The Simpsons Who Shot Mr. Burns Custom Homebrew Pinball Machine!

Cooltoy·video·41m 14s·analyzed·Sep 29, 2025

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Homebrew builder Marco discusses his two-year Simpsons pinball project, tech stack, and design process.

Summary

Cooltoy interviews Marco, a homebrew pinball builder, about his custom "The Simpsons: Who Shot Mr. Burns" pinball machine. Marco discusses his two-year build process, the Simpsons theme and rule set, playfield design iterations, and the technical hardware and software tools (Fast Pinball boards and Mission Pinball Framework) that enabled him to build the game without prior coding experience. The conversation covers electronics, MPF coding basics, and the community resources that made the project feasible.

Key Claims

Marco spent almost two years building the homebrew Simpsons pinball machine
high confidence · Marco states: 'I've been a pinball fanatic my whole life' and 'I spent the last two years building a pinball machine.' Doug confirms 'this took me two years almost to the day' when discussing the project scope.
Fast Pinball boards are used in Barrel of Fun machines
high confidence · Marco states: 'Fast Pinball. By the way, their their boards are in Barrel Barrel of Fun machines. They're the standard, if you will.'
Marco has approximately 920+ Simpsons call-outs recorded for flipper button presses in attract mode
high confidence · Marco states: 'I think I'm at 920 something call outs' and later references '900 whatever of them' when showing the MPF code for sound pools.
The game chooses a random suspect each game for the 'Who Shot Mr. Burns' wizard mode
high confidence · Marco explains: 'The game chooses one at random every game you play, so it's always different' regarding which suspect is the shooter in wizard mode.
Marco had no prior coding experience before this project except a high school class 20 years ago
high confidence · Marco states: 'I had no coding experience at all, except for like a class in high school 20 years ago.'
The Fast Pinball starter kit supports 8 solenoids and 32 switches with approximately 100+ lights
medium confidence · Marco states: 'You can wire I think uh well not I think I know you can wire eight solenoids and 32 switches and like a 100 lights maybe just with their starter kit. Probably more than 100 lights.'
Marco's game requires the Nuclear Power Plant rotator to move by only a millimeter to optimize playfield geometry
high confidence · Marco states: 'the other day I made a change. I I moved the big bash toy duck can just over a millimeter just to open this tower lane a little bit.'
The game went through 3 iterations across 2 pieces of plywood over approximately 1.5 years before the final design

Notable Quotes

“I spent the last two years building a pinball machine and um to the extent that I can encourage other people to try the project themselves especially get on board with some of these awesome tools we have um you know I want to be able to blast out that message.”
Marco@ 1:21 — Establishes Marco's motivation to evangelize homebrew pinball tools and community to other potential builders.
“if I'm going to do my first pinball homebrew pinball machine project I need a theme that's going to speak to me for two years. Like I can't get bored of the theme.”
Marco@ 2:10 — Explains his strategic choice of Simpsons 'Who Shot Mr. Burns' theme based on personal nostalgia and sustained interest.
“I was scared of the fact that I can't code it, you know, and I I wanted to do it myself. So, but thankfully uh thanks to the magic of these tools that I'm going to show you.”
Marco@ 11:58 — Highlights the critical role of accessible tooling (Fast Pinball, MPF) in enabling non-coders to build complex machines.
“Fast doesn't know I'm doing this. I just love the tool so much.”
Marco@ 18:02 — Indicates organic enthusiasm for Fast Pinball hardware, distinguishing from sponsored content.
“I felt like I was putting myself through, you know, a college program just reading their website because it talks about all the safety stuff like you need to know about grounding. Um, in in fast system, you have actually two different grounds.”
Marco@ 19:24 — Praises Fast Pinball's documentation quality and educational approach as critical to builder success.

Entities

MarcopersonDougpersonFast PinballcompanyMission Pinball Framework (MPF)productBarrel of FuncompanyThe Simpsons: Who Shot Mr. BurnsgameSimpsons Pinball PartygameData East Simpsons gamegame

Signals

?
community_signal: Evidence that homebrew pinball community has reached a level of technical accessibility enabling non-programmers and non-engineers to complete complex projects through improved tooling (Fast Pinball, MPF) and documentation.
high · Marco explicitly states he had no coding experience and basic electronics knowledge yet successfully built a game with 3+ modes, custom art, 900+ call-outs, and sophisticated event logic through these tools. He credits the documentation and tools explicitly.
?
design_philosophy: Strategic selection of deeply nostalgic, personally resonant IP/theme for multi-year homebrew projects to maintain creative momentum and avoid theme fatigue.
high · Marco explicitly chose Simpsons 'Who Shot Mr. Burns' because 'if I'm going to do my first pinball homebrew pinball machine project I need a theme that's going to speak to me for two years. Like I can't get bored of the theme.'
?
design_innovation: Novel rule design element: wizard mode randomly selects which Simpsons character is the 'shooter' each game, creating unique outcomes and replayability for the Who Shot Mr. Burns theme.
high · Marco explains: 'The game chooses one at random every game you play, so it's always different' for the wizard mode, contrasting with traditional pinball where wizard mode is static.
?
technology_signal: Fast Pinball modular hardware increasingly used as standard platform for homebrew builders, with confirmed adoption in at least one commercial manufacturer (Barrel of Fun).
high · Marco uses Fast Pinball boards; states 'their their boards are in Barrel Barrel of Fun machines. They're the standard, if you will.' Fast Pinball starter kit covers 8 solenoids, 32 switches, 100+ lights.

