Oh, hey. Well, I guess I should actually flip it to the right screen. Starting on a win. That might help. Might help. Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the Dirty Pool podcast. We're doing episode 7. I can't believe it's number seven and today we have somebody different than any of the other avenues of pinball that we've covered so far. This is Davey from Stumbler Mods. Hey, everybody. How's it going Jeff? Thanks for having us on the show, man. Cheers, man. So, if you don't know, Davey produces basically the top tier creme de la creme pinball mods for a very select few games. And we'll talk about that in a little bit because I'm curious about what is your decision-m process when you do approach that. But aside from the business, there's a whole creative element to it. And I feel like your mods are, for lack of a better word, art. Like there really are like they're not they're not just plastic threedimensional objects that you put on a playfield. you're actually making something that improves the game like it existed from the from the day it left the factory. Oh man. Well, that's very kind of you to say and I I truly appreciate uh you saying that. Um obviously that's what we shoot for uh when we when we build mods for the games. Um but it just sort of I guess you know why that happens you know it sort of just came out of uh what I'm interested in. So, you know, I'm a computer programmer by trade and uh you know, when I sort of took that knowledge into the pinball sphere, it sort of just made sense to start doing circuit boards and lighting patterns and things like that. And it kind of just evolved from there. Um, you know, the mods that probably you're familiar with, the ones for Godzilla, um, that was probably six or seven mods into into the catalog before things started really sort of ticking over. Um, and by that stage, it sort of built up the the software to the point where it could do all of that stuff. So, it's yeah, it's been a long process, but um, you know, I think, uh, you know, I'm really pleased with with where things have gone and, um, you know, and I think that, uh, you know, I sort of like to humbly take some credit for, uh, you know, where modding is now. You know, people are producing some absolutely fantastic work across the board. Uh, and it never fails to surprise me. um you know how good some people are um at the work that they produce um you know and it's just such a joy sometimes to open those packages and see what people have produced and just not not even know how they've done it sometimes you know so this was a question I had for way later but do you think that because of how good mods have become now that some of the manufacturers are kind of like leaving a gap so that mods can be made on their machines instead of trying to like develop them the way they should be? It's a it's a funny question that one man. Yeah. Um and a good one too. So we we uh we we have our own pod as some people may know and thanks a lot anybody who who watches us and um probably about a year ago there was a there was a question or possibly even an accusation you might say aimed at mod makers on pinsside that said that mod makers are to blame for why we don't get good enough games anymore. Right. That was the That was the accusation. That was um No, I I don't at all. I I would love I would love to think that manufacturers thought of us at all. Um but I honestly don't think that. I think that I think that bomb um you know, past history uh you know, I would never produce something myself um that I thought could go out into the world and be improved upon by people later. I mean, that would be the equivalent of, say, me sending out a mod and going, "Oh, well, I just won't glue those pieces together. I'll just let the customer glue them at the other end." Or, you know, the lighting's a bit crap there, but hey, somebody else will improve it later on down the track. There's also so many components that go into making a pinball machine. It's like to to think that they really were like, "Oh, we should leave space for the mod makers." Like, no, they're consumed with all of the other disaster drama of getting a pinball machine out the door. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's a bit um you know, it would be thinking way too much of ourselves to to imagine that pinball manufacturers even sort of consider us to that degree. I mean uh you know we've had a couple of shoutouts um from people like Keith Elwen at times, you know, Keith Owen's been interviewed on a pod or whatever and somebody's shown him the Tokyo Neon and he's recognized it and said it's cool, you know, and that's literally, you know, for me that's a that's a massive win. But at the same time, that's like recognition. Oh, yeah. I think that's cool. It's not that's not a huge deal. That's probably a 10-second thought that he's had in the past that he's recognizing that. So, no, I don't I don't think that um I don't think I don't think manufacturers are altering their behavior to fit us in. The LE Kong like the I'm kind of peeking over at it now, but the uh the the biplane on it, there's things on it that have Yeah, you can see they're hiding in the background. Looks like you you dove in to be an Ellie boy, too. What are we doing? Uh, well, yeah, there's a good reason for that, though. Research. Yeah, we'll get to that. I want to We're of course going to talk about some of the up and cominging designs and production pipelines, but you kind of mentioned uh earlier talking about when you first started getting into that. And the first note I have here in my notes is what was the first mod you made and how did it come about? And I think that's like where did where did Stumbler come from? Uh, the name. No, the actual Well, we'll get to that, too. But when when you were like, "Hey, I need to make a mod for a pinball machine, and this should be a business." What which mod was that, and what committed you to making a business out of it? Um, so I reurbed a creature from the Black Lagoon pinball machine. And if anybody wants to see that reverb, it's on the website, sort of hidden, deep into the news articles and stuff. Um, you might be able to find it if you go to the news section on the website. Uh it'll be deep deep deep. So you might have to scroll back a few levels. Um but so I I sort of picked up and this was this is the first pinball machine I'd uh ever uh gotten. You know, we were in bed one Saturday morning and I asked my wife if I could get a pinball machine to work on and refurb. Um there it is there. So this is the this is the hunk of junk that I picked up off eBay for like a hundred 100 quid or something. needed an absolute major overhaul. That cabinet build. Yeah, it was absolute toast. Yeah. So, quite an interesting little project to embark on before you've even sort of, you know, know what the heck you're doing. I mean, I was, you know, you know, screw when I was trying to undo the screws from the playfield, they were basically just breaking off and, you know, I was trying to drill them out and that wasn't working. I had no idea what I was doing. So, why not make Creature in better condition? What What fueled you to to take this absolute disaster? Good question. That is a very very good question. I have no idea. Probably just lack of knowledge really. Um I mean well actually originally I was going to turn it into a VPIN. So the fact that the playfield was toast wasn't um that big a deal to me um because I was going to just pull it all out and stick in a TV screen and stuff anyway. And I did all that um but then decided that that wasn't scratching the itch. So, I kept looking at this old playfield and thinking, "Ah, surely I could, you know, tart that up and, you know, I'm sure it's probably good to go." And of course, it wasn't. Um, so I ended up getting a donor playfield. Most of the parts on it I was able to save. All of the wire looms. I was able to save. Um, ended up doing a bunch of uh, you know, work on it, like wrapping all the cables and stuff. It was a huge amount of work. Um, but there was stuff going on, you know, health stuff going on with my family at that time. And so it was sort of a little bit of a way to just sit by myself. Um, and you know, think about things while I was grinding off rust on on mechs and things like that. So anyway, this all this all came back together. It was a really enjoyable project. It looked amazing when it was all said and done. Um, but the chase board was toast on it. Now, the chase board is a little circuit board that runs uh the lights on the whirlpool ramp. Um, and the uh what is the whirlpools, the one down by the flippers and the big circular ramp. I can't remember the name of it now on Creature, but there's sort of lights and they chase in a chasing pattern like that. So, it's just on off. And the board was toast, so I was going to have to get a new one anyway. Um, and they are available from UFO Pinball, but I thought that I'd just I thought, you know, I could maybe design something was a little bit better that could do some actual patterns across those lights rather than just the on-off pattern. Um, so I kind of embarked on creating a board that could do that. And, you know, I'd never designed circuit boards before. Um, but you know, sort of taught myself just by watching YouTube and and uh learning as I went. And you know, it took probably a good 6 months and a lot of mistakes uh to get there, but eventually I came up with something that um turned into the Chase Echo, which is still available now on the website. We've just done another run of them. Um, and you know, interestingly, the the code that went into that board that that did those lighting patterns on the ramps is is still like the precursor to all of the LED pattern work that we run across all of our boards. Um, you know, on all of our mods. So um you know while it was just a two a single color pattern for Creech uh as it evolved through and went into RGB LEDs you know we added um color to those same patterns and then added a Wi-Fi configuration interface which has now turned into a Bluetooth configuration interface and it's it's all just sort of grown mine are all Wi-Fi. I want the Bluetooth one. Anyone who's used any of your mods, I would have to say the the way the setup is listed, it sounds really intimidating. Like, oh man, you can go in and change colors and patterns and stuff like that. Like, that sounds like a lot of work. It's not. In fact, connecting to the Wi-Fi, you know, I set my uh my Godzilla mods to kind of have like a icy blue and then fiery red when they're interacting. And it's like it's pretty easy to do. So, yeah. yeah. I mean, there's certainly some people who just leave it as is and and never sort of delve down uh into that that level of detail, but there's certainly a chunk of people who do, and there's nothing I love more than seeing, you know, pictures out in the wild, you know, of Godzilla's out in the wild that have got my mods in them that have clearly sort of had lighting changes done by by the customer. I just think that's fantastic, you know, and it's they're kind of just living on beyond me, you know, and and giving people uh, you know, sort of the ability to mod their machines in their own way. Um, and I love that. I think that's I think that's such a great thing. Um, you said the big word. We got to talk about Godzilla. I mean, when you think of Stumbler, you think of Godzilla. It's just you have such a complete conversion of the game with so many different mods. Yeah. What drove that decision? That one. Um Yeah, I bet all the other mod makers are just like shaking their head and and I mean, yeah, it was it was it was the perfect storm really for for this kind of thing. So, you know, the Chase Echo sort of sold maybe 30 units or whatever. Um, I turned that into the into a lollipops board, which was a pop bumper mod. Um, and I sold maybe 50 of those. It was just a hobby thing at that time. Um, and then, uh, I, uh, a mate of mine, John, sort of got in touch. J85M, people might know him. He's a mod maker as well. He He is now a mod maker. We were both not really mod makers in those days. got in touch with me and sort of just said to he sort of seen the work that I'd done and he said, "Oh, you should do a sign for Godzilla. Um, I think it'd be really great for your style of modding." So, I took a look at it and just sort of instantly came up with the idea of the three um Japanese characters in a very sort of Tokyo um billboard type thing. um went through a couple of iterations, stuck the same uh firmware code, um like a variation of the firmware code that we were using in the Lollipops board and then just kind of figured it would be just another fun little uh project. Um and you know, I might sell 50 or something along those lines. I think I had 20 ready um at the time of