 Well, I don't know how about you, but whenever I start playing a new game I know I'm in trouble because I usually get really excited playing all kinds of games because I like to win and Usually it ends with me getting hurt somehow couple days ago, I played a card game with some other guys and It was a fast card game and we were both all the guy next to me and I were aiming at the same pile of Cards and we hit each other's arms really hard So I was still in pain the next day. It gets even worse when I play the pinball machine I don't know if you know that feeling when you see those those milliseconds when the ball Gets closer and closer to the flippers And you know it goes straight through the middle and you actually have no chance of hitting the ball and keeping it in the game, but Nevertheless, you keep trying and you push those buttons really hard trying to keep the ball in the game And then you hurt your fingers and punch the machine Uh anyone who knows that feeling Okay, good. I'm glad I'm not the only one then Well, how cool would it be to have your own custom pinball machine? I mean one where you can pick out your favorite LEDs. We can build your own design and everything Lucky for you. We got someone here who's built his own pinball machine and who can tell you exactly What you can do He's a computer scientist. He's actually right now doing his PhD in computer science One of his favorite hobbies is pinball machines and he uses this experience again So playing pinball machines to learn more about manufacturing hardware game design and real-time software Well, I'm pretty sure if you're loud enough now He'll show us some pictures of his own pinball machine and I give you an expression or an impression Of what your own machine could look like. So please welcome and Give a warm round of applause to yeah Yeah, good afternoon everybody. My name is Jan Kantot and I actually started building my own pinball machine about one and a half year ago and I will tell you about that this talk will be mostly pictures a few bullet points and This will be basically our outline today. So you start with game design. So How do you want your game to look what kind of toys and mechanics do you want in there? And then we skip to what mechanics do we need then how to control those mechanics? So which electronics we need to control them then how to drive the electronics with software and then now we theoretically know how this works and Then we actually do the hard stuff building all the parts for it and At the end I got a small lessons learned if we have time I got a video of our machine actually running a game and You can you may ask some questions if you like But let's start with what what is what is pinball? This is a pinball And it weights 80 grams and it's 27 millimeters diameter So if you want I will give some some through audience Just just to give you a feeling how hard a pinball is and Just just hang it around just Yeah, and the side and Not everybody had it yet, but you will notice that this is actually more heavier than then you actually thought probably and Yeah Pinball is about shooting this nice ball Around in the machine. So it's actually a machine with all the consequences. So I'm a computer scientist. So I'm not used to mechanics and all the stuff I know a little bit of electronics, but yeah mechanics are new to me But let's start at the beginning Small small warning inside of pinball machine. They're high voltages Just turn them off before touching them. Maybe and then you could coils and they can hurt you and If you drive them incorrectly, they will also burn and they can also burn down your house and This is an expensive hobby And it takes a lot of time and effort. So maybe consult with your girlfriend or a better half before and But but if you find with this then then let's go so I met with a friend and We actually decided all we want to build a pinball machine. So actually at first week we were drunken and but next day we still remembered it and and Let me say well, how could it be? So I made this this beautiful drawings here and For God's sakes, they're not no longer in the artwork and But we we wanted to make a machine which is for two players not one player with two players So a head-to-head pinball machine one player fighting against against the other player and we wanted to be good where those evil So this is obviously evil and this is maybe good Yeah, so so so we select the theme and Yeah, then some artwork. Okay, we got the better I work later and then we wanted some medieval scheme for for the music and Then we also picked the general color scheme because you have to do to make you have a lot of these decisions for mechanics for graphics and And you want to make sure that that you don't have to redo everything at the end. So we will also pick colors in our case, it's more blue for for the good side and black for black and red for the for the bad side or from the evil side and and the girlfriend of my friend with whom I'm doing is this She's a teacher So so we started with this So it's full-size play field here. That's a kitchen table and And we just started off moving around parts. So how do it? How should how should the layout look? And You have to do one basic decision at the beginning Do you want to have a standard body or a white body machine? the standard body machine is 50 centimeters or 20 20 inches and The white body machine is about 25 inches. So 60 60 centimeters That's a general decision and if you closely look at different Pimbo machines They play quite differently only even if it's only 10 centimeters. It plays differently and so we we decided to go with a standard size and Then we started with the standard lower third the standard layer lower third is basically sling shots here Some flipper fingers here trough in this bottom and the ball is shot here. So that's That's very common on nearly every machine Then you have some pop bumpers here and some yeah colorful rams here and that's that's how we started off and We started to to imagine a layout and which toys we want And basically which mechanics we need to achieve the effects we want to have Then we we designed a little bit more