Homebrew developers showcase 4 custom pinball machines and discuss platforms, design challenges, and community collaboration.
Summary
A panel discussion showcasing four homebrew pinball machines at Pintastic Expo 2024, featuring developers sharing technical platforms, design challenges, and lessons learned. Machines presented include Warhammer (FAST/MPF, early-stage), Borderlands (Arduino-controlled articulated playfield, innovation-focused), King of the Arcade (pinball 2000 format), and Battle Stations (competitive head-to-head design). Panel emphasizes candid discussion of failures, collaborative problem-solving, and the motivation behind building homebrew machines despite higher costs.
Key Claims
Building a homebrew pinball machine costs roughly twice as much as purchasing a commercial machine
high confidence · Panel moderator explicitly states: 'to ask questions share feedback and and have a conversation we're going to try to stay on time as I do run the programming in this room I'm going to throw you all out right at the end' and 'why you would build your own machine instead of just buying it because it's twice as expensive to do it this way'
Borderlands homebrew features a fully articulated playfield controlled via joystick, allowing players to tilt and lean the playing surface during gameplay
high confidence · Brian describes: 'this system has a fully articulated controlled Playfield and so this was a concept I had uh two years ago that what if I could control the Playfield and you know make it steeper make it lean make it do all sorts of stuff you can pick up the controller and you can play it like the game Labyrinth'
Mission Pinball Framework (MPF) is widely adopted across homebrew developers using different hardware platforms (FAST, Cobra, P3)
high confidence · Panel discussion documents: 'fast pinball with um with unity yeah and so I have two games one of them is a P3 platform the other one is fast but they're both using Mission pinball framework so mpf across the board'
Borderlands playfield control system was built by a friend who contributed ~150 hours of work using Arduino stack and MPF integration
high confidence · Brian states: 'he showed up with a Christmas with it in a Christmas Box and uh he's like here you go here's your stack it's fully functioning all the code works I put in IND pinball framework for you uh load this file and let's go have some fun and so he did like 150 hours of work because he was out of work at the time and bored'
Borderlands game was damaged in transit to the expo, causing the articulated playfield control system to malfunction
high confidence · Brian notes: 'until yesterday at four o'clock um and so the game was designed around that' and 'it's flipping it doesn't move unfortunately we were going to get parts here for tomorrow but they're out of stock'
King of the Arcade uses a pinball 2000 format with pepper ghost display and monitor shooting onto the top surface
Notable Quotes
“everyone in here needs to throw this man $10 so that he can patent this so that somebody else won't steal this idea and do it incorrectly cuz you need to protect this you did something really really interesting”
Panel moderator (discussing Borderlands playfield control innovation) @ ~20:00 — Highlights recognition of Borderlands' technical innovation as genuinely novel and patentable; moderator advocates for IP protection of homebrew mechanics
“I couldn't have done it without it because I learned so much about the shots you know you're not going to know this stuff building it but then the satisfaction of having it just go together and be right”
Brian (Borderlands developer) @ ~17:30 — Emphasizes value of iterative prototyping with whitewoods before investing in CNC-cut playfields; demonstrates learning-by-doing philosophy
“I want to make sure that every time I press that start button that everybody has the exact same experience and with three linear actuators under a Playfield where you're already indexing and leveling this can be perfectly leveled and pitched at all times”
Panel moderator (describing Borderlands control system benefits) @ ~19:30 — Articulates how homebrew innovation can address commercial manufacturing gaps; self-leveling playfield is a novel application of articulation technology
“you got to do what you can do best I would say and and hey he didn't burn the shop down with blow I know I know I know cuz that was uh that was definitely a concern”
Ryan (King of the Arcade developer, joking about Mike's torch work) @ ~32:00 — Demonstrates humor in handling homebrew safety issues; emphasizes importance of leveraging strengths and finding collaborators for weaknesses
“this is going to flip this weekend with cardboard ball protectors and and it's going to have a bunch of stuck balls in it but but so's Bryan's game who has beautiful ball protectors and Edge guards in it that are 3D printed because his aren't perfect yet either”
Ryan (King of the Arcade developer) @ ~35:00 — Key insight on iterative development: first-draft imperfection is acceptable and expected; shipped games will have bugs regardless of build quality
Entities
Mission Pinball Framework (MPF)productFAST PinballcompanyWarhammergameBorderlandsgameKing of the ArcadegameBattle StationsgamePincraftgameBrianperson
Signals
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community_signal: Pintastic Expo demonstrates strong institutional support for homebrew development through dedicated panel track, playable exhibit space, and mentorship prioritization for first-time builders
high · Panel structure explicitly prioritizes first-time builders and new games; dedicated homebrew room with playable machines; moderator (Jillian) actively recruits and pressures developers to participate; panel discussion format emphasizes sharing failures and lessons
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community_signal: Homebrew development embedded within family/relationship structures; father-son teams (Pincraft/Battle Stations) and spouse support (Mike Testa) normalize pinball building as multigenerational hobby rather than specialist pursuit
high · Pincraft developer started with son when child was 'very little'; Battle Stations is father-son collaborative project; Mike credits wife and family support for making deadline feasible; panel celebrates family contributions
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competitive_signal: Homebrew head-to-head format (Battle Stations) addresses perceived design gap in commercial head-to-head machines (joust, soccer) by eliminating score-based complexity and emphasizing direct player interaction
high · Developer notes inspiration from air hockey experiment; criticizes existing head-to-heads for cluttering playfield with obstacles that prevent direct player attack; Battle Stations design removes score entirely and optimizes for two-player conflict
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design_philosophy: Homebrew developers deliberately embrace material imperfection and 'good enough' solutions (cardboard ramps, duct tape, copper wire) as strategies to maintain forward momentum and avoid perfectionism paralysis
high · Ryan (King of the Arcade) describes using cardboard instead of perfect materials; notes 'the first draft perfect no right no it's going to have bugs'; acknowledges ball gets stuck but attributes this to material choices enabling rapid iteration; Brian similarly notes imperfect 3D printing on Battle Stations
Topics
Homebrew hardware platforms and control systemsprimaryMission Pinball Framework adoption and cross-platform compatibilityprimaryIterative prototyping and design iteration strategiesprimaryMechanical innovation in playfield design (articulated playfield, head-to-head, pepperbox displays)primaryCommunity mentorship and collaborative problem-solving in homebrew developmentprimaryBalancing artistic vision with practical deadlines and resource constraintssecondaryAccessibility and inclusive game design (scoreless competition, lower entry barriers)secondaryHomebrew exhibition and community engagement at pinball expossecondary
Sentiment
positive(0.82)— Strong enthusiasm from developers and moderator about homebrew innovation, community collaboration, and creative problem-solving. Candid discussion of failures and challenges frames them as learning opportunities rather than defeats. Panel celebrates both completed machines and work-in-progress iterations. Minor frustration about transportation damage to Borderlands but presented as surmountable. Overall tone is encouraging, supportive of experimentation, and celebratory of amateur innovation.
