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Episode 420 - Multi at Allentown, Development changes, 1938 Bally Arcade

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·20m 27s·analyzed·Apr 25, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.024

TL;DR

MultiBingo development continues with coin flash animations and bug fixes ahead of Allentown show debut.

Summary

Nick Baldridge discusses extensive development work on MultiBingo ahead of its debut at the Allentown pinball show (May 3-5), including detailed coin flash animations for Bally bingo games, rollover light programming, bug fixes, and game rule refinements. He also covers restoration work on a Gottlieb Sure Shot and explores the 1938 Bally Valley Arcade flipperless game as part of his "Year of Flipperless" series.

Key Claims

  • MultiBingo will be at Allentown show on May 5th only, with Nick Baldridge driving up Friday night and present all day Saturday

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge, opening segment, event announcement

  • Majority of Bally coin flash animations are now completed, with documentation from Phil Hooper enabling implementation of accurate animations

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge describing coin flash animation work

  • Bally spotting discs contain 50 positions with two (sometimes three) wiper fingers, creating coin flash patterns during insertion

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge explaining technical mechanics of spotting disc animation

  • Early Bally games had reversed rollover positions (yellow on right, red on left) compared to later standard (yellow left, red right)

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge describing historical rollover configuration differences around 1953

  • PyProc Game default pulse time of 30 milliseconds was insufficient; extended to 85 milliseconds for proper 6.3 volt bulb flash on 5 volt power

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge technical troubleshooting of rollover lamp flashing

  • Pick-a-play button was causing double knockoffs of replays; fixed by changing order and function of button logic

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge describing bug fix for pick-a-play games

  • 1938 Valley Arcade featured 12 drop targets on backglass (6 ducks top, 6 rabbits bottom) with novel out-ball return feature allowing replay of all balls

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge analyzing 1938 Bally flipperless game

  • Valley Arcade cabinet appears to have yellow, red, and white striping (possibly red, gold, white with touch of blue) based on period flyers

    medium confidence · Nick Baldridge describing cabinet aesthetics from archival flyer

Notable Quotes

  • “I have been working like a madman trying to make this as wonderful as possible for Allentown, similar to the pains that I go through for York.”

    Nick Baldridge @ Opening — Shows dedication to show preparation and consistency across major pinball festivals

  • “I'm doing these in alphabetical order rather than chronological. And the reason for that is so I can keep track of what I have left to do.”

    Nick Baldridge @ Early development discussion — Reveals project organization methodology using GitHub issue tracker for homebrew game development

  • “So you're talking about a disc that has, I don't recall off the top of my head, I think it's eight independent rows of rivets, each of which containing 50 rivets.”

    Nick Baldridge @ Spotting disc discussion — Technical detail about complexity of electromechanical animation documentation (400 individual rivets)

  • “There's nothing more frustrating than kind of losing a replay, which is what would happen.”

    Nick Baldridge @ Pick-a-play button bug discussion — Illustrates player experience issues that drove bug fixes

  • “I love the alternating rollover feature. I think it's neat. It makes for a bit more of a skill type shot than the standard time tree.”

    Nick Baldridge @ Alternating rollover discussion — Design philosophy appreciation for early Bally innovation and skill differentiation

  • “Seeing things disappear from the back glass is kind of a neat thing and something that you don't expect.”

    Nick Baldridge @ Valley Arcade analysis — Commentary on spectator appeal and novelty value of backglass animation mechanics

Entities

Nick BaldridgepersonPhil HooperpersonMultiBingoproductAllentown Pinball ShoweventYork Pinball ShoweventBallycompanyGottliebcompanyValley Arcadeproduct

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: MultiBingo making first appearance at Allentown pinball show on May 5th after extensive development work

    high · Nick Baldridge: 'Allentown is less than two weeks away... I will be there with the Multibingo on May the 5th only' and 'this is the first year the multi will be there'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Reconstruction of historically accurate coin flash animations for Bally bingo games using frame-by-frame video analysis and original documentation

    high · Detailed explanation of wire-for-wire and rivet-for-rivet spotting disc animation work, including video frame analysis for games lacking documentation

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Methodical, iterative homebrew machine development using GitHub issue tracking, chronological/alphabetical organization, and systematic bug testing

    high · Nick Baldridge: 'I've opened up an issue on GitHub that's like a bug tracker and have written down the games that still require coin flash animation'

  • ?

    technology_signal: PyProc Game framework's 30ms default pulse time insufficient for proper electromechanical lamp simulation; extended to 85ms for accurate results

    high · Technical troubleshooting discussion of pulse timing and 6.3 volt bulb behavior with 5 volt power supply

