Did you see some of the interviews of Wonderland guys? Very sincere and just what we thought, they are taking the concept from A1Up and applying it to the pinball area. They seems to know very little about pinball, but they have the expertise, reputation, and conexiones in the world to get funding from investors, to open doors for pricing, open doors for talented people to work fue them, acquire permission to get licensing themes. The target is not real pinball players/community, seems the target is the digital pinball guy, or the common Joe that might have some space at home next to the A1Up toys. They won't be in the same maket/target.
Usually Lounge $10 Fridays. Sometimes I go the whole month sometimes it's 2 fridays a month. District Eat and Play does 7pm free tournaments every friday too if you didnt' know. Usually 20+ players, and it's free to play and win stuff.
@@NightWindsMusic It's head to head. A mix of adults and kids. Usually only a few players that are near the top. Everyone else is casual and sometimes casuals win. Free either way.
Spooky does a button instead of shooter rod so they can spend money on sculpts, real backglass, full powdercoat, shaker, magnetic graphics, topper. You get quite a bit more for a game under $10K compared to $12-15K from Stern and JJP.
For me gameplay > cosmetics. I feel like the plunger is satisfying in most games. The manual pull/timing and the reward that is granted. If you look at a parts supplier like pinball life, for a one-off purchase the plunger and giant launch buttons are the same price. (0.85 spring + 0.15 rubber tip + 6.00 main rod + 0.30 bounce back spring + plunger housing) vs Launch Ball button $7.00. Only a difference of around $10. I don't think it should be on the chopping block for around $5-$10 cost difference. At volume I estimate its maybe $5.00 more just because of the black shooter rod housing cost. I feel it's an essential part of gameplay that I miss while playing a spooky game.
Texas chainsaw massacre (spooky) has a skill shot from the plunge button. It’s not just a simple button press. Depending how long you hold it down, there is a power readout on the plunge strength. I think this makes a fun new element to the game. When done like this, it feels like a good trade off.
@@smellymelly011273 the other big reason that designers opt out of a shooter rod, is that it then gives back space and control for how and where the ball will launch from. This either gives back space under or beside the apron and other elements.
@@asdftwef I always thought about doing that. Is it not on Looney Tunes? I didn't readily see anything on the game that led me to believe this was an option.
IMO- there are certain elements that are the essence of a pinball machine, and a plunger rod is one of that iconic parts that makes you feel that you are playing a pinball machine. Scoops, holes, orbit, pop bumpers, toys. The rest might be fancy adds on like ramps, upper or basement fields, 11:48 magnets, etc.
About them Amusement people. Most companies, like the one they created before, A1Up operate at a loss when starting up. A1Up started around 2017, and what help them was the pandemic, and the nostalgia for the licensing they were delivering. This might be their way: Assemble at your home, all comes on a box from “ China”, license a theme that is free or partner with old franchise like Williams, promo and marketing by the community, sell separately upgrades, etc. Eventually, in the second generation, get the product to a mass distributor like Costco, Sam’s, Ealmart, Amazon; and that is where and when they get their $$$ CEO salary
Still dying to try out the software. As a fellow game dev, it's a very interesting idea to apply level design tools to pins instead of pure CAD. Glad to hear you are ok after the storms and still able to dig into it full time.
Yea in videogame dev we don't F around. This legit took me like no time to build pinball designer (order magnitude of weeks). There is a pinball company with 14 software engineers, at least what I looked up. I don't know how them and other companies don't have this type of tech. Just to spread knowledge, I like Spooky the most, but I read or listened to an interview that their dual production games Looney Tunes and Chainsaw were on completely different game engines and tech stacks. Like they don't even share a commonized high score or game settings backend from what it sounds like. Makes no sense from my experiences learned in software.