Transcript
youtube_auto_sub · $0.000
here to present the uh The Homebrew panel something I'm passionate about but uh don't have enough time to ever do myself give it up for Jillian I live vicariously through these fine people yes harassing and encouraging people to bring flipping games every year that's right flipping games or un flipping games and this year we've got a couple really special ones uh that we're going to talk about tonight so uh let's get started let's let's talk about the format and why we're here uh we want to showcase these Homebrew games um my mic's a little tiny if you could turn it down please um want to showcase these Homebrew games that are here at pantastic we're going to give priority to the people who have brought games for the first time or people who have brought their first game so people like Lynn which I do have a slide in here for Lynn who has four of his own games and a new one every year but we've we've heard Lynn talk enough so if you want to talk to Lynn you should convince him to do his own seminar and you should they y do it it's got to happen where is it what I want to where is it we talk we'll we'll cut it short L get it get up here um so really this is about sharing successes and and and corporate speak lessed learns which means all the great failures we're going to hear about which is what actually makes this really interesting um because everyone here is really candid about how much they screw up how much they do wrong and how much pain goes through trying to to fix those things and sharing those for people so that they don't have to do the same things um we're going to try to keep it for each pin for each person to the who what when where why how of why you would build your own machine instead of just buying it because it's twice as expensive to do it this way it is it is and then we're going to give some time at the end um to to ask questions share feedback and and have a conversation we're going to try to stay on time as I do run the programming in this room I'm going to throw you all out right at the end and I want you all to go over to the Home Brew Room and see these pins with these people uh so that we can flip this room over for the next thing thank you um so we're going to talk about Warhammer first so Warhammer was here six months ago um has it been eight months how it seven seven eight months okay last show fine um and uh it was the first showing you had of this Aaron so you want to talk about what you did since then the soft launch yeah my soft launch of of six months ago yeah yeah um I mean where do you want me to start uh where would you like to start right there why when um so uh I guess this game's at like one guess officially one year it's like I started one you know uh four months before pantastic and I started with basically nothing I bought stuff from Fast um wired everything together and then said oh you know explo um I have to build a cabinet now and so you just I just started picking up stuff and and cutting things and assembling a cabinet and I got it to the first show and it flipped and it didn't have much to it but it did flip and so now a year or like seven months later I'm here you know again uh showing off and the improvements that I've made so far I've changed a lot of stuff around um been in pain for certain times and um you know I'm I'm happy with uh the improvements that have been made with the time I've I've had right so let's just go over the quick stuff we've already done this with you before but what's the uh what's the platform what are you coding on okay uh so the hardware is fast pinball uh the code is Mission pinball framework okay and use those two together uh might as well just go down the list with everybody else while we're doing this right now yeah so I'm Cobra pin with with Mission pinball framework as well fast pinball with um with unity yeah and so I have two games one of them is a P3 platform the other one is fast but they're both using Mission pinball framework so mpf across the board the exclusion of unity unity and unity system yeah lindall I don't know is it pat so since the last time you were here any major accomplishments in the last seven months yes so um stability like we've got code um I've got a multiball fall in I've got some light shows I've got a little bit of rules um it's three flipper now so that was definitely an improvement that's a big change yeah there you know there's certain you find certain things you don't really like and you say I want to make this more fun maybe I can make this a little more shooty or interactive with the player and so I said yeah I can I can go three flipper here um and shoved a flipper in it you know it only took me a little bit of time but cutting and Drilling and you get you get it done um at the end we're going to come back and talk to everybody about um you know feedback that you got from the last show feedback you've gotten on this show and and you know things like that poor Mike this is torture for you I'm loving this um so let's move on to Borderlands which is uh I just have to say that I didn't I'm sorry I didn't to put your name on the slide Brian uh Brian was here sitting over there last year um when I called him out and when you will have a flipping pin here uh for next show and here you are we've we've corresponded back and forth a bunch I've seen pictures and video of this it didn't do it justice um I nothing done like a deadline and being pressured into doing something so so if you want go a just you know have Jillian tell you that you have to have it here and and that's the expectation it will be that two people that's it something one of those words I'm a glutton for punishment so I've I've been you know working like crazy on this thing trying to get everything up to the vision I have in my head getting it into reality uh this game started a little over two years ago uh at the last show it um in Charlton uh the concept sort of came around there started a little bit before that but the the premise of the whole game uh which is a feature that's actually not working because it got damaged in transit but this system has a fully articulated controlled Playfield and so this was a concept I had uh two years ago that what if I could control the Playfield and you know make it steeper make it lean make it do all sorts of stuff you can pick up the controller and you can play it like the game Labyrinth uh so we built the control system we got it with RC prototypes motor drives just had literally a piece of cardboard on a piece of plywood it was the day after the Charon show we went to the hardware store I happen to have some linear actuators kicking around my basement because I work on robots uh and we just slapped it together I'm like well yeah I can put a ball in the center of that and I can move it around with a joystick so like let's go um so the last two years I've been getting that system functioning a friend of mine did a ton of work that's whole system's running on Arduino stack uh he showed up with a Christmas with it in a Christmas Box and uh he's like here you go here's your stack it's fully functioning all the code works I put in IND pinball framework for you uh load this file and let's go have some fun and so he did like 150 hours of work because he was out of work at the time and bored uh so yeah that that dropped it and that really lit a fire because I knew I had to come and I had a fully functioning control system until yesterday at four o'clock um and so the game was designed around that and so there's lots of fun modes where you know you go and you're helping a bartender find her ingredients and every time you bring her something she gives you a beer and then the Playfield starts to wobble around a little bit and the more times you do that mode the more the Playfield wobbles until it's it's it's pretty unsho if you get to the final mode but it's possible uh so that was the the premise the whole game it's here it's flipping it doesn't move unfortunately we were going to get parts here for tomorrow but they're out of stock it turns out so that'll be working at the next pinball show and we will take the Playfield out of the cabinet before it gets transported next time what do we have to do to make this happen who I have to call I did a lot of work already we can try we can try I think the potentiometers in the linear exors got jacked up on the drive here so we might take it I'm it's flipping we'll all go play it for a while afterwards and then if it gets quiet I might rip it apart and see what we can do but we have a box of toys to go over at the end pull those out uh so I'm a mechanical engineer by trade I have been doing CAD for a long time uh so everything you're in the game I built myself everything on the top surface is custom designed there's a whole CAD file that I have for everything so like I ordered my CNC Playfield and things just showed up and they just dropped on and screwed down and it was like oh it's so nice my friends were helping me and they're like so how many of these screws you think are in the wrong spot I was like uh let's go with four four that's my over under and they all they all bet against me and there were zero wrong screws whoa nice there were some that were missing because they didn't they didn't I had to wait three weeks for the thing to show off so like there was time in between more stuff got built yeah um so it was so satisfying going from my first prototype Whitewood that was all handmade with you know routers and skill saws and dremels and fighting everything to get right and then just having this one it was like you know while the thing was being built or the cut rather all the Parts got 3D printed and it just like in an hour it was just it came online it was so satisfying so there's definitely you know something to be said about you get your game flipping do your prototype learn what you need to learn I couldn't have done it without it because I learned so much about the shots you know you're not going to know this stuff building it but then the satisfaction of having it just go together and be right aside from the upper pop bumper maybe uh but uh yeah it was it was fun to have that come in and that was that was like a month ago that Playfield showed up so um it's fun to work on I think the the moment I had yesterday or Wednesday I don't remember what day it was um these days drift together here um we were sitting there and I'm like I I don't think you realize what you actually built you built something I've been trying to build for a while I want a self-leveling self- pitching pinball right I I want to make sure that every time I press that start button that everybody has the exact same experience and with three linear actuators under a Playfield where you're already indexing and leveling this can be perfectly leveled and pitched at all times and and so everyone in here needs to throw this man $10 so that he can patent this so that somebody else won't steal this idea and do it incorrectly cuz you need to protect this you did something really really interesting and fun and uh it's really neat and and this level of innovation isn't happening in all the manufacturers I mean they don't have the opportunity to to work on small single one of prototypes and and to see