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Deep commitment to accurate historical reproduction of electromechanical game mechanics and animation effects in homebrew recreation

    high · Extensive work on period-accurate coin flash animations, rollover configurations, and feature behavior spanning 70+ Bally games

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.061

0:00
what's that sound it's for amusement only the em and bingo pinball podcast welcome back to for amusement only this is nick baldridge allentown is less than two weeks away it starts next thursday may the third and runs through may the fifth i will be there with the Multibingo on May the 5th only. I'm driving up Friday night and will be there all day Saturday.
0:33
If you are planning on attending Allentown, let me know. Come say hello, come play the Multibingo, and let me know what you think. I have been working like a madman trying to make this as wonderful as possible for Allentown, similar to the pains that I go through for York. It's always worth it and always a lot of fun. So let's dive into exactly what I've been doing and what's been taking up my time here. I had mentioned I'd been working on coin flash animations for all the games. I have the majority of Bally's completed now. There are games where documentation is still coming to light, and thanks to Phil Hooper for quick documentation on Spotlight, which I need to implement now. But the ones with documentation, most of those have been completed. So the majority of games that you attempt on the multi will now have accurate coin flash animation. Part of that is essentially erasing and redrawing, part of the back glass for each movement of each wiper on the spotting disc, but also drawing the illuminated portion as well when it is supposed to be illuminated. So what I'm doing is actually going wire for wire and rivet for rivet on the spotting disc, which is 50 positions, and typically there are two wiper fingers, sometimes three, which handle the lighting that happens when you insert a coin. I call this the coin flash, for lack of a better term. And basically, you drop in the coin, that spotting disk turns, and as it turns, a pattern emerges, and you'll start to notice that it blinks the odds and the features in a particular way. There seem to be two different methods that Bally used, at least. One is kind of a sequential or sweep method. A lot of the older games use this with single odds. You know, the entire card scores in one way. A lot of those games, the animation just kind of sweeps across the entire back glass. It looks really cool.
Sure Shot
product
For Amusement Only Podcastorganization
Coney Islandproduct
Spotlightproduct
PyProc Gameproduct
  • ?

    community_signal: Request for community collaboration in documenting obscure electromechanical game components (spotting disc rivets); high barrier to participation

    medium · Nick Baldridge: 'if anybody feels like doing that... it's a huge ask' regarding spotting disc documentation for games like Palm Springs and Beach Club

  • ?

    historical_signal: Ongoing documentary-style series exploring pre-flipper and early flipper pinball machines; 1938 Valley Arcade featured as innovative design example

    medium · Dedicated segment analyzing 1938 Valley Arcade's novel backglass animation, out-ball return, and cabinet design as part of 'Year of Flipperless' series

  • ?

    operational_signal: Routine restoration and maintenance of vintage electromechanical games (Gottlieb Sure Shot) requiring cleaning, tuning, and playfield optimization

    medium · Nick Baldridge: 'I did some work on a Gottlieb Sure shot... it just needed some general cleaning, a little bit of tuning, and it was good to go'

  • ?

    event_signal: Intensive preparation cycle for pinball festival exhibitions (Allentown, York) requiring significant lead time and iterative refinement

    high · Nick Baldridge: 'I have been working like a madman trying to make this as wonderful as possible for Allentown, similar to the pains that I go through for York. It's always worth it and always a lot of fun.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Designer appreciation for alternating rollover features in early Bally games as providing superior skill-based gameplay compared to static targeting

    medium · Nick Baldridge: 'I love the alternating rollover feature. I think it's neat. It makes for a bit more of a skill type shot than the standard time tree'

