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Episode 365 - Bingo Emulation

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·27m 11s·analyzed·Mar 10, 2016
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TL;DR

Nick Baldridge discusses bingo emulation and announces transition to bi-weekly format

Summary

Nick Baldridge celebrates one year of daily episodes of the For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast (episode 365) by discussing bingo emulation—both Joop's existing software simulation and his own ambitious hardware-based emulation project using real bingo playfields, P-Rock control systems, and LCD backboxes. He announces a transition to bi-weekly episodes to dedicate time to his custom bingo emulation development, focusing initially on implementing the Coney Island bingo machine.

Key Claims

  • Joop from the Netherlands has created a fantastic bingo simulation playable on Windows and Mac OS X featuring multiple classic Bally bingos including Showtime, Silver Sails, Bounty, Sun Valley, Key West, Miss America Deluxe, Miami Beach, Doubleheader, Lido, Magic Ring, Gaiety, Yacht Club, and Dude Ranch

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge, podcast host, discussing existing bingo emulation software available to the community

  • Bounty is the only bingo with a skill shot feature

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge, established EM bingo expert, referencing his extensive knowledge of bingo mechanics

  • Silver Sails is one of only two magic screen bingos with a gate feature

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge describing Silver Sails characteristics

  • Miami Beach is the only game with a magic curtain

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge listing unique bingo features

  • Magic Ring is a 20-hole machine with a special rotating carousel feature that Nick Baldridge had never played before trying the simulation

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge recounting his experience with the Magic Ring emulation

  • Nick Baldridge is developing a custom hardware-based bingo emulation system using real playfields, P-Rock control boards, and LCD backboxes with code interfacing to lifter motors, shutter motors, and playfield switches

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge describing his current development project in detail

  • Only three different playfields are needed to emulate every single Bally bingo: one with hold mechanisms (like Palm Springs), one with magic pockets (Gaiety/Gay Time), and one 20-hole playfield (Tahiti)

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge explaining his hardware strategy for the emulation system

  • Coney Island was the second bingo that Bally produced and is Nick's chosen starting point for implementation because it has no backglass animation and he is familiar with it

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge explaining his development approach and game selection rationale

Notable Quotes

  • “These are fantastic emulations. He's spent a lot of time dealing with ball physics, and the ball does tend to roll as it does in real life. you get a really good sense for how the ball will travel on this play field.”

    Nick Baldridge @ ~10:00 — Validation of Joop's bingo simulation quality and its utility for learning how bingos play

  • “A bingo is thousands of times more complex because your game can effectively last forever if you're a really good player. You can keep steering that ball all the way down to the ball return.”

    Nick Baldridge @ ~45:00 — Illustrates the technical challenge of implementing bingo emulation on a flipper-machine-oriented control system

  • “I have absolutely zero experience with P-Rock. I have zero experience with custom pinball development. So this is going to be quite the experience here.”

    Nick Baldridge @ ~27:00 — Establishes Nick as a passionate amateur developer taking on a complex technical challenge

  • “I am not a graphics person. So, you know, I can work my way around the Gamper or Illustrator if need be, but 3D rendering is a little beyond me.”

    Nick Baldridge @ ~35:00 — Identifies a limiting factor in his implementation approach and explains choice to start with Coney Island (no backglass animation)

  • “Some days were harder than others. But I really wanted to see if I could keep up the discipline to do a podcast every single day.”

    Nick Baldridge @ ~55:00 — Reflects on the toll of daily podcast production and motivation for format change

  • “I'm really excited to hear your experiences playing these games, and I would love to know if you enjoy them, if you don't like them. Let me know what you think.”

    Nick Baldridge @ ~62:00 — Shows engagement with community and desire for feedback on both Joop's and his own emulation projects

Entities

Nick BaldridgepersonJooppersonPhil HooperpersonFor Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball PodcastorganizationBallyBingosInBritainorganizationP-RockproductShowtimegameSilver SailsgameBountygame

Signals

  • ?

    technology_signal: Joop's bingo simulation software provides accessible digital implementation of classic Bally bingos with realistic ball physics on Windows/Mac platforms

    high · Detailed description of multiple games available in the simulation with accurate mechanical representations

  • ?

    technology_signal: Nick Baldridge is developing a hybrid hardware/software system combining real bingo playfields with P-Rock control boards and LCD backboxes for authentic bingo gameplay

    high · Extensive discussion of his development approach, choice of P-Rock boards, plans for swappable playfields, and current implementation status

  • ?