announcement and I was like, if I get through these 20, I'll do another 20 and it'll be great. And um little did you know little did I know so I the and I'm sure I've told people have probably heard this story before but I'll tell it anyway. Like on the day of the announcement it was like a Friday afternoon and I got my I got my spiel ready and I posted it up on pinside and I waited 5 minutes and there were no replies and I'm like that's cool. I've got to go into the city anyway to meet my wife for dinner. Um so I grabbed the kids. Come on kids let's go. and we jumped on the tube and obviously there's no reception in the tube so I couldn't check anything all the way into Oxford Street. It's about a 40minute trip on the tube and I we all got out at Oxford Street. We're waiting around for Cath um who's still coming from work and I was like I'll just check the bin side thread and I jump on and it's like there was already like a 100 posts or something like that like already. And I'm like I was like what's going on? Is this good or bad? I couldn't quite work it out like was I getting slammed like were people No, it's probably good. It's Reddit that does the bad stuff. Yeah. Yeah. All you know all news is good news, right? So So kind of the whole dinner I was like what are we going to do? What are we going to cuz like 100 you know I couldn't at that time I didn't even sort of have enough money in the bank account to buy the parts for that many mods you know. So, we sort of had to quickly make a decision about do we do I get a credit card and buy the parts that way and then hope that it'll all work out and I can pay back that credit. Like we just didn't quite you know you've got no experience with this level of stuff. So, um I mean one pin side post overnight just created your business and it was basically like you either had to commit or pull the plug at that moment. Yeah. Yeah. And you know you're staring down and this is still a side hustle too. So, you've got your regular job. You got to do this on the side. You've got to take a risk in terms of the investment in the parts. Um, and you you sort of haven't really done anything on this scale. Um, to the point where, you know, what if there's a problem with it? You know, what am I going to do? You know, how am I going to fix that if things are out in the wild? Um, can I step up and manage the level of emails and PMs and everything I'm going to get as a result of this and all that kind of stuff. Um, I suppose what all mod makers have to do when something of theirs blows up, um, which is done for people from time to time. Um, I mean, this is this has been one of the big ones. I mean, Tokyo Neon's done over 2,000 now. So, it's been Yeah. Yeah. A lot of units. Um, and you know, all the other buildings on top of that as well. It's I mean I think that in terms of when that mod came out and what Godzilla was doing at the time and how that sort of moved into co after that. It was kind of just all and and possibly also that um you know nobody had sort of done a mod like that before that had that level of interaction and configurability and firmware updates over the air and you know so it was kind of it was kind of a bunch of things that sort of drove it to I guess that success. Um and and you know I think I was very lucky to and fortunate to have sort of um been in the right place at the right time with the right product and then was able to sort of back it up I suppose and not not completely fall to my ass during the whole process. Yeah. I mean I feel like it's been I mean when did Stumbler officially start producing that? I mean it had to be back when Godzilla came out. So at least Yeah, it's probably four years ago now. Five years ago. Yeah. Yeah. So, um I can't believe I thought it was over a decade ago. No, man. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night with a new puppy. So, so part of part of what we do here as well is have chat, interact, and ask questions. So, in the arcade was curious when you restored your creature. Uh 2021, by the way. Yeah. So, three years. It's only been three years. data manufacturer. Sorry. Oh, whoops. Sorry, man. Also, Nuclear Black has a really hilarious question. He's mentioning Elvin G's Mystery Castle, which I think I saw Carl from my pinball stream at one point. He wants to know if you're going to make a mod that actually feeds the ball correctly to the upper flipper. Uh, if you know anything about that game, that's pretty funny. Uh, but it is a good leadin for how you decide when to make a game or when do you make a mod for a game if it's successful enough. Check sound. What's wrong with sound? Yeah, sorry that might be Yeah, your your sound's uh coming in and out a little bit. Cutting in and out. How's my sound, guys? Anybody got my sound? My sound choppy as well. It's a Jeff check sound. It's a Jeff check. Oh, that's because my CPU is overdriv. I think it's your website. Hold on. Ah, the Stumbler website playing non-stop animations was bricking my potato computer. Thank you for the check, everybody. How are we doing? Good now. This should be good. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, it's probably installing uh installing spyware on your machine. Yeah, Stumbler Mods brought to you by suspicious malware. Uh anyways, sorry. Thank you for that. Uh so yeah, you started when did the creature uh the actual creature mod start production? Your creature project? So that one So that one that was god probably seven or eight years ago now. Um and you know getting back to uh Mystery Castle. So I've played Mystery Castle. Have you played Mystery Castle, Jeff? Have you? I've seen it played. I haven't personally played it. Seen it played. Yeah. Yeah. because it's a super rare game, isn't it? So, um, uh, so no, I'll I'll never I'll probably never produce them unless it's like just for fun. Um, because obviously it's it's too rare a title. Um, now working out what uh, so I've to be just released an Elton John mod. Let's look at that. So Elton John Yeah. How many units did Elton John move and how does that motivate you for I mean I'm going to guess probably I don't know thousand 2,000 the internet loves to do research chat chat how many can someone look up how many units Elton John moves so then it's more like so if you if you ever catch us at a show if you you catch me and Rob and bunch of other mod makers of the show this is the this is invariably going to be the topic of conversation where we all start trying to guess what the production numbers are were of particular games because obviously that's a that's a massive um driving factor for whether you choose to mod a game or not. Now it's obviously not the only deciding factor because that would be super boring and lame and you know money driven and all the rest of it. You know sometimes you just love a game and want to create a mod for it. And in the case of Elton John, that was certainly the case for that game. And it was a bit of a tentative sort of exploration into doing modding for JJP, which I've never done before. Was similar? Did any of the the systems like carry over easily from one from like your Stern stuff to that? Um, relatively, yes. But the the Elton sign that I did um was being driven just from a um like essentially what they call a WS2812 lighting strip. So it's like I'm afraid now. Let me know if it starts WS2812. Yeah. Yeah. So just I'm just sort of bring up the nerd but basically an LED strip. So if you think of an LED strip or an addressable LED strip, that's going to be generally WS2812. It's like the the you know the most popular sort of form of LED strips. Um so the what JJP tend to do for a lot of their signs is they run them all as essentially a big LED strip except that every sort of item on that sign will be like a single pixel on that LED strip. So pixel one, pixel 2, pixel 3. So in the case of this sign, those first five sort of lighting elements are five pixels on an LED strip. So the entire sign um is just run um directly from sort of 5 Vs ground and the data line of that of that sign. So I didn't actually find out whether um there were points that I could hook into in JJP games, but we've we've done similar investigations with uh other people, other customers. Um, and apparently there's heat. There's so many positions that you could look into in JJP games. It's not funny. There's like three in the backbox and there's two in the cabinet and, you know, they're all 12vt lines. So, I think they're they're highly conducive uh, for modders actually who want to be playing games available for anybody trying to do it. For a lot of the consumer base, that's curious when you're going to be doing the black and white version of the Elton John sign. How like how long are we going to have to wait for that? for the black and white version, but there's no black and white version of the Elton John game, guys. So, uh you'll be waiting a while. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the the big talk is uh when the Who was talking about it? What game was it? Was it for Kong? Maybe. I think somebody was asking about the black and white version of Kong and when that was coming out. I'm sure that's what they were asking about. There's no way people are waiting. Wow. I feel like Stern has received enough feedback about when they should shouldn't shouldn't do black and white games that just doing it arbitrarily on every release is probably not the best idea. Probably not the right move to make. Yeah. I mean, I think that's why um Metallica was probably bad for them in some ways because it was a massive hit, right? So, because Metallica remastered was such a massive hit. They're going to be like, "Oh, we could do remasters of loads of games." So, we're I don't think we're looking at three cornerstone games a year anymore. I don't I think those days are done. I think they're going to do two two cornerstones and then a remaster every year if I if I had to guess, but we'll see. Yeah, I think that would be a good move uh on on their behalf. Um, but yeah, I mean it'll be interesting to see uh, you know, how how Harry Potter sells as well. Um, now obviously Harry Potter, you know, is being closely watched by mod makers as well. Um, you would expect it to be selling uh, a huge amount of uh, units um, based on the IP alone. Um, but the word is that Guns and Roses shifted 7,000 units back. Oh, really? Well, then they we did some math on that that they would need to shift about 5,000 units in order to recoup the purchase of a license cost. Um, but if you're saying that they made 7,000 units on G&R, then I don't see that being a problem with Potter. But we'll see. It needs to be a good game first, I would imagine. Unless people are just going to GNR was a different time, though, too, wasn't it? Like when G&R came out, it was like, you know, pinball was really in a golden era. Um, you know, less were still being purchased to flip. Um, you know, it was it it was a very different time. Um, I I'd be surprised if they'd go over G&R numbers on Harry Potter, but I guess we'll see. I think they I think they released I think they were still releasing their sales figures at the point where GNR came out, whereas they're not releasing them anymore. Um, so Howard has a question. Sorry. Go. Yeah. Go on. Uh, we're playing the Zoom delay latency game. By the way, anybody watching this and wondering why people talk over each other on a podcast, it's because there's about 5 seconds of latency. Those who don't know, uh, Dave, you're located in the UK. Uh, so if you buy a Stumbler mod, it comes it comes from overseas. But you you are not from the UK. You are you're an Aussie just like uh just like um David from uh Barrels. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yep. Yeah. Uh, pinball's very big in Australia. Um, so, you know, I cut my teeth over in the pubs over there. I think Theater of Magic was the first game that truly got me hooked. Um, and after that it was Creature. Um, which is the reason why I sort of came back to it later on in life. But yeah, I'm from um from Australia, but been living in the UK for the last 17 years. Not that you can tell from my accent, which is No, not even a little not changed. Even my family are just like, nope, hasn't changed. So Howard asks, "How much crossover is there from the VPIN community to modding such as LED strips and stuff like that? Is the does the VPIN software communicate in a in a format that you could put physical stuff in the cabinet?" Great question. That's a that's a really great question. Um there is a fair bit of crossover actually. Um, so projects like pin to DMD, which is a um essentially an opensourceish, it's not really open source, but a communitydriven um color DMD clone, I suppose you'd call it a clone, but that started out in the VPIN um scene as a way of um as a way of essentially having color DMD um for VPIN games. Um, and so all the colorizations started out as VPIN colorizations and then they thought, hey, we can take this into the real pinball arena and and that's why we now have pin to DMD um on real pinball machines. Um, likewise actually colored those for a while. He was responsible for doing the colors and the technology that that stuff works on is pretty fascinating. It basically scans to see what frame it's at and then looks at what the coloring should be. So sometimes you'll get frames where they're not colored correctly and all of a sudden the color slaps onto it because it's it's currently doing its little thinky ding trying to figure out what frame it's supposed to be coloring or what what frame it's looking at. Yeah. Yeah. It is it is absolutely fascinating and it and not only that but an absolute monumental amount of work. So, if you ever talk to a colorist, anybody, then please buy them a beer and say how much you appreciate the work that they've done because um you know, it's hours and hours and hours of really boring, painstaking labor um just so that we can all enjoy you know, white water with with extra blues, you Well, and to your point earlier where you were talking about doing it cuz you liked it versus it making money, most of the people that do the color DMD colorizations own the games and want the color DMD for their games. So, they're not really artists. They're They're just fan. They're super fans. I mean, we're all we're every pinball person's a super fan to a degree, I suppose. Y Yeah. and we we produce those pin to DMDs uh commercially um and pay uh a donation to the to the colorists every time we use one of because that's the new relationship that we're all sort of working under and I I love doing it. Um but it's you know it's like 20 20 bucks or something per game sold or something like that. So this isn't huge money uh you know it's it's a little bit of pocket money for those guys you know um every time their colors get used and they thoroughly thoroughly deserve it. So yeah, anybody who's um using their stuff, make sure you um tell them how much you love them cuz they're they're great dudes, all of them. Um Oh man, this question is too good. Okay, I was going to say just one more one more aspect of the BPIN crossover is Pinm as well. So Pinm is the uh core software that uh interprets the ROMs of a historical pinball game and converts it into a format that can be then turned into a virtual pinball machine. It's called pin mame. So in much the same way as mim is a multiarch arcade machine emulator. Yeah. Okay. So pin mame is like a way of interpreting pinball roms in the same way um and converting them into vpin um software. Now pinm is used in I think uh do I don't I'm not sure whether fast use it um in their board sets um to interpret old ROMs. I think maybe they've done it a different way now. Um, but certainly there's a whole bunch of CPU emulators that are now running Pin Mame as well. Um, and likewise there's a there's some movement as well into pinball manufacturers using virtual recreations of the games as they're coding. So that you don't actually have to have a real pinball machine beside you as you're as you're working through the code. you can have it set up in a virtual environment, test all the shots, jump to a section in the code or whatever in much the same way as you would do any coding. Um, but doing it all completely within a virtual environment, which will massively speed up uh production of code. Um I'm not sure how many of the companies are doing that yet, but it's certainly possible um uh with uh you know you know using uh VPX uh and uh pinm and and software like that and um and yeah you know I think all of that stuff is shared you know across those boundaries. I think fans of one thing will generally be fans of the you know fans of virtual will be fans of real as well and there's a lot of crossover. So yeah, I haven't heard of a lot of people that are bagging on virtual pin in recent years. Like we are I don't stream virtual pins, but I have nothing against it. And I think virtual pinball is just as much real pinball as anything else, especially with the how prohibitively expensive most games are. Um, we have a lot of fans of virtual pinball on the channel. Uh, so yeah, it's cool to see the people working hard in the mod community in those realms are pushing it to try to I don't know, make a relevant crossover where the the line of of hardware and software for those games is going to be more and more blurred. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think discounting and, you know, certainly there's a lot of pinball people who do discount it outright and just say it's not real pinball. It's It's a piece of [ __ ] It doesn't feel right. Whatever. Um, I think that is ignoring a lot of very very smart people and some amazing work that they're doing. Um, and you would do it to your own detriment because, you know, if you don't keep an eye on that stuff, you won't see some of the amazing progress uh, and work that they're doing and how that can be used in real pinball. Um, for the reasons I've just make wild decisions because you don't have to worry about whatever prototyping or building white woods for it and let it rip. Yeah. Yeah. There's There's a lot of really exciting uh stuff that could be used uh in real pinball uh more than it is too. Sure. So, Indie Arcade Wave asked this question. I think this is pretty uh un unrelated to my notes, but an excellent question. So, he's like, "Now that you're being confident with mods, have you ever thought about making a homebrew?" A starter home. Oh, boy. Wouldn't that be awesome? I mean, I would I would love to. Um yes, 100%. I think there's not a pinball player alive who hasn't dreamed of making their own pin, is there? Uh, you know, if anybody has not thought about what would make a good pin, then I question your commitment to this hobby. Um, yeah, man. I I've got I've got a ton of ideas, an absolute ton. Um, and a couple of a couple of absolute crackers, too. I mean, everybody thinks that their idea is the best idea since sliced bread, but um I would absolutely love to do it. Um I don't think that it's physically possible for me to do it currently just um because I'm just 24 hours slammed at the moment. Um the list for back orders for your stuff is enormous. Is there ever a time where you look at the numbers of how many units need to ship for all of the different products and you're just like, "Oh my god, what am I doing?" The trick is not to think about it too much, man. I've got to say, like, you just you have to just you have to have the blinkers on and just uh get busy. It It is a lot sometimes. Um particularly when you're the kind of person who likes to take on projects, too. So, somebody comes to you and they've got an awesome idea, an awesome opportunity, um, and you're kind of just like, I really want to work on that. And so, you just say yes, and you'll be like, I'll be fine. Um, and then you find yourself in this position where there's just physically not enough hours in the day to get everything done. Um, and I would I would have to say that I'm probably pretty close to that at the moment. you know, it's a case of staying up late and waking up at 5 to respond to emails and do things like that and then get to work and then try and prioritize as much as possible and try and delegate to the people who work in the workshop as well. And for most of the part that works fine, but um but you know, it's always a learning process too when you get it wrong and you're always going to get it wrong. Um, so you know, getting back to the original question of building my own pinball machine, I would absolutely love to and I firmly believe that one day I will. Um, but it'll have to be sort of when I hit semi-retirement, whenever that is. And you know, in much the same way as um, you know, you know, I'm just not I'm not playing enough pinball either, which is a which is a big problem, I think. Um, just because it's always work and it's not enough playing. and I try and do as you know more playing um you know I try and set time aside for that because I think it's a really really important facet of building mods is actually being a hobbyist as well. Um I don't believe that you can be one without being the other effectively. Um but still it's it's not really enough to uh get get the job done. It needs to be you know I need need to be playing more than I am. Isn't it kind of scary when you start taking on a hobby more as an occupation? And like the fear the fear of like losing the interest in the hobby because you you spend so much time doing it as a job is I don't think something that a lot of people think about before diving in. You just get consumed by it and then realize afterwards you're like, "Oh [ __ ] like I just spent 10 hours working on." Yeah. And that's you know that is a that is a scary thing I think. Um, I mean, fortunately, uh, you know, I I do love the hobby and love creating mods so much that even though it is intense and stressful and complicated, um, I still really really get a buzz out of it, you know, like when you, uh, receive a lovely email from someone who's just absolutely buzzing on an install that they've just done and they can't believe how good it looks or whatever. And And look, sometimes you open emails with trepidation. You're thinking, "Oh god, what's it going to be now?" or whatever. And then you get an email that's just like, "Hey man, just wanted to get in touch to tell you how much I'm really enjoying this and you know, keep up the great work and everything you're doing for the hobby." And that's it. And you're just like, "Oh, it's so nice." you know, it's just like, you know, as a shout out to your own customer service, uh, you know, I I admitted full-fledged in an email when I installed my, uh, Subway or I guess it was the noodle shop mod for it that, uh, when I had returned it, you know, I didn't it wasn't on the magnet or it was on the magnet thing. So, it had like impacted it going back into the playfield on Godzilla. And so, it like took out one of the LEDs on the top of it. And I emailed you and was like, "Hey, man. I put this back in. I'm a dumbass. It broke the board. Like, one of the LEDs is out." and you sent me a new board just like that. It was shipped out the next day. So, you know, I Yeah. Yeah. Oh, thanks, man. Look, I mean, I I don't believe the customer is always right. Like, you know, some sometimes people go, "The customer's always right. You just got to make the customer happy and that's fine." Like, I don't necessarily agree with that because, you know, you I've had some horrible people and few and far between. one or two maybe and I I could probably remember them you know now I could remember their names but you know some people are just in in you know horrible and I think that some in in those types of situations I'm just like look man full refund you know uh we I won't send you any more mods we'll just call it a day you get your full refund so that you're cool I'm cool and we just won't work together again you know like that's how I deal with those situations but literally everybody else you know it doesn't matter whether it's your fault or um or whether you're the the next buyer of the mod from somebody else. So, you know, it's been an indirect sale, um, or a double indirect sale or whatever it is, as long as you're a cool person and you're kind and honest or whatever, then, you know, I'll just, you know, I I believe that that aspect of it, that that level of customer service when, you know, somebody's a hobbyist and, you know, you didn't mean to do it and, you know, you uh, you know, in you could look at that particular thing as a failure of the design that it, you know, it shouldn't be capable of breaking in that way. Um, so you know, in terms of sort of replacements, we've got a pretty uh strong Ryan Policky of just sorting people out regardless of of what the cause is. Um, and uh, you know, it's obviously something I try and reduce as much as possible because it does eat a lot of time um, you know, servicing sort of that that aspect of the business. Sure. Working on new developments and new products. It's easy for people to get uh like I think people are so accustomed to dealing with like faceless corporations and channeling their anger of customer service on that that it's easy to forget that not all companies are that and sometimes they're just small mom and pop shops and you know people working in their workshops and that when you mouth off and try to vent all your rage because of something that occurred you're you're not really helping yourself solve that problem. No, No, not at all. And um and it does surprise me too because uh you know as as pinball hobbyists like you have to live around failure like constantly. You know, everything's