the feasibility and you did and and it's sorry that it's broken here and we don't get to see it but this is really impressive I'm beyond like grief and like sort of an acceptance sadness mode right now so like the game flips we can have fun it is what it is uh next time it will be working better but yeah the the control system was sort of the Beast that we wanted to take on with this right and there's like weird stuff like when I lean the Playfield 15 degrees to the right and then up like you know three days ago I learned that my apron was going to blow right through the glass so we had to bring up the uh kinematics and like change the the envelope so like the game knows where the Playfield is it's like oh well we should probably make it not do that before the show so that got fixed and then it's a matter of like you know when you're leaning far to the right there's a hole now between the Playfield and the cabinet and you can have a ball go down that hole and so how do you how do you put walls up knowing that when you lean the game you're going to smash into your cabinet wall and like how do you lay out the game so that like the there's a there's a drop Targets on the wings and I couldn't put them on the wings because I'd smash into the wall wall so there's actually the drop targets moved over and there's a a flag with a jog in it so that I could get you know the thing to be in an out lane even though it's not under the out lane so there was a lot of thought that had to go into the layout and where things live so that when this thing does start to not be a normal pinball machine anymore it doesn't just like Fall to Pieces yeah I just want to call attention to like my pointers there the uh the little Borderlands pinball Puck if you will soap bar yeah yeah so that's the controller so when you shoot the the the clap trap shot in the back there's a video mode that comes up from Borderlands 2 is a video game so there's tons of assets on there that was one of the realizations that like this is a good theme to do because the fan support for this game is ridiculous I was able to find so many assets to pull and use for the game it's sort of crazy but when you shoot that shot uh you have to go hand out invitations for his birthday party and you do so by picking up the controller and actually tilting the game around to get the ball to go into those shots uh so there's a shot in the out lane in a little hidden hole that you have to navigate either down through your Shield or up through your flippers to find that little hole and you can only do it because you can actually invert the game and and tilt it and so yeah it's back out of the out and then you can well you can't come back out the outlane if your Shields up though because you can't drop a Target that way so it's interesting that's like one of those pinball mazes that you see yeah yeah like the two knob Labyrinth thing that was the inspiration that yeah and so there's a mode that word writing that uh you've got the J so there's a story mode where you're fighting monsters they have health and if you do the good shots they lose their health and if you do the bad shots you lose your health and there's a jackpot shot but there's an anti- jackpot shot and so in this particular mode if you hit the anti- jackpot shot there's a video of him throwing a car at you and then you I like Drop the play field 15 degrees to left uh and so now you've got a broken leg or whatever it is and you've got to play the game like that until you get a good shot and then you'll heal yourself or you can get the health targets and heal yourself and so there's another one where you can do a timer mode and you have 30 seconds to do a thing and as you're doing it the play Field's just getting steeper and steeper or we can lay the play field almost flat and just like totally nuke whatever speed you have in that game uh to make it really lethargic so there's like a lot of really fun tricks you can do uh once a you write the code for it which I'm that's like my one weakness I would point out like you know if you look at the skills needed to do a pinball machine I'm like pretty high in a lot of them and then just like zero on on code and so I've been reaching out to Ernie and a few other people to help me build these modes and I don't think it had any modes two weeks ago uh and now it's got three modes you can play and so the find people that can help you that's definitely one of the the tricks you have some shots that are impossible without that feature right there yeah so without the tilting the the some of the shots are pretty challenging let's move on to Mike Testa oh God here we go another person we challenged uh 7 months ago yes he's been talking about building a home brew machine for years everybody really give Mike a round of applause thank you started before I even met him yeah this game has been in the works for a while he needed a deadline and uh and it's here finally out of my garage yeah pretty much pretty much and I really just finished this artwork like I don't know two days ago seriously um yeah it's it's uh it's really tough to uh to do anything on a whack tablet when you're uh when uh you got like maybe two a half an hour maybe an hour until the kids wake up Dad da put me back to bed yeah if you love your kids that's you know you want to you got to do your thing but uh yeah they're great I love them but um but yeah it's just it's um that's I guess when we're talking about weaknesses it's just finding the time to really put aside or sneak in here and there to really work on it but um but I was able to and that's I'm here I'm freaking here this is in this is this is the accomplishment really and it's good well thank you thank you thank you thank you Ryan so uh King of the arcade is off of the pinball 2000 format with the monitor shooting down onto the top of the pepper ghost pepper ghost we love pepper ghost um and a lot of help from Lynn on this all of that that he's been working on over the years he's a very good teacher and uh and lets me make mistakes so I can learn from him and also be able to not make some mistakes that have been made in the past which is very helpful so I'm sticking in the right direction to make sure I'm uh you know make sure things uh run smooth and that's a you know from a guy that's been doing it for God how long how when did you start 2006 it got to be before that or something yeah but you're making like a digital table before that so you like the PS3 G yeah 2007 so this is what I'm talking about this guy's been doing this for a long time so he's picked up on on stuff and uh and I'm very fortunate to be somewhat of a an apprentice to be able to continue the learning and you know I'm more of a uh idea guy when it comes to it and design is is something creating it's always been you know the art artist in me has always been you know inherent but uh when it comes to like code and whatnot and you know there's weaknesses and there's strengths but uh you gota you got to do what you can do best I would say and and hey he didn't burn the shop down with blow I know I know I know cuz that was uh that was definitely a concern right next door to where you blow torch in that thing too he was right on a wood table this is true and so some of the things you can't see is that the ramps in this are really neat by the way everyone again the end of this go in and play these games um but this ramp here is is literally copper wire uh so he little copper wire form there's cardboard in that there's I'm sure there's some duct tape in there there's cardboard in there now because it was getting stuck up a couple places I'm pretty sure it's going to be once we go back in there the ball won't be stuck I knew exactly where it was and if it's just getting stuck in places where you already knew and you know how to fix it f it cardboard just ball still got stuck a few times in the back of course it did I know there's a couple more places I couldn't fit back there but you know we use indry don't worry I'm sure you go but this is a this is another thing you don't have to get the the first draft perfect no right no it's going to have bugs it's going to have problems and and sometimes going with the easier to use more flexible cheaper materials just it gets you along the project further right this game is going to flip this weekend with cardboard ball protectors and and it's going to have a bunch of stuck balls in it but but so's Bryan's game who has beautiful ball protectors and Edge guards in it that are 3D printed because his aren't perfect yet either I've got the fure where it runs down the rails and Bott the cabinet you have uh you have gutter Lanes on the side of yours to bring it back down into the cabinet it's an easy get that way we got to get you a little better Grabber to throw it back on the field so a gigantic vck that pops out where are where are the Freddy mechs where you can just slap it you know right so Mike do you want to talk about I it's been a few okay fine next question oh my God I didn't know how loud it was going to be I'm so sorry it's okay it's okay unintentional kind of like me screaming for no reason it's fine we talked about the code and the hardware and the the platform we talked about uh how you got to where you got to where' this idea come from why are you doing this um God how do I summarize this in very okay so started hanging out with Lynn while back I won't go too much into that but we were playing games together and then eventually he told me hey I'm making a game it's called Tower flight adventures in Tower flight it's on Steam download that game it's amazing anyways um Shameless pitch sorry about that well not sorry it's a good game um and I helped him out on that a little bit and afterwards you know it was received pretty cool one off the bat and they're like hey let's make a table together I'm like yes let's do that and he was like yeah we can make like a one-off thing I'm like I don't want to do that I'm in it to win it man I want to like I want to do this for like if I'm going to put something out there I want to like make it you know so everybody enjoys it not like so there's like a couple things like oh I like this shot and just do the shot over and over no I want to make sure everybody likes it so that's just how I work I want to you know I'm an Entertainer clearly you can see that you can hear it in my voice and and uh you know song and dance man if you will but uh what is it good actor too thank you appreciate that Nealon you know 20 yeah any um but uh uh yeah you know like share the wealth when it comes to what you can what you can do but what yeah what I only wanted to do is I want everybody to be able to enjoy it so this iteration it's not you know it's going to take some time to really get more into it and be able to prog the for the progression of this but this is it the groundworks they're there you know I know what I'm going to add to it I know needs to be fixed I know what I need to work with just to fine tune but uh the theme how' you come up with oh Jesus Christ I know thank you thank you so okay all right let's do that let's do that okay so I was just thinking it' be a fun little thing like a meta table this where do you see arcade games they're in an arcade right it's pinball