$1400 is a lot more reasonable, though split 5 ways that is miles less money than I'm taking per game as a salary, and I've been price conscious since the first day. My original pricing idea when I started this 5 years ago was $1,200. Of course paying one person and believing it would only be a small side business makes sense. One 9-digit score display. 2 flippers, and whatever else I could add to the playfield. Without any need for LCD or mini pc, you can build the segmented score display and program game logic in a combined chipset +display for like $10. It's not impossible. Just depends what you want to do. My target audience is still pinball consumers (who are poor), not mass market consumers which this sounds like. I wasted too many years on that stupid chipset. Once I went to mini-pc and started using my game engine that was the smartest thing I ever did. Guess we will have to wait and see.
I personally love that you are building an sdk and then piece-mealing out the different components of a build. While a total package deal is cool, I think most people who are even bothering to design/build an original machine are the types who are more likely to want to DIY things and likely have some of the pieces of the puzzle already solved in different ways. I am very anxious to go down this path with your services!
Yea, people always want to do things their own way. Some people are against it but re-learning/ re-inventing the wheels is what every engineering degree/ art degree/ life is about, so if people find a different way or only want to use a portion of what I offer then it's whatever. Should be a fun thing to play around with and design digital games if nothing else. You can always share the files too and get design direct feedback from playtesting, rather than take a half made homebrew to an expo. That's one of the reasons I did this, so I could send files to people I might license games from. If not Slayer, I know Kerry King is a huge pinball fan and would be interested to work with him.I think it would be cool for him to just drag and drop parts and we share digital files back and forth etc.
Have you considered selling a pin mod first? Easier to produce and easier for a buyer to try the product when it is of less value. Build up to the full machines. I can only think of positives for you to start smaller. There are always haters, competition, copycats, scumbags, time wasters. You know you have something here so be positive and make it happen. Stop sweating over that stuff.
For me this is all-in. I wanted to build a product with myself as a consumer in mind. I have no interest/enjoyment in mods or selling games at $6,000. I had a co-worker message me the other day out of the blue that he wanted a pinball machine but settled on virtual because $7,000 is way out of any budget where he is at with his family. Even if I could do it and make money in mods, it's just not something I really believe in using my time for. I'm dedicated to this and focused on this. I have a full machine working, just the business isn't fully check-listed to hit manufacturing, hire people etc. My current game has 9 flippers. Well see if it ships that way. I want to do something big. I wouldn't mind staying at 100 games a year if that's all this gets to.
Also, selling a mod I don't think translates to consumer trust in manufacturing games. That's a significant step, but yea I plan to start small (around 10 games sold behind closed doors for people to bang on for some time. Pre-production games).
Ive been noticing a lot of these fake business people creeping into all sorts of companies. they think they can make linear math exponential math and cant explain their equation for making raw materials into a summed product. your doing a better job and proving you have something. I think there is a martket for items that will work with older pinball systems and newer systems like modern dmd and backglass as well as toppers and such. interactive games that fight back are a really neat thing especially that people can design and have made then shipped to them.
Sometimes I watch shark tank and amazed that someone spent $1,000,000 in R&D and molds to build a new potato peeler. Happens all the time on that show.
Honestly I didn't anticipate doing it ALL in house. There are 2 parts suppliers and one publicly said legit everything I was doing was a lie/scam/etc like a month before I was going to fly out and make sure that we had a deal inked. Possible but hesitant to go with the other company, and nothing on them personally at this moment. Just being smart. I'd have to have a straight solid deal that if they ever did some scummy stuff like that or want to just cut ties, that I get compensated losses up to 1/2 milllion+ if they weren't selling me products that I can verify are in stock. The only annoying things I don't care to do / want to do is legs and rubbers. I started to play with some metal presses and may end up getting a 50-ton press in house to smash and bend legs. I can make molds and run tons of rubbers, but was not on my list of things to do. I anticipate though that a lot of parts, I would be able to do an 8 hour run to stock 50-100 games. If you watch my documentary I can build plungers that get magnetized and kick the ball around like 1 part per 5 seconds. Can build thousands in a couple hours.
Homepin Blues Brothers was around $4,000 USD. $1,000 the only game we've ever seen is Zizzle. Above that Stern did some home affordable games like Transformers ($2,000 10 years ago).
