dea to play Visual Pinmame on my Mame Cabinet

[Reg]

Hi,

I have the following idea for my Mame Cabinet.

My idea is based on these components:

- two real pinball Legs
- a real pinball shooter
- a real pinball ball
- two real flippers with their solenoils
- two Arcade switch
- two pinball pendulum (one for the Tilt!, one for to detect when I push
the table,sides and front)
- two relays
- a Particules Panel
- a plastic tube
- few screws
- 1 microswitch
- small AC 12V or 24V

Basically the idea is to remove my current Control Panel and make
a "Half Pinball Control Panel" the tube+pinball shotter + ball + microswitch will give the feeling of launching a ball an trig the microswitch (this switch will be hokked up to the Enter key in VP).

The Relays+arcade switch+flipper will activate the real flipper and the relay will send the Left /right Shift keys to VP.

One pendulum will be hooked to the Tilt and the other will trigger
the front / sides push.

So do you thins this idea is feasible to have more a true feeling of
playing a pinball with VP?

thanks

Reg

[CanStick]

That sounds like a pretty cool idea...I have a few items though that I want to mention about this.

The shooter-ball-tube-switch is a neat idea.  The only downside I can think of is that the switch would only send a quick keypress, so the plunger in vpinmame would probably only register a light ball hit, so the ball probably would not even get onto the playfield.  You would need a way to simulate the switch being held down for a couple of seconds to give full power.

Do you really need actual flippers?  Regular pushbuttons would be OK for this...

For the table bump pendulum, you would need three different sets of contacts (one for left, one for right, and one for forward/back).  Not a big deal at all...something like this:
                _
              | o |
 
Where the o is the pendulum, and the lines are three contacts.  This should work out good!

Good luck on this, and make sure you post some pics when you get it working...it sounds cool!

[paigeoliver]

Sounds cool to me, although do you really want to be tilting your Mame cabinet? I won't even nudge my REAL Pinball machine (Gottlieb Victory) and they are designed to take that.

More on tilts though.

My machine has 3 tilt mechanisms.

A pendulum

A pinball on a little track.

A "slam switch" on the coin door (not sure if that counts as a tilt mechanism or not).

[Reg]

Hi,

You are right for the swith that will detect when the ball will be launched...


So may be this solution is better:

tube
______________________________________
...........................................................     )))
..........................................O<==========))) Ball+plunger
________________________________/_____ ..)))
................................................./
..............................................|__| microswitch
................................................|.|

so the idea is the ball will activate the microswitch when
we pull the plunger so we just have to hold it the strength
we need to apply to the ball in VP.

Does someone have the dimension of a pinball?

thanks

Reg

[Lilwolf]

I like the idea... but simplify it some (to start) might really help.

I like the real flippers... Why?  You can turn off the sound for the flippers in vpinball.  You will also get the feel of them under your fingers.

The pendulums are a great idea..  but is your cab light enought that you can actually tilt it?  You might have some issues with this... mine is a !@#$ tank.  I was thinking of creating a control panel that physically moves a little..  with a button to trigger it... but if your cab can move some... this would be a better solution... (remember... the center of gravity for a pinball game is about 4 feet off the ground with just four little legs...  Arcades are usually about 1 foot off the ground with a solid box holding it)...

The pinball shooter for vpinball is not analog in the normal sense.  But if you could come up with a way to convert how hard the ball hits something into how long a button is pressed... then it would be pretty sweet (and I would say get that ball back in there... not sure how you would do it... you might get a ramp going up that the ball would go... and the ball itself would make contact from one side to the other...  So you knock the ball up... it goes up the track (now making a connect... The harder you hit it the higher it goes)...  Might be pretty doable.

[Reg]

Hi,

After I have written my idea I was thinking about the issue of the weigth of the cabinet.  You are right the "half Pinball box control panel"
should allow a bit of shaking without trying to move the whole 350 pounds cabinet.  May be by fixing the box on a small Rail with springs...

I have to think about this.  

For the ball Plunger I think the longer you maintain the plunger towards you the harder the ball will be shoot in VP.

The real Flipper was for the feeling and the noise they make ...
but you are may be right ... they are may be useless.

thanks

Reg

[Reg]

Hi,

here is a schematic of how I see it:

Cabinet
___
***\
***|
***|
***|________
****|*|..........|--) plunger
****|_|_____|
******|.........|| pinball legs
******|.........||

.......... half pinball

thanks

Reg

[allroy1975]

I had an idea a few weeks ago (a joke for me, but I can see on of you lunatics doing it) to make a big cabinet with a PinMame type Marquee and 4  or 5 charachter displays on it.
the idea was that you could recreate (or buy) playfields for different games and slide the playfields in and out.  You could have a couple buttons on each side of the cab for games that have more than 1 button per side.
Of course play 1-4 player games.
There would of course be some sort of computer interface to tell PinMame what Game you've got loaded.
Molex connectors to make swapping the games quick and simple.

I don't really know anything about PinMame though... is that even what it's for? It was just cracking me up...imagining my basement with 1 pinball machine in it and playfield boards laying around everywhere.  

Allroy

[hooded_paladin]

aren't the flipper buttons in real pinball machines just pushbuttons anyway?  They may be hooked up to solenoids that push the flippers up, but the actual thing you push is just a button.

Since the actual flippers don't do anything, and you can't quite feel the force of the solenoid, and the flippers are placed in all the VPinball tables anyway, there's no point to having any more than just buttons on the side, as far as flippers go.

[Reg]

Hi,

look here:
http://www.mediom.com/~regisma/halfpinSide.JPG

this is the way I see the "half pinball control panel" unit.

My Actual cabinet is based on Lusid:
http://users.adelphia.net/~seanhat/arcade/

I can tell you that measurments are quite tight because if the unit was a bit higher, the screen will be a bit hidden by it.

I have estimated the measurements from the AFM table...;-) (Mr. Hide do you think it is a hazard that I have taken those measurements from the AFM table?)

Now I have to convince "The GirlFriend".

that's it for now.

Reg

[paigeoliver]

aren't the flipper buttons in real pinball machines just pushbuttons anyway?  They may be hooked up to solenoids that push the flippers up, but the actual thing you push is just a button.

Since the actual flippers don't do anything, and you can't quite feel the force of the solenoid, and the flippers are placed in all the VPinball tables anyway, there's no point to having any more than just buttons on the side, as far as flippers go.

My Gottlieb Victory pinball machine has standard leaf switch buttons as flipper buttons, and no, you can't feel the flippers, but you certainly can hear them.