breaking or failing or not working properly. You know, you have to have the glass off and you have to have the hood up and you have to be problem solving constantly. And And you know, while too much of that can be frustrating, um it's it's also probably partly the reason why we do enjoy doing what we do because, you know, there there's also a buzz in solving that kind of problem. You know, when you fun, man, tinkering is like the best part of the hobby except when you have to take the glass off for the fifth time cuz you forgot like a screw or didn't put a rubber back on. And at that point, you're just like, "Fuck it. I'm going to go have a beer. I'm done." Yeah. Yeah. You know what the worst balls in? I've done that. People forgetting to take the balls out, man. Forgetting to take the balls out. Um, and I don't care how long you've been doing this for, you're still going to forget to take the balls out, you know? I still forget to take the balls out. So true. From time to time. Yeah. All right. So, so when people are getting into making mods, right? So, do you do you prototype your stuff in like Solid Works, for example? Like what is your technical production method? like where do you start when you're making a mod? Ah, where do I start when I'm making a mod? Um, so it's changed over the years from time to time. I mean I I so I use Fusion as my main um 3D rendering CAD tool. Um Rob uh who who's at TP who I do the pod with, he uses Solid Works. So Solid Works is also a very good bit of software. Um but I use Fusion just because that's what I know. Um, and it's changed uh over the years exactly what I do. But what I tend to do nowadays is um, quick shout out. Tap's going to be on the podcast too in the future. He does amazing toppers. Yeah. Yeah. Rob's Rob and Alec are both awesome dudes, man. Very close friends of mine and and you know, they're great great people to work with. Very professional. Um, so this is this is something that I'm working on for Kong. Um, and like obviously doesn't look like much right now, right? because where where's my camera? Because it's just like it's just a chunk of plastic. So, all I did was I think I modeled this up this morning just based on the area. So, I took a couple of measurements. I took a measurement of the plastic, traced the plastic, tried to work out where the screw holes were, tried to work out what the general sort of shape of the area was. Um, and then and then uh uh you know got that into the CAD program and designed it all and uh got the dimensions all and then and then printed it this afternoon. Brought it back in tonight before the pod and then just fitted it into the game and realized it was too wide. The ball path through there needed to have an center taken off. Um because obviously if you don't have the the CAD files for the game um how are you supposed to line stuff up, right? You just kind of from the hip shoot. You kind of you kind of just have to do it that way. And you know, you take measurements and um uh you know and and you'll generally be pretty close and taking uh you know, tracing plastics and doing things like that um certainly really helps in that regard. Um but ultimately you just have to print some stuff and fit it in the game and see where you need to take some uh take some of the edges off and stuff. So as you can see, I got this one completely wrong. I don't know what I was doing today. I think I was busy. So what I you can see that that whole area there. So I got that completely wrong. I don't know what I was thinking. The wood cutter mark for get rid of it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So I use like a gold pen. Yeah. And then I'll go home tonight. Um take some more measurements from this uh change that design, do another print, take it back in tomorrow. And if it generally looks like the right shape, then I'll uh then raise it to the level it needs to be because it's going to go up from that point. And then start thinking about where circuit boards are going to go. Start thinking about where um cable lines are going to need to to go um for power. um whether the controller board cuz there's always uh for my stuff there's always a a controller that does all the software and all the lighting patterns and all the sensing. Um whether that's going to be in the mod itself or whether it's going to be in a secondary board below the playfield because this one's not very big. Um it'll most likely be somewhere below the playfield. Uh and then it's and then it's sculpting. So either I'll do the sculpting in Zbrush um or I'll uh use a freelancer or a number of freelancers to work on the sculpts. Generally, if it's more figurative stuff, um I'll get a freelancer to do it because usually they're better positioned for doing that kind of stuff, more more artistic. Um and you know if anybody wants to engage with freelancers to do similar stuff then Fiverr is a really good resource for finding people. Um my recommendation there is to find people quite close to home for you um just because your uh time zone differences will be um better. You can always get on the phone to them and explain things. There'll be less language barriers, that kind of thing. So, you know, if you're doing a search on Fiverr, um make sure you do a search for designers that are sort of within, you know, your country or your area. Um and then and then just go from there really. I mean, uh you know, in in terms of circuit boards and lighting, you know, you can do very simple stuff uh like just tying into uh inserts or the GI uh for your lights. you know, comets uh sell some fantastic products uh just for tapping into those kind of things if you want sort of that level of interactivity or if you want to go higher levels of interactivity. You know, I've built uh freeboards uh for other mod makers that they can use to do sort of just uh like a timer on a light so that if a switch gets hit, a timer will turn on for 10 seconds and turn a light on for 10 seconds. Or you can go the whole hog and do, you know, crazy lighting patterns that emulate fire or water or rainbows or whatever really, you know, which some of those presets are programmed into your uh Wi-Fi boards. Yeah. If you want to go that direction, give us a call. Yeah. the uh it's it's wild to me how much of like an artistic merging there is for the mod making for this type of work because it really is like a technical thing that is also very artistic. Um I was talking with Bowen about rule design too and I think that's one thing I love so much about pinball is that it really is kind of like a synergistic like marrying of mechanical design and artistic kind of like design as well. Um, yeah. Do Do you manufacture your stuff is is resin printed, right? I feel like it's it's not uh it's all over the shop really. So, we use we use uh like literally all over the shop. So, we use some PLA um uh which is just you know filament print 3D printed filament for those who don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So, any Yeah. So, anybody who's got a home 3D printer um they'll be using uh either PLA or or some other derivative. Uh but it's called filament printing. It's just the one that you the general one that you see. Um, but it won't be for any parts that are visible to the eye, if you know what I mean. So, um, generally it's it's not really of a good enough quality to have it as the only thing. Um, although I have, you know, like the the quality level of parts um, and printers is getting better and better. Um, and I received uh one one mod last night which I featured on the pod that was definitely PLA printed and you could not tell it was absolutely gorgeous. So, you know, the the lines are getting blurred in that regard, but generally I I use I mean PLA is quite tough so I'll use it for quite functional parts like like gearing and racks and things. Um, so the theater building that I'm doing that's got like a collapsing wall. Um the wall itself is is nylon um a technology technology called PA12 um which is just very beautiful and and um tough uh and you can't see any print lines. So, the Tokyo Neon uh black outer shell is PA12 uh nylon. Um but the the gearing system that lowers the wall in the theater is PLA. Um just because it's it's really strong. Um and then the for the buildings on Tokyo Neon, they are initially uh resin printed on a 3D resin printer. Uh, and then we go at them with a Dremel to give them some decay and destruction. They're then cast in silicon and then resin uh resin cast um to get the final parts and then painted dry brushing and things over the top of that. That's then mounted onto a PA12 frame and then the circuit boards and everything uh gets stuffed into the internals and all wired up to everything. And do you have a education in material? I mean like this is a lot of knowledge that goes into knowing what will and won't work for what kind of problem you're trying to solve per mod. Yeah. Like what is what is your traditional background? Programmer. Computer programmer. Yeah. Yeah. So circuit board design um and materials and engineering even are all things that I've sort of had to learn on the hoof. Um if there's a c certain process or whatever that's sort of outside of my skill set um then we've sort of got subsidiary companies around the place that we work very closely with um that can assist in that regard. So, we've got a guy up in the Midlands um who's been working with us for, you know, a couple of years now, um who, you know, has got people on his staff that can do sculpting work, who can do, uh, you know, cast resin sort of things. Um, and likewise suppliers in India that we've got who can do vacolding. So, um, you know, this workshop is probably only big enough for three or four people to work in at any one time. We certainly don't have any big machines. All my printers are at home. Um, you mentioned a medium tour. Did you want to show people around a little bit with the mobile cam? Let's do it now. Yeah. All right. Melody says, "Thanks, Dave, for sending the UFO sensing board and then asking when the middle middle building for Godzilla is coming." Yeah, I gotta be honest, Dave. The only reason I asked you on here was so I could try to earn some good you know, good karma and getting myself moved up the list. That's actually not true. Not happening, Jeff. Not happening. Um, yeah. Well, look, this is the theater building. We've been working on these um today. So, yeah, if you're watching this on the audio podcast later, I urge you to check out the YouTube so you can see what you're actually looking at. And there's a little fire emblem that like sticks out too when it when it lowers, right? I don't know if I can quite show you that yet because we haven't mounted that. Yeah. So, this is the um So, oh, it'll get blurry if I take it too close, but this is the wall that drops and then essentially this fire sticks out the side of the building and it's all flaming with it with an LED strip that you can see it's all connected up there. Um, and that's the gearing system that I was talking about earlier. There's a servo uh there and the PLA gear. And this is a rack. I think they call it rack and pinion um uh linkage. And that's all connected up to essentially a lolly board in here that that does all the Do you mechanically test these to determine how many kind of like uses they'll be able to go through without failing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So you can sort of uh you just build a special firmware um that essentially just, you know, draw abuses out of it. Yeah. And then you just then you just leave it in one corner of the workshop for a week and see what happens. It's like having a six-year-old in the corner play with your pinball machine, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. They'll very quickly work out uh Yeah. where all the stuck balls go. Yeah. Um so yeah, so theater's coming. Um, now I just need to try and work out because what I need to do is potentially Melody's also asking you have a app out now for I'm guessing iOS and probably other platforms. How is that planned on being integrated with the with your future mods? Well, it's automatic with the future mods. So this Okay, so um so the legacy mods are running a certain controller and all of the modern mods are using a new controller called the ASP32. Now that's the controller that's compatible with the new app. Um it's far and away a better user experience. Um which is unfortunate in in some ways because it means that whatever the user experience was before, it's not as good as what it is now. Sorry. Sorry. In before in before new UI, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, we do have a solution for that. You can convert the older mods to use the new app by by using like a little converter board, which is this guy here. So, this is called one app, and you sort of just plug it into the header of the legacy mods, and it will enable you to use the new app. Um but uh yeah the the new Bluetooth app which is iOS, Android and on the web um is far and away a better system. It's written in React Native um which is a fully modern um piece of software. It enables me to you know it sounds lame but spread my wings uh in terms of the programming. I was always a little bit restricted with how things were previously because um you were essentially set uh you were essentially serving static web pages with jQuery underneath the hood but it wasn't very sophisticated. It wasn't very reactive. Um I couldn't do very much uh without creating bugs and it was very difficult to test things like this. Using React Native, it's just a lot smoother process for creating a lot better apps. So the experience overall is just far far better. I don't think that's lame. I think that it shows that you actually give a [ __ ] about your products and that you're trying to expand their usability to be less cumbersome through new technology that's more accessible. Yeah. Um yeah, we've actually got we've actually got Melvin to thank for that. Like Melvin was the one that suggested that we should head in that direction when um when that Alice project came about. So really it was uh it was him that sort of pushed for it and I'm so glad he did because it was the right move for sure. I had I had one question before that but I guess you already you already mentioned Alice so we kind of got to jump into that. So if you don't know it was announced by Dutch Pinball that Stumbler is essentially now kind of like the official sculpt producer slash like playfield techn mod technology uh partnership with them. Can you can you talk a little bit about what what that means for your relation with Dutch? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, Melvin and I have known each other for ages. Um, we worked on Funhouse 2 together as testers. Um, and this was pre sort of Stumbleore blowing up days. Um, and obviously before he was sort of doing a lot of work. We were essentially both just hobbyists who wanted to be involved in sort of a fun project with Pretty. So, we kind of met each other on that project and um, you know, got along really well, became friends. I sent him a couple of lollipops boards um because he was really interested in it. And then um and then sort of as he uh sort of and for anybody who doesn't know the sort of the backstory, Melvin bought a shipping container full of assets from the Deeproot uh liquidation sale. And that Deep Routt is John Papadiuk's failed Kickstarter for everybody who isn't familiar. and they had a bunch of materials, art assets, and IP ownership. And it was kind of divided among most of the pinball companies. Turner picked up a few. That's where you see Merlin's Magic and uh the um god, what is it? Ninja Eclipse, among others. But uh you know, his Magic Girl IP and a bunch of other stuff. So that's that's what that is. Yeah. Yeah. So I think um so and I'm just trying to get the story right. So Melvin, I think, purchased those assets from Turner. Um, and those assets being um those assets being Alice in Wonderland, which was a essentially just a mockup sort of machine that Pubic put together. Um, it was uh atomic retro atomic zombies adventure land. It was magic girl and that might be it. I think if anybody in the chat knows if there was any others that I'm missing out on then. But essentially it was those and plus a whole bunch of J-pop sort of personal items that that Melvin ended up returning to him actually. Um and uh Yeah. Yeah. It was like his laptop and it was like I think his like his some some of his kids stuff and Yeah. stuff like that. Like having some of your kids stuff inside of a large shipping container. That's That's Yeah. Yeah. Bit Bit weird. Um Melvin has always been a lover of weird and rare pinball machines, you know. Uh to give you an indication like was is his favorite game of all time. Um, so he's he's into that kind of whimsical weird uh nonlinear kind of or I guess non normal pinball machine. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So this is where kind of his interest I guess in in these uh in these licenses sort of came from originally. Um, so he started producing uh Alice in Wonderland um and got in touch with me, I think not very early on in the piece. I think it was probably quite close to a finished game by that point um to get involved and he wanted to use the lolly board um for uh the uh the side rails. He wanted to use it for a bunch of other elements in the game. he wanted to use it um to control. Well, I don't think we'd sort of done the Jabawaki arm at that point. Um because at that stage the lollipops couldn't really do servos, I don't think. Um but he sort of also said, but you know, but I want it to be like, you know, really user friendly. I want it to ideally be app controlled. And so I was like, oh, app controlled. Well, that's not going to be possible. And you know, unless we change controllers to the SP32 and and I was like, but why don't we change it to that anyway? you know, and I think I'd sort of been hitting some walls in terms of like memory optimization and stuff with the old controller anyway. And And I was like, I should just bite the bullet and go for it. And I did. Um, and actually got a pretty, you know, working solution out in like about a week um of that. So, the collaboration really pushed the technology for your own board further. Absolutely. 100% it did. Yeah. So, I'm very very thankful to Melvin for doing that uh and making that suggestion and you know uh because because it's a far better product now than it was prior to that relationship. Um and you know alongside that I was also just very thankful to him in particular for uh investing that trust I suppose in the modding industry. You know he's got Leor to do all of the sculpting work in the game. yours, obviously one of the biggest modders of all time. Um, does incredible work. Uh, and then used me to, um, you know, do these lighting effects in the side rails and and elsewhere. Um, and you know, he's he's just a really big uh advocate for uh the modding scene. Um, and you know, he's gone on to show that by by sort of bringing us into the fold in that way. And it's always been something that uh both Rob and I have always talked about, you know, getting close to the manufacturers, getting a um a data line of information coming out of the game that we can interpret and do things with. You know, historically, you know, as as you know, we're sort of tying into lamps using T- splicers. In some case, people are using croc clips. Um it's not a great user experience. There's a lot of scope for customers to get it wrong. There's a lot of scope for things to go wrong. Um things to be plugged in the wrong places. All kinds of stuff. So having the, you know, a more official way of getting access to that information, you know, via a USB cable would be like the holy grail of modding. And what a way to open up the type and potential mods that can be available. I I feel like there's some like, you know, Scorbit also has kind of some uh legs in that trying to create a a data pipeline that can be used for all sorts of stuff that they're trying to integrate with games from the from the get-go. Well, and and Score bit is the number one reason why we're all so apprehensive about just going in uh without the permission of the manufacturers because um that's what they did. And it ended up being like a 12 month cat-and- mouse game between them and Stern to um to to you know get that information. You know, they they got the information, Stern would shut it down. they'd have to change the code and and you know create a back door and get around it and get the information some other way. Stern would shut that down. It was 12 months. The word on the street is that like Stern spent about a hundred grand to just to just to screw up that connection and and it's ridiculous. Well, Insider Connected was what people said because they were trying to protect that. Um, sure. But they had how many years of development on Insider Connected and all you can do on it is put a little crab graphic on your name and look up your high scores. I mean, yeah. yeah. I I think it's I think it's it's just really sad. It's a big waste of time. None of it benefits the consumer at the end of the day. You know, we all we all love score bit. We all want score bit and we want it to be on every machine. Yeah, the only one that should be under fire here though cuz Jersey Jack had that like integrated in their code from day one and I guess they just stopped. I don't know what happened there. I'm not trying to start the rumor mill but is no longer in Jersey Jack games for as far as I know. No, I mean look, we we hacked the Stern node protocol. Um, so me and a good friend of mine, Vincent, um, who goes under the name Asham 56. We, uh, we always sort of talk behind the scenes, uh, Vincent lives in France. I live in the C. We always talk behind the scenes about all the the fun, nerdy, technical stuff in pinball. And we, we sort of came up with the idea of hacking the Stern node protocol to try and get access to all of the switch data and all the lamp data just so that it would be from a user. You can make better mods with it. For sure, make better mods. And you know, you just take out one of the uh Ethernet cables, you plug it into the mod, and suddenly you've got everything that you need without having to screw around with T-slices or crockp or anything. Um, and and we did it. We We cracked it, and you know, I was getting all of the switch data out of the node protocol. And I was I thought this was the, you know, a new dawn for for pinball modding and announced it on pin side. um you know people were like oh you sure you should be sort of mentioning this and um now what happened is that a couple of weeks later and I've never actually proven that the two are related so take all this with a grain of salt but a couple of weeks later Stern released an all games update um that didn't actually do anything from what I could see except the Stern node protocol had been updated across all those games the version number had changed Suddenly stopped working. Yeah. Stopped working. And so you're like, okay, this isn't this isn't a viable way of doing it. Because if you know, say you had a thousand mods out in the wild all using this tech and suddenly none of them worked. Like you'd have to go into hiding. Like that's just it's just not something that I want to um have to deal with. So, you know, that kind of proved to me that unless you have their permission, it's it's not a path that's worth going down. Sure. But philosophically, it makes no sense either. I mean, you're you're creating more opportunities for people to want to own Stern pinball machines by creating, you know, mods and toys, for lack of a better word, that make them more attractive. And you're not damaging. It's not like you're selling the the decryptting algorithm or whatever to anybody. It's like they're they're protecting it for a reason that makes no sense. Yeah. I I see it as being an opportunity for both us and for them. Um and you know, we're just going to keep pushing for it. And you know, the more that everybody um talks about it and mentions it and thinks about it and tries to work out a way where it can be productive for both them and for us. Um you know, the more likely it's going to be that it will happen one day and all it really needs is a conversation. You know, you just go into a couple of meetings and they go, "Yeah, you know, we can do that for you." And then suddenly you're off. So, you know, in much the same way as it happened with Dutch, obviously Dutch is a much smaller company. Um, but it can happen. You know, they just need to see the benefit in doing so. Sure. And it's not like they need to do any extra work, too, other than allowing you permission to do so. You're the one doing the leg work, so it's not like they need to invest any money in it. So, it's silly for them to invest even tons of money to block it for no reason. Yeah. Yep. I fingers crossed. Yeah. Fingers crossed. we're gonna do. Well, there's plenty of other pinball manufacturers that are probably interested in having their uh games boot look and work better with uh your technology. One of those is Dutch Pinball, which we were just talking about. So, to continue that. Yeah. Yeah. Um so, yeah. Uh so, we we're getting back to Dutch Pinball. Is that what you want to talk about? Yeah. So, I mean, you know, you've started this relationship with them. Uh I I think Alice looks amazing. I haven't played it yet just because Dutch Pinball has a hard time getting overseas, especially now with all this Terraforce [ __ ] So, I'm curious to see it. I think it's interesting that it's a