@@pawlowskipinball They did the Jurrasic home edition recently as well but yea, like you said, I just don't know how you would stay afloat with that price point when you'd have to target for moving over 50-100k units just to break even. That equation has to break down at some point
@@TripleFX Not sure how much profit dealers made when they were allowed to drop their Jurassic/StarWars home editions down to $3,599 sale earlier this year. If the dealers still made money on that, then that means Stern sold them a game for something less than $3,599. I'd imagine cutting out distributors, that they could have have sold direct to customer for $3,000 (as opposed to a dealer at $3,000). My equation is a work in progress but close, and only makes sense because I'm direct to customer as one of the big ticket reductions.
I’m not sure if this translate, but, I used to work at a company with 53k employees and the CEO makes $10 million a year. Then went to work at a company that delivered the same service, but only 609 employees. The services provide had the same quality, at a less expensive price. The OH in big companies add up unnecessary cost to a product. There is a lot of OH in the pinball machines we buy; the building, the licensing for the theme, music, artwork, maybe patents, marketing, other expenses, etc, have to be covered by the price of the machine. There is profit, but not as much as you would think, once you substract all that.
Distributors is a big chunk I'm sure. When you have a distributor that needs to make money to survive, they have to take reasonable risk/reward/profit to buy the games. Then when you have 100 distributors in the USA, you now have 100 people who have to make a living selling your games. It's something I saw Kiesel/Carvin guitars talk about a lot. How he would have to double his price tag if he sold his guitars in guitar center. If you watch the latest Stern videos, they said they bought out two companies that did contract work for them that they brought in house. I think one was playfield clear coating. Can't remember the other service.
It might be doable. These guys came from A1up, and in their business model, they avoid the assembly line, marketing, customer service, etc. They use you tubers, tik-toks, community, etc. to promote a product that the quality leave much to desire. IMO they will replicate that formula. They might sell you a “package” that you will assemble at home, with less expensive parts, the artwork might be separate or a poster you stick on, sound might be just decent, playfield might be a composite, etc. If they sell you all the components to assemble a full scale pinball machine at home that you can customize or upgrade later for sub $2K, will we buy it?
(thought I double posted) To me it's like some Mattel/large volume toy guys want to cash out with pinball. Search for "Shuffle Golf" Kickstarter. Just junk toy ideas. They even met their goal but cancelled the product. There is a demand for affordability but I don't think there is a demand for novelty pinball machines. People that can't afford games but love pinball want real pinball. If they come out with something a little bit more expensive with some decent stuff in it then it's cool and welcome them into pinball.
Would be way too much work to support / get up and running on multiple platforms. It connects to circuit boards via windows protocols and has other networking features via windows. If you want it to run on a physical machine, MAC mini is $600, windows mini PC can go as low as $100-$120.
This is thee most impressive, mind-blowing video I’ve seen all year (no joke). I was around when PinMAME had just gotten started. I remember marveling at JP Salas’s first Taxi table. Then I just kept playing real pins over the last 20 years (& now own three newer ones), only to see THIS TONIGHT?! 👀 😳 🤦♂️ HOLY MOSES, man! This is just truly too amazing to get my MELON around!! Kudos to YOU 🫵!! This gets a standing-O from THIS old slob! Take a bow: 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏🤘✌️
@@pawlowskipinball You’re the first & only person who ever took umbrage to a huge, sincere compliment. May I suggest a simple “Thank you” next time you might receive one. It looks better if nothing else. 🤷♂️
@@Mo_Ketchups Sorry. I appreciate it for sure and I 100% recognize the sincerity. End of the day I'm just doing what I enjoy doing. I deleted the comment it in case someone else read it that way also since that wasn't the intent. Cool stuff is coming.