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

0:01

In today's video, I thought I would share with you a recent conversation I had with a gentleman by the name of Marco who I recently met. He's another YouTube creative, but he's also responsible for making an amazing Who Shot Mr. Burns homebrew pinball. So, we had a casual conversation where he went through the inner workings of what his pinball machine is all about, the rule set, uh, you know, some headaches and hurdles along the way of building and creating his own project from scratch. pull up a chair, get some popcorn, get a drink because it is a long video, but I'll put time stamps to relevant information down in the video description box below. And enjoy, guys. Hey. Yeah. Hey, Doug. Well, thanks for Hey. Yeah. Hey, Doug. Well, thanks for having me. First of all, I'm a big fan of your channel. Uh, my name is Marco and um uh I'm a fellow YouTuber, but I I'm an art YouTuber, but adjacent to that, I have been a pinball fanatic my whole life. And um uh we're just chatting before we hit record that in seventh grade my dad and I built a crappy pinball machine out of a a piece of uh plywood and a couple PVC pipes that we chopped up with a with a hacksaw. And uh there was no lights, no phys no electronics in it at all, but you could throw the ball around and stuff. And um I um thanks to the community of home brewers specifically you know fast pinball MPF it's kind of made my dream come true to the you know where I spent the last two years building a pinball machine and um to the extent that I can encourage other people to try the project themselves especially get on board with some of these awesome tools we have um you know I want to be able to blast out that message. That's why I'd like to That's why I'm here chatting with you, Doug. Is here. It's uh Simpsons. Specifically, Is here. It's uh Simpsons. Specifically, my favorite episode is It's Who Shot Mr. Burns. Yeah. And is here. So now in my game, Yeah. And is here. So now in my game, it's not Maggie. As you can see on the sidear, Maggie is innocent, kid of the 90s. So it was the first time kid of the 90s. So it was the first time I ever experienced a who done it in general. So I was so captivated and the episodes always stuck with me. I mean, you know, you know how nostalgia is. And um so I'm like when I was thinking of a project because the pinball machine this took me two years almost to the day and I thought well if I'm going to do my first pinball homebrew pinball machine project I need a theme that's going to speak to me for two years. Like I can't get bored of the theme. Um that's that would be terrible for for progress and inspiration. So I knew the Simpsons I'd have that and I also didn't want to copy Simpsons Pinball Party or the Data East one. Um, so you know, it's an original design and I thought, hey, let's theme it around who shot Mr. Burns. So, here's the here's the suspects. The game chooses one at random every game you play, so it's always different. And um, but that's just the wizard mode, you know, to get there, you got to progress through a bunch of like classic Simpsons, you got Flaming Mo, Nuclear Meltdown, Beer Baron, a bunch of uh classic songs are in here, and Treehouse of Horror. If you progress through those, you unlock wizard mode. And um there's other things too. There's like I mean I'll go through the play field here. Yeah. You uh a big part of the game is Yeah. You uh a big part of the game is collecting duffs which you spell. There's uh the duff target duf. You spell douff. Then you bash this giant big bash toy duff to collect it. And then you can go and to collect it. And then you can go and then you can go drink those duffs here in Mo. So is that a So is that a The more duffs you drink, obviously it's The more duffs you drink, obviously it's is that a scoop ejector in that left is that a scoop ejector in that left corner? That's right. Moses is a scoop. Yep. And That's right. Moses is a scoop. Yep. And the more duffs you drink, obviously it's points, but duffs duffs some drinking unlocks some of these moes. Like you unlock these major modes in different ways. Drinking duffs will unlock these two, beer baron and flaming moes, which makes sense because they're both connected to beer. Um, and uh, so you know, Beer Baron, any any Simpsons fan will probably remember Beer Baron. I know you're a Simpsons fan, Doug. You told me that. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So, here's the bowling alley and you So, here's the bowling alley and you collect bowling balls in beer baron mode, which you then bowl right into MO. Uh, you know, feeding all the alcoholics in there, mostly Barney. Uh, in Flaming Mo, you collect your your ingredients with the bottles, which are over here in the orbits. Um, and there's a bunch of other things that that you do in that mode to like create the Flaming Mo drink and then Mo steals it. You kind of play through the episode basically in in Beer Baron and Flaming Mo. Um, it's not just about the modes though. Like throughout the game, you know, the thing I like about pinball is like there are the big modes you want to achieve, but you can do, you know, when you're just in regular base mode, you can do things all the time. Like in my game, you can collect dust all the time and and you know, bash the bash toy to collect it. There's also the swear jar here. And the swear jar is also a little scoop that goes in there and it ejects into this loop down here. Um the swear jar gives you money. These are coins. There's money that you then can spend up at the quickie mart up here. Wow. Wow. And u the quickie mark and you can buy, And u the quickie mark and you can buy, you know, again classic Simpsons. You can buy the mul boowbo prostilius squishy and remember that hot dog that a food drops on the floor. Oh, absolutely. The hot dog and I was Oh, absolutely. The hot dog and I was just thinking of the the the mul is like rich in vitamin R or something like that. I was trying to remember vitamin R. vitamin R. Yeah, Yeah, you got it. You got it. Yeah. And so you got it. You got it. Yeah. And so yeah, so that's that's um Cookie Mart is not a mode. It's something that's always available throughout the game. Um you know there's this is Lisa is a mystery award. That's there's where you shoot the quickie mart is in there. Uh, one of my other favorite episodes is Frank Grimes where you know where it's called. Good old Grimy. Good old Grimy. Get old grimy. In fact, I screwed up. I Get old grimy. In fact, I screwed up. I should have called him Grimy, not Grimes. But, uh, anyway, that's too late to fix that. But anyway, if you uh get combos, there's like these combo lights around the playfield, the blue ones. If you shoot enough combos, you can drop this ramp. This ramp will come down and you can shoot up the ramp around. So, here's Homer's office. You can go up around his office. There's a there's a ramp back there. You go up around his office. And remember, Frank Grimes is next door to Homer's office. Yeah. Yeah. So, you bother Frank Grimes every time So, you bother Frank Grimes every time you shoot up there and it bothers him. And Frank Grimes is a is a meltdown multiball multiplier. So, in meltdown multiball, the amount of times you've bothered Frank Grimes adds to your jackpots in a big way because it's a pretty tough shot. Um, and uh, you know, so like there's, you know, I mean, there's well, probably a lot more in it, but there's that's a basic rundown of like the Simpsons nerd level we're talking about here. Well, just for theme integration, Well, just for theme integration, absolutely. I got to say tip of tip of the cap to you because you you've killed it with the little details, especially for Simpsons nerds out there that'll, you know, have a a fine appreciation for this bit of nostalgia, but I mean, and your layout looks pretty amazing as well. How many how many iterations do you think you've went through before you kind of like dialed in your your final layout here? Yeah. Oh, thanks. Well, I'll show you Yeah. Oh, thanks. Well, I'll show you the I have the So, it's the second piece of plywood, but it's my third iteration. This is the rough here. I'll just lay this on the floor. This was the This was what it looked like for the first year and a half. It was this first piece of plywood. You can see this was just acrylic paint. You see some basic art ideas back there at the bowling alley, right? Um and see all like the million holes. That's me like drilling something, putting it on, saying, "Whoops, that's in the wrong spot." Moving it, you know, move everything by millimeters. It's amazing how much that changes anyone geometry. Yeah. I mean, you think just I geometry. Yeah. I mean, you think just I mean, anybody that's ever played a bad pinball game, it's like, "Oh, why don't they make this game better?" It's like you'd be surprised just how little details can, you know, change the uh effectiveness of a shot. Absolutely. And I know Doug, you've Absolutely. And I know Doug, you've dialed in pinball machines, you've rethemed, you you know all about it. I was amazed. I had never before this project, like, you know, I I own machines here and I've like fixed these, but I've never I've never rethemed. I've never like um had to work with the nuts and bolts of the game like from the design standpoint. So I was amazed at how much just little changes really matters in how the game plays. Yeah. Even here like the other day I made a change. I I moved the big bash toy duck can just over a millimeter just to open this tower lane a little bit. Oh, the uh the nuclear power plant. This is on a motor so you can um I'll show you. I'll start the game maybe a bit later. rotate. Yeah, it looks like it rotates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's killer. that's killer. Yeah. Um I mean, I want to show you the Yeah. Um I mean, I want to show you the the hardware stuff and talk about like fast pinball. But here, I'll show you the the um power plant first. Let me just start a game here. Okay, go for it. Okay, go for it. So, here's the ball. Let me just plunge So, here's the ball. Let me just plunge it. That's a skill shot. Okay. So, if you go That's a skill shot. Okay. So, if you go up this tower lane, there's a switch in there. Uh that'll rotate the tower. Let's see if I can move it. Hang on.