    design_innovation: Adaptation of P-Rock flipper-oriented control system for complex flipperless bingo machines requires disabling standard game flow logic and implementing custom ball handling/lifter mechanics

    high · Nick discusses challenges of implementing bingo's infinite game length, trough switches, lifter mechanics, and timer-based ball return on a system designed for three-ball flippers

  • ?

    content_signal: For Amusement Only daily podcast (365 consecutive episodes) transitioning to bi-weekly format due to production burden on host and family; milestone marks one year of daily releases

    high · Nick announces format change, reflects on daily production challenges, and explains bi-weekly structure will focus on longer episodes, project updates, single-machine deep dives, and interviews

  • ?

    community_signal: Active community collaboration on bingo emulation projects: Joop's software shared on BallyBingosInBritain forums, multiple users developing custom hardware integrations using Joop's codebase

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.082

0:00
What's that sound? It's For Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Happy birthday to the For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast.
0:17
Well, it's been a fun year. Welcome to episode 365 of the For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. I'm Nick Baldrige.
0:29
Tonight is going to be the last in my series of daily episodes. After tonight's episode, I'm going to move to a bi-weekly format, which I'll discuss more towards the end of this episode.
0:43
For today, though, what I wanted to do was talk about bingo emulation. But before I get into that, I wanted to thank my wife for designing and drawing the episode 365 artwork, which should graze your podcast feed or your show notes, depending on how you view this episode. Now, I've talked at length about Bally's bingos, and I still have yet to talk about United's bingos, for the most part. But tonight what I want to talk about is a way that you can experience these games without actually owning one at the moment.
1:29
There is a fantastic bingo simulation that you can play right now on either Windows or Mac OS X. it's written by a really clever guy named Joop and he's from the Netherlands and I've had just a couple of email correspondences with him about something that I'm going to be working on which I'll talk about shortly but here are some of the games that he's got Showtime which is a fantastic Magic Squares game he's got Silver Sails One of the most desirable magic screen bingos. It's one of the two with the gate feature. He's got Bounty. You've heard me wax rhapsodic about that for 364 previous episodes.

  • Bally's games moved incrementally with minor exceptions when switching between systems (like Magic Squares to Magic Screen), enabling easier port-by-port implementation

    medium confidence · Nick Baldridge discussing the design philosophy and evolution of Bally bingo machines

  • Nick Baldridge is moving the For Amusement Only podcast from daily to bi-weekly format to dedicate time to his emulation project

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge announcing his format change and rationale at the end of the episode

    • Sun Valleygame
    Key Westgame
    Miss America Deluxegame
    Miami Beachgame
    Doubleheadergame
    Magic Ringgame
    Gaietygame
    Yacht Clubgame
    Coney Islandgame
    Nightclubgame
    Tahitigame

    high · Nick references Joop posting updates, mentions unnamed Rockola cabinet user, and plans to share his source code and seek P-Rock developer feedback

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Bally bingo hardware evolved incrementally between generations (except for system transitions like Magic Squares to Magic Screen), enabling efficient multi-game implementation through playfield variants

    medium · Nick explains why three playfield types can cover all Bally bingos and how he'll move game-to-game once Coney Island is implemented

  • ?

    product_strategy: Joop developing centralized menu system (bingo jukebox) to manage downloaded emulations, enabling automatic updates and simplified game selection

    medium · Nick mentions Joop working on bingo jukebox feature that will auto-update bug fixes and new features

  • ?

    resource_documentation: Phil Hooper maintains bingo.cdyn.com as repository of schematics and documentation; BallyBingosInBritain forums serve as community hub for bingo discussion and project collaboration

    high · Nick cites bingo.cdyn.com for schematics while developing hardware emulation and references BallyBingosInBritain for community coordination

  • ?

    accessibility_signal: Software and hardware emulation projects removing barriers to bingo machine experience: Joop's free simulation provides playable access; Nick's hardware project enables real-machine authenticity at lower cost than restoration

    medium · Nick positions both projects as ways for collectors/enthusiasts to experience bingos without owning machines, with hardware emulation enabling swappable gameplay

  • ?

    technical_challenge: Nick's development hindered by graphics implementation challenges; chose Coney Island to start precisely because it lacks backglass animation, avoiding complex rendering requirements

    high · Nick explicitly states graphics is not his strength, discusses layer-based backglass rendering approach as future challenge, and selected Coney Island to minimize animation complexity

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Some bingo playfields (like 28-hole or 18-hole variants for Shoot Align/Galaxy) remain scarce; Nick considering but hesitant about sourcing rare variants from secondary market

    medium · Nick mentions seeing one 28-hole playfield on eBay but uncertain about pursuing it; identifies only three standard playfield types as necessary for full Bally bingo coverage