@@pawlowskipinball Of that, you weren’t accused. You’re just not good at taking compliments. It’s not unusual, I’m the same way. I’m glad you love this because you’re giving so many people the ability to achieve the otherwise unachievable (to a very large degree). 🤔
Man ! That looks almost too good to be true !!! If you're able to reach all of your goals, you will have to invest in a massive workshop because the need for a supplier like you is huge ! 😄 I wish you the very best in your journey. Cheers from Frnace Laurent
Maybe you could team up with the guy who wanted the Burger World 3d asset - I've set up a couple of companies, it's easier with a team rather than 100% solo. Interesting stuff though, you have some good ideas :)
I don't have any issues with him, but it's a company built by me in my name. I want the outright recognition that I did stuff nobody ever did. Danger, Elwin, etc etc, these guys aren't building companies. They are homebrew designers and are being hired as employees as game designers. Someday I will have employees but the company will be outright mine, the tech will be mine. This is a completely different company than what is out there right now and I've been working towards this from the age of 16 day and night. I have to take 100% recognition at this point. No speed to market or money will tempt me. This is all getting very close to launching but it is my spare time and will come when it comes. Just today I will be working all Saturday for about 12 hours. No reason to share the wealth.
@@pawlowskipinball Fair enough mate, good luck with your vision, it's a great idea :) I briefly considered feasibility of doing something similar with UK-style slot machines, much smaller market though more based on nostalgia than pure playability, and I'm not not that passionate about it. Does feel like there would be a market there though for your custom pins. Heck I could imagine someone converting some of the most popular custom (original, not arcade recreations) Future Pinball / Visual Pinball tables to your software, tweaking physics, then building those! It's certainly a very interesting crossover back to physical from virtual anyway :)
@@johnparker007 Thanks man. I see people enter the industry after I started. The one company said $10k USD for unlicensed game. Other one sounds like it will be $8-$10k for unlicensed game. And even Ernie, he sells low-volume homebrew kits to make extra money for his family, but those are $2-$3k for some basic stripped down kits. My only interest in pinball is selling entire games in the $2-$3k range. Reasonably I think I will be just a tad out of that range with Pinball Eternal but have plans for some lower priced, simpler games. Pinball Eternal I went overboard.
@@pawlowskipinball It really is a fascinating endeavour :) So I just checked out your alpha gameplay preview video for your Pinball Eternal whitewood. Has a real one been built and 'battle tested', perhaps in a busy operator environment? Or are you only targeting the hobby market initially, where the purchaser of the machine would be reasonably expected to self-repair the machine, as some form of 'beta test'? Please don't take this as a criticism, I'm just trying to get my head around this kinda new model of a pinball manufacturing process! Kinda reminds me of early 3d printing... but if this could be made super reliable, there's some amazing potential - for around $2k I could imagine making myself a custom pin for you guys to manufacture (though I'm in UK). Again, very cool project this mate, and I suspect underrated, I really respect what you are trying to build here, it's certainly never existed before as a platform afaik.
As an example, I could imagine your team building this old but classic original Future Pinball table (tweaked so the physics work in reality of course): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bs1BEcmrZ2Y.html If there were some way to tap into all the original tables that have been made in these programs such as Future Pinball and Visual Pinball, perhaps with the permission of the original creators, you'd have some very cool templates to build... as a lot of people would love a cool pin for $2k, but don't want to learn how to design/build/test one in any kind of software. For info, I built this a couple of years back, I'm in 'the scene' as it were, but your project is very interesting :) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dTWk4gIJCuM.html
Very excited to see this become available. Our mechanical guy has decided he doesn't have time for the project and this would be much more accessible to us than the CAD drawings he did for our whitewood prototype. I'd be interested to hear more about how you enter the game rules, or if it's mpf underneath or something else. Thanks foe all your efforts!
100% my technology platform. Still working on wrapping up the programming side for ease of use. Right now everything is just code I wrote knowing how my game engine works. So things like like shows and game modes to to be abstracted out and expose to users in a simple way.
I'm very interested in your offerings. I am currently working on a homebrew pin both virtually and soon to be physically. I have been using VPX and plan to continue to do so in order to finish up the virtual version, but I am very interested in your services/software as I get into the physical side of things. Are your services/software already available? How do I get involved? Very anxious to learn more!