9:11

Okay, there we go. Okay, the tower rotates and interfaces with there. If I put them all in there. Okay, Okay, so I'm in the tower and I can decide where it goes. I change it with the flipper buttons. I'm hitting the flipper buttons. I can tell it where to go. I can tell it where to go. For example, if I want to go down this For example, if I want to go down this big ramp here, I can hit the I can hit the flipper. Oh, so you got three different flipper. Oh, so you got three different options there you can choose. That's right. Yeah. Three different options. Uh, one, Yeah. Three different options. Uh, one, two, and three. That's a ball lock, by the way. My locks are not lit right now, so I can't choose that. But if I chose this one, it's a toxic waste. It gives me a bit of it's a toxic waste. It gives me a bit of an animation and then it'll kick out here. There we go. That comes down. Oh, and There we go. That comes down. Oh, and the ramp is down, too. Yeah. Very cool. And you were saying earlier Very cool. And you were saying earlier like before we hit record and everything like you came into this not really with any kind of experience with you know building homebrews like other than your childhood you know Tinker Toy project with dad like you're not a coder. You're not a guy that's built pinball machines. You're an artist by trade. That's right. Yeah. So, um, from from my That's right. Yeah. So, um, from from my experience and talking to the pinball community, the homebrew community, everyone who comes into the project has a few skill sets that they that they already are good at that they bring to the table, but nobody knows everything. Like, you have to do I mean, assuming you're doing it yourself. People do it with teams as well but you have to do you know design art coding uh which involves like the design involves like woodworking, metal working, you got to you know print stuff and you know but here it pl making plastics 3D printing engineering just everything. Yeah. Like and that's why to me pinball the Like and that's why to me pinball the ultimate toy. It's got everything like what what more could you want right? Um, so I came into the project, I'm a professional artist. That's what I had in my professional toolkit. So I knew I could do well, first of all, any of the visual artwork. I knew I could do that. Um, I could copy the style of Simpsons in terms of drawing, which I wanted to do. I knew I could do that. And because design is kind of adjacent to art, I was pretty confident, especially being a big pinball fan, that I could design a playfield. I was pretty confident, like, not that it was easy, but I I knew I could probably do that. Um, and it took some iteration, but what I had no idea how to do, I had some very basic electronics knowledge, like basic basic. So, I was scared of I was scared of that. And I was scared of coding. I had no coding experience at all, except for like a class in high school 20 years ago. Um, so I was like, oh man, you know, am I going to design this thing only to then run into the fact that I can't code it, you know, and I I wanted to do it myself. So, but thankfully uh thanks to the magic of these tools that I'm going to show you. Okay. So, um the company is is Fast Pinball that make all the hardware. Oh, wait. Let me show you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fast Pinball. You see their logo Yeah. Fast Pinball. You see their logo down here? Okay. Hang on a second. Yeah, you see it there. Uh Fast Pinball. By the way, their their Uh Fast Pinball. By the way, their their boards are in Barrel Barrel of Fun machines. They're the standard, if you will. They're the standard, if you will. Absolutely. Yeah. And so what I did when Absolutely. Yeah. And so what I did when I first started my game was you I bought their starter kit. Their starter kit gives you all the power stuff you need and a few of the playfield elements you need to drive some basic solenoids and some lights um and even some servo motors if you wanted. That'll get you started. You can wire I think uh well not I think I know you can wire eight solenoids and 32 switches and like a 100 lights maybe just with their starter kit. Probably more than 100 lights. So, I'll show you a couple things that that that you come that it comes with. This is the main power um they call it the power filter board. You have two power supplies just like standard modern pinball. 48 volts and a 12vt. If anyone has a CGC game, you have the exact same stuff going on there. Um although actually I think they use a Um although actually I think they use a transformer, but anyway, 48 volts and a 12vt. It all feeds into this guy here. Um if anyone has ever looked into their old Williams pills games or Stern games, you see these big capacitors. They they basically are a voltage reserve to to dump voltage um because solenoids take a lot of current and voltage drops as a result. So your your power all goes in here. It's all fused. This is all straight from fast. Those are the little fuses there for every circuit in the game. There's two circuits for uh high voltage solenoids and there's a lighting circuit, a CPU circuit, and um a backbox circuit. Yeah, it's very streamlined. Yeah, it's very streamlined. Yeah, very streamlined. is all there. Yeah, very streamlined. is all there. These This is straight from Fast. The fuses all come with it. You can obviously replace them if needed. I have, you know, you're going to blow a few You're going to blow some fuses when you make a when you make a game. That That's a good thing, though. Um anyway, so the power comes out uh through I think it's this guy. And this is what this would go in your back box. And the power comes out through these big headers here and down. You know, we're all familiar with that big cable going down into the playfield, right? That's what this guy is. Then what you then do under the playfield is you mount this guy. This is what they call the uh power what's it called? Uh sorry oh interchange the playfield interchange board. So all that power that I just showed comes down to the playfield and goes right in here. This would be under your playfield connects right in there. It's the same this is the same pins. It contains your 48 volts your 12 volts all in isolated circuits. And then um these serial cables, this is just RJ45, like the same as an Ethernet cable. Uh this talks to the CPU in the back box Uh this talks to the CPU in the back box and it talks to all the daughter boards, the individual IO boards, in-out boards that drive solenoids and lights. So all your communication goes through here. And then um these little headers here are just power 12volt power to power more boards such as piggyback chain. piggyback chain. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Uh such as this guy. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Uh such as this guy. So So in my Simpsons game, this is the first board that the computer sees. It's called the 3208. Again, it's all fast pinball. 