and came out with this This is actually our first design for the lights where where should the lights be? so we drew this on paper and Yeah, it's pretty similar to the machine at the end Not quite you will you will see later, but Just plan ahead because changing stuff later with real Mechanics or hardware is general expensive. That's even worse than in software late changes just a lot of effort So do them early if you can And next we did a wide worked a wide wood is the name for basically a prototype play field usually son of wood, but We decided to go a little bit lighter and it's so we used foam core. It's basically a Foam with two paper plates on top and on a bottom bottom and you can you can cut them with Exciter knives you can hot glue them. It's it's really really cool And you can use gaffer tape everywhere. So we built it up this and just We were creative and just to try a lot of stuff ripped stuff off and put them put it together differently just to see how it feels good and then we went sophisticated and Designed it in a cat program and the play field looks like this So let me just walk you through this machine The players are here and on the other side those play feuds are identical besides artwork We got two flipper fingers here We got slingshots here, which push the ball away We got the shooter here, but the shooter doesn't go into the play field like in most machines Instead the shooter goes over to the other side. So the ball comes back here and stops here Here's a post which stops the ball and Then we release the ball from here into the play field And after we released one we just shoot another one there. So that once you lose a ball you instantly get a new one So just it's it's just a flow machine. There's no stop and flow. There's just flow. You always got a ball until you lost and Then we got some ramps and two of them this Goes over to the other play field and a little bit hard to see here But there's another one and the center ramp here. It also goes over to the other side And it comes basically back here from the other side and here's a lock so this can keep three balls and Once you're under attack from the other side There's a certain mode which you can achieve and then it will release up to three balls from this lock actually Then you got this nice star here That will be a some some kind of bash toys a figure in one side and an angel of the other side Some some kind of demon and you can you can shoot them There's a drop target in front and a target to actually attack it Then we got one loop ramp here, which comes from here So you choose from the right flipper finger and it goes back over this wire ramp to the left flipper finger We got the same on the right side ramp here, which goes here and to the right So you basically can shoot from here to this side It comes back on the left side you can shoot from the left side to the right and it comes back to the right side So you can switch switch the flipper fingers if you like there's an an orbit here, which goes into a kicker this can Hold the ball for a second and then release it into the pop bumpers here And you can also shoot the orbit from the other side and it goes goes around so it comes back And we got a scoop here. It shoots just to this ramp That's basic the basic play out we came up with this after playing with foam core and trying trying a few revisions. So now Imagine we got this in a cat program. What do we need to actually build this and It turns out we need mechanics because the ball won't Move on its own at least not for very long and the standard lower third is basically four parts It's flipper fingers because this is a cut drawing here But you will see a nicer picture in a minute and you got sling shots You got a trough which keeps the balls and ejects balls and you get a launcher which launches the ball into the play field and so There was our first Build basically this is fun core again. This is not real wood. This fun core fun core is 10 millimeter thick and A standard play field in Pimbo machines is 13 millimeters thick. So It's an unusual size in Germany basically or in Europe in general because it's inch and So for most mechanics it works fine in a low third it works But for some mechanics, you just have to put another three millimeters below Otherwise, they will just stick out too much from the plate. Yes And this is a trough it from below it keeps the balls This is a flipper finger. Those are sling shots from below This is from from above that to blade switches And this is the actually kicker it kicks the ball like here And those are the flipper fingers of the flipper bats on the upper side the trough Collects the ball here or drains there and ejects here and the launcher just injects to the play field So there was our first build Traff in case You wonder how this works. It's pretty simple basically the best flipper mechanics are always simple They work better if they are simple So it got multiple ball positions They just rolled down and into the in the trough there two rails on the bottom and then for every ball. There's one switch To detect if there's a ball So it basically counts the boards here and when a new one drains once it sits on the switch We know that the ball drained it has a coil here, which ejects the ball out to the to the shooter and There's a special gem position. There's also usually an optical contact To detect this because it's very usual that the ball just Comes back because it's mechanic. It's it's not 100% reliable And and you want then want to pulse this coil a little bit less because otherwise both balls will go out So that just the upper one kicks out This is how it looks in our machine Here's the trough from above with at least two boards and this is the kicker Usually there's a spring which you can pull and to to manually Launch the ball, but in this case we only got an auto launcher because now machine the machine will feed balls to the other side So it would be bad if you can You can keep the balls away from another player So this is also a little bit more reliable. We switched those mechanics. We had another one before Then we got some more mechanics we need that's very basic and