2 months roughly to launch. pawlowskipinball.com/pinball-designer is the breakdown on pricing information. You can pick and choose at will. If you just want a ramp or wireform made and go another route for everything else, we can on-off build parts.
@pawlowskipinball love hearing this. I definitely don't know of any good solution for metal ramps and wire forms. Though I'm interested in the playfield too. Anxious to see your upcoming videos!
@@eric3dee The current method is make your own or take a known ramp/wireform and cut/bend it for your needs. It will be nice if he can provide custom ones.
I've had a handful of people/companies email. When I talk about licensing, it's for Pinball Designer software only, as an alternative to planning shots, layouts, prototyping in other software. This is not turnkey manufacturing or large scale board+software support for launching pinball companies. I put a lot of time into this so that I could get recognition as a game designer, engineer and recognition for bringing affordability to the pinball market. I haven't even enjoyed the fruits of my labor yet. This is just a small detour to help the homebrew/DIY community in building physical games. I'm still not even planning to hit full-scale manufacturing for myself for another 12 months as there is a lot of hours of work still involved just to launch my own pinball company. If you want a pinball company you have to put the work in.
Cool I will be watching - with regards licensing, I would be a startup but hopefully be something much larger over time. I am sure we find a way of talking but excited to see this.
This is super amazing. Do you know if Stern or other manufacturers have their own software for this purpose? Your product looks like something that could make the design / prototyping process very smooth. I wish you great success!
It will be available in about 2 months. I'm wrapping up a ton of new features and will be working on a tutorial stepping through the whole process from design, programming and then eventually a physical game.
My first thought was "why reinvent the wheel when VPX already exists", but it's very impressive that you were able to produce a table of this quality this quickly. Very curious to see how this develops.
Always good to re-invent the wheel. We had Netscape Navigator, then Internet Explorer and now many others. Don't stop innovating. This is all my own code so I built it so I could design and program real physical games quickly and carry it on for a lifetime programming my product line. The virtual side is cool, but the unique portion is taking all the bend and ramp data into real world for a physical reproduction.
Dis you publish it on github or did you sale it ? What is the language used ? Nice job. I am in progress to build my pinball i am so interrested about your software. Kiss from France 🤣👍
uumm... wait a sec....LOL we have been doing this for 20yrs in Visual Pinball... also its how Jack "Danger" ....lol.... (sorry every time I see that dudes name I laugh) designed and built his game... so back to VP... we are at the point were you cant tell this difference from real and VP.... so I'm wondering why build a tool, that there is all ready a superior version of?... just wondering....here is Metallica that was just released.... just as an example ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BJDudZrRueU.html
@@CementRoots The owner of vpuniverse website said what I showed here is light years ahead of vpinball just on the virtual game side. I wouldn't know. This was never built for virtual table replication of metallica games. The is a tool suite for manufacturing real games in a cabinet (not virtual cabinet) with a steel ball. If you stick around in a about a month we are going to design, program and build a real game and assemble it. All the virtual ramps and wireforms get cut out.
@@pawlowskipinball ooohhh... Billy said that huh?....lol ..... ok I get it now.... you mock it up on the PC and send the files to manufacture the real machine... neat... VP files can be exported so you could use a CNC... or a wire former.... good luck
I'm curious as to how well the software can handle detecting impossible shots. I did see you mentioned that the physics isn't perfect and that some of the shots are hard, but was that discovered purely through trying to play the resulting design, or is there and automated process that can detect potential issues like chutes that can't be entered, ramps that are too steep, things like that?
I already made a small revision to the physics that feels much better. It's never going to be 100% perfect to real world but well will get you a very close approximation. If you have enough experience playing games, you kind of know how steep the max is. If it ends up that in the real world you find your ramp a little hard, just replace a 4" elevation ramp mount with a 3.5" one and subsequently lower your wireform linking to the ramp. One thing this does have is the feature to move the 3D ball to every x,y,z location within the cabinet (millions of locations) and release to see if you have a stuck ball possibility. I played Jaws last night and got a ball stuck between a ramp and wireform. It happens. So I anticipate it could help in that aspect.