32 means 32 switches and eight means eight uh solenoid drivers. And you can tell um you see how see how this guy's big and those are and these guys are all and those are and these guys are all small. Yeah. Yeah. The big one is um just bigger headers The big one is um just bigger headers because you're putting a lot more amperage through these connectors for the solenoids. So the big headers are for solenoids and uh it's all standard sizes. You know going dig key they have it all and even fast will ship you the connectors for all these. And then the small headers each of these headers can drive up to eight switches. So the way a switch is wired is so simple. Um uh let's see. Let me just get to the camera here. Okay. So let's just look at one of these switch guys here. Uh they're all numbered. The numbers are small but you can see the numbers there, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, they're all numbered for that's how you name them in your game. So, a switch has two wires, a hot and a ground return. That's it, right? So, you get the hot coming out of one of these headers numbered goes to your switch. And then coming back from your switch, each one of these headers has a ground on it. You can see the letter G at the end. There's actually two grounds right at the end there. You see the two G's? And that's how you You see the two G's? And that's how you go back to your ground. And of course under the playfield I have like a ground bus that because our grounds are all tied together with your switches. So I have a ground bus uh that then goes back into the board and that's it. You can wire a switch very quickly. Simple simple. Um the solenoids are the solenoids are likewise simple. Just a hot and a ground. Same thing. Now the solenoids are special though because as you know uh they're driven by transistors. So this being an eight solenoid board. There's your eight transistors that drive each solenoid. Those are all, you know, all done for you. You don't even have to think about it. Although, if you're like me, you fried a couple on your during the build. You'll get you'll get accustomed to You'll get you'll get accustomed to switching out some transistors here and there, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it helps that, you know, Yeah. Yeah. Um, it helps that, you know, if you if anyone's ever worked on, especially Yeah. Especially like a Williams, like a 90s or 80s, you know, uh, solid state, it's all the same uh, solid state, it's all the same stuff. It's just this is smaller now, you know, smaller, more, more refined. Yeah. smaller, more, more refined. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And as you can see, the um Yeah. Yeah. And as you can see, the um these boards have two connectors for the uh serial cables in just in out. So one goes in from the CPU and then well because that's the first in line. So the CPU sees that first and then it goes out and say here's another board. Here's you also get this one with the starter kit. This is not paid advertising by the way. Fast doesn't know I'm doing this. I just love the tool so much. Um this is a board that drives lights Um this is a board that drives lights and servos. These headers at the bottom uh are your headers for LEDs. Each of these headers can drive 32 individually addressable LEDs. So that's 32 times four in this board alone. U and then up here at the top there are U and then up here at the top there are drivers for servos. Four. You can drive four servos with this board. Uh and this is a board that also comes with a starter kit. And that's what I started with. Those were the two plus the power supplies which I I don't have right now. They're in they're in the game. Um I these are new boards. I bought for whenever the next build happens. I just stocked up on stuff. Um yeah, those are the tools you get. And with those tools and a bit of time, their documentation is amazing on fast site. Uh I I felt like, you know, as someone who had very basic electronics knowledge, like I knew what a hot in the ground did, like I I knew how to I could wire a light bulb, you know. Yeah. You had enough knowledge to be Yeah. You had enough knowledge to be dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but from there reading their website, it's I swear, um, I don't know who wrote it. There's a few fast guys, Dave or Eli, Aaron. Um, shout outs to all them. I'm not sure who wrote the documentation, but they did such an amazing job. I felt like I was putting myself through, you know, a college program just reading their website because it talks about all the safety stuff like you need to know about grounding. Um, in in fast system, you have actually two different grounds. One for the high power solenoids, one for the the LEDs. and they explain like here's what ground is if you don't know here's why you need two different grounds for your machine because there's going to be some voltage drops that could affect things but they all explain it all and and it's so richly documented that honestly I was amazed I'm like wow like these guys they really care about teaching not just providing the tools saying yeah here you go loser have fun no they want you to learn like how this all works and it's just was like I felt like I wasn't alone you know when I was building this. Yeah. The other tool that made it a reality for me was um MPF which is which stands for Mission Pinball Framework. Are you familiar Doug? Yeah. So like that's the the code side Yeah. So like that's the the code side of it if you will, right? Yeah. Yeah. So Mission Pinball Framework Yeah. Yeah. So Mission Pinball Framework is it's a game engine really. So I'm not I I'm not a coder. People ask me like oh when I tell them I programmed it, they're like, "Oh, you're a coder." I'm like, "No, I know how to code in MPF and that's it." Yeah. Very limited understanding of Yeah. Very limited understanding of coding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, MPF, it's based on Python. Python, So, MPF, it's based on Python. Python, like the real programmers who made MPF uh built it based on Python. They used uh built it based on Python. They used Python to create this framework. It's the mission pinball framework. What it does is a interface between me and Python. So, I can learn uh in more basic English. Like it's it feels like I'm writing English when I'm when I'm coding an MPF. Yes, there's a learning curve, but it's way less steep than learning Python. Um, they give you all the things that a pinball machine can do. Uh, firing solenoids, hitting switches, um, detecting all that stuff and then you can write the code based on what should happen with those things. And, uh, I can show you a very basic example of how that logic flows. So MPF is like a what I I call it like an English-based coding language that is the barrier between the middleman if you will between you and Python and then you know through the magic of uh coding or the magic of computers the computer reads it converts between the two and your pinball machine works.

