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Skee Ball Restoration and Improvement

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Entropy42:
Glad to see you are still around and working on your build. The lack of activity on your thread had me worried.  Your Skeeball machine is the inspiration for most of my plans for my machines.

I currently have all the switches in a row, like the stock machines, but I have some complicated timing crap in the code to filter out everything after the first switch.  Basically, if you throw a 50, as soon as the 50 triggers it adds 50 to your score and counts it as a ball thrown, then puts out a timer to ignore all switches for the next 1.5 seconds.  I use the ball counter switch only to detect gutter balls.  Now that I've got all the timings worked out, it rarely makes a mistake.

I originally was going to do what you did and mount the switches so they trigger when the ball goes through the hole, but there is actually not enough space in my machine to do it that way, the switch terminals hit the ball return trough.  When I add the 100s though, I plan to remove the return trough and just do a full width return ramp, like yours.  Then I can eliminate all the silly switch filtering.

I think once I get this net done I'm going to try one with either 1/2" PVC or 1/2" conduit.  I just don't have a good feeling about the u-channel from the work I've done so far.  I think it will look the nicest of the 3, but we'll see about the stability.  I'll be sure to post my conclusions on it though.  I expect to finish that in about 2 weeks.

And I would love to try out your software whenever you release it.  It kinda makes all the time I spent on mine pointless, since yours is a lot cooler, but maybe some of my features are things you could use as well.

I attached some screenshots of mine. 
0. Opening menu with game select.
1. Basic skeeball game.
2. Choosing a name for the high score.  It saves every name that is entered, but it also puts the most recently used names on the top, so if you are the only one playing, you just have to hit "Select" to choose your name and don't have to go find it.
3. Entering a new name.  This took a stupid amount of time for something so simple, just because I had to learn a bunch of tiny things about how to deal with strings/chars in C#.
4. Playing MultiBall, where you have to hit a certain ring to get a multiplier.  Starts with 30 as your target, then 40, then 50, then 100.  My machine has no 100s yet, so the the highest multiplier you can get is 4x.  It resets your multiplier if you throw less than a 30.
5. 1 player cricket
6. 2 player cricket

Nephasth:
I like the dart games incorporated with your software! I've got a model H, would love to have the ability to play different games on it, but I would feel like a sinner if I modified it do so.

How's Skank as an opponent? ;D

Entropy42:
Heh, that's my brother's nickname.

If your Model H is anything like my offbrand machine, you could just modify your wire harnesses to also send the signal to a keyboard encoder/PC.  Then you could play alternate games without ruining your real machine.  You'd have to override the ball gate for some of the game modes though.  I planned to eventually wire up my ball gate, but with only 6 good balls and a ton of game modes that require more than 9 balls, I'd probably just have to hold it open all the time anyway.

thatpurplestuff:
Good stuff!  I came really close to having player names as well... the possibilities are pretty awesome in regards to high scores, a general score history... hell you could even do detailed stats like accuracy percentages and stuff.  Love the dart games as well... Cricket (well Skricket on my machine) and 310 are two of the more popular games when people come over.  I'm super close to being done with the latest version (need to clean up some code in bowling and fix some LED issues with another game mode) so I'll post some new screenshots sometime tonight or tomorrow.

In the last few months I've added some new games and refined some existing ones, so right now the number of playable games is at 13.  I think I want to slim that number down a bit or at least come up with a cleaner interface... my game selection menu looks a bit cluttered and hard to read at a glance.  Anyway don't want to hijack, just wanted to say that things are looking good on your machine(s)!

Entropy42:
Names and High Scores were something I really wanted to have, so I got that in there almost from the beginning, and it actually works great.  I've got to work on how I display the high scores in several of the game modes, and will probably change it to only display them at the Game Over screen, like most arcade games.  I will probably expand the high score lists at that point to hold 10 names.  You only enter your name if you get a high score, so if someone wants to just play the game, they can just walk up and play, no login required.

I have yet to play a full game of Cricket (literally got it working last night), but I think it will have real longevity.  For now, since I don't have 100s, hitting a 50 turns the 50 into a 100 for the next ball only.  Its the only game I have so far that is 2 player.  I was originally going to do 2P versions of lots of games, but decided it was pointless for many of them.  If 2 people want to compete, they can just play 2 games in a row.

LEDs and a Bowling game mode are both on my to-do list.  I have a LEDWiz but haven't hooked it up yet.  Other than doing something like your Flash multiplier game mode, I'm not sure what other modes I'd add.  Also need to get the sound working.  I had a set of mp3 files that would play for each hole, but it was slowing down the machine for some reason, and ruining the ball switch timing.  I don't understand why, and it doesn't do it on my real PC, only the Skeeball laptop.  So for now, no sound.

Got a big party at my house this weekend, so hopefully everything goes smoothly. 

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