@@AustinSteingrube It will be in the videogame price range and will get community feedback via forum for feature requests. If you want plug and play to translate to a physical game: software + hardware cost will still be cheaper than any hardware controller from competitors. Good experience all around.
@@pawlowskipinball I think that’s fair! Need any help with development/maintenance? I do simulations for a living now and I did low level embedded software for nearly a decade before that.
@@pawlowskipinballThis looks awesome! Just want to put a word in for linux support, it's a pain having to dual boot into windows to use VPX. Totally understand if that's unfeasible though!
@@anthonyebiner8929 Won't happen. Not financially reasonable/timeworthy to port. Not a single videogame company I worked at ever released a game on Linux even with tons of $ and developers. Just not something we deal with. My main business is in mass producing physical games as a manufacturer with low priced, packed games competing in the physical pinball space. The main goal of the software is to support physical homebrew builders. As far as opening and supporting virtual makers/players, that will certainly come but I need some additional input from the community and will have to wrap up some support for haptics and what not.
Incredible software; I've been interested in homebrew pinball and this looks fantastic for prototyping ideas. I would love to see more about exporting the designs for real world use!
At least 1 month out (Mid October). Couple small bugs, about 30 features still to integrate. I have to scan in all the parts from suppliers. Working to get it out as soon as possible though. follow here and/or email list on the main page of my business website.
I'm curious to see this in action, especially the exporter. Im on my second homebrew at the moment, and already past design, and whitewood build, but insert, and art would be nice to use to layout art on the playfield, and be able to set that up for a printer to do on my final playfield. Looks very impressive, and look forward to further updates.
You could take a top down photo of your whitewood and import it as the playfield art and use this to place inserts only and generate the data for just those to be cut out. Just drop your whitewood back into a CNC machine and have it do an insert cut pass.
@pawlowskipinball getting a good angle shot is tough with just a camera to do that, and always seems like something is off. I don't mind doing the measurements. Biggest thing I was wondering, is if it's possible to lay art on my virtual after I build inserts, and do my own art on that setup you have? Or would I need to do that then import it onto the whitewood in your program?
You can drag and drop any image onto the playfield. If its the correct proprtion to the playfield dimensions, then it will map 1:1 to your game. The exported file is the guide. Draw your art and then print. Or if you already had an art file and its the proper playfield proportions, import the image right on the virtual table and place inserts where the art is. So you can work both ways if that's what you are asking.
This is super cool, and I'm very interested in trying it out! I would also love to hear how you feel this compares to the process of designing a table in VPX, if you have any experience with that.
Seems very easy to get a pinball build running, wish software like VPX had something more easy to use like this seems to be, however physics in vpx is top tier :) great job!
Not too worried about it. Physics will get there. I made a virtual demo of my foo fighters game last year that I may load back up and take some real videos and compare and make sure it maps nearly 1:1. Good to use a real machine that I know to compare it to.
Thought I replied, but must have closed out: Its a custom made wire machine that does 100lb torque at 1" out. It's a mix of a couple designs I found on youtube. I will not be selling the bending machines. This also has an extra tool head that doesnt just feed round rod, it can feed 1" ball guide steel walls and bend those as well. Feed it a 1"x30" 20 some gauge cut and it will shape it up. This can perform 3D bends in the wire and also all the 4 wireforms get exported directly to the machine. Each wire has a slight different in feed length for each bend to shape correctly so its convenient to work with my virtual builder that just does all the work for you.
Subscribe here or any social media platform under my business name. Likely crank this out quicker than anticipated due to the response. Will probably add about 50 new features in the next 2 weeks. I'd expect this to be out before the end of the year.
Sooo disappointed. I thought it was already available. This is what the pinball industry needs! As a 35+ year software engineer veteran, my hat is off to you, this is some incredible work! I'll buy a license RIGHT NOW. lol. Need any Q/A testers? HA! (No seriously... Lol)