You can find those in nearly every Pimbo machine This is a vertical up kicker or a scoop This is a this is a scoop But it's also vertical up kicker depending on the on the naming It's it's a it's a vertical up kicker if it kicks it up to a ramp If it's a scoop if it kicks it back to the play field and it's a kicker if it doesn't fully go in So basically those are all the same but just with three different names and and they work by having a switch like this and To just to notice that there's a ball and the coil you can see the shaft here Which just kicks a ball out here. It actually falls in there's also a switch and it shoots the ball Into the ramp. It can also just trick Pulls the coil less and it will go back to the play field also works Then we got pop bumpers very very common mechanics and they make those nice noises of the machine That's how they look from above and this is how they look from below basically this is a this is a switch Plastic of the plastic and this actually moves here this the shaft here which triggers the switch It's kind of complicated, but it works fairly well And then you got this coil Which pulls down this metal ring here, which pushes the ball away Very common mechanics you can buy them and usually they work pretty fine and here you can see that we glued another three millimeters of foam here Otherwise this which is we just not fit at all So but this still works on foam core So no need to to make wood so far for prototypes. It's really really good I would totally recommend it, but there are other Opinions so some people say well no just just do it in wood initially, but I would recommend foam core Then you got some other mechanics This is simple. This is just a blade switch with some green plastic on top So this is those are targets and you can see them everywhere in the machine and you got job targets job target is a Plastic shaft here and once you hit it it goes down With spring And there's a switch to detect this and the coil this one which just can pull it up again To to reset it in software at the end And those are very typical mechanics you can see in a lot of machines and We got one special mechanics, which is basically a diverter And I showed you this this playfield before and what happens if one player constantly drains boards Then at some point there will be no boards in the trough of the other side So we need some mechanic to balance the troughs and This is done by this nice mechanic here. This is basically a diverter. It's a flap It's just flap and we shoot the ball over and we can just Enable a coil which is below here, which will push the Flap up and the ball would just jump over and then it drains on the trough below basically In the normal case if we just drop in here and we will hold it with this post which we go up So this is basically a lock Which temporarily locks a ball and once we need it we will release it This is the other lock, which is fed from the ramp in the middle. So it comes over from the other side Or sorry it comes from here and then we got three positions with optos here and again a post which can just go up and Hold the boards and we can release them Even one by one. So we don't we don't have to release all of them So Where do you have those mechanics so obviously you could you could take a machine and just strip them out Will work and it's it's Probably also the cheapest way to do it But those will be old mechanics and you have to clean them and and so on and not everything may be available So so it might be better to just buy them and it turns out that's it's totally possible for most mechanics Just check out the manuals of the machine where the Mechanic you like is in and there are part numbers and you can just order them In general, it's good to to order assemblies, which are just a collection of parts because usually for example a flipper finger that's 50 into 20 parts and if you order them And separately that that will be expensive very very quickly So all the assemblies if possible and there is one Shop which actually sells those mechanics and they build them on their own also for for very old mechanics So look what they have. It's usually a good idea. So just check what they have and those are Very well priced. Usually it's pinball life And you can also write them an email and if you're lucky they will build the mechanic for you They will yeah, it takes half a year and then then we have it Have it and then there's marco specialties They got everything like really everything but usually only one or two and old stuff But they got I don't know maybe ten thousand parts. So so they got really everything and it's It's not a high price usually and Then you can get go to your stern distributor if it's a recent storm machine. That's the largest pinball manufacturer And they they sell replacement parts. It's usually not that expensive but it takes a lot of time to get those and Sometimes some effort, but they will I guess they will even produce those parts if you if you want to buy them So those are your options You can also build mechanics like we did on a diverter, but I showed you the third revision So that took some efforts to to to make it reliable Because that's sometimes not easy at least not for a computer scientist like me So now now we got mechanics and we bought them and while they're in there and Yeah, now we need to control them and I'm working on an open source project which is called the mission pinball framework and It's it's a framework which can control all those mechanics. So you can say well, there's there's a flipper mechanic This is a button and this is the coil Enable it and it will do all the magic in a background. So it contains a lot of building blocks It works on windows Mac linux and for example raspberry pi Which is also linux, but with some special limitations Then you need a pinball control system Which usually interfaces with USB to your computer and there are three three major ones it's fast pinball Multimorphic p-rock and the open pinball project, which is actually open hardware and This is a little bit little bit basic, but also works. It's also the cheapest option And I got all I got them all here So if