    • 3:03
    Later games used kind of a spotlight effect. So there are so many features on the later games that it's impractical for them to really sweep across. in that same way and be limited to 50, 100, or even 150 rivets worth of animation, when you're talking over 100 bulbs just for the features, you're going to be unlikely to be able to match that with a simple single disc system. So what they did is they pick and chose. They found an appropriate combination that gave you the illusion that it was kind of highlighting a lot on the back glass, but in reality it's only highlighting those 50, 100, or 150 different things. And it does them in a particular order and cadence. So it might highlight the same set of odds in the yellow on a particular game five times, or it might only highlight it twice. And it's all dependent on the other features in that game and how they differed from the game before. So I'm doing these in alphabetical order. rather than chronological.
    4:12
    And the reason for that is so I can keep track of what I have left to do. I've opened up an issue on GitHub that's like a bug tracker and have written down the games that still require coin flash animation and those that require improvement. So I had rudimentary coin flash animation for extra balls on, for example, Coney Island. since then I've gone and looked at YouTube videos and rather than requiring somebody to disassemble and document their extra ball scan disc which is kind of the precursor to the spotting disc I can look at those YouTube videos and watch frame by frame and figure out exactly where those rivets might be or at least a close enough guess that it be indistinguishable from the real thing I had to do that on two other games as well and likely a third But rather than that I prefer using the documentation The only problem is getting that documentation is a big ask. Most of the flash animation rivets are deep into that disc, and you're talking about a disc that has, I don't recall off the top of my head, I think it's eight independent rows of rivets, each of which containing 50 rivets. So, you know, that's a, that's a lot for somebody to dig through. And I, I have only asked one person to do that who was planning on doing it anyway. And it's, it's a huge, it's a huge ask. So if anybody feels like doing that. For some games, there are some that still require that, and they have the game apart or whatever. A lot of the early games, for example, Palm Springs, there is no documentation for the spotting disc. Beach Club, same deal. With Beach Club, I can probably use most of the spotting disc from Hi-Fi, so I can make an educated guess there after looking at a video, because there's only, I think, two things that highlight one of the features on Hi-Fi that are not on Beach Club.
    6:33
    So those kinds of things. It's very challenging and very tedious to get everything lined up appropriately as it was to get it lined up appropriately just to show the feature has been enabled. But doing it during animation is especially interesting because you have to blank out the exact same spot. So you can run into animation bugs. Like, for example, I have a photo, for lack of a better term, of the odds in one of these single scoring games, like, say, Gate Time. And as the odds sweep across, one set of odds might be larger than its neighbor, or the neighbor might extend into the same box that would contain those odds.
    7:26
    I haven't quite thought of a good solution for that. It's really pronounced in games like Variety, where you have a lot of the odds which kind of lean over each other.
    7:37
    I do have appropriate animation in Variety, but there's just that little bug or nuance that I need to figure out a better solution for, and I'm sure there is something.
    7:52
    Another interesting one would be kind of mid-range 20-hole games. These are the Mystic Lines games, which came out in the 60s, and some of the middle ones had a feature where you could double or triple your scores in a particular color. and based on that, which one is highlighted, it can cause a problem, a similar problem, with the doubled or tripled colors and it blanking out one that's already lit.
    8:26
    So again, I've just got to figure out a good workaround for that. I can probably blit the double or triple back quickly during that flash, but I haven't programmed that in yet. So the thing I've been working on this weekend and this week has been to add the flash animations for the rollover lights. Now the rollover lights flash in time with the selection feature disk. When the spotting disk flashes, say the red star or the yellow star on the back glass, the rollover lamps on most games flash as well. And I'm programming those. I had those built in previously, but unfortunately there was a problem. PyProc Game uses a pulse time of 30 milliseconds by default, and so I was just calling pulse and hoping that it lit up. And it would light up, but only very briefly. So instead what I've done is extended that pulse time to 85 milliseconds, which is just enough using the 5 volts that I'm using to power this 6.3 volt bulb. And I am seeing an accurate flash with that. Now, the other thing that I tweaked is that early Bally games had reversed their rollovers. So always on the later games, your yellow rollover is on the left and your red rollover is on the right. Well, in games that are around, again, like 53, so somewhere in that area and before the rollovers were reversed So yellow was on the right and red was on the left When I made all the rules for every game I did go in chronological order and so I had initially named those lamps as yellow and red, but backwards, which has always bugged me a bit. So I've taken the time to go ahead and correct that issue, which really helps when I'm looking at the physical game and trying to troubleshoot. If I'm calling the red roll over yellow and the yellow roll over red, it's just a mind bender if there's a problem.
    10:48