    • 2:26
    That's the only bingo with the skill shot feature. He's got Sun Valley. Sun Valley is one of my absolute favorites. You can reposition every number on the back glass. It's magic squares and a magic line. Key West. Key West is a fantastic Magic Squares game with select a score. You can change.
    2:49
    If you have a winner in the yellow, you can actually change to the red odds. And if you have a winner in the red, you can change to the yellow odds. It's pretty nifty.
    2:59
    It's got Miss America Deluxe, one of the last Miss Americas that Bally built. Miami Beach This is the only game with a magic curtain Doubleheader The extremely rare two bingos in one Lido One of the two Futurity games Magic Ring This is a 20-hole machine with a special rotating carousel feature Now, I had never played one previous, but I downloaded his simulation, and it gave me a great feel for how this game would play in real life.
    3:43
    Gaiety. That's one of the two Magic Pockets games. Yacht Club. That's the one with the lighted sections scored, so you can earn additional cards, additional positions to highlight.
    3:59
    Dude Ranch has two different bingo cards. and you can win on both at the same time. And he has more in the pipeline.
    4:12
    Now, Joop is a very clever guy, and Joop, if you're listening, I apologize if I butchered the pronunciation of your name.
    4:21
    But these are fantastic emulations. He's spent a lot of time dealing with ball physics, and the ball does tend to roll as it does in real life. you get a really good sense for how the ball will travel on this play field. For those of you that are downloading right now, what I would advise is that you play these as you do a real bingo, and that is that you have to click on the machine to insert your money.
    4:52
    You also have to click on the machine to push any of the buttons. So what I would suggest, if you're just starting out, having never played a bingo previously, is to start with a game like Miss America Deluxe, or perhaps Key West.
    5:11
    Both of those have moving numbers features that you will click on on the footrail, but you only have one or two buttons on the front that you have to deal with.
    5:24
    Some of the other games with pick-a-play are going to be a little tricky for your first game. It always takes a little bit of time to figure out how exactly that works. But just listen back to some of my previous episodes, and you'll hear when and why you should push some of those buttons. So as a quick tip here, if you're playing Bounty, for example, you put in your first coin and it'll start the machine. Before you put in your second coin, push the blue button on the front, and that will give you a guaranteed double jump in all three colors of your odds.
    6:04
    But there are other tricks and things that you'll have to experiment with, but as you'll be able to play this without actually having the machine and getting it working, that is pretty phenomenal. And once you've played one for a while, you can decide if that's something that you do want to try and put in your own collection. I think that's a fantastic resource.
    6:28
    Now, Joop has been kind enough. He's been posting on the BallyBingosInBritain forums, and he's been notifying the members as new machines go up.
    6:42
    But there also an intrepid user who is modifying a Rockola cabinet to house his own custom bingo playfield and he going to run the software inside that machine and allow him to actually change machines and play the game with real balls on a real playfield. That's a very good idea. The only limitation of Joop's software that I've found is that it only runs in Windows or OS X.
    7:20
    So, definitely, go out, download, try every one of these machines. They're all fantastic machines. Those of you that are seasoned bingo players and have not had the opportunity to bring one into your own collection, definitely go out, download your sentimental favorite, and then go back and investigate some of these other machines that I've talked about at length and see if any of them are for you. For those of you that are new to bingos, I gave you a couple ideas there, but feel free, I mean, download them all. They are all fantastic. And one thing that Joop's working on right now is what he calls the bingo jukebox, And this will allow you to have them all downloaded and be able to pick from a centralized menu in order to start them. It will also update all the bingos automatically as she puts out bug fixes or new features and so forth.
    8:20
    But as I say, these games have been really trouble-free for me. I've played Magic Ring. I've played Doubleheader a lot. I've actually had some pretty good wins on Doubleheader, too. That's a great, great game.
    8:35
    Miami Beach, Key West, and Sun Valley. I've tried all those, and I have yet to try the rest. But they're all sitting here waiting for me to do it. So, go out and give those a shot. Now, what I wanted to talk about today is actually what I've been working on. and what I'm planning to do with bingo emulation.
    9:02
    So as with the fella on the Ballybingos in Britain forums, what I'm planning to do is to develop a system that will allow you to use real bingo hardware for the lower cab and an LCD monitor for the back box. The backbox will either be a trashed backbox from a game, or I will custom build one to the same size and shape specifications of your typical magic screen backbox. Those are the tallest that Bally made. the plan is that I will write code to interface with the hardware on the playfield the hardware for the lifter motor the hardware for the switches, the hardware for the shutter motor and all the switches on the front and foot rail of the game now, what I'm planning to do is to have swappable play fields.
    10:13
    So the brains of this machine are going to be a simple system-on-a-chip setup. You know, something with enough processing oomph to output to an LCD monitor in a relatively high resolution.