22:41

so I'll show you how like how simple it was to do that okay I'm going to go into MPF now And I'll show you. So I think like viewers will appreciate this because uh everyone gets including me gets terrified by the coding part. Uh share and yep this one. Share. Sweet. Uh share and yep this one. Share. Sweet. Okay. Can you see my screen? Yes sir. Yes sir. Okay. So this is MPF. This is the land Okay. So this is MPF. This is the land of coding which scared the pants off me two years ago and now it's it's really not that bad. Um, although because I can tell you like although because I can tell you like from a person that was in your situation two years ago, like I have no coding experience other than making like, you know, some basic HTML based websites in the early 2000s. Like to me, this looks like the Matrix, you know, it did to me, too. Yep. But but check it did to me, too. Yep. But but check out how simple they've made this. All right. Um, I can So, on the left, I have like chapters. You can think of them as chapters of code, little snippets of code that control different things. So, like here's attract mode, for example. Uh, but but I also have attracted sound. So, here are the sounds in my attract mode. Remember I was saying how I've got almost a thousand call outs just in attract mode when you hit a flipper button. So, I saved all those as wave files. And here's how you you program them. It's something called over here. It's called sound pools like a you know pool that of sound that it draws from. And I called it flipper call outs. And uh the type is they they force uh they're done randomly. Uh, force all means it it goes through all of them. You can't get any repeats. And like you just list the wave files. These are all the wave files of call outlets I have. Um, there's all 900 whatever of them. I can keep going going going. Good lord. Good lord. Yeah, it was a Yeah, it was a I mean it looks scary, but I mean to I mean it looks scary, but I mean to your point that's actually like as far as like just the nesting of you know the code, it's very straightforward. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll show you how Yeah, absolutely. And I'll show you how they get called now. So here's that's me defining the sounds, right? So the game says, "Okay, I got a pool of sounds here. How do you want me to call them?" Well, like how do you want me to play them? Well, in my attract mode, you have um all these little modules. Like, for example, here's light player. Well, it's obvious what that does. It makes lights go. Um there's one called sound player, which let me just find it. Um sound player down here. This is called sound player. Well, it plays sounds obviously. So, um here's the command that does it. flipper pressed, which is a um an event that happens when when you push the flipper buttons. I've you can tell MPF what line of text, it's called an event, what event to to say. I I've told MPF when I push a flipper button, you say uh flipper pressed. So, when MPF sees flipper pressed, it will uh it says right here, flipper call outs, which is what my sound pool was named, flipper call outs. It will play from the flipper call outs. I've told it to play loops zero volume one and then there's an event when it's stopped. So when the sound stops MPF will say call out finished. Um I use call out finished so that I so you can't overlap sounds. So if you're if you're rapid firing your flipper buttons, MPF will not play another sound until it sees call out finished. So that's another use for an event. MPF is based on events. events are just strings of text that some are predefined in MPF. Like for example, a predefined one would be for your switches, say a flipper button. Let's say you call your flipper button uh left flipper. Left flipper. So automatically in MPF when you push your your left flipper, MPF will post an event called left flipper active. Makes sense, right? And also when you let go, it'll say left flipper inactive. Those are events that you can tag anything onto. So at any point in your game, you want the left flipper to do something like besides flip the flipper, you want it to play a sound, you want it to rotate a tower, you just hook on code. Uh you say look for this left flipper active and hook on your code. In this case for flipper press, which is programmed to left flipper active in my case, I am telling it to play flipper call outs. Um, and it's uh it's really like that's that's how MPF is across the board. It's an event that happens that you then connect code to. Now, there is definitely complexity in pinball. Like it's events are happening at an unpredictable rate, unpredictable order. So, so the challenging part for for me is someone who is brand new to this coding stuff two years ago who is I feel like I'm pretty comfortable now with at least with MPF. The hard part is not actually writing the code. It's like being able to anticipate all the trying to keep things organized and trying to keep things organized and cohesive and you know making sense of the chaos if you will. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. cuz uh you know my Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. cuz uh you know my first test plays were just were were just you know gong shows like you know uh sounds would overlap each other like call outs would just overlap overlap each other um modes would start and you know another mode like if I was starting one major mode my machine would also start some other mode and it's like well those should not be able to start at the same time you know stuff like that um and you can code all you know you can um and you can code all you know you can code all those provisions in like you can so every um mode like a mode in MPF is like these chapters of code that I was talking about. So for example um for example uh remember about spelling duff I showed you earlier about spelling duff. Let me just go to my spell duff mode. So this spell duff one I've called it So this spell duff one I've called it because there's different stages of spelling duff in my game. When you start a game you start spell When you start a game you start spell duff one. Whenever you have a mode you you tell it you tell mpf at the top when to start it. Um so for for in my game you can always spell duff. That's a main stay of the game. So in my game um when mode see it says here mode skill shot started when my skill shot is started which is right at the beginning of your ball. It also starts uh spell duff and then this uh all of this stuff down here. This is all the code that is spell duff looks at. So here you have your shots. I'll just go through one last thing here. Shots. Okay. Pinball has a lot of shots. So you a shot needs a switch. Well first of all shot a shot needs a name. Duff D begin I called it because it's the beginning of my spelling duff. So and it's the letter D. This is the Duff D target. Okay. Okay. Begin because I I just call it that Begin because I I just call it that because it's the beginning of the game. It So you need a switch. Well, the switch is S stuff D. Switch DUD. I I named my switch SUD. Um this tells you the LED. This tells you which light it is. It's L Duft D for light du. My switches are always S underscore. or my lights are always L underscore. Uh the color lime just one of the pre-programmed color names. You could use all hex codes if you want. You know, it's it's addressable RGB. You can do whatever you want. I just you use lime as this one. And then um the profile is um is the the order of of what happens to the shot. So my profile is up here in shot profiles. I have two states of the shot. The first state is flashing. The target the light is flashing means you know hit me. And then when you hit it, it's on. And those are the two states of this shot. So this shot knows to flash L duftd. And it knows when it starts, it should be flashing. And when it's hit, it should be on. Okay. And you can change all that. You can And you can change all that. You can have your shot start off or you can have it start on and then flashing. Whatever you want. You you tell it what the order is. It's all here. It's all like hopefully you can see how like English-based this all is. Yeah. It's not as scary like I mean it's Yeah. It's not as scary like I mean it's still lines and lines of code but I mean as far as its understanding and rationale um it's very straightforward as far as you know your actions your your your tableabling and your nesting of data if you will. Um yeah Um yeah I got to ask you how many times uh were I got to ask you how many times uh were you you know misplacing a letter or a comma that you were bouncing your head off you know against the wall trying to figure out what what was going on. How many times you run into that? Dude, I've wasted hours of my life, days of my life banging my head against that wall being like, "Why won't you run?" Um, that's just me being an amateur. Um, but it's funny now. So, fast, uh, sorry, MPF gives you good error logs, like when you have an error, it it tries its best to say, "Hey, you've got an error with this line." Sometimes though, it'll give you more of a generic message, and those are the ones where you bang your head cuz you're like, "Why are you crashing?" Yeah, that could be a multitude of Yeah, that could be a multitude of things. What? What do you mean? Be more specific. Yeah. But I tell you, after I'd say after But I tell you, after I'd say after about a year, cuz I I was I coded my machine over two years. Like I I coded while I made it. And I should interject right there. You can um I can show you here. Uh I can drag this onto my screen. You You can test your game virtually. So Oh, that's handy. Oh, that's handy. See this See this picture here? See this See this picture here? Yeah. Yeah. This is my playfield with all your This is my playfield with all your lights. Lights. Yeah. Lights. Yeah. Yeah. Lights and switches mapped out. Yeah. Lights and switches mapped out. This is when I before I had the art on there. It's just this flat piece of plywood there. Yeah. I was with So, this is a physical Yeah. I was with So, this is a physical picture that you've uploaded and then you've you know put your lights in correspondence where That's awesome. Yeah. So, here I'll show you. I can I'll Yeah. So, here I'll show you. I can I'll I'll run a virtual game right now. This is what I also wanted to show uh to viewers who are interested in this stuff. So, I'm running my game virtually. Here's the uh here's the intro screen. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. Simpsons intro which you saw a minute Simpsons intro which you saw a minute ago in the real thing. Yeah. Yeah. And if you look at my game, you see the And if you look at my game, you see the lights and stuff. Uhhuh. It's real exactly what my machine Uhhuh. It's real exactly what my machine was doing because it's the same code. It's the exact same code from one from this computer to my game. I just connect the two, right? Uh and upload code from here to there. Uh so, for example, like I'll show you the duff thing. So, let let me start a game here. Just got to credit it up here.

