Episode 404 - Multi-Bingo Playtesting and 1947 Williams Amber

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·16m 34s·analyzed·Sep 7, 2017

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.022

TL;DR

Multi-Bingo playtesting update, bug fixes, 1947 Williams Amber design analysis

Summary

Nick Baldridge discusses Multi-Bingo playtesting progress, bug fixes in his homebrew bingo machine software, and provides a detailed design analysis of a 1947 Williams flipperless machine called Amber. He previews his appearance at White Rose Game Room show and shares technical insights into switch logic issues and coin flash animation implementation across his expanding game library.

Key Claims

Multi-Bingo now has 96 total switches with 6 switch processing boards installed, using approximately 83 switches currently with room to grow
high confidence · Nick Baldridge discussing Multi-Bingo hardware specifications in playtesting episode
Fixed a critical lifter bug in Multi-Bingo where ball number six would occasionally lift when only five should lift, caused by inverted logic in is_active/is_inactive methods for normally closed switches
high confidence · Nick Baldridge explaining technical bug resolution on Multi-Bingo
Big Wheel coin flash animation was implemented backwards due to misreading manual documentation drawn from wiring side instead of wiper side
high confidence · Nick Baldridge discussing Big Wheel implementation issue and discovery
Multi-Bingo has evolved significantly since last appearance at York show and now includes cosmetic improvements
high confidence · Nick Baldridge noting feedback from Taylor Reese and Joe during playtesting
Only three bugs remain open in Multi-Bingo issue tracker on GitHub after recent fixing spree
high confidence · Nick Baldridge reporting current bug status

Notable Quotes

“It completely cured that one, and I'll need to backport it... I'm going to go ahead and backport that to 137 more games, then everything should be good there.”
Nick Baldridge @ mid-episode — Shows scale of Multi-Bingo project - lifter bug fix affects 137 different games in software library
“The problem was related to the is active method and is inactive. And the issue that I had is that they act exactly the opposite of the way that you'd expect for a normally closed switch.”
Nick Baldridge @ mid-episode — Technical explanation of subtle but critical switch logic bug that required understanding hardware behavior
“It's definitely something I'll be on the lookout for as I implement coin flash in the rest of the games, because it'll be quite easy to make that mistake in the future.”
Nick Baldridge @ later-episode — Reflects on documentation pitfalls and need for careful verification of technical specifications
“With the layout of the bumpers, you as a player really need every bit of help that you can get.”
Nick Baldridge @ later-episode — Analysis of 1947 Williams Amber flipperless layout difficulty and game design philosophy
“One of the guys that came was Taylor Reese from this Flippin' podcast, and he had seen the multi-bingo last year, but it's evolved quite a bit since its last appearance at York”
Nick Baldridge @ early-episode — Indicates cross-podcast collaboration and evolution of Multi-Bingo project

Entities

Nick BaldridgepersonMulti-BingoproductTaylor Reeseperson JoepersonWhite Rose Game Room ShoweventWilliams AmbergameBig Wheelgame Frolicsgame

Signals

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product_concern: Critical lifter bug in Multi-Bingo where ball 6 would occasionally lift when only 5 should, caused by inverted switch logic for normally closed switches. Fixed but requires backporting to 137+ games.
high · Nick describes issue in detail: 'occasionally ball number six would lift in a game that should only have lifted five' and solution involving is_active/is_inactive methods
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design_innovation: Multi-Bingo features 96 total switches across 6 switch processing boards, representing significant hardware complexity for homebrew machine. Currently using ~83 switches with room to grow and additional playfields to wire.
high · Nick states: 'Each switch processor supports up to 16 physical switches, so that gives you kind of an idea of how many switches are in this game. The answer is 96.'
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technology_signal: Multi-Bingo project involves software recreation of 137+ classic bingo games with accurate coin flash animations, requiring detailed analysis of original machine documentation and wiring diagrams.
high · Discussion of Big Wheel coin flash implementation requiring wiring diagram analysis and detailed measurements from back glass documentation
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event_signal: Multi-Bingo will be displayed at White Rose Game Room Show (Sept 29-30) with Nick Baldridge providing prizes for bingo row competition, indicating public exhibition and community engagement.
high · Nick states: 'I will be there on the 29th and 30th, as well as the Thursday setup day, along with the multi-bingo. Please come say hello, give the game a shot'
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content_signal: Taylor Reese from Flippin' podcast attended Multi-Bingo playtesting session, suggesting growing awareness and cross-promotion within pinball podcast community.