you want to have to look on to have a look later just come by and you can show them And then you need obviously a film or machine. You can retrofit an all one. You can build your new one whatever you like and Then you driver boards those usually come with this control system and they even in traditional machines that typically separated from the CPU because Those are the boards where the power is actually which even may burn in some machines or cost damage Then you got the it has those fats which drives the the coils and Those sometimes burn for example if you've got a charge in your coil Then those might burn and you have to replace them. They also got input protection. So your your CPU won't burn once you have Once you connect your input to coil power for example so You can buy those or you can build the open pinball project hardware, which I can show it Which looks like this So that's that's the cheapest option basically this baby 40 bucks But you have to sold it on your Yeah, then obviously you have to wire it up. This is how this looked for standard low third. Those are the control boards here and Yeah, you think enough wires because coils carry a lot of current at least initially So don't don't take two thin wires. Otherwise, they were just burned away Yeah Then yeah, I talked a lot about coils So I figured I need one slide about coils. They use basically everywhere because they're cheap. They're reliable and They're fast For example, you could you could use a servo, but it will go out and it takes a lot of time and it it's It's expensive compared to a coil So usually they're driven this way that they initially pulse for Five to twenty milliseconds something and then they they're whoop with PWM So they enable for one millisecond disabled for six millisecond enabled for one and so on Because otherwise you won't have enough power you for example if you want to kick a ball you need a lot of Acceleration in the beginning so you need a lot of a lot of current there. So usually they got an impotence of Four to eight ohms a little little bit less so They carry a lot of current or they they And they can burn obviously so if you just connect them to your To your PSU they will they will burn usually that's why it's important that you PWM them and do not Unless you know what you're doing do not just enable coils They will burn Try it try it once but Don't do not do it in your keyboard machine. Yeah, and they can hurt you you actually they actually have a lot of force So you probably all Tried the born by my now It can shoot this ball pretty pretty fast and it can also shoot your your fingers for example And that will hurt I can tell you Then You want to know where the ball is actually and this is done by switches So there are the two traditional approaches here One is those blade switches the simplest and most reliable switch basically ever made and this will Basically always work. You can have a target here. You can have a button here if it's possible They usually go with those switches and in in newer machines. They're also those micro switches usually from cherry like like in your keyboard and And for example with this custom custom blade here So this goes through the play field. This is basically a rollovers which if the boy roads around along there It will it will notices and the control system. We get this pulse and Tell the software about it Then we got up toes. I showed you some before and So the the most common ones are those those are the Williams or stern up toes they're about 13 millimeters thick so you need a lot of space here and We forgot about that or we didn't actually know in the beginning and a lot of places We didn't have 13 millimeters So we needed to come up with another solution. So if we deprinted this part, which is a side LED This is 1.6 millimeters and you see it connected here to a 1 millimeter steel ramp This was the first design. So it worked pretty well in the beginning but then it turned out vibrations are are bad for this and It clips through the hole here But it's not enough. Sometimes they will they will just fly off and so we so we redesigned it like this So that the LED goes in from here and you can screw them into into the ramp. So we cut Threads there and then you can screw them in There was the final design, but it took some iterations so Now you know and you can do better hopefully Next is We needed to connect those optos to the control board. This is a control board here for the inputs And we designed those breakout boards here one for power for the current limiting resistor because every Opto is basically an LED and it is current current limiting resistor And you don't want to solder them into the line for every single opto So we designed those breakout boards and one for the receiver side You could just crimp those receiver sides here But then you could never disconnect it again because there are two wires from the opto and they go down and then you Got eight optos on this bank of this control boat and this is on the bottom and the optos on the top You will never be able to disconnect it. So we went with Those small connectors and then you can put them put them out Then we need lights and today everybody wants RGB, right? You know those blinker light people. It's it's borrowing if it's just one color so You got two types of of lights basically those insert lights which are basically those Things here which are plastic and light below and you got general illumination GIs which are below the The rails and everything on a side just to light the play from the side and those we use those nice Christmas lights for the general illumination and those WS 28 12 LEDs which come in this nice package here to screw them from below We did another play field which is from core again Just for the lights just to test light shows and Not not we didn't build it in our actually actual prototype So next you need near display So there are different options that you can use an LCD display if you like But then you need higher definition graphics and it gets a lot of It costs a lot of I thought and game design and graphics rendering and video rendering and those small displays Which are basically