Long story short… I have had a long list of hobbies .. most come and go. However, as I take on this next one, I figured it would be a good idea to write some things down, possibly get some peer pressure to actually finish.. as this one is pretty ambitious.
I have just started a project to build a pinball machine. Specifically a “head to head” style that has never been a commercial success with few examples. The ones I’ve been able to play are :
Why this commercially unsuccessful style of game? Well, I just thought it would be something different and maybe more fun for non-pinball people. There’s not been a lot of activity in this area since late 90s and I think there could be some fresh ideas here.
Also, it’s important to give credit here; there was significant googling before I thought I could even think of this task; the big confidence boosters :
- Pinside – Currently the most popular forums for pinball discussion. There have been many home brew build threads on there. From what I can tell about the home brew build threads.. seems like the average is about 2 years :-O
- Pinball Controllers / Multimorphic – Gerry has been selling USB based pinball control hardware for many years now. Additionally, this hardware has made it into some commercial games, such as The Big Lebowski by Dutch Pinball
- Pinball Makers – Lots of lessons learned, 3D Cad files, tools, dimensions, etc from other pinball makers
- Mission Pinball Framework – There are a few pinball software frameworks, and having evaluated a few of them.. this one is the most active and they seem pretty serious for a project that nobody makes any money off of (automated unit tests!)
There will be more, but these are the ones that have helped kick this off
Chronic Dabbler 