Topics

Multi-Bingo Development and PlaytestingprimarySoftware Bug Fixes and Technical Implementationprimary1947 Williams Amber Design AnalysisprimaryHomebrew Pinball Machine HardwaresecondaryEM and Bingo Pinball HistorysecondaryWhite Rose Game Room Show AnnouncementsecondarySwitch Logic and Control SystemssecondaryTechnical Documentation and Accuracymentioned

Sentiment

positive(0.82)— Nick Baldridge expresses satisfaction with playtesting feedback, appreciation for technical help, enthusiasm about upcoming show appearance, and genuine interest in historical machine design. Some frustration with documentation errors, but resolved positively. Overall tone is constructive and collaborative.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.050

What's that sound? It's For Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to For Amusement Only. This is Nicholas Baldridge. Quick one tonight. Time has escaped me. But there's a few things that I wanted to talk about. The first, the wonderful White Rose Game Room show is coming up at the end of September. I will be there on the 29th and 30th, as well as the Thursday setup day, along with the multi-bingo. Please come say hello, give the game a shot, let me know what you think, and as always, I'll be providing prizes for those who can make four or five in a row at any of the machines on bingo row. So there's a number of collectors who will be there, and we're all bringing machines, and it should be a fantastic time. I'm looking forward to it. I look forward to it all year long, and the time is almost upon us. Last Friday, I had a little playtesting party with a few local guys. It was a horribly rainy night, and only a couple of the invitees were able to make it, but I had a great time. Only one bug reared its head, and it's a bug that I've resolved since then across dozens of games. and it was a fun time. Everything worked. Had lots of dramatic balls, ones that required a lot of movement in order to pull out of holes or nudge into the appropriate holes or guide back down to the ball return down at the bottom of the play field. One of the guys that came was Taylor James Rees from this Flippin' podcast, and he had seen the multi-bingo last year, but it's evolved quite a bit since its last appearance at York, and it was pleasing to get that outside feedback. And then my chief bingo playtester, Joe, came over, and he put it through its paces as well. he also hadn't seen it since a lot of the cosmetic improvements had been made so it was gratifying to hear their feedback and kind of bring them up to speed on the project as a whole so I mentioned the bug I've actually been on a bug fixing tear there were several bugs which I had logged in the issue tracker in GitHub and there are only three open as of today one of which was a lifter bug. The problem was that occasionally ball number six would lift in a game that should only have lifted five. I did finally narrow that down. The problem was related to the is active method and is inactive. And the issue that I had is that they act exactly the opposite of the way that you'd expect for a normally closed switch. So a normally closed switch, when it's active, is when a ball actuates it, so it opens it up. I had assumed precisely the opposite. So for a normally open switch, it's active when it's closed. A normally closed switch would also be active when it's closed, but that's not right, and I understand the logic there. They do provide two alternate methods isOpen and isClosed and so I converted my code to use those and I was able to remove a delay method because of that I only updated Frolics so far which was the game where it was most likely to appear of the games that were playtested on Friday So it completely cured that one, and I'll need to backport it. The lifter code is pretty low-level stuff in each game, and unfortunately it needs to be specific to almost every game because the way that the game determines if an extra ball should lift or not is actually dependent on various units that have different numbers of steps and so forth per game. So I'm thinking about making a generic five ball lifter and then just adding the extra ball logic within the game, but I may not do that. I'm not sure yet. So I'm going to go ahead and backport that to 137 more games, then everything should be good there. One of the other bugs that I fixed that was notable was Big Wheel. I had implemented the coin flash animations, which was, you know, fun and gratifying. I'd mentioned how great it was to actually have the games flash like they're supposed to. The only problem with Big Wheel was I implemented it, looked at a YouTube video, because I've never seen one in person, and then started up my game and dropped the coin and it flashed exactly backwards from the way that it should. And I wasn't able to figure this out. I had done things like change the direction of spin and all kinds of interesting things in order to try to correct it. But actually, in reviewing it today, what I found out is that the technical writer who had written the documentation for that particular unit had actually drawn it from the wiring side instead of from the wiper side. Almost every unit in the manuals for all of the Bally Bingos are drawn from the wiper side instead of the wiring side. So that was unusual, and I made an assumption, which was incorrect, despite there being about five notes on that page, which said, hey, this is from the wiring side. But live and learn. It's definitely something I'll be on the lookout for as I implement coin flash in the rest of the games, because it'll be quite easy to make that mistake in the future. And because the coin flash animations are such a time-intensive process, you know, I I have to not only map the wire colors, but also pull out the specific measurements for the illuminated image and the non-illuminated back glass image portion that I'm going to re-render. Because that's so time consuming, I'm going to want to get it right the first time if I can. So I'll be on the lookout for that in future games. I do not recall any other game that is like that at all. So that's just kind of interesting. Other than that, let's see, I've been working on some of the physical aspects of the game. I wired in some additional switches from the drawer. I received a new switchboard, and I've begun the wiring process for that. This will be the sixth switch processing board. Each switch processor supports up to 16 physical switches, so that gives you kind of an idea of how many switches are in this game. The