DMD dot matrix display place. They only have 128 x 32 pixels So it's a lot easier to make graphics for them. So we went with those and because we are head to head We need two of them. So this is in software We got you got the two DMDs and one is on every side and this is actually an LED matrix Which we which we bought and this can then actually show the same thing which is shown here and stuff Then use power and Usually in older machines, you have 70 to 80 volts with those nice Transformers here But nowadays I would recommend switching power supply with 48 volts they work fine and you can you can buy those for 50 60 bucks We went with the old one because three years ago. They they weren't readily available when we bought those Then you need 12 volts for for switches for Yeah, for the switches on the play field and Five volts for all your lights. So if you go with serial LEDs like we did you need a lot of power on the five volts So we went with an ATX power supply, but they're cheaper options for this and we went with the transformer, but A switching power supply would be would be better probably Then No, you got all the basics. So now you know everything to do it on your own. Well, we didn't actually build much So let's get started with this You need a play field which is as I mentioned 13 millimeters thick and at the end its speltic birch and And it ended send it to 30 millimeters because if you glue in those inserts, then you have to to send it down You got if you can decide between standard and white body And you can make it between 1 meter 6 and 1 meter 16 long But it doesn't matter much as I mentioned before the width actually matters It's a lot. It feels a lot slower if it's if it's wider and Yeah, I showed you the prototype in foam core and Now the option would be to hand root it in wood and the final version would be you would do it with a with a CNC machine and Just as a reminder that was the first machine we built in foam core like even the ramps everything is foam core here Works works fine. Sometimes you just have to reheat glue stuff because this ball is Heavy it would just it will shoot off stuff But yeah, it's just foam core and I can fix everything and then we went more professional and We we use the CNC machine to put the play field This is actually where we cut our play field took about 15 minutes roughly But at a professional manufacturer, there's one in Germany actually which which does play fields And he did this for us Yeah, then afterwards you usually glue the inserts and you sand it flat And you print it at the end. There's coating. It's like car coating but a lot a lot more layers and You probably do not want to do this on your own unless your professional painter or something Then maybe but otherwise you you do not want to do this and at least we decided not to This is how the wood version looked so we didn't do inserts at the beginning because it's expensive with all the coating So we took the simple version and just built the same play field again with with wood So it looks a lot cleaner now. So this is all the the lower side with all the electronics and this is the upper side with the ramps and And Next so we currently doing a next version which we hope to have have it finished for Congress here But but it's not finished yet. It will be finished in January and but this is the the cat drawing basically with also insert where they where they should go and This is actually how it's done. That's a nice nice robot which can glue the insert for you At least if you if you have if you do more than maybe ten play fields So for professional Rational machines it's done with a robot. It just sucks the insert here and just puts it down and then it's then it's glued We did some artwork With Photoshop my colleague is actually called Philip so Photoshop Philip It's probably a German joke, but still works Yeah, this is what you came up with it's not a final version, but I think you get the idea This is probably too light. This may be too dark at some points It's too much contrast between the two and but but but you get the idea. This is the obviously the evil side This is the good side But the inserts are the same and obviously the the holes for the mechanics are the same Just different different print and software will just drive it differently So now you know we need all the hard stuff so like metal So let's build some rails. So at the at the edge of the play field There are those rails because if you shoot the orbit the boy should slide around and not just go to the top and fall down so those are typically made of steel and we Initially just got two millimeters tree a steel band from Amazon was pretty cheap and then we braced Screws to it. That's what you can see here. Just braced screws to it doesn't look pretty but it worked for a long time and Later we lasered them. I can show you in a minute. And this is when we mounted this handmade prototype rails and we had them for quite some time. They work pretty really well Afterwards I designed them a cat again with with a sheet metal tool with all those nice ledges here and then we Basically unrolled them for this and this is what our manufacturer sandals 5 weeks later, and then we bend them by hand. That's one millimeter steel stainless steel and This is how one rail looked like Unfortunately, I don't have a nice picture without the ramps on top But I think you get the idea. This is just the rail around the orbit here And it has some nice ledges where you can screw it to the play field Yeah, so next we need we need some ramps So you get different options for ramps one is plastic you can just 3d print them, but they're large and it takes a lot of time and probably Filament, but it works if you want you can do this Later you would typically deep draw them It's also doable at home and a lot of people do it. We didn't we went with metal It should be this should be solid solid And so first we actually cut them by hand and at the end we lasered them again and You got wire ramps, which you usually use Where a metal ramp would just hide too much stuff of your play field. So Those coming down from the top. Those are wire ramps And you can weld