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Okay. So, let me start a game. I'm just pushing S for start. Okay. Now, let me just turn on the Okay. Now, let me just turn on the volume. Okay. You're not going to see a ball. This is not a simulator. Yeah. It's not virtual pinball or Yeah. It's not virtual pinball or anything like that. Yeah. The ball is my mouse. Okay. You can see The ball is my mouse. Okay. You can see my mouse. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, remember I just showed you the Okay. So, remember I just showed you the duff shots that are flashing. There they are. Right there. Right. The purple ones. Duf. Okay. Duf. Okay. Let me plunge a ball. Okay. So, I'm in a Let me plunge a ball. Okay. So, I'm in a game right now. I pushed You didn't see it. I pushed P to plunge the ball. And the game thinks there's a ball in there now. So, to test this, these are my duff targets. I can push this and there's the D. I can push this is the F. There's the F. So it's like you can see There's the F. So it's like you can see your code working just on your computer and I'm just using my mouse as the ball. So there's the U and I'll hit this other F target. So now I've spelled Duff. There's the giant duff can. Uh I'm There's the giant duff can. Uh I'm circling with my mouse there and there's the light to indicate that it's lit. I can hit it and I collect a duff. Um and now you see remember where Mo was? There's Mo that I'm circling there. You can see that it's lit. I can I have it mapped to my keyboard. I I can I have it mapped to my keyboard. I push M to go into Moe's. So I push M and like I'm drinking a beer at Mo now. Um so all the code I'll exit out of this now. Um it it I had the sound turned down, but it's playing all the sound. It's doing all this the coding. It's as if it were running a real machine. So you could So I was coding my game during the build before I even had anything wired up. I could play various versions of my game just here on my computer. I'm at my desktop top computer right now and um I was like I remember being so and um I was like I remember being so scared. I'm like I I was spending hours and hours on my virtual code and it would and you know things would would work virtually and I'm like oh my gosh when I port this over to my game it's not going to work. Like some random crap is not going to work. And but it did like I'm like oh like you know there were a couple hiccups. So, I'm not saying I just plugged in the thing and it worked, but with, you know, when I was ready to put this code on my physical game, I don't know, it took me a couple of like iterations of like tweaking thing here and there uh for it to recognize the hardware, but like the code was working and it it just worked. And that's not testament to me. That's testament to like these these tools that you know, MPF talks to to fast and it all just works. And I was like, this is it's a dream come true that these tools are available. Um, I just wanted to bring it around to that like how how friendly it all is. You know, to the extent a pinball machine making a machine can be friendly, you know, all the nuts and bolts and ins and outs and it it from a like a time-saving perspective. from a like a time-saving perspective. Like to me, this is just a massive labor savings and being able to like truly test anything real time before you actually have to put it in the machine. Because you didn't have this ability, you would literally be messing with the code, upload it, put it in the machine. Oh crap, I found something wrong back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, which would just exponentially increase your your build, your coding, all that, you know, time spent on this machine. Whereas you could test it uh debug it real time with, like I said, you got your your scoring display, you got your lighting animations, you got everything represented virtually, uh to where you wouldn't need to put it uh to where you wouldn't need to put it over to the game until you're, you know, ready to go. That's awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It it's Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It it's it's it's so cool. So, even to this day, even though I've got my real machine there, when I write code, it's it's here. I test it here. And then when I'm done, I just copy and paste it. I just have virtual connection to my my game over there because it's just running on a PC, my actual pinball machine, just a little PC in there, and I just remote connect and copy and paste the code and and there you go. Yeah, cuz I you know, with coding, you might write a rule that that influences a physical decision or or vice versa, right? that happened all the time on this game. And um anyway, that it was a Yeah, it was a it was a fun process. I I definitely wasted a not wasted, but my you know, I work from home just like you and like there were days where like I just didn't work on my job. I was doing the pinball. Yeah. You're just head down. You're Yeah. You're just head down. You're like, I got to get this figured out. I want to do this. Yeah. You're just you, you know, get the blinders on. You get narrow-minded and focused. For sure. Yeah. So, I'm finally starting to get my Yeah. So, I'm finally starting to get my life back now that the machine is uh quote unquote done. So you are you last are you enjoying it now? Like it it was a labor of love obviously, but now that it's quote unquote, you know, at a finishing point, not necessarily done, but you know, are you able to enjoy it for what it is? Yeah. You know, that's a good question. Yeah. You know, that's a good question. I do play it. I do play it and enjoy it. Um it's just one of those things like if uh because I I I made it and I know every little part, it's hard for me to enjoy it the same way I enjoy like my Williams games I have over there. Um, what I really enjoy though is watching other people play it. Yeah. Yeah. Because because they are having a Because because they are having a pinball experience for the first time. Yeah. Yeah. And and for them it's a pinball Yeah. And and for them it's a pinball machine. For me it's a pinball machine too, but I know every little part of it. So it's it's hard to to It's like it doesn't have that mystique. it doesn't have that mystique. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um, but I do play Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um, but I do play it now. Every now and then I I fire up a game and and I play it as if I were just new to the to the table to the machine. And uh I do have fun with it. Yeah. But it it is a different kind of relationship that you have to your own homebrew. Nice. Nice. So, is there another one in Nice. Nice. So, is there another one in the works? Do you have, you know, because that's that's the thing with pinball machines and collectors. Like you buy one pinball machine and then all of a sudden it starts growing. I got to assume it's probably the same kind of thing with this one. Are you are you you already got other things cooking in your brain as far as future ideas or it's like, hey, I'm gonna take a a year hiatus and I don't want to look at think about anything for a while. Um, yeah. So, yes, absolutely. That's what actually why I have all these boards is because there will be another one. Um, I'm pretty sure I know what it's going to be. I'm debating between two different ideas right now. Um, and uh I'm but I'm in no rush to to start it. I I want to just kind of meditate on the idea. Let let things happen in in slow motion time while I finish the code on on Simpsons. I definitely don't want to start a new project before fully fully finishing the other one. And by the way, the only thing that needs to be done on Simpsons is the wizard mode. The wizard mode is in in production. Everything else where everything else is done. Nice. And I mean, Nice. And I mean, so once I got wizard mode, then I'm so once I got wizard mode, then I'm done. Done. Yeah, I was about to say you truly are Yeah, I was about to say you truly are done. And uh you can actually, you know, enjoy the fruits of your labor for sure. And that that's those are the, you know, testimonials that truly make it feel like, okay, this is this is something I can get it down with. So, I I may may have to start uh one of one of my projects this winter when, you know, I'm stuck indoors and, you know, not really going anywhere. That that would be a perfect winter project to kickstart, if you will. Yeah, do it, man. And, uh, I, like I Yeah, do it, man. And, uh, I, like I said, I can't wait to see what you do. And, and hey, if you have any questions, hit me. I I I'll be able to answer them at this point. Been through it now. So, absolutely. And like you said, there's absolutely. And like you said, there's there's a community out there of like-minded people. And that's that's one thing I I've noticed, especi specifically in the pinball world, there's a lot of people out there willing and able to help others in need. Um because we all know what it's like to waste a weekend Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. trying to track down something that trying to track down something that doesn't work. And it sometimes, more often than not, it's a simple fix, something that we're overlooking. And sometimes we just need that that clarity, that other perspective of somebody just, you know, that it's not staring at it to say, "Hey, did you think of this? Have you tried this?" this and you go. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, that will Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, that will happen. But everyone's there to help. I will do a gameplay video for my YouTube channel. Um, probably not for another couple months, though. I'm on vacation all of October, but I'll be circling back and getting that video done. But, um, other than that, I'll be trying to get it out to shows next year, probably. Awesome. Awesome. Looking forward to Awesome. Awesome. Looking forward to playing it. And like I said, thanks again for teaching us more about MPF and just the fast system and how you were able to put together your Simpsons pinball machine. Man, it's it's it's awesome. Well, thank you, Doug. I appreciate you Well, thank you, Doug. I appreciate you having me on and sharing, you know, your audience and outreach with me in the pinball world. I appreciate it, man. And I love your channel. Love what you do. And keep the enthusiasm going. I I love your stuff. Ah, thank you, man. I appreciate it. All Ah, thank you, man. I appreciate it. All right, man. Marco, thank you. All right. Take care.