.com....984.m1439.l2649

 

Webster

[BilboX]

Hi kris! Awesome cab here!

 

Just to know: have you already made the martians for AFM? I planned to do it but as you are faaaaaaaaaaar better (and I assume, faster too ),there is no need to do it twice .

 

Keep updating, this post is gorgeous...

[antropus]

Long hiatus (probably before another one). Stopping by briefly to share a new mod I just put together and to reply to some old questions

 

Webbly:

1. Whats the estimated spend of your pinball only build?

tough one. It was a lot of try and error so I spent much more than one would if they got the right pieces from the get go. I would put it around 6.5 grand at this point. It would cost between 4 to 5.5 grand if I knew what I was doing at first

 

2. Have you found your fans enough or too much?

At the beginning I thought I went over the top, but just recently my computer started to shutdown from overheating (???). I changed the CPU cooler and it's now all good, but at least it made clear that fans are never enough when comes to colling down a CPU and I believe it would be unusable if I didn't have all the fans I have when the cooler crapped on me. Besides, the blue glow on the back of the machine from those fans is an extra eye candy

 

3.The Belkin power board, does this power on TV's if the PC is in the control socket?

Correct, it "in theory" powers on the TVs... but, different TVs are more annoying than others. My solution was to get an IguanaWorks IR USB stick and run a script on windows start to send the power ON command to both TVs. It works pretty well.

 

BilboX,

don't trust me, man! Life is soooooooo busy these days and seeing your work I believe you can do a better job with your photo projecting techniques! I will have my models done one day, but no idea when

 

 

==============================================

 

So, for new, I saw some people talking about the 12v Chinese solenoids from eBay and I decided to buy them and give a spin. I was worried about them not being too powerful and how weak the sound would be... boy I was wrong!

I build a working prototype and from it I developed this little kit. The catch here is to make the back of the base completely hollow, so it can echo when installed against the side wall of the cabinet. It amplified the sound quite a lot in my case!

Then I thought about trying to get real, authentic old school mechanical sounds on the pop bumpers, so my solution was to get super cheap Chinese bike bells (90 cents each) from eBay and create the mod shown in the pictures.

It sounds AMAZING and it's LOUD as well. It helps that I'm actually running everything at around 16v instead of 12v (dunno how long everything will last ). Flippers, slingshots and pop bumpers sound pretty loud now and I'm convinced that this is the way to go. Contactors never did it for me. Too "plasticky" of a sound. Those sound louder and more authentic... and WAY cheaper as well. They also use  less space and are more pleasing looking as well. The cool thing is that now that I got the back of the base hollow, I can experiment filling it with different materials to get different sounds. For example, to differentiate between the sound of flipper and slingshots I'm planning to add a rubber pad on the hollow area of the flippers, or some thick piece foam or any other material that sound good, fix it back and done.

 

Enough talk, check out the little video showing how they sound like (the video doesn't actually do justice to how great they sound in real life):

 

Cheers,

-Kris

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Edited by antropus, 22 July 2014 - 09:21 PM.

[Pinball999]

Amazing idea Kris, makes me want to experiment on this!