them again or you could weld or brass them So this is again the ramp setup So those those will be wire ramps because they will this will hide too much of the play field You just want to see the inserts and the nice artwork below and this will be Steer ramps basically so first we went again with a cat program and then we did this nice prototype out of cardboard and You you may laugh But this works for for some times until until this this flies away here because the ball hits it and Until that point it will work, but for prototyping it's fine It just just put them in there hot glue them and it will work. It will work Then we cut them by hand Doesn't look pretty But it worked even better especially was faster there and And then we went more professional So the the bottom one hand made one and the top one was the professionally made one Which we didn't bend by by by hand because we missed to cut them here then we did again and Like a lot of things we did a lot of iterations So we currently do the fourth iteration of rms the third iteration of the playfield and the fourth iteration of the rails Also, so this is what we did next this again of what we got from our manufacturer We just lasered out the the bending the bending slots So you can bend them at home with a small bench and that's what we did and then it looked like this We got everything everything twice because two sides and then you have to build everything twice Should have thought about that earlier but well You learn from your mistakes and then that that were our ramps basically and there will be a new version next year so Then we did wire ramps and we decided to go with pressing with a silver Silver hard load. It's in German silver breath alloy. I think it's English and You just use a torch and put the silver to to the To the metal and then it connects. It's pretty stable So we didn't manage to break it until now. So it's easier to break it here than break this So that's pretty okay. This works. I mean it doesn't look perfect. So But it works for quite some time and we still have them and this is actually before with all those foam core ramps and afterwards with wood and all the rear ramps and the and the wire ramps here so you see that we still have a lot of foam core here and hot glue and Gaffer tape for just connecting stuff because You need latches everything everywhere and you need holes to screw stuff and you tend to forget this and we didn't We didn't notice until we got this that steel v4a steel is actually really hard and You cannot easily just Just just drill a hole. It would just go And then it won't look pretty anymore. So we just went well Let's let's do it again put in all the holes and doing that new revision with all the mistakes you've had made and fix them the next revision so Now you notice that there's a lot of open space like here and what the ball we do it will just fall in and then stay there and Since there's no mechanic to put it to push it out. Well, it will stay there forever and That's a problem At least if you put the glass on top But but but it's not good. So usually you got plastics and In the beginning. Yeah, just put them out of foam core like everything and hot glue them And then we went to the 3d printing That's what you look at you can see here and then as usual. Let's face reality and There's always something missing So there's some manufacturing tolerances at the REM some tolerances when you bend the the REMs and Yeah, even if you just screw stuff everything has tolerances. So Make sure just to cut a little bit a little bit off here and leave the ledge here And yeah, yeah, and then we did it again. So like everything You learn from from doing it so credit prototype everything if you if you can laser it out from from cardboard We didn't have a laser. So laser would be will be handy. So just laser it out from cardboard and try it out It would save you a lot of time Then it's software I talked about the mission Pimo framework and Basically, it's a framework. It's written in Python. It's a Python 3. You can install it via PIP Just pip install MPF then mission Pimo framework and Then it's basically installed you need working open. Yeah, open GL and SDL to So that's why we listed the Raspberry Pi before because the Raspberry Pi only has this EGL this limited Mobile open GL implementation. So we support Windows Linux macOS and the Raspberry Pi and It's this framework has two processes one game process was actually runs also logic and a media controller process which renders all the graphics plays the videos because Your your game should be pretty real time I mean, it's not not important that everything reacts inside one millisecond in the game framework Because whatever it actually does is it pushes the rules into this hardware controller So it says well if this fitter flipper button is hit here pulls this coil For 15 milliseconds. So the hardware will take care of that But still if if I hit the target The game needs to say well now light this light and this shouldn't be I don't know two seconds The player will notice everything over. I don't know 50 to 100 milliseconds. So this should be Pretty real time and the media controller stuff usually is not very real time. So loading a video may block everything involving I owe on the disk may block and This also renders the DMD which is connected to the game process again. So we Send events to the media controller. It renders the DMD We get that out of open GL and then we send it back and then we send it to the hardware because If you you do not want to do everything pixel-wise so we actually render an Impact video on an open GL viewport and then just get the right pixels for further DMD back Just to make it easier for a developer This is the general sequence How the software works it launches initial startup initialize everything then you got an attract mode Where you flash all the lights and tell the player well, I give me a coin play me and when when the player does as a game start sequence Where usually some sounds play and the ball starts The player something the ball ends and this repeats until the player has no no more balls Then the game ends in our case We got 30 