table so the Playfield it's an arcade within an arcade very meta you know hipsterish time when this came out so this is this is very relevant anyways but uh but pretty much with that it's the king of the arcade this is a competition where everybody's trying to get the the uh high scores um all these these are all the characters that you can see um I've got names for them I have stories for them a lot of things are written there's back things that don't need to be like there are there you know I'm a I you know I'm an actor I'm a director I'm a writer at heart so this was so important ly was kind of like being like don't worry about the artwork you just put slap something back that I'm like dude knowing that the table is not going to be exactly where I want it to be and like my deadline I knew what I could accomplish and I knew that I could I could set the stage in one set a picture is worth a thousand words I wanted to set the stage so you can look at that and be like the BL it's a blank table but by looking at that and getting an idea then you're going to be ble to see like interesting You Pick A Part look at what is it you give me your right oh okay oh yeah look at look at this backlash people I put a a little little light on it for a reason pick it apart look at it if you want to ask me questions I'll go in depth because there's more to it this is going to show you like what this game will be so a little backstory as to why I told him don't worry about the artwork um a week ago this didn't even have a cabinet yeah so there were more important to worry about well and uh two weeks before that it had no harness no wires whatsoever well so they we had more important things to worry about this is true this is true but luckily I was able to make a little bit of time thank you uh thank you uh my wife and kids and family for being so supportive um in this process and uh yeah time Jesus when you don't have time man you got to make it and yeah yeah all right so our next person we have two machines from you unfortunately the slides are in the wrong order so I'm going to skip this one battle stations but we're going to talk about pincraft real quick because pincraft has been around before pincraft has been around it's it's actually here four years ago and I've seen it at other events across the country as well it's been to Expo it's been to Allentown it's been to York um so has there been any advancements in pincraft I see there's a little more polish on it than uh some of the last times I've seen it but uh any anything since uh last year or so pincraft we can consider complete uh but what I did do is we added uh the ability to advance to the wizard mode so if you actually go through the mode selection there's the Ender Dragon challenge so you can go in and play the Ender Dragon Challenge and get right to the wizard mode and challenge that because it's actually a really fun mode and it's very hard to get there so he did that because I keep making poke the switches and cheat to get me there that's actually very correct that's exactly why we added a real afternoon now now you make these these pins with your son right this is a a hobby you guys do together or uh yes it's a hobby I started with my son Conor which you will see him in the Home Brew Room trust me he'll tell you all about the games um so it's something we started together when he was very little and now he's very big so love that and and besides taking on this this you know standard form factor I guess we can call it pinball machine uh you guys recently went and and decided to do a heads up challenge correct so battle stations which is in the center of the room is our brand new from the ground up Homebrew game uh the inspiration really came from other head-to-head games like joust and you know there's a couple of them like the soccer game and I played football football yeah anyone I can get my hands on um and we were just at one point we had this little air hockey table in the basement we put a pinball on it and we were batting the pinball around at the hockey table and I was like this is fun like why aren't why don't the other head to heads feel this way and we said you know let's take all the stuff away that's causing it not to be fun like you look at joust like you're trying to go for score and they put all this stuff in the middle that is in your way and what you really want to do is just attack the other player so that's what that's where Battle Stations really came and got inspired from um so we also like constraint wise uh we want it to fit a standard pinball glass so that's where everything started was measurements was I want a standard pinb glass and I want to sit like flat so it's you know we're not using really a bunch of unique parts so it's most of the parts you can find off the shelf that we're used to build it um it's a custom Cabinet but otherwise you know it's running fast it's get Mission pinball um you know it's been three years now in the build cycle so so I kind of intentionally glossed over pincraft because I really want to talk more about Battle Stations cuz I I really want to hear some of the design and build challenge Ines and and you know how well this hinge you have a hinge literally in the middle there to have the two two things pitched is is the ball getting damaged on that have you seen any anything there so the hinge came from the requirement to maintain the pinball machine at least in a home brew State because all the other head to- heads you there's a really awkward way to actually lift it or you look at Jou you actually have to go in from underneath so the hinges came from hey I got to be able to lift this up and actually work on it um it we haven't seen ball damage or anything from it um but we're looking at maybe Alternatives but actually work out really great honestly um the other challenges we ran into is none of the stuff's the right height so all the mounting hardware had to go lower than you typically expect um and again it was just getting it to all fit in that that custom Cabinet with that constraint of I'm going to use a standard glass and standard lock dumb bars so that took quite a bit of work it looks fantastic it's been busy every time I've tried to go in there uh I actually wanted to try to get a play on it with either you or your son and I just hadn't it's a blast but too busy in there to even get in there and do that yeah and what I I really appreciate about it is there's no score the only objective is to beat the other player so we see kids we see people that really aren't you know super pinball players they just they go up to it they approach it they play it they don't know exactly what they're doing the first time but they want to play it again and figure it out and that's what really pinball is all about is you can't just walk up to a game and play it you have to want to come back and figure it out so it kind of like Sparks that in the players and I think I really appreciate that that's the reception I wasn't expecting but really surprised me when we put it out at Expo and here as well if I remember correctly it doesn't have any outlanes the outl all the outlanes go to the flippers correct there is one outlane on the right side cuz that was another thing that as I was watching people play it I was like wow this is pretty engaging because you know you don't have a lot of shots just going out you're getting to to make a lot of shots so how many balls are in the game uh there are six now six uh we originally had uh a lot more we had 14 but we found out we couldn't launch them fast enough that you only needed six so imagine the TR are a problem too you had too many one side well that was the other problem yeah because you can run you get too many balls on one Sid so they jam up so we we found that out awfully quickly that you think it's a great idea oh we'll put us many is like oh W 14 balls in the game they'll all fly out at everybody and you realize well I can't get them to even kick out fast enough to make that even work so six was actually works much better now yeah another lesson learned across the I wouldn't have expected that yep question how about the displays I think you've got displays for each player you talk about how far along you are on using those and what your aspirations are absolutely if we that's a recent addition uh we realized we need some sort of display um especially if you like put it in an arcade you need to know how many coins you need to put in and you need to know like you need a a screen for a service menu so it's kind of we're forced to put a display in there it didn't need it so um the software is very uh Alpha it's it's about a days worth of software actually on the screen um just to kind of you know say who won and make the ship explode but we're planning on adding some more in there as well as we go along so but it's funny the feedback we get is often oh add more and the problem is the game works because it's less so we're very cautious about adding more um and actually upsetting that balance all right I'm going to move on to the honorable mention slide because you you do have four machines here um and you're a friend and love you or something you know so get up here let's excuse me you want to talk about Christmas yeah sure get them get them up here come on LY come on come on but I'm sitting here he's not going to move's not going what my butt is on this chair all that eff okay uh yeah so uh the Christmas uh machine it started off as 12 Days of Christmas I've streamed pretty much the whole development process on uh Facebook and I recorded all of that so it's all going to go on YouTube as well I didn't stream the last I want to say 20 hours of just the wiring and getting the cabinet ready and all that but the vast majority of the important part of Designing the Playfield getting the Playfield up to a flipable Whitewood and doing some of the art and whatnot that that's all there and actually I I streamed some of this the programming I did too for a bunch of the basic modes and then you know when you stream you have to focus on the stream and I need to just focus on just getting the game done so that I just said nuts to the stream I need to you know finish the thing but yeah I started uh the first week in November of last year 2023 and uh I want to say com compressed my time down it probably only about 40 to 60 man hours total to make this game from nothing to what it is including the cabinet and everything uh yeah but he has a lot of practice Yeah 10 years might have done it before yeah well it's not just I have a lot of practice I have a lot of systems in place I I have software that I just copy paste and then it's ready to go I have Playfield templates I can just start off with and I I have a whole process I can kind of just do yeah but Christmas is there it's also the first one that doesn't use the augmented uh uh head it uses a regular standard head except um well Unicode 26in screen came out last year and those things are awesome and I wanted not a back glass but a screen so that's what it is I hope they have a 32 in screen that comes out at some point because I really like a bigger screen uh and yeah that that's kind of it oh and the reason I didn't make Christmas argumented because I was originally thinking about it is