basically a Papaduke sketch, for lack of a better word, right? And then it was taken to the finish line uh through Dutch. Um, so I'm just in terms of your relationship with them, like are are you now going to be improving Dutch pinball games with with Stumbler's kind of like eye for technology and design? Yeah. Um, we we'll definitely be working together again. Yes, for sure. Um, you know, it's a it's a really great working relation. Also, you confirmed Kong mods, too, by the way. Officially unofficially. That's probably the wor the worst kept secret. Yeah, D and D mods and Kong mods uh coming soon and and uh Jurassic Park mods. Um that's the next one off the line is actually Oh, interesting. Somebody who owns a Jurassic Park. That's interesting to me. By the way, you also you mentioned your podcast twice, but you haven't said the name of it. It's in Before Lock. Go ahead, plug it. There's no reason you can't. Yeah. So, yeah, it's cuz I'm not that bothered. But yeah, in before the lock, guys. Um, you know, we uh, you know, we we have a lot of fun, me and Rob, and you know, we we mainly, um, just use it as an opportunity to catch up and, uh, you know, just have a bit of a chinwag really. Um, but yeah, primarily the focus is on modding. um we don't 100% focus on that, but we try and sort of keep it um about the mod scene, about either mod production from our points of view or new mods that have come out um in the industry that people might not be aware of. So, try try to draw attention to those. And then if we're ever in any shows or whatever, we'll generally do a bit of a what we like to call a pit walk or a pin walk. Um which, you know, much the same way as they do on the F1, where you sort of just walk around, try and find people, and chat with them. Um, so yeah, we we uh we have a lot of fun with it. Uh, in before the lock if anybody wants to catch it. We're very irregular with when we do our shows. Um, but we generally announce them on pin side. Um, and you'll probably get a a Twitch update or a YouTube update when the show's about to come out. Probably, you know, that we've just gone live or something. So, yeah, come come and say hello next time. Is there an avenue for people to get a hold of you that are mod makers that are interested in either picking your brain or getting kind of info on how they can improve their mods? Is that something that Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I mean time is always of the essence, but I always um make time for people in that regard. Um if I if I possibly can. Um but just email is the best way um or on Pinsside. So I'm either Stumblore on Pinsside. So just stumblore um or it's Davey stumblinball.com. There you go. If you wanted to if you want to get a hold of the man and ask some mod questions, that's how you do it. Um that's how you do it. I have a somewhat of a personal question. I think it's it's a little bit of a of a trifecta. Um I I kind of want to just throw three games at you and I'm curious out of these three games, like which one of these would you be most interested in doing any kind of mod work for? Okay. Uh the first one is Raven. Okay. The second game is Raven. Okay. And uh the third game is certainly also Raven. So I'm just curious what kind of mod stuff you think would really benefit that game. Uh okay. So Raven is Am I right in saying it's Bali or is it Gotle? I should know this since I make jokes about it constantly. I think it's got all I can think of is the back glass which is just in burned into my memory. It is a Gotale. It's an 86 Godly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I like gots. Um I've got a soft spot for them. Um my mate's going to be if he ever watches this this pod, he's going to be so upset with me that I didn't immediately know it was a godle. Um I've got Robo War, which I absolutely love. Um Jeff, you ever played Robo War? I have. But do you think Robo War is better than Laser War? Uh yes, I do. Laser wars. Laser wars valley, isn't it? It is. It is. But it also says that you're fighting a laser war, and I like to be informed about what I'm doing when I'm playing when I'm playing a game. Yeah. What is my weapon? Oh, it's a laser. Okay, good. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for letting me know. Yeah, there you go. Um, whereas with Robo War, you don't know what you're fighting with or why the robots are there. It's very, very Would you say your mod for Robo War would be to explain what the Robo War is about? Like how would you project that information through mods? Uh I have no idea. I've to be honest. Uh what would I if it's a legit I don't even know. I've never played Raven. Have you played Raven? I have played Raven. They had one at Until for a little bit. It's got a whole slew of pop bumpers. It really is like the most unsatisfying game on the planet. Like playing it, it just feels miserable. It's up there with like Thunderbolts or I forget what the other notoriously like horrible, you know, that Spirit of 76. Just the like bottom of the pin side barrel, you know? Yeah. Well, see, I've always wanted to get a um what's the gotle with the uh uh it's not spring break, even though I wouldn't I wouldn't mind a spring break as well, but there's the other one that's like the the vice like the Miami Vice ripoff one. Oh. Uh, Heat. Something. Danger Heat or Yeah. Hollywood Heat. Hollywood Heat. That's the one. Yeah. Yeah. That's a fun game. I love the music for that, man. It's got the DX kind of like, you know, Genesis style FM soundboard. Good stuff. See, all the games of that era just sound amazing. Like, yeah. I mean, Genesis sounds great. Um, TX Sector sounds great. Robo War sounds great. Um, yeah. But I mean, Robo War for me just feels like the kind of precursor to uh Total Nuclear Annihilation, you know? I just feel like that's the granddaddy of games like that. Um it's an amazing tournament game because it's so short playing, but it's just it's like got to bring a bottle of lube if you're going to play TNA. Yeah. Yeah. Because it can absolutely serve you one, can't it? you know, and you know, your ball can just be gone in seconds. So, yeah, I do I do like me, you know, which is not it's refreshing, uh, you know, not to to bag on, you know, the longer playing games like the Owens. I mean, Kong is a very long playing game and most of his games are are tailored towards that. Uh, but it is refresh it is refreshing to play a game that can just serve your ass in under five minutes and and you move on with your life, you know. In the chat, somebody said Hollywood Heat is Steve Ritchie's favorite table of all time. So, there you go. And actually, that makes a lot of sense considering the way that he wears his sunglasses. For sure. He's got the He channels the Hollywood heat, right? He does. He definit glasses except as sunglasses instead of not sunglasses, right? Yeah. Yeah. I do like me some Elton John too as you can see in the background everybody. Yeah, I see that you I think you were saying before we started our stream that Led Zeppelin is your favorite game of all time. Oh yeah, for sure. Isn't it everybody's though? I mean like for sure minded Zeppelin. I think I don't either. I keep I make comment this all the time that there's no real bad pinball machines. There's just games that you would own and games that you would not own. And it's super fun to go into an arcade and see a game like Raven or you know Led Zeppelin or that Spinner. I mean, you say that there's no bad pinball games, but then have you played uh Blues Brothers andor uh Spinal Tap? I haven't I haven't played any of the uh um God, what is the name of Blues Brothers is marginally better than Spinal Tap? Um Spinal Tap is well, you know, I feel Yeah, I not ideal. Yeah. So, you're not going to be making any Stumbler mods for Spinal Tap is what I'm hearing. New New say yeah new someone somebody asked about what your what your like per uh dream theme would be. So I guess in that same vein is is there a game that you would love to make a mod for but it's just it's not financially viable because there's not enough people that have the game. Like is there an idea that you like played a pin and you were just like, "Oh my god, like this would be if I did this, this would be so cool on this, but it just it's just not worth it." Um, not that I can think of off the top of my head. And like when it comes when it comes to dream themes, I'm probably less focused on theme than um what some people are. You know, like some people heard that Harry Potter was coming out and that's they're like, I'm all in. I don't care how it looks. This is like my dream theme. It's like I don't think I've ever said that anything is my dream theme. Even for things that I absolutely love like Goonies or Back to the Future or, you know, uh IPs that, you know, mean a lot to me and mean a lot to my childhood and my sense of being or whatever. Still like, you know, Goonies coming out, I'll be like, "That's cool. I'm really looking forward to that." Um, but it's not like I can't I can't help but point out that you had said that you love Back to the Future so much and that you are continuing to work with Dutch Pinball and many of us do know that Dutch Pinball does have the Back to the Future license for their upcoming potential DPX games. I'm just saying I don't think they've ever I don't think they've ever actually 100% confirmed that one. They have not. The rumor mill she be is spinning. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know anything about that, I'm afraid. Yeah. Uh to your point though that that the theme is essentially a coat of paint and that the the rules and the as much as that is important for the experience and the music and sound design and art package really do help sell the entire experience, you know, the design and the code really. Yeah. Okay. So, I'm going to I'm going to contradict myself slightly here in that I do believe that games should be designed for the theme. So when when Spooky do things like they do a double theme, I'm really against doing that because I think it like breaks the fourth wall in a way. You sort of you're sort of saying to everybody we can just put any theme on this game. Doesn't matter. You know, if if you were watching and don't know what Davey's talking about, if for example, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre was also released as Looney Tunes and is essentially the exact same game except for the art package and the call outs and whatnot are different. I believe the rules are the same. I haven't played one back toback so I I don't know. No, they are they are different. I think um they are slightly different. Um, but I yeah, for me it's just a it's just something that shouldn't ever be done. And I'm really pleased that they have chosen not to do that on Evil Dead. And I think which is a really great game. Have you played Evil Dead? Amazing. Yeah, man. I am I am all in on Evil Dead. They absolutely smashed it on that and I can't wait to get one here. Um, good luck. Do you have one? Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Oh, you do? You lucky God. I was so happy to see them hit the top 10 list on pins after, you know, I mean, you want these up these I can't call Spooky an upcoming pinball company anymore. It's been around for forever or at least quite a while. But, you know, these smaller companies, they need they need to be What's that? They're disruptors. I said so. Yeah, I do believe that they are still upandcomers. They're I think that Spooky is the modern godly. Yeah. Yeah. And like so we we ran into Bug at the last uh Texas show and he was just over the moon, man. You know, like full of energy. Uh they sold their last game at the show. Um which added to that energy. And when I was chatting with him about I was like, "Oh man, like this is an absolute cracker. You guys have knocked out of the park. How does it feel?" And he was just feels so good, man. feels so good. And I said, you know, cuz you know, the last couple of titles, they've been good, man, but you know, maybe they haven't sort of quite hit like you've wanted them to hit. Would that be right to say that? And he was like, yeah, that's that's probably true. And he's like, you know, you just try everything sometimes and you know, you think you've done your best work and then it still doesn't sell. And you're like, what do they want? That's that was his words. And then he's like, and then we did this and it starts selling really well and you're like, we do know what we're doing. we can do this. And so I think that Evil Dead was just like that shot of confidence and adrenaline that they needed. Um they needed to hear that um that that they had what it takes to make a game that people really really like and want. And I'm so pleased for them because um you know they work their absolute butts off. Um, you know, they they've coped a lot of [ __ ] over the years for their QC and probably rightly so. I think sure their games break a lot, but they take a lot of risks to make interesting games and a lot of companies don't have the balls to do that. Yep. Yep. That's That's definitely true. Um, so, uh, you know, I I love Spooky. Um, and I also love the new spooky. Like it's my favorite version of Spooky is the latest Spooky with their Evil Dead and you know leaning into the gore and leaning into the horror and leaving the Looney Tunes at the door. Uh leaving the double barreled themes at the door and um that game's fun for how much is not in it either. Not like I mean there's a lot to play and if you do find an Evil Dead, there's plenty of game there to both enjoy and to own. But you know there's a number of wizard modes that aren't in there. There's some other modes that aren't in it. But the just the base fundamental playfield layout and it being a widebody is just super fun to play. It's just great. It's a great game. Cracker. Now I'm hoping they produce Mohead next. That's That's my uh That's your That's your dream theme right there is Mohead. Um not necessarily. Homerew Motorhead. Yeah. Well, that's the one. So that got made by Ro Dave. Ro Dave, but Spooky were hosting it at Expo last year. I'm sure it was Expo last year. No, No, it was Texas last year. Sorry, I get my shows confused. I think Texas last year, Spooky were hosting that homebrew uh at their stand. Um, and then Ro Dave then took the game to Spooky headquarters cuz he's from New Zealand. Took it to Spooky Headquarters after that for a couple of weeks just if that doesn't imply what's happening there. Who? Man, get get going. Rumor mill. Come on, internet. Yeah. And I would love that to I would love that to happen cuz it it was a great game, man. It had like scissor flippers and it had a fist that shouts out, "You've been fisted when you hit the shot." And I mean, it was just it was just completely bonkers and, you know, so much fun. So, yeah, I'm hoping they I'm hoping they make that one, man. It's It's refreshing to hear that kind of like not slapstick, but like you know the '9s had a very like specific type of pinball humor where it wasn't really taking itself so serious. And I feel like that's been kind of lost that passion for it just being like fun, weird. Yeah. Well, that's why I like Kong so much, man, because I feel like that kind of that kind of silliness and Godzilla, too. you know, is very much sort of in that vein as well. You know, like go and press the flipper button on the side of Godzilla when the game's not on and you know, and you know, get told to put your shoes back on. Like, you know, it's that kind of stuff that, you know, just there's a few call outs that are weird though in that way though where it's like get, you know, get off your cell phone and one the girl's like I'm not used to being kept waiting and it's like whoa. Like whether you think that's funny or not, it's just it's not very timeless. Like at least some of the call outs on like you know you think of these 90s games those call outs are timeless like in 20 or 30 years they're going to stand up and I I just don't think the Kong ones are going to do that 20 or 30 years people are going to be like what's a cell phone yeah yeah you might be right but anyways but back to Stumbler I I have one more question because we're we're kicking almost two hours and I know it's late over in the UK. Uh, the most important question that I've been curious about, the name Stumbler. Oh, yeah. Okay. Um, so it's a bit of a weird story. Um, so it used to be Okay. So, it's actually a Simpsons reference, weirdly, or like a side Simpsons reference. So, do you remember the episode? Do you know? Are you a Simpsons afficionado? I'm not an afficionado, but I mean I grew up in the 80s, so I watched a lot of Simpsons, you know. Yeah. Okay. So, do you know that episode where Marge got addicted to playing gambling machines and stuff and Homer's Homer's making an outfit for Lisa and it's the state of Nevada and like he's just messed it all up or whatever and and Lisa goes, "I'm a monster." And Homer goes, "You're not a monster, Lisa. The only monster here is the gambling monster that's taken over your mother. I call him Gambler. So, um, so anyway, I've just lost my speaker. Hold on. So, that's the bit in the Simpsons, right? Anyway, we were walking home drunk one night and um and my mate fell in a bush and um and he screamed out, "I'm a monster." And I said, "No, no, Jeff." I'll just use your name. No, Jeff, you're not a monster. The only is the monster that's taken over your walking. I call him Stumbler. And that's where it started. That's hilarious. It's And you were like And you were like, "This is the name we got to go for the company, right?" Well, this is this is the thing, right? Like, so it was just one of those random stupid jokes that we laughed about because we're all Simpsons nerds. And um and then I made a blog, I don't know, a year later because that's what everyone was doing at that time. And like blog, get your blog on. Yeah. Get that blog out there. And I was like, what am I going to call my blog? what am I going to call my blog? What am I? And so I was just like, uh, I'll call it Stumblore. So I called the blog Stumblore and then did a bit of blogging for a couple of years. That was all good and well. And um, and then when I got over to the UK and got into pinball, um, I jumped on the forum Pinball Info, which is the UK equivalent of Pinsside, and I was like, what am I going to call my username? And I was like, I'll just call it Stumble. And then you sort of just keep doing this, just you reusing these names, not thinking it's going to be anything. Um, all of a sudden you're stuck with it. And then you're stuck with it. So now it's Dumbler, you know, like it's just a stupid If my mate hadn't have fallen into that bush all those years ago, then I'd be called like Davey's Zizzle Mods or something. See, and then it wouldn't be so successful. If anything, you owe your buddy a pint, man. Like he really The MVP is the bush. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I need to go find that bush, man. And like, you know, put a transplant that put it in your home. Official stumbler bush. Uh amazing. Great. The uh I wanted to just throw it to chat, too, as we're, like I said, closing in on two hours here. Uh if you have any questions that you want to fire at Davey, please go go for it. And while we're doing that, Davey, if there's anything going on with Stumbler that you want to plug on the channel to all four of our viewers, uh, let it rip. Um, no, man. Just, uh, so look, we're we're releasing a Jurassic Park mod very soon. Um, it's going to be for the back of the playfield. I'm not going to say too much on it, uh, at the moment. Um, but it'll be an interesting little 4range Jurassic Park. Um, Jurassic Park is a game that I've been getting asked about for ages and ages and ages. Um, I've never owned the game. Um, but recently I was able to pick up a nice premium. Uh, and I thought, hey, you know, let's let's give it a bash. Like Jurassic Park probably came out before the age of modernday modding. Um, so it doesn't have a heap available for it. I know Leor did some sculpts for the uh for the T-Rex. Um, and I know there's a few other little bits and pieces. I think there's some possibly some Pop Bumper mods that showed like the resin and the uh mosquito and a few other bits and pieces. I know that um the Data East uh version of the game's got a whole bunch of mods as well. Um, but yeah, there's there's a there's a whole bunch of things there that I'm really excited about doing and it's going to be using um a new sort of technology that I've used before. Um, and I'm really excited to see what people think of it. So, that should be out within a week or two. Uh, amazing. Not only do Why did I I traded my Jurassic Park temporarily for a Star Trek. So, I'm not going to have my Jurassic Park back for like a month or two, which is super frustrating. But, uh, I'm definitely Count me in on that one. and I'm going to see if I can get on that list sooner than later. Okay. All right. Yeah. Well, uh, yeah, anybody who sort of feels like they miss out sometimes, and I do get people from time to time, um, who are upset that they feel like they've missed out on announcements. So, whatever the best way of learning about what we're up to, is to jump on the website and stick your email address, uh, in the either the popup that comes or the footer also has a sign up and that'll get you on the email list. Uh we send out emails fairly regularly uh letting everybody know of updates and offers and new announcements and products and stuff. So jump on that and uh you'll be the first to know. Awesome. Uh here, can you give people a visual tour of your space real quick? We talked about that right before we started. Well, why not? We'll send off the stream with that. Yeah. Okay. So, um I usually get I know what I need to do. Oh, I think we lost your audio. I don't know if you can hear me. Still Still no audio, but I'll talk. So, this is this is the corner where I have my pinball machines. And uh this is my Elton John. And this is my Metallica. And uh I'm probably going to be doing a lot of mods for Metallica, my favorite band. Oh, this is Godzilla. Someday I'll work on some mods for it. Uh this is another game. That's a Foo Fighters, I think. Oh, there's a lot more pinball machines over here. The problem is Davey doesn't know that we can't hear him right now, but that's okay. Uh, this space is way larger than I thought. That's the corner of my studio. That's the floor. Oh, he does have a TNA. This is my TNA that we were talking about. A top secret project. That's Dungeons and Dragons. And I'm going to point my finger at it. I'm going to point my finger over here at the side of total nuclear annihilation. No, that's me talking. His audio is muted. Oh, Davey. I wish I could let him know. Davey. Uh, well, this looks like storage components for uh components that they probably mass assemble for all of the different mods. Uh, this Yeah, this is my mods. This is my big bucket of mods. Yeah, get your get your mods. These are lots of rubbers. I use them on my games. Yeah, there plenty of buckets. Get lots of buckets for everything. Yeah, electric board. This is my Yorkshire Tile. So, this is the most fascinating silent uh tour. For anybody watching this or listening to the podcast, uh we are currently being given an amazing visual tour of uh Stumbler Mod's uh workshop. Everything from his component boards and assembly line stuff and machines all over the place. He's got tons of pins hiding behind and around the corner. Uh but uh but unfortunately Davey's mic is not working uh as he stepped away and transferred it to his mobile uh mobile camera. So he's currently going around pointing at all sorts of interesting objects and uh we can't hear it. So, uh, yeah, I guess, you know, uh, I was going to play some some moody, uh, chanting to go along with this. Unfortunately, I can't send him a message. If anybody has got Davey's cell phone, please text him and tell him that we can't hear anything he's saying. Uh, yeah, I guess I'll go back to describing what we're looking at. So, we're looking at more buckets on shelves, lots and lots of stock of what I imagine are his uh assembly boards for when they do mass construction of this. Some project games. He's got a medieval madness that looks like a cactus canyon, I think. I can't Oh, no. That's creature that. And then an Attack from Mars, which looks like the uh CGC remake as it has the larger display, which by the way, plug for myself. That's currently what I'm streaming right now if you're curious to see that. Uh let's see, what is that? A Dracula. Oh man, I sold my BSD. I'm so sad about that. He has the new translite on it. That's not the original one. Also, that display is huge. I would love to hear what he's saying about it. It looks like he modded his uh his BSD to have a giant display. And a Lord of the Rings. We got one of those. It's right there. There it is. Let's see. What's that? That's a bride of pinbot, I believe. This is testing my pinball knowledge. Uh that's fun house. Can't tell if that's the remake. Yeah, this is an insane collection. And I like that D and D is boxed up. I know that he's going back to doing uh some D and D things. I don't I don't know if he can hear me or not. Davey, we can't hear you. Oh, he's returning. Here we go. Okay, hold on. You're You don't You're not Your mic's off. How about now? Yeah. So, that was an amazing tour, but it was totally silent. I did my best to pretend being you and talk about what you would say, but uh I have a few questions. That Bram Stokers has an incredibly large display in it. That's not normal. What's that? Oh, I'm so