lives so you can lose 30 balls and every side and whoever loses 30 balls first will lose a little bit different But we just overloaded some classes here and then then this mechanics work This is how the software side works You got the virtual DMD here. You got the state of your Devices in your software here, and you got the the rectangle ones are switches you can click them and they activate virtually and The the round ones are a lights actually so you can see your light shows and you can play with all the switches You say oh, but but war went here and then the software knows that it's here and it will it will carry on with this It has some limited Simulation like if the boy goes here and this coil fires It will it knows that it goes to the play field for example So that's what it does we and those are our two play fields We lie we lay out of them not head-by-head, but next to each other just because it better fits the screen So this is how how this Actually works from a hardware perspective You got the computer which connects by USB to the LED controller Which control next why I see where to the LEDs the DMDs are our USB The controller board our USB then we got a lot of node boards Which just are basically just break out boards for the coils and switches She mount below the play field and modern machines, and then you connect the switches and up those and coils to those node balls This is a general hardback This is how it looks in reality our game Runs here Transformer there's a the the control system and some mechanics and the LEDs connect to those this nice fade candy bar from matterfruit We need a cabinet and we do everything in foam core. So we did this in foam core, too This is a cat model actually how it's supposed to look this is how it actually looked And yeah, there's some foil on the glass, but it's actually believe me. It's glass This is our back box, which is different from normal machines. It's just up on top so you can see your opponent and Mostly this DMD is more for for the observers most players do not look at the DMD during during the game because Especially in our game where you always have a ball you don't you don't have time to look up otherwise, we we parked up and We did sound I did this so It's well, it's music But if you seriously listen to most machines the background sound is so simple It's just I don't know it repeats after 20 seconds and it's it's simple. So It works. It may improve in the future. That's why I won't play it now, but you can you can play it at home if you like Then you need to play sound so we built our professional sound system with the $60 China amp and A large subwoofer like like every car has so it's actually car audio stuff because it's cheap. This is about 90 bucks and Yeah, we got basically one one speaker on every side and the DMD will go here basically it's not in here yet It's from from the bottom the back box from the bottom and this is the cabinet from from top Yeah, that plays pretty fine. It's loud enough. It's nice. So What what does it all cost? So and and it turns out this is pretty expensive. So for our machine just takes us by two because we got everything twice Somebody should have told us And this is basically just for the final version so a playfield including print and everything is between 800 and 1000 euros If you let if you leave if you go to some manufacturer and let them produce it for you the cabinet including prints is about five hundred two thousand For for normal copy net you can just buy one and then print it for our cabinet as I showed you that they won't work because of head-to-head But usually I would buy it Then the control system depending on which one you choose a commercial one or this is homemade one It's between 200 800 euros including the PC You got some electronics depending on if you got silver or golden wires and what strengths and what PSU 100 to 500 euro and then You got the mechanics and it really depends on which mechanics you buy if you've got more mechanics It will be obviously more expensive, but between between 1000 and 2000 years for just mechanics Though those this is a part which would really be a lot lot cheaper if you produce maybe thousand machines this will be maybe a 10th but We can do it. We have to be buy basically replacement parts, and that's why it's why it's Expensive then metal and plastic parts depending on how many you do and how many you buy 200 800 and the typical retail price of a normal machine is 8000 to 10,000 euros recently a little bit more you and Then you can see that this this quickly adds up and Building a machine is not actually very cost efficient If you fucked it in your time, then I don't know never So we got some lessons learned before I show you a nice video of our machine at the end General manufacturing is hard and expensive and it takes a lot of time actually you you go to a manufacturer Well, I want to build this and I say well, yeah, we can do it in eight weeks to get it and Yeah, I mean as an hobbyist It's it's fine probably because I do not have unlimited time to build my machine But still I have to wait a lot of time that have everything in cut if possible And it's nice to notice that parts hit each other before building them because then mm-hmm Okay, which one do we throw away? Happens I mean Most most of times it's hard to fix then then what we learned is the shot with though if you do a ramp it should be between Five and ten centimeters the ball is 27 millimeters in diameter. So theoretically They will work already, but practically you will never hit it So five to ten is your range above ten it was it's far too easy and you always always make the shot and Below five. It's really really hard then prevent jumps Prevent jumps because if the ball jumps it will go somewhere and Then it gets stuck. I mean it will get stuck anyway everywhere if it can it will At some time so do not make jump ramps like this Yeah, the ball we just go on and just fly over the ramp Yeah, you learn that by prototyping and Finally for me as a cute computer science a computer scientist. You cannot fix physics and software so So yeah, that's that's basically it. So our current playfield. So one