when I was at Expo a couple people played Magic Forest and said they hated it because it was too dark so this is my response to them saying nuts to you now this is bright and you can see everything love it love it I I my answer to that is is not everybody's opinion is as valued as other people's cuz that one's wrong it's just it it may it may be wrong but it may be wrong but there's now A nice bright game that anybody can play true and the shots don't rattle that much so one of the things I love about Lynn is is the his process the way that he goes about things and and sometimes they come up and they appear halfhazard and and like well this is never going to be done I'm never going to finish this right that's good enough and I'm going to move on and then other things you are an extreme perfectionist which I also really appreciate a point to a point uh when you fold the head down on this and of course he showed me cuz he knows how much I appreciate details like this when you fold the head down on this machine and look at it from the side the the ribbon on the side of the head lines up with the ribbon that makes the package for the rest of the cabin and and it is it is just like you you took the time to do the math the engineering the everything to make that there was no math for that no no no no no it's called make everything in one big Photoshop file so the patterns all line up and then fold the head down when you put the side on and and kind of hope that it lines up and then realize you're a millimeter off and say screw it no one will notice yeah well no you you loosen the head nut and you push the head up a little bit a lot it's difficult details are hard you should just lie so now that I know that Lynn's turnaround time for a brand new game is 60 hours can I challenge him to make every single other holiday this year oh my God yes well normally I'd say yes but I'm going to say no because uh between now and Expo I want to work on all four of those games replace three playfields new art for haunted well actual art for haunted crws and actual art for Frozen new ramps for haunted Crews and software all across the board make them like [ __ ] amazing for Expo that is a way better answer than my dumb question but I got my laughs so I'm happy you got your laughs but you know what your dumb question [ __ ] you how do I have to edit streaming this seminar turn that off go back to the other one no it's not oh this better yeah well no that'll go on the screen behind you when we tell them to this is on the screen behind you not at the moment but it will be when we tell him now it's on the screen you see it's right you shouldn't have given me this Jullian don't you know better than this no I don't I don't oh I should run around try to find Steve Ritchie okaya so I gave you that not to point at the audience and Lynn I gave you that so I could stand over here and be lazy yeah would you give it to the wrong person Fally no you it you gave it to the right guy I got it I got don't don't that's you open your mouth now now have aob oh yeah yeah show us the box of toys the box of toys the stay on task yeah if you wanted to stay on task I wouldn't be moderator there's a couple good ones in here we love I have no idea why so why don't you start talking about this hold on I'm just going to get him out on the table then get we will we know put those anywhere there're spare parts for a reason that was a really dumb day to quit drinking so I'm I'm big in the 3D printing I'm big into making models part of the fun of this game was I got to design all these cool mechanism so it was like you know what what are some cool things we can do we've never seen before uh the 3D printer kind of really let me like open the door and look at that right so like this is a ramp I designed little there um so this is I call it inertia ramp and there's there's no diver in here but there's two exits there we go so if you hit the ball really hard it comes out the top and if you don't hit it hard enough it falls down to this lower level here uh but I was thinking you know I really wanted a reliable way to get to the the mid level and so so there's also this side scoop and so I have a backwards flipper in my game and if you get it just right you can pop this this shoot here and it'll comes up and it comes out the side lane here um I'll give a plug to this the printer I have is a bamboo x1c it is amazing um it prints really nice Parts you can do multicolor printing so like it's plausible to make that all one look at that uh we can print this as one piece and it'll just do all the colors on its own um but the thing it does is the speed so this uh this side part here is uh about 90 minutes off the printer and so it lets you like do some work you send the part to the printer work on something else you know oven dings you go pull your part out you drop it in there and so it really allowed me to iterate you know quite a bit on the game so like one of the things I had to do was figure out exactly the right envelope so all my parts I did have sort of a a wire frame around like okay will it fit um and so this ramp like whenever I put in there I have to like scooch it just right because there's only one sort of orientation it actually fits in the machine but then you know this is a 4our print and now I have a brand new ramp um so it was a lot of fun to just come up with cool ideas we've got um so the other one that I thought was fun um we put this together so this is a helix U captive ball there's a pin the way that just you you ejected it you didn't break that was pretty cool yeah um so I wanted to come up with the new captive ball so the ball sits here in the bottom and when you hit it it goes all the way up to the top and then it falls back again and so this is the version that was my prototype uh it doesn't have any sensors in it and I just wanted to figure out like could I do it the other thing that I decided would be fun to suffer through was using wires CU I like the way it sounded it turns out once you put the glass on you don't hear it anyway but it looks pretty and like mixed materials is something I like a lot like if it's everything's just you know one color 3D printed it sort of loses its Dynamics it loses it's fun so I wanted that shiny wire in there um the challenge with that was these are uh cro not crocheting it's like the circles you get when you knit through them um and so I bought those on Amazon I dremeled them into a hoop and then you're like just manually bending them trying to get it to fit in there just right and then you super glue it in and you walk away with all your clamps on there and then you go to fit it and it's turns out that the wire is actually stronger than the printed part and so now your part doesn't fit so if you look closely this it's dremeled to Hell CU I didn't care I just wanted it to work and then the next one I built that's in the game I took a lot more care on and in the design I made a jig that held this really strong uh so that when I was doing the wiring and the gluing that would be the part that held properly and when I took the jig off the amount of dremeling didn't go to zero but it went it went much lower than it was for this one so one of the things I really enjoyed of the game was just kind of coming up with things I've never seen before the there's a a mechanism that's not here actually I do have no it's not here um there's another mechanism where you know I've got this ramp so again 3D printed um there's a little diverter here so this is a Servo this thing works really nicely um when you open the mode you can load a ball in here and there's a mechanism that uh it's like the little penguin thing where it marches up the the steps oh cool but it's circular and so when you fire it's a it's a post safe post solenoid and so when I pull it down the that's just that's F uh the ball moves uh you know one six of a rotation and then when it releases it moves the other six of the rotation so you can load three balls in there and every time you do it it goes [ __ ] [ __ ] and the ball moves to another Zone love that and when you fully load it it it just fires a whole bunch of times and all the the balls dump out but um yeah so if you have the ability to get a 3D printer get access to one if you've got the ability to learn how to do catting you can really come with a lot of stuff this is the bamboo x1c um that again it just spits Parts out so fast and you there's some show your oh yeah so so what I was saying earlier like this isn't your normal drop Target um but if I put this on an outlane when the game tilts I smash the solenoid through the wall the cabinet so I needed to get the system over further and so this is how I get my outlane with this particular part patent that's amazing getting this to work just right so like you know now it's got now it's got some Flex in it and so I had to mess with the latches and and what not and currently the one of the game is not functioning um but this was just another you know kind of silly thing I had to come up with a solution like well I've got a pirates uh jjp Pirates it's like I could just scoot the in Lane to the the inside and I could do the crisscross they do but that seemed like more effort than I wanted and I wanted to look like just normal outlanes U so this was the solution for that and it turns out there's also uh a post in the way so you get this nice little knockout for oh crap I forgot that's there right um so that this is the the gen two of this design but do you still get the uh on the end of the ball of that Helix you still get that that that sound you get the whack noise yeah yeah it's really satisfying to watch it go up and then sort of Circle the Drain and go down again and the ring it actually goes through a light ring uh which is a feature I wanted to have so the light ring is sort of only kind of coated right now my primary focus so like for me the the challenge is the cating right I'm I'm pretty good at doing artsy stuff pretty good at designing mechanical components I can wire okay what are you using to design your so I'm using a program called Creo it's similar to solar works I I use it professionally I've been using it for like 20 years so I'm I'm pretty efficient at getting all sorts of weird shapes like yesterday we were shooting off this ramp here and so last night I went home and I just made a diverter for this thing and I brought it in and I had some hoto and it just went on there perfect ly and it's like oh it's just so nice when like the things in your computer match reality because I know that when I print it it's it's just going to work um so you the hard part for me was the coding it's like I can spend an hour doing hardware and that hour will be useful or I can spend an hour doing coding and I might have a thing that works sort of kind of at the end or I might just like destroy my code and so I would always sort of just lean to like well I'll just do some Hardware we'll do the code later we'll do the code later uh and again you know leaned on some people and that we the code got done in a couple weeks you know the code that's here got done in a couple weeks primarily because it's like well if the game's not done I don't know how I want to write the story like I know what I want to do but if