    10:35
    But as far as switch handling and so forth, what I'm going to be using is the P-Rock system. Now, this is a board set that is fairly straightforward. It can handle high-powered driving of various items, such as motors, and it appears that it'll work without blowing up or catching on fire, which is really what I'm looking for when it all comes down to it. So I have absolutely zero experience with P-Rock. I have zero experience with custom pinball development. So this is going to be quite the experience here. What I am doing and how I differ from Joop's approach, aside from being able to run from a Linux-based system on a chip. That way I can custom compile the kernel with low overhead and set it up to automatically bootstrap and run my little game program.
    11:44
    But I am also implementing items like the mixers and the reflex for each game independently, as electrically accurate as possible, So, I'm reviewing schematics, I am reviewing documentation where available on Phil Hooper's awesome site, bingo.cdyn.com, and I'm going to make the source code available for anybody that wants to do the same. Now this source code will not include the assets for the back glasses.
    12:26
    And the other big limitation is that you will have to have your own cabinet in order to interface with this. But you can emulate that using a computer keyboard. Now one thing that's worth noting is that the number of switches that your typical bingo has in order to determine balls in the trough, balls on the playfield, if your lifter has lifted, and various other minor things like tilt.
    13:03
    Who needs that? make this a fairly complex pinball machine. So if you think about your typical flipper machine, the number of switches is actually fairly limited if you're going to replace, say, the score motor with a solid-state component. But if you're looking at a bingo, the number of switches that you have to keep track of, even if you replacing all of the thinking parts with a computer is actually fairly high So what I planning to do and what I started doing is implementing Nightclub which is my favorite bingo but I realized rather quickly not super quickly, but rather quickly, that it was probably a little ambitious for my first game to implement. And so I've been helping various people with Coney Island bingos, and that's actually the second bingo that Bally produced. And I figured, since I'm familiar with that game, I've played it myself, and I'm reading through the schematics and manual anyway in order to help these folks, why not start with Coney Island? Coney Island also has no backlash animation, which is another weak spot for me. I am not a graphics person. So, you know, I can work my way around the Gamper or Illustrator if need be, but 3D rendering is a little beyond me. I've used Blender in the past, but I'm not very good at it. So we will see what happens. At the moment, what I've got is a machine that will boot, and it will read all the switches, all the trough switches, the tilt, your shooter lane switch, and all of your playfield switches. But what it doesn't do is actually function. So where I'm having trouble is actually displaying the back glass image that I'm using as a test here. So once I figure out that, things should move along a little more quickly. Now once Coney Island is implemented, I'll be able to go back and implement Bright Lights, and I'll be able to go forward and implement the third and fourth games that Bally produced rather easily. The nice thing about Bally's games is that they moved incrementally.
    15:45
    Except for minor exceptions where they switched from one system to another, like, say, from Magic Squares to Magic Screen, you don't have giant jumps in hardware or capability.
    15:59
    This is really good for a project of this magnitude because I'll be able to very easily move from machine to machine.
    16:11
    Now, starting with this as a focus, running off the actual hardware, having a coin door with a coin mech, and being able to put in your own nickels and start up the game. Not
    16:28
    to mention the fact that I'm actually going to have swappable playfields. So, by my reckoning, you're going to need three different playfields in order to emulate every single bingo that Bally produced. You'll need one with the mechanisms for hold, like Palm Springs. You'll also need one with magic pockets to emulate gaiety and gay time. But aside from that, you're going to need a 20-hole playfield. And the best candidate for that is Tahiti's playfield, because it also has the hold feature, which uses a specialized shutter, which is different from all the other games.
    17:09
    So that doesn't include games like Shoot Align or Galaxy, which have their own unique playfield layouts, and I'm not sure if I'm going to dive into those or not, because I would need that 28-hole or 18-hole playfield. I know there's one on eBay right now, but I'm not sure if I want to take the plunge.
    17:33
    I'll keep you posted, though. All this is how it differs from Joop's implementation. That said, I am following what that fellow is doing with Joop's implementation on the Ballybingos in Britain forums, and I'm going to link to that in the show notes, and you'll be able to see for yourselves. for those of you folks who have done P-Rock development I would love to hear from you as well I have a few questions and it's pretty interesting developing a flipperless game for a system that is made to handle flippers now obviously I've removed any flipper logic and so forth and that's gone very well there's nothing really exceptional about any of that It's just another set of coils. But I suspect that some of my issues have to do with disabling many of the built-in functions that handle things like length of the game.
    18:40
    So, you know, if you think about your typical flipper game, you have three balls on a solid state machine, right? And then after your three balls drain, the game is over. A bingo is thousands of times more complex because your game can effectively last forever if you're a really good player. You can keep steering that ball all the way down to the ball return.