of them looks this from below So this is all the electronics now add all the lights and then it's then it's full and So there's not a lot of space left. This is how it looks from from top So one player here one player there here with phone core decals and Yeah, now we'll show video and at the same time take some Q&A So thanks for listening So you saw here one was released And the next new one came Any questions now is your chance? Yes Give me the mic You said you had two Computers basically one doing all the mechanical stuff and one controlling the whole play field and Displays and stuff But in your price calculation you already you also had the third system like control system for 200 to 800 euros. What's that playing a part? The 200 to 800 are your PC like a Raspberry Pi and your control system This is basically just the the node boards and the controller board It will cause the demand then you are the electronics, which are the cables and the power supply Yeah, and yeah, maybe the lights Yeah, some if you if you had too much hot glue Do you have a question from our online viewers? Yes, we do The internet wants to know or states that pin more machines have been around for a long time and aside from modern Like manufacturing technologies or like planning and building with cat and cam Making things easier have actually have gameplay mechanics been modernized over the years That's right I mean the difference between Old machines and car machines is that the rules are much deeper so before it was just shoot this target 20 times and every time you get score and The the the main objective was just to get an extra ball or Extra credit sometimes and in modern machines is like shoot this one Five times then we flash this insert there then shoot this one and then the other player gets a ball And you get a nice animation and insert here lights up and you can start another mode Basically a mission is a mode is a mode in a pinball machine So the rules are a lot a lot deeper in modern machines, and that's basically because we have better CPUs in our machines Question over there. Okay. Well, first of all, thank you very much. This is totally awesome Thanks So obviously the physicalness of the machine. That's that's great. Did you ever consider? Simulating not on a piece. I mean to build a real-scale model and project CG render and project the entire game instead of building the mechanics There's There's virtual pinball and you can play all the old games You just take a 42 inch TV and put it into a cabinet actually fits and at some buttons You can you can buy this for I don't know about 1,000 bucks Then you can do this and there's actually one machine, which is Some somewhere in between which it's a called the P3 And it actually has a TV on In the play field, but it has a real flipper fingers on top and the play the flipper fingers on top of the of the Of the TV and then there's the upper third like this part and you can swap those so you actually can swap your games It's still on development, but I think you can pre-order it like like you can pre-order everything five years in advance in pinball But eventually it will be made and I actually played it. It's it's pretty fun But it's it's different a little bit because the contrast is different here. You got a light which actually Emits light and and there you got the whole play field is light up because of the background light and the ball is Looking somehow black if it goes on top of the TV, but still it's a nice machine Thanks question over there Okay Any more questions now, what's your chance? Could you go up to the microphone, please? Okay, we start on the left side I think this is the first two player pinball machine. I've heard of Do you think this could become a trend if your machine is fun to play? Well, they're actually two or maybe three machines. So They're a lot smaller, but they're from 1990 around about so they're no no longer produced for 25 years, but they still exist And they do not have deep roots the problem with our machine is actually that it's really really large basically long it's two meter long and You need basically three or four meters room for this So you need a long wall on your new living room or somewhere where you can put it So this will be a problem in the market probably so maybe we could make 100 machines and sell them I don't know but probably not a thousand. So I don't think it will be totally mainstream Okay, we're time for two short questions Yes, yeah, how are you handling the tilting of a machine because I imagine it's quite difficult for a two-player machine Yeah, we got two two accelerometers on every side so actually because you tilt them on your side and Then you can measure the acceleration there and then you can see that a direction actually If it goes this way, and then you can see that the player on this side Tilted it actually and we just we just remove life as easy and if you tilt too much then you will have no more lives Okay, last question and could you give us a time frame from first idea to the first game you actually but were able to play I we started last year in April so it's one half years roughly and We were able to play in Before Congress, so I think in August September somewhere after camp after camp definitely and But mostly because all this ordering stuff took about three months and my colleague Philip He did all this sourcing and stuff and getting stuff from Canada and the US and getting it through customs And it took a lot of time So when we actually got the stuff and we had everything the first built on foam core We added the software before and then we connected and just worked after two or three days So that was pretty fast, but you could just Shoot the ball up and it comes down and shoot it up again. It's not that much fun Sorry, we cannot hear you without a microphone So you talk about the man. I'll leave it's a short question the shortest. Okay You talk about the dimension, but what about the inclination of the field itself? It's typically the six and a half degrees. So but you can go between six and seven so but standard is six and a half and Yeah, that just worked best Okay, thank you very much