that shot's not there if that switch isn't wired if the solenoid is not working if the light's not on like it didn't feel like there's a lot of value in doing the code for it because there was nothing to tie it into so I really leaned heavily on the hardware for a long time uh and then only recently started to sort of pivot away from it because things have like stopped moving every single day and now it sort of gel things like this really interest me because uh it's something I I don't remember it was something um Mark said or something you said Ryan about uh Playfield layout and positioning from underneath to to prevent things like this because stuff like this makes manufacturing really hard right see a 3D printer and you're only making one if you're only making one right prototyp exactly and so uh coming up with Creative Solutions for stuff like this for one of Parts is fantastic it really is is and and I love the quality on that by the way I'm a huge Borderlands fan so yeah uh the whole theme just kind of speaks to me and all the little details that I see everywhere uh as a as a fan of the franchise just um I don't want to spend too much more time on you but you want to talk about these real quick yeah uh so there's two wire forms in the game we were kind of messing around with how we wanted them to work you've got the one coming off this ramp you've got the one coming off the inertia ramp that's going around uh and the game there's some pretty hard shots in the game they've been opened up since the handbuilt first Whitewood but it's still pretty tricky and I like a game where you can do some control and catch your shots so these actually bring the ramps uh not to the inlanes but to the slings and they do it in such a way that for the most part I can drop it in front of the sling without triggering it the left one the the sensor is a little aggressive but you get about a 5050 previously mentioned you're Mist so you just decided that the slings is the way yeah no no it's supposed so I want to drop them into the sling and then have them R off so you can catch it so that way you if you want a reliable shot if you hit a ramp you've got a pretty good chance of catching the ball thinking about what you want to do next and then taking your shot uh so that's where these came from I uh Ryan thanks for bringing that up because it's one of the things I feel about your game um is is that if you stage more balls in certain parts like where you know there there's one spot where you capture the ball and it gets shot out someplace else and if that goes and hits that sling and goes across it goes across the uh if those balls were staged i' swear he Scott Danesi because the game would just be mean at that point it would just instantly just start throwing stuff towards the drain yeah and that's CU Scott hates himself and he's a crappy player he hates all of us in the same his words not mine Scott Deni loves making hard games but he doesn't even try to be good at them he just likes watching other people suffer he hates other he hates other people and he's one of my best friends at this point so like I'm also pretty bad at pinball but one of the things we did yesterday was I just like we got here you know watch some people play it and they'd get a mode going and they would drain it it's like ah so like every mode has a ball save now it's just like you know what you get a mode you get a ball save and the timer doesn't work so you get a mode you get a ball save it could be 5 seconds later it could be four minutes later but don't worry it's there waiting for you and if you get two modes then you get two ball saves waiting and you know this is the stuff it's like it's just good enough right like the thing you find with pinball is you know I'm staying up till like 5 6 in the morning some of these nights because like there's no stop like there's just that's done well if I just do this real quick and send it to the printer then I'll have it in the morning and then you send to the printer well that's only 45 minutes what can I get done I can stay up for 45 I could do the wiring over there and then when this is done it'll oh and then well actually that wire so let me just solder the connector on and you're like oh sh it's 5 in the morning the sun is coming up at that point yeah like what birds birds trip oh boy I have work tomorrow but I think I can get this couple done 500 a.m. wake up 2 hours working from home with employees that are all in California for the most part definitely helped my pinball hobby a little bit having family that puts up with my [ __ ] and like lets me like I can s my wife messaged it's 6 a.m. I'm going to bed can you please take the kids to school I need an extra 30 minutes of sleep uh that's definitely helpful to have a little bit of flexibility but to Mike's Point it's like just about finding the time like I don't know how many hundreds of hours are into this but I was doing 40 or 50 hours a week for the last like month on the game just to get it where it is because I had a vision of what I like I've been off the web that my goal for this was to just like plop this thing down like when I saw Jillian last time she's like who are you I'm like I'm an enigma I hide in the shadows and then my goal was just like here you go world like this is my first game and so really trying to get to that level you know with printed art and just all the little things that it's like every minute you put into it unless you're doing coding feels like something you you get that time back out of it you can see it change I love the coding the coding makes it awesome I need to learn it um but for yeah it's just everything you put into it you get back right you 20 minutes on cing take that much I'm just terrible suck at it ly I know it's cuz I suck at better you've got three L's there that's why it's not working like do you know how long I've been trying to fix that bug are you serious yeah there's Three L's you can't see that I'm like no I went to I got four hours of sleep last night I can't see anything welcome to welcome to programming yeah I'm not I don't have the mind for a programmer I have I have the artist engineering mind not the syntax mind glad you have good compilers now whereas C++ if you missed that semicolon 20 years ago you'd have 10,000 errors start in the middle every once in a while Mission pinball will say it looks like you did this you should do this and you're like but it's like one and 10 maybe error in config file mik go ahead to um to add on top of that like I was saying before when it came to our strengths and weaknesses really our games and and us as designers we really trying to explore what we can do but also show everyone our our strengths our weaknesses um it's a Showcase of what we can do I was talking about I forget who I was talking about this to but a bunch of different people bunch of different designers a bunch of different uh home Brewers we need to work together like that we can easily take someone else's ideas or at least just put something else on there and put our own little thing but we all have the same goal we want to make a game we want to make this so we can use each other to be able to do what like our master plan is like just like any any other company any other other that's what they do they have different little jobs for everything I I see a lot of people doing it on their own and I think that's really cool but since like this is phenomenal like these things are so cool like they have like people have been in the industry for years and years and years to do what you do and this is in I'm just blowing my mind some of the little things that you've showcased in your game it's just like if we ever are like ah I'm stuck on something like we should always be like I'm a call away let's work together and this is just this is going out to everybody else that will see this we should be working together what's the Discord that we're on try to it's on there you go so Ernie's got a Discord there's a handful of people on there they also have weird hours you can jump on and be like anyone see what the hell's wrong with my code like what's going on you know 3D printing like oh hey you know here's how you do X code what's that like I my brain doesn't work that way I can't think that way I wish I could I've tried I've tried Lynn I tried I tried he wanted he put me in front of unity for a little bit I can make this ball run around and I'm like I can't do anything else so threw him in the de end immunity is a little bit it's all right so so on that note um let me volun told Brian here into something else uh so when this hits YouTube you need to go and put links to the discords and things onto the video make sure that actually happens because I say it's going to happen every year and it never does yeah all of those things so somebody collect a list and he has now been volen told sorry Brian Jesus you hate me though I love you that much that's what it is and I trust you that you'll get it done uh and and on that note uh just you know I can code like a wizard I can't do this all right we'll trade I can't do this right and so yes we all have our strength we talk and that's what I'm talking about I think there's a lot of people here who help each other out which is fantastic so we have about five minutes left I want to make sure we get time for questions there's a little padding at the end of this but I'm a hypocrite if I take it because I fought for it and making everybody else stick to it but we're going to take princess's privilege maybe um so one of the last questions I have is what's next right some of these games are finished some of these games aren't finished what's next what's the plan and what are you committing to bring me back next year yeah and then I have to find suckers in the room what you have a whole year you have a year this time a whole year instead of seven months unless you're going to Expo and then expo's what 5 months from now October October I'm not unfortunately you want to start go ahead where where to start um so code like it's probably the biggest one is is code um I finally got things together audio boards like you know really assembled and and put together and I'm kind of happy with my layout or design even though it's not very Innovative it's know that's something we never talk about as the sound packages what we're doing for sound packages and and we will fix that for next year we will focus on sound stuff my game kind of shoots like an old Williams but um you know I want to do really modern code with it and and get it you know up to up to Snuff com it's a combo yeah there's nothing wrong with it it just you know it's it's feel but uh uh that's my biggest goal for next year or you know next show wonderful that's right my goal uh get the control system working again so it actually does like the thing it's supposed to do uh beyond that it's going to be a advancing the code there's a whole bunch of modes and stories I I want to tell with this game and then I I've got a ton of media assets but you don't have to take the time to go through them and pick and choose what you want to use and so a lot of it's just going to be going through like what sound do I hear how do I figure out how I can turn off the pop bumpers in the Basse