answer is 96. that's quite a lot. Of course that's 96 total I'm actually only using about 83 at the moment but I have some room to grow and I certainly have additional playfields to wire in so that should be okay. I had done some concatenating of some of the switches to reduce the switch count but now I have room to grow so I'll expand that again probably That got here very quick thanks to pinballcontrollers.com and Jerry at Multimorphic so thank you and thanks to the custom pinball folks who walked me through the is active and is inactive issues that I was mulling about in my head this morning You may notice I a little quiet Everyone in bed or getting ready for bed right now and it is rather late and I remembered at the last minute that I needed to record a podcast. So here is what I've got. Remember this is the year of flipper list. Today's example is January of 1947's Williams Amber. Amber is a flipperless machine, and it's got an interesting layout. There are 10 different passive bumpers, each of which awards a number towards the sequence, which is displayed on the back glass. There are two additional passive bumpers, marked 11 and 12. These are additional numbers, which are not part of the main sequence. And these bumpers are marked with caps that are special when lit, or 5,000 points. Now, what's interesting about this playfield layout is that there are also rollovers in the center of the playfield. and on the left and right you get 5,000 points apiece each time you roll over them and it will also light those bumpers numbered 11 and 12. As I mentioned, they're not part of the sequence, so when they're lit, you get a free game if you hit them. Now, as this is a flipperless game and because of the layout, there's a rubber band which is stretched across up above two posts. you're going to have to roll over to it or bounce off of the rubber which is near the out area but in between the two rubbers which are stretched down near the bottom of the game there are two gobble holes one of which scores 5,000 points except when it's lit in which case it scores 10,000 and the other which is super special which awards a certain number of games and when if I read this correctly when the top hole is lit then the bottom hole becomes extra special in order to light it you have to knock out the entire sequence, 1 through 10 this looks like quite a feat that's the first thing I'll say and the second thing is it looks like it's very lucrative to hit that hole now I'm sure it's operator configurable and unfortunately there's no pictures of the inside of the machine or any other paperwork that's uploaded to IPDB but I would imagine as would be typical for games this time that you could win some multiple of two up to 8 or 10 games, depending on if it's super or extra special. So something like 4 games, 8 games, 10 games, somewhere in that range. Looks super challenging and actually like a lot of fun. The layout of the rubbers is such that you can sneak behind some of the bumpers and then hit them from underneath. I think that is really clever and would be some good eye candy while you're playing. The layout of the bumpers up top, you have a cluster of five bumpers, which are actually, I say clustered, but they're spread out along the machine. In the top area, you have one, two, and three. And in between those bumpers, there is a singular post. this post you can bank a ball off of and up into a gobble hole The gobble hole is worth 5 points unless it lit in which case it scores 10 Now it unclear how to light that as it unclear how to light the top gobble hole of the bottom two So, I guess the middle gobble hole. Bumpers four and five flank either side of the play field. And again, the rubber layout is such that you can bank a ball off of the rubbers underneath and hit the bumpers up above the four and five. I think it's very cool. The artwork is fancy scroll work and concentric circles and beautiful ribbons, which are kind of draped around the gobble holes. The gobble holes themselves are made up of these large plastic inserts, which will illuminate when you complete the sequence or otherwise light the double value. One other interesting note, the machine that's pictured on IPDB has a rebound, which is very interesting. It is much larger than those that I've seen from other machines of the era. I'm not sure if this is a Williams thing. I've never worked on a Williams that was this old. But it is pretty cool looking and unique. With the layout of the bumpers, you as a player really need every bit of help that you can get. So I would be interested to see, because that looks an awful lot bouncier than most of the ERA's rebound rubbers, I'd be interested to see how it played. one other thing of note this game has a beautiful screen shooter lane, it looks very much like the exhibit mystery that I own in that it's got these blue lines which project out from the shooter lane and actually get larger as you go up until they culminate in a circle near the top of the shooter lane I think that's very beautiful and eye-catching and it's interesting to me that they stopped doing that kind of flourish at some point, probably because there were so many other mechanical gimmicks in the game that you didn't need quite the artwork in the shooter lane anymore. But, as I say, beautiful game. Would love to play one of these one day. And the back glass has a lady in a gown, and she's standing in front of a wall, which happens to have, you guessed it, a curtain, a beautiful curtain. The back glass has a gorgeous array of colors, and the sequence is made up of flowers. They're very large and again, multicolored, beautiful arrangement. Williams is up at the top. There's beautiful scroll work and the point values are arrayed below the little vignette with Amber herself there in the center. Up at the top center, there is a circle that illuminates when you tilt. I think that's pretty cool. It's just a red circle and very tall letters. All right, well, that's all for tonight. Thank you very much for listening. My name again is Nicholas Baldridge. You can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail.com, or you can call us on the bingos line. That's 724-BINGOS-1, 724-246-4671. You can listen to me on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Cast, VRSS, on Facebook, on Twitter, at bingopodcast. You can follow me on Instagram, also at bingopodcast. Or you can listen to me on my website, which is foramusementonly.libsyn.com. Thank you very much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time.