    So one of the issues that I've had is that if you call enable on a lamp and then you call pulse on the same lamp, it will turn that lamp off. Seems pretty obvious, and it is. In fact, anywhere where that was happening was a bug. So I've had to go through and kind of correct some small issues like that in order to get that accurate flash. The other thing is that on some games, the rollovers were actually lighting up before the feature that allowed you to move numbers like the magic lines or magic squares, magic screen, those kind of things. So I'm just going through and correcting those. I'm in the Fs right now of going through all the games and so far so good. Another thing I did was to change the order and function of pick a play buttons. So the order was a problem because I was getting a single button press that would actually knock off two replays for each press of that button. That was kind of annoying, because if you had just put together a winner, there's nothing more frustrating than kind of losing a replay, which is what would happen. So I changed it so that it would light the panel last if there were no replays on the register or the game wasn't in free play. in that way it prevents it from doing a double knock basically because the game is a lot faster than a human the other thing that i've done is change the function of the pick a play button so on pick a play games if you are at the end of a game or in the middle of a game and you press one of the pick a play buttons it will function as the red button i had disabled this until i had my drawer built and forgot to re-enable it. So basically I had to re-enable it, but then I had to bug test everything because there's nothing more frustrating than jumping into a game and realizing that you can't actually play it. So aside from that, various bug fixes, there was a scoring problem on big time. There was a scoring problem on bounty. Bounty is exceptional because it has an extra position that the OK game can go into, the orange section can slide into, and this extra position was causing a problem on the straight bingo portion of the card. That would not score. I put together this awesome yellow winner in line right beside the orange section and got nothing. That's another situation where there are fewer things more frustrating than that.
    13:44
    So, got that taken care of. Little things like that, or big, depending on how you look at it. And things are shaping up very nicely. Tonight I should have about another third of the games done, I hope. I'm about to hit a lot of the games with alternating rollovers. Those flash as you play for coin, but they also change back and forth.
    14:07
    This is a bit of a problem, because you have that problem with enable and then pulse. so what I may end up having to do on those and this may even be accurate once you have the rollovers they may no longer flash they may just appear and I can certainly do that in the same way games like Key West the entire Miss America series those are the only ones that come to mind off the top of my head but those are the types of games that are impacted. I love the alternating rollover feature. I think it's neat. It makes for a bit more of a skill type shot than the standard time tree.
    14:56
    On the time tree, the yellow star is always enabled at a certain position. The red star is always enabled at a certain position. But you can really choose with extra coin which side you want to go for and you get the same reward on these alternating games. Of course, the disadvantage is that you don't have the fully extended time tree like these later games but small price to pay for something that pretty cool So aside from that what else is going on Really that the big deal I did some work on a Gottlieb Sure shot a few weeks ago. Time is really running together in my head here. I may have already talked about that on the podcast. It just needed some general cleaning, a little bit of tuning, and it was good to go. It's a fun 70s wedgehead, and like many of Gottlieb's games, one of the things that I appreciate is having to chase specials, meaning they shift from lane to lane or from scoring target to scoring target, and in Sure Shot's case, you have a rollover at the top center and then a kickout hole on the left and right, and the game will alternate between all three, and you have to pick the appropriate one to get your replays. Well, unfortunately, I've got to get going here. I have lots more to test, lots more to do, but before I do, let's talk about the year of Flipperless. Today's game is 1938's Valley Arcade. this game is really interesting for 1938 on the back class there are 12 drop targets essentially or targets that swing out of the way you've got it's a shooting gallery theme so you've got six targets on the top which equate to ducks and then six on the bottom which equate to rabbits On the play field, you have six springs in the top half, which equate to the same ducks, and then six target bumpers on the bottom, which equate to the rabbits. One of the most appealing things about this game is that it has an out-ball return feature. So you can actually replay all the balls which have previously been played simply by hitting a post near the center of the game. when you do it will dump all the balls in the out area back into play this is really a very interesting game and it is not a payout game it's a five ball game but at the time there was certainly not much else like it on the market 1938 was a very interesting year for innovations in pinball, and there was a lot of focus on the back laughs for these early electromechanical games. This is getting into kind of the later era, but having those targets that swing away as you hit the bumpers is something very novel, even today. You know, there are plenty of games which have done it over the years, but there are very few modern games that have any kind of back glass animation effect like that. It's something that I've always appreciated and really draws you into the game, even as a spectator. Seeing things disappear from the back glass is kind of a neat thing and something that you don't expect. The playfield layout, the six bumpers at the top, which equate to ducks, are arranged in two small chevrons. There's the out-ball return bumper, which is right in the center. And then in the bottom half, you have the six bumpers, which are for the rabbits, which are shaped kind of in a duck shape, kind of a bird shape. Very interesting. The cabinet itself is striped. Unfortunately, there are no color pictures of this cabinet. in it. But from the flyer, it appears that it is yellow, red, and white. It might be red, gold, and white, perhaps with a touch of blue. Very attractive design. This is something I would love to play. It has the beautiful bally triangular lifter. I've always really loved those. so that's all for tonight please join me in Allentown again May the 5th and attend that show it's a big show there's a lot going on there all the time but this is the first year the multi will be there and hopefully I'll be back again in future years I expect to hear all about that next episode thank you very much for joining me my name is Nick Baldridge you can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail.com or you can call me on the bingos line. That's 724-BINGOS1. 724-246-4671. You can listen to me on iTunes, Google Play Music, Pocket Casts, via RSS, on Facebook, on Twitter at bingopodcast. You can follow me on Instagram, also at bingopodcast. Or you can listen to me on my website, which is 4amusementonly.libsyn.com. Thank you very much for listening and I'll talk to you next time.