mode when I've got another mode running and so yeah it's it's it's get the game tilting uh sounds funny to say uh and then get the assets get the assets and get it uh and get it all programmed up so for me I've set the stage but we have to have modes we have to have what is in plans which is already written bunch of stuff that's already like in set aside like I know what's this game's going to be which is good A lot of times that's not the case but having this and in including it onto a blink page with the and of course the peppers ghost is definitely going to help me out to show that if if there's anybody out there that can animate I want an opening animatic I'm not saying that it's going to be able to happen this year but I um that's something in the future I really want I have a story board man I really want that yeah so uh battle stations that prototype's actually done so my goal next is I'm going to build another one nice four players yeah go four players no four but just more L is more get caught up and we're going to create a second one uh the pinball octagon too many ideas we second one and we'll have artwork and uh the full package in the Playfield cuz we need to repackage it to get the artwork in and the is actually going to be a lexon overlay over the hinge so that's progress I we have another home brew it's more traditional it's it's in progress but I'm not going to announce it yet probably two years yet on that one cool very cool question questions from the audience is there a video of the play there is yeah come by and we'll put it on the main screen on Borderlands afterwards there's proof it's there I've seen it move I yeah I saw it move earlier I was like what is that sick I've I also have my my laptop that has CAD on it so if people want to see some Cad and some some poke around the game we can spin that for a little while too impressive maybe yes anyone else you didn't find your volunteer for next year yet no I got to do that ask a question I will all right who's thinking of making a pen yes yes what are you working on thinking um in terms of like just how how like would I tweak my geometry like how long would it take me to get the shot right I mean yeah I mean you can get most shot geometry kind of tweaked in maybe like an hour or two like it it doesn't take that long before you're like you know you've drilled like maybe four or five holes and you're like all right this didn't work all right this didn't work this one kind of works I'm getting close and then you're like okay I'm really happy with this one like and then you you you you know you get to that point and then there you go and then you fill you take out the wood putty and you fill all your holes and you're like okay this looks like [ __ ] but H we're getting there um it's it's really an iterative process and yeah it it sucks time and it hurts and you know you eventually get there you will eventually get there you just have to put in the effort and your time it's really it poster paper and Panter tape duct tape duct yeah duct tape and anything you can use but yeah I mean there's lots of things you can do to accelerate your process um obviously like okay Dave uh you're all talking about doing the real 3D materials how far could you get uh in a computer and just Sim what the geometry is are you referring to like maybe an A A computer application where you can play your uh what is that you know what it's called what is that V VPX yeah VPX or like maybe like drawing it up and then catting it VPX VPX I dabbled with VPX a little bit when I first started just like hey look at this I can make a pinball machine uh it's a lot of effort to put into the game like I mean you get something that you can see on a computer but it's not not like 20 minutes uh it's that's a pretty heavy hurdle if your way up does it reveal clunkiness early or anything like that I mean like a little bit Yeah like Ryan says yes Ryan says so so Ryan has talked about this ad nauseum in two other seminars at the last hotel where he talked about uh his goal in VPS was VPX was to put a flippable pin together that was fun before he drilled a single Hole uh so that he could get it out to all of us and all of his friend you know I had to go load VPX on my computer and play it for an hour before he would be my friend again uh he was he was volun holding all of us I think I might have learned this from him actually probably I'm sure you knew that way before I did know that way before um but it was it was a crucial start of so go ahead if you want to grab a mic actually I'm loud enough you know that but we can we can turn it on when it gets to you nice catch close it's not my first catch from Jan's poor throws um so I won't get into too too much of the weeds because this is actually in some of the old seminars and it's going to be we're going to mention it a little bit more at the American pinball seminar about berio's barbecue um that's tomorrow right I don't know I got to make sure I show up um but VPX is an incredibly useful tool for people who are like back here you're trying to save some time um it doesn't work for everybody because you it's another tool you need to learn like you do need to learn it it's not quick um but once you're fluent in it kind of like how Lynn can throw together an entire game in 60 hours because he's fluent with this entire process I can make a game from like David Hankin doodle or even thought idle thought in my head to completely realized hang Concept in less than three days of being paid at my salary job so that's um the the game that I'm working on right now that's going to be professionally produced was designed in 3 days in VPX and then after that I was also able to start iterating incredibly quickly you're right with the simulator that is 95% dis accurate so even backhands backhands usually suck with v they do and I will give you that backhands are awful in VPX plan your backhands accordingly as a player um like I said it's not perfect but I have heard it ramp Heights are also not great on my ramp Heights are great on VPX the ball can fit through a spot that it Y in that's that's interesting get on anyway for me um I've been able to get my games to the point where so I I use VPX the simulator as my Whitewood zero so uh it's I never build my Whitewood zero my white wood zero is completely virtual and I'd say 75% of my iteration is done there because you're right I immediately can see this is never going to work I'm going to not waste my time on it or close all right right over here over here over here and it's exact same as Iron's process except I don't have to Bondo six holes afterwards that's it and so I've been told by my play testers that when when they got my Whitewood they said it shot like a like level two level three Whitewood that they're used to so like and I was like good CU I spent months moving things every so slightly before I basically traced it in my CAD program so it is very useful but you have to have the like mindset of of that you're going to sink the time into it and if you're fluent in it and you can understand how to learn from it you can greatly save time at no cost and that that was the real thing I pitched it for in the previous Homebrew seminars which was it's a great entry point with zero cost so if you're just thinking about it and you're not quite ready to take the dive into the you know pinball machines are not cheap anymore like and and like Jillian said if you have a 2X play field price multiplier on anything that is custom built so you're if you're building if you're buying games for 8,000 y'all could do the math on how much these gentlement have spent building their games um my wife is here dude shut up also I'm way under that budget so far I'm sure I'm sure sure you are get out of here leave go poor L you have a good accountant right okay he says 2 low the barrier of Entry to out if to do this and then by the time you've messed around with VPX for long you're like I want to like you'll you'll know that it's something you're willing to put the time and cost into and you'll you'll be able to figure out at no cost if this is for you so that's why that's why I say those three salary days areour days like they normal people days they're at least 10 yes cuz those are the ones I get most excited about designing a brand new game that's the one they can't kick me out of the office it's when they want me to do boring paperwork stuff and fight with managers that I want to get the hell out of there as soon as possible but more about that tomorrow but yeah so no I'm not going to change so I I kind of poo poo VPX because of the various issues I have with it but truth be told the first games I made were on VPX because they were for PS3 and I wrote a converter to convert from VPX to uh Lua and uh like polygons to run on PS3 so the original games were all in and a cross converter from a Visual Basic to to C++ and everything so the first games I did were technically on uh VPX 8 and uh yeah so I've used it I understand it and I don't like it anymore the physics have come a long way and in 10 specifically try it again no I I I have a Wacom tablet I can just play with that so yeah I started with VPX does need to save time um I think it's yeah it's it's another tool right it's another thing you can use the the zero cost entry point is definitely factual uh for me like I play with it a little bit and it's I happen to be really skilled at like the designing and I can put things in my hand and I'm much better at having things in my hands so you know one of the things I'd say is uh you know I have a lot of 3D printed Parts but like when you have a hammer everything's a nail and so that's why like yeah I have a 3D printer that can spit out exactly perfect things and like hours and like that's that's what I leaned against to get this out of here I don't have a wood shop like I I wasn't and doing a lot of stuff on the Playfield because it's just hard and so that was like the smoothest way to watch the game transition uh high with high efficiency literally said that same thing in your exact same chair like two years ago when you have a when you have a hammer everything's a nail talking about 3D printing so oh there go hell yeah anybody else thinking of making a home brew machine yes okay good by the way you've been volun told I want to see it next year flipping game doesn't have to have any logic or any rules Whitewood in a cabinet flippers cabinet's optional cabinet's optional cabinet's optional if you bring it you bring a play you played your game for a long time before you put it in a cabinet onor rotiss cabinet's optional I've had Che should be that was me no it's not on all right um with your Borderlands table and H uh how it moves I've also had an idea like that except not side to side as well just uh up and down um and it if I ever make it it would be a space scam to game and like you go to different planets and uh lower Gravity the table is more flat that's actually pretty cool yeah do it it do it do it peer pressure got a year yeah you have a year got a year bring us something it doesn't have to be perfect it just has to be somebody knows Robotics and knows how to do that kind of stuff L and I will literally just pick up the front and back oh oh yeah oh yeah tell up down okay