    19:05
    Well, this is tricky, right? And certain machines, like Coney Island, which was the last one with this particular setup, have a ball count unit, and it will step up and step down as the ball is returned to you. But other machines just have a timer. The timer increments as the ball lifter lifts, and then if it comes back to you, it will not increment again.
    19:38
    It does this by way of the trough switches. It knows that a ball has been returned to you. but all this is rather challenging for this system that is built for solid state games and so I just have a few questions about especially rendering graphics because my thought is to do it in layers so I'll have a back glass image, I'll have a masking image that I produce from the back glass and then have individually controlled lamps in quotes that will shine through This is probably going to prove very difficult especially when coupled with the back glass animation
    20:33
    So I just wanted to pick another programmer's brain at some point. And now that the cat's out of the bag, I'll probably start posting on the P-Rock forums, or pinballcontrollers.com I forget where it is but at any case that's what I've been working on and what I need is time to be able to really sit down and map out these circuits and then program them in at the moment Coney Island works but I have a dummy implementation of the reflex unit So I've got to go back in and actually map out the reflex unit.
    21:19
    So that's why I need to move to a biweekly format. And here's the plan going forward. My shows are going to be slightly longer than they were before, but there's no guarantee on the length. You know, again, if it's something that only warrants five minutes of discussion, I'm not going to sit there and repeat the same thing 85 times. but what I will attempt to do and we'll see if I can stick with this is give you an update on progress on this project I will dive into one machine and I'll tell you how it works about the artwork, what makes it exceptional and so forth and then I'll give you an update on what's going on in my EM life You know, if there's anything new or exciting happening in the world that I'm aware of, any developments in the bingo space, because there are developments.
    22:23
    And otherwise, if I have an interview, that's probably going to be the episode. So my interviews, I'm going to try and stick with the hour to two hour format that I've had up to now. But, yeah, if the interview is only half an hour, then that'll be the episode. And hopefully that works for everybody. I've had feedback all over the board ever since I started this podcast. Some people love it and say, man, you know, five minutes is great. You get right to the meat of the thing, and then you move on.
    23:01
    And then I have other people that say five minutes is too short. You know, I need at least 40 minutes to completely cover my commute. And then I have other people that say, hey, you produce way too much content.
    23:17
    I hope you've enjoyed listening to the past year's worth of podcasts. I've really had a good time doing them. Some days were harder than others. But I really wanted to see if I could keep up the discipline to do a podcast every single day. And yes, in some instances I did pre-record up to a week's worth of shows, but that was by far the exception. For the most part, I've been recording on the day of for each of these shows. That includes times when I've been out of town, times when we've been on vacation, just all over the place. And that's really been a burden to my family as well. You know, I do tend to record late at night or other times where I'm not going to impact my time with my children or my wife. But, you know, sometimes I've had to make a sacrifice and they have too. And so, you know, I really think this will be good for me, my family, and hopefully all of you understand and will continue to listen.
    24:29
    Because I'll keep talking. you can probably tell once again you started talking about something, I just don't stop, and especially bingos. They are near and dear to my heart, and I just love them very much. I've had such a great time working on them, learning about the mechanisms, learning about the ingenious circuit design and playing them. I mean, the gameplay is phenomenal.
    25:00
    And I've told and told and told you about this, and now you'll have the chance to try it out for yourselves. I'm really excited to hear your experiences playing these games, and I would love to know if you enjoy them, if you don't like them. Let me know what you think. otherwise I'm going to be talking about flipper games I'm going to be talking about flipperless games mechanical games all the same stuff that I've been talking about up to now this will just give me the ability to work on this project for several days without having to stop and use some of that little bit of spare time that I have to record the podcast Thank you to all of my listeners, to my guests, and anybody who has taken the time out of their day to shoot me an email telling me how much they enjoy the show. That kind of stuff really makes my day, and I very much appreciate it. those people who've left iTunes reviews, all that stuff. It really makes me glad that people enjoy it. So thank you all for coming with me on this journey this past year. And again, I hope you continue with me for the next year and into the future.
    26:27
    I'll still be here. Well, thank you very much for listening all the way up to this point. my name again 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 us on iTunes Stitcher, Pocket Casts, via RSS on Facebook, on Twitter at bingopodcast you can follow me on Instagram also at bingopodcast or you can listen to us on our website, which is foramusementonly.libsyn.com. Thank you very much for listening and I'll talk to you next time.