sorry about that. It's cuz I didn't have my earpiece on. So, cuz I was getting echo. I We probably should have ran through the uh the test case, shouldn't we? That's okay. So, we saw we saw storage containers and and rubbers that you had. We saw some project machines that you had clearly have been working on and doing some interesting stuff. You had a creature there. Amazing collection. By the way, I saw the the CGC remake of Attack from Mars, which we're currently streaming. Um, but yeah, your BSD had a huge display. Was that a project mod? So, that is a that's a pin to DMDXL. Um, we sell them on the website. Um, as uh those are the ones that we mentioned before where uh they're sort of they're the V started out in VPIN. and they sort of moved into the uh real pinball uh sphere. And then Jurg, who uh is the creator of that uh project or Lucky One is the is handle um he sort of worked out a way of using bigger screens to essentially recreate sort of um the bigger screens like uh CGC uses. Um, so those those uh bigger screens um really modernize those older games as you can see on VS. Um uh and I've got one in Creature as well, but they they just look absolutely fantastic and totally modernize the game. Um if one is available for one of my classic uh Bali Williams games, I always stick it in because they just look so fantastic. I mean, plus replacing the front wood with a oversized hole that has the speakers moved to the side seems like such an easy, you know, swappable component. Just getting a new, you know, front. Yeah. Front. Well, we we um we basically sell the entire unit. So, we've sort of CNCed a piece of plywood so that it's got the correct sort of size hole for the screens. The speakers get swapped out for ones that can fit within that small gap. Do you include a decal or something to give it the same look on the front or Yeah. Yep. So, we include acrylics at the front that have been modified in Photoshop because obviously when you move Exactly. And different different pins will be have different levels of complexity for that. like creature was an absolute nightmare because it's like a car scene at the bottom and fences and stuff and so you've sort of got to reshuffle things around and recreate art in certain places where it wasn't. Um Um but we've pretty much done that for most games now. Uh you know, so we've got them for Theater of Magic, we've got them for Adam's Family, we've got it for Star Trek Next Generation, um Dracula, as you saw creature, you know, loads and loads of different games. I definitely was surprised you have a quite a hidden secret like extension to your to your workshop. I just as soon as you ran in the corner it was just like oh wow. Yeah. It's just and it's just filled with pins too. Like it's like darn it could be shelving. It could be shelving but it could be. So what was you were pointing at a lot of the containers like what's in a lot of the uh is it parts for assembly for now? So, the problem problem was is when I was trying to use my mic and go over here. Round two. Can you can you hear me now? Uh oh. Yeah. I don't know, Dave. We can We got no video from your from your iPhone if you can still hear me. Yeah. And And I was testing that theory again. I was testing that theory again, but um I figured that I could use my microphone and my camera, but it's not working. So, I'll work that out later. No worries. That's what we do. We do it live. [ __ ] it. Yeah. What could possibly go wrong? Nothing. Yeah. So, those boxes are essentially uh filled with parts uh for the various mods. Um and actually that management of um parts you know boringly and weirdly has been one of the most complicated things to scale as the business has gotten bigger. So cuz you know if you think about it any sort of manufacturing company if you run out of one part the whole line shuts down you know so and and if you've sort of preemptively sold 50 mods with the expectation that you'll be able to build 50 mods and then you can't build 50 mods because you've run out of screws then suddenly you've got a problem where you're holding on to people's money. You have to get in contact with people. You're doing email. you know, it's just so getting on top of that and making sure that that is a smooth operation has been one of the biggest challenges with creating a manufacturing company. Um, and you know, we leverage a lot of uh technology in order to support that. So, you know, inventory management systems, but also systems that monitor mods going out and then automatically know what parts are in those orders. So they can decrement the inventory management system automatically by three screws and an acrylic or something like that. So to remove the human element, you know, you say that this was like a side job, Dave. This doesn't sound like a side job. This sounds like a full-time job. Yeah, it's a it's a it's it's a full-time job now. Yeah, I've I've sort of resigned from my main gig um a little while ago and now doing this full-time. Um because it's yeah it's it's a it's quite a big operation now. Um and how lucky am I that I've been able to to do that you know I mean not many people are you know get given the opportunity to turn their their you know the the hobby that they love into something that can you know support their family and and do those kinds of things. So I'm incredibly grateful to everyone for for giving me that opportunity. I think um you knowve I've found it to be you know the the love and um support that I get from everybody within the community has just been you know overwhelmingly great and uh you know you know pushes me to keep keep doing good things I suppose. Awesome. Plus also it's nice because for from a business aspect like the games the manufacturer needs to make a great game and then once you see that a game is great you're like well I can I can now make it even better. So you know and I feel like a lot people that have a game that they love are already interested in making it better if there's an opportunity to do so. Would you say that that carries true to sales? Yeah. I mean, we sort of we sort of touched a little bit on what the decision-m process was when you when a game gets released and whether you decide to make a mod for it. And I think that that's sort of uh it's multifaceted sort of, you know, you try and look at first of all, you look at how well the game is being received, you know, um is it generally positive? Do you think the sales are going to be good? you know, and if if all of those sort of things are correlating, okay, well, that's one data point to consider. Number two, is it a game that looks to have areas that could be conducive to modding? Uh, and are those areas the type of, you know, is the artwork and is those type of areas or the mods you have in mind conducive to your style of modding? For me, it's um generally uh structures that have some kind of lighting component um or some kind of functionality or some kind of moving component. Um and then the final one and the one that's like so I guess the hardest to try and work out is are the people who are buying this pinball machine the types of people who are going to want to mod their pinball machines? Because if you sort of think about Godzilla, you know, the customers for Godzilla were overwhelmingly sort of positive about modding in general and tended to mob. What's an example of a game that doesn't have tinkerers? Um, that's a good question as well. Let's sort of think about that. Um, well, I think like all games have tinkerers. All games have people who are modding them. Um, but I think that possibly, you know, you could look at John Wick, Venom. Um, you know, maybe games that are more transitive. Uh, like, you know, if you people people will generally only mod games if they feel like they're going to be in their collection for a while because there's no point sort of modding a game if it's just going to be out the door in a couple of weeks. Sure. people that post on pinside like they have all these mods in it like it's increasing the value past the value of the mods are are living in a dream world. Exactly. So yeah and it and it and it doesn't. So um so really the only reason why you do it is for your own enjoyment and and you would generally do that only if you're you know you're hanging on to the game for a chunk of time so that you can enjoy you know the work that you've put into it and you can show your friends and you go that was that that was that. you know, a lot of the people that I speak to, um, well, we produced a stainless steel, um, Tokyo neon sign, um, with a special design for Project Pinball, which is, uh, a group of, uh, pinball enthusiasts who do great work for children's charities. Um, and they do a raffle every year, um, to raise money for the charity. And so, we produced this uh, stainless steel Tokyo Neon sign. And um the the it ended up going to three people and they s sort of shared the prize and I produced some more so that all three of them could share it. Um and they all loved that because it sort of increased the story of winning that piece and they all wanted them individually numbered so that they that could also add to the story of it sort of being a one of three piece. Um so I think that's sort of part of it in a way is that storytelling aspect. you know, I was at Expo at that time. This happened, you know, three of us ended up winning it. I got number one. Look, you can see it's written on the back. I met Davey. Davey sent out, you know, like that kind of, you know, so when your pinball friends are over, you know, you've just got a talking point, um, something to point out to them. And, you know, I think that's part of it. Um, so yeah, it's it's one that we're always sort of analyzing and trying to get to the bottom of. um just cuz it kind of helps us make better decision making I suppose on on what games to focus on. I mean ultimately you just choose the games you like and you think will be cool. To your point about that story I mean it's like pinball machines are as much as a game that it's about making the memories around it right like yeah sure you remember playing Godzilla because Godzilla is great but really you remember being at the bar when you beat your friend by two billion points or whatever and he had spilled his drink on somebody or something. I mean, like, you're creating memories around the pinball machine, not inside of it. Um, for sure. Well, Dave, thank you so much for taking the time to be on my podcast and talk about all of the interesting stuff going on and how it is to make mods and how you built this company from a single pinside post. Wild. Uh, I hope you truly do find that bush and transplant it to wherever you are or buy your mate of beer as uh yeah, cuz it seems like Stumbers's got so much cool stuff going on and and you know, Pinball's not stopping anytime soon. So, uh, awesome, Jeff. Thanks so much for having us on, man. It's been a blast and uh, yeah, thanks for hearing my crazy stories. Uh, and uh, yeah, I'm just, you know, I'm looking forward to catching up in person at a show maybe and uh, sharing a beer and making some memories. Are you going to Pinball Expo? I am. I'll be at Expo. Yep. Um, pretty much go to Expo and uh, and Texas uh, Pinball Festival every year now. So, yeah, if anybody, you know, wants to, you know, I'm always sort of milling about. never usually have a stall. Um, just cuz I'm sort of busy, you know, drinking beers and and making memories. So, you know, I'll always be floating about if anybody ever sees me and wants to come up and say hi, you know, I've always got time for for a chat and a game pinball. So, make sure you do that. It's where all the important business happens anyways is at the bar near like these exposures. Anyways, yes, I would absolutely love to meet in person. I will be at Pinball Expo and uh Texas at TPF moving forward. Those are going to be my major stops for now since apparently I'm doing this pinball thing. Um, great. Good to hear. Good to hear. Sounds like a plan. Um, okay. So, the other thing we do is we jump on to uh we raid. We got to do a raid because the show is live. And uh if anybody else has a last question while I go and try to find a channel to raid. Uh, now's the time or forever hold your peace or at least until next time we have Dave on. Uh, maybe when he makes his new uh releases his new Jurassic Park mod to send to me. Yeah, exactly. So, without further ado, thank you so much for everybody for watching. If you want to catch us on video on demand, it's going to be up on all the socials, etc., etc. And if you want to listen to it on a podcast and hear me talk in an Arnold voice while Dave gives a tour of his silent studio, uh, that one should be pretty funny. So, uh, yeah, thank you so much for watching. Uh, yeah, stick around till we're done raiding. Goodbye. See you guys. See you.