we'll do it don't even have to say anything just have Ty of tasers for us exactly I had started with the notion of having one and then I thought about all the things I could do with more and am a SAT masochist cre I was going to say the real scope creep yeah but you got to start I think that's the thing that we've heard here repeatedly over the last God it's been six or seven years getting old um hardest every single yeah every single get just get started get it here so the best I can say is is you owe me a machine next year I want to see something with some flippers and something the rest of it doesn't matter but I think when you get to that point you'll start innovating So speaking about getting started um I have a fairly large shop now and I'm thinking about starting a pinball specific maker type space for everybody um I'm I'm thinking about it so if you guys are interested come talk to me uh this is me right here hi um come come talk to me um ly you want this oh yeah yeah I'll take it Tak money do it taking money now so I'm thinking about different types of options for it and whatnot but um yeah there's a lot of people in this New Robert Englunds area that just want to make games that now and the future and as everybody's saying hey Community helps like one person knows something someone else doesn't know something and another person has already dealt with the problem that you've dealing with and can tell you don't do that stupid right uh having a space might be useful specifically for that rather than a general makers or a general this or that where oh yeah I'm I'm making a new table like a new uh dresser okay great that doesn't help me with pinball or or or does it um but yeah so I'm I'm thinking about that idea so come talk to me with home bre Le uh not yeah something like that I don't I don't I don't know that I haven't thought that far ahead I I just came up with this idea like three weeks ago because I have like 6,000 square feet now L you know nice about that idea uh is that what a lot of people won't tell you is that making games is kind of a CSE because then you get stuck with this machine forever which you can't par with because it's got hundreds and hundreds of hours your even you don't want to look at it any yes and so if you set up that to also be like a rting no you see I have a solution for that um Emily it's called EMP she she it's called EMP my my four game or my three games soon to be four are all at EMP and so the public plays them 24 hours a day seven days a week basically nice um and if you guys make a home brew game uh have the public play it otherwise you won't know what's wrong and you and you won't know how well it holds up don't don't make a game to have in a vacuum there's no [ __ ] point in that make a game to playing your bring your games yeah so I just want to let people know bring your games um you know I was here last show and my game just flipped like and I didn't have ramps or really you know a lot of stuff finished but I still brought the game and the benefit yeah but the benefit of of coming to the show is the fact that you get a lot of people to play your game you start figuring things out it's the little things that you don't get at home in your basement or wherever the heck you're building your game you're not going to get that experience so it is absolutely worth bringing your game to the show um Lynn can attest to it bring your game please bring your game what was I telling you like all all couple months leading up to this bring your damn game I don't I didn't give it two shits if it flipped or not it was going to be here for people to play it and see it and tell you like what's good or not because you needed it to get that fire under your ass exactly well nothing makes you like a deadline exactly it's true there you go deadline because we can't ask I have to cut this conversation off because I'm the one who complains that everybody goes over an hour and we're now at an hour and 15 minutes so speaking of uh shut off the mics they're unplugged now uh so the rest of you thank you for coming this is the highlight of my weekend here um I do a lot of work here to get all this AV stuff set up and everything but this is the reason I do it is for this community right here this is actually the most important thing to me um so thank you for being here and supporting these people that did something amazing I think we forget how hard understanding computers and and software and code physics geometry art math everything all into one um and as you heard not one person can do it by themselves so it takes a community except Lyn Lyn doesn't count though no Lynn does Lyn's a wizard okay it's Lyn doesn't count Jules so thank you for coming here and helping me support these people and encouraging new people that will have pins for us here next year you've been committed um just the way these two got roped into it by me years before so come take a seat up here come talk about what you've learned come be part of this great Community with me and uh maybe someday Lyn and I will build a pinball machine together I get some time in my life
high confidence · Panel moderator explains: 'King of the arcade is off of the pinball 2000 format with the monitor shooting down onto the top of the pepper ghost pepper ghost we love pepper ghost'
Battle Stations is designed as a competitive head-to-head game without traditional outlanes (except one on right side directing to flippers)
high confidence · Developer states: 'the only objective is to beat the other player' and when asked about outlanes: 'all the outlanes go to the flippers correct there is one outlane on the right side cuz that was another thing'
Battle Stations was developed over a three-year build cycle with constraints including fitting within standard pinball glass dimensions
high confidence · Developer explains: 'it's been three years now in the build cycle' and 'we want it to fit a standard pinball glass so that's where everything started was measurements'
“I want to make sure everybody likes it so that's just how I work I want to you know I'm an Entertainer clearly you can see that you can hear it in my voice”
Mike Testa (King of the Arcade developer) @ ~40:00 — Reveals personal design philosophy: entertainment value and broad appeal over single-shot focus; entertainment/performance background informs game design approach
“you know I'm an actor I'm a director I'm a writer at heart so this was so important ly was kind of like being like don't worry about the artwork you just put slap something back”
Mike Testa @ ~44:00 — Demonstrates tension between artistic vision and practical deadlines; shows how experienced mentors (Lynn) help prioritize achievable deliverables
“there's no score the only objective is to beat the other player so we see kids we see people that really aren't you know super pinball players they just they go up to it they approach it they play it they don't know exactly what they're doing the first time but they want to play it again”
Pincraft/Battle Stations developer @ ~70:00 — Core design insight: scoreless competitive format lowers barriers to entry and encourages replay; addresses accessibility gap in traditional pinball
“I don't want to do that I'm in it to win it man I want to like I want to do this for like if I'm going to put something out there I want to like make it you know so everybody enjoys it”
Mike Testa (King of the Arcade) @ ~38:00 — Illustrates motivation for homebrew building: desire for quality and universal appeal vs. one-off novelty; personal pride and entertainment value
“we were just at one point we had this little air hockey table in the basement we put a pinball on it and we were batting the pinball around at the hockey table and I was like this is fun like why aren't why don't the other head to heads feel this way”
Pincraft/Battle Stations developer @ ~57:00 — Reveals creative origin of Battle Stations: prototyping through play-testing unconventional mechanics leads to game design innovation
design_philosophy: Contemporary homebrew developers prioritize accessibility and inclusive gameplay over traditional score-based competition; Battle Stations scoreless head-to-head design attracts casual players and encourages replay learning
high · Battle Stations developer notes unexpected reception from non-pinball-players; 'there's no score the only objective is to beat the other player'; kids and casual players drive repeated play to learn mechanics
high · Moderator explicitly states: 'why you would build your own machine instead of just buying it because it's twice as expensive to do it this way it is it is'; builders describe personal fulfillment, creative control, and community contribution as primary motivations
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personnel_signal: Experienced mentors (Lynn, Ernie) enabling rapid skill transfer to new homebrew developers through collaborative development, reducing time-to-completion and improving design quality
high · Brian credits Ernie for code/rules help on Borderlands; Mike credits Lynn as teacher and mentor on King of the Arcade; Lynn described as involved in multiple projects spanning 15+ years; mentorship model explicitly highlighted as success factor
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product_strategy: Pincraft completed platform receives post-release accessibility enhancement (wizard mode shortcut) based on developer play-testing behavior, demonstrating ongoing iteration even for finished homebrew titles
high · Developer added mode selection to skip to Ender Dragon challenge/wizard mode after observing owner repeatedly cheating via button pokes to access that content; simple QoL improvement improves accessibility for challenge seekers
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product_strategy: Borderlands articulated playfield system represents novel mechanical innovation not currently pursued by commercial manufacturers; moderator advocates for patent protection to prevent unauthorized commercialization
high · Moderator states: 'this level of innovation isn't happening in all the manufacturers I mean they don't have the opportunity to to work on small single one of prototypes'; describes self-leveling/pitching capability as addressing commercial gap; advocates patent filing
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product_concern: Borderlands articulated playfield sustained damage during transportation, disabling primary mechanical innovation; reveals vulnerability of novel homebrew designs to logistics and suggests potential reliability concerns for transported machines
high · Brian: 'until yesterday at four o'clock' playfield was fully functioning; damage occurred in transit to expo; parts out of stock preventing same-day repair; team prepared to strip playfield before next transport to prevent recurrence
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technology_signal: Mission Pinball Framework (MPF) has achieved widespread adoption as de facto standard for homebrew development, enabling hardware-agnostic game design across FAST, Cobra, and P3 platforms
high · All four machines presented use MPF; developers explicitly state 'mpf across the board' with different hardware; MPF enables code portability and reduces hardware vendor lock-in