Author Topic: Foley's Unfotunately Back... (Read 20009 times)

ValamirCleaver · « **on:** July 11, 2008, 01:26:32 am »

Here we go again...

Quote

Gottlieb ‘virtually’ returns to pinball through Nanotech Entertainment @ Arcade Heroes
Now classic Gottlieb tables are on their way back in virtual form due to an agreement that newcomer Nanotech Entertainment made with the existing Gottlieb Development LLC (personally I had no idea that they were still around). The pinball tables are being recreated for Nanotech’s Multipin video based pinball machine which states that it uses a special engine to recreate the feel of bumping and nudging a table to move the ball around accurately. According to the company website they have two flavors of the MultiPin machine, with the much more expensive MultiPin Gold table suggesting that it will be the one to support more classic tables (Gottlieb isn’t mentioned specifically but I doubt that they would go to all of this trouble to release these tables on a limited edition unit). Pictured is the standard unit, the Gold one has a different color layout.

Quote

Foley finally comes out of the woodwork again @ VPForums
First let me say hello to many of you that I have not talked to in a couple of years. I've taken a couple of years off after my differences with Global VR.

I know a lot about NanoTech and the associated questions and will offer my input and opinions. Since there are really several topics, I'll start separate threads for each of the topics and stick to the information about Gottlieb in this thread.

Seeing how "well" things went over with a Visual Pinball and VPinMAME powered UltraPin I wonder what makes them think a Future Pinball powered MultiPin will do any better?

One can read up on what Foley has to say at VPForums. If one chooses to do so I’d also suggest to check the archives to read his posts and the responses concerning UltraPin back from about 2-3 years ago. It should help put one’s opinion regarding the situation in better perspective.

davidrfoley · « **Reply #1 on:** July 11, 2008, 09:19:52 am »

The failure of UltraPin by Global VR has nothing to do with the concept of the product and everything to do with execution. It's like saying given that the Wright brothers initial flight was only a few seconds, why would anyone bother building an airplane.

Also, please be clear about NanoTech and MultiPin. They are not my company or product. I created the Pinball Wizard controller that NanoTech has exclusive rights too. The MultiPin product is not mine, I merely offered my feedback on what I have seen so far. I'm merely a bit player in this play.

FrizzleFried · « **Reply #2 on:** July 11, 2008, 09:48:03 am »

...and to think I'm new enough in this scene to only have heard of the legendary douchiness of David F....and now I get to experience it!

davidrfoley · « **Reply #3 on:** July 11, 2008, 09:58:36 am »

I think it is awesome that someone who has no experience with me feels the need to post an insult about me. Why talk about how I've created a new and innovative controller for PC users to play pinball, and discuss that on an arcade controls forum when you could just toss out insults.

I love forums!!!!

SirPeale · « **Reply #4 on:** July 11, 2008, 10:22:27 am »

I have no experience with Hitler, but I know from history he's no one I'd want to deal with.

(yes, I mentioned Nazi's...this discussion is officially over).

davidrfoley · « **Reply #5 on:** July 11, 2008, 10:29:44 am »

I created the controller for the PC to support a wide variety of Pinball products. It is a USB device, that is HID and requires no drivers. It appears to the PC as a Keyboard and Joystick. All buttons are soft coded in the firmware and remappable. The devices features a 3 axis motion sensor for "nudging" and also has built in keyboard mapping for the motion input so that it can be used in Pinball games that don't support analog input for nudging.

The unit is the width of an actual pinball machine and uses an authentic lockdown bar and plunger for realistic feel.

The plunger system uses an optical sensor to detect motion.

I'm also currently working on an XBOX version of the controller.

NanoTech Entertainment has acquired the exclusive rights to the technology and will be selling it through a variety of channels.

Feel free to post questions, suggestions and anything else with regards to this product and I'll be happy to answer them.

ChadTower · « **Reply #6 on:** July 11, 2008, 10:33:30 am »

Who's taking odds that the first person who opens one up finds a Wiimote duct taped in there?

davidrfoley · « **Reply #7 on:** July 11, 2008, 10:41:30 am »

I'll take that bet. Put your money where you mouth is and throw down!!!!!

I can assure you this is a ground up development. There will even be an open source release of the firmware so that people that so choose, may customize it to their own needs.

FrizzleFried · « **Reply #8 on:** July 11, 2008, 10:42:10 am »

I won't purchase a Slick Stick product based on the owners past actions. Same applies here.

EDIT: Oh yeah...and good luck with your product. Based on the past writings of this community, I think you're going to need it.

davidrfoley · « **Reply #9 on:** July 11, 2008, 10:45:01 am »

What past actions are you referring too?

SirPeale · « **Reply #10 on:** July 11, 2008, 10:46:10 am »

Quote from: davidrfoley on July 11, 2008, 10:45:01 am

What past actions are you referring too?

Do the words "Mame trademark" ring a bell?

davidrfoley · « **Reply #11 on:** July 11, 2008, 10:55:54 am »

Does the phrase, do your homework ring a bell?

If you actually read the replies from Aaron Giles, I tried several times to contact the MAME team for help in putting a stop to people that were building and selling MAME based cabinets with no permission and no licenses for the games. After no response I filed the trademark in an effort to stop the unfair and illegal competition. I also transferred the trademark over to the team on my own accord, even though legally I could have kept it. If my effort was to steal the mark, I would have succeeded, and still owned it to this day. However, that wasn't my goal or attempt. Aaron confirmed this and my actions led to the MAME team cleaning up the commercial use of MAME, and it was good for the team and the community.

In order to understand this, you would have to educate yourself, and most people can't be bothered, instead they want to just run around and make uneducated flames about how evil I am. If you are too lazy to bother to understand the facts about something, so be it.

SirPeale · « **Reply #12 on:** July 11, 2008, 11:32:15 am »

I know the story. You can say whatever you want, you overstepped your bounds. And forevermore your name is synonymous with several naughty words that I won't repeat here.

davidrfoley · « **Reply #13 on:** July 11, 2008, 12:24:08 pm »

Here you go

This is the controller inside (hey, where is my money, it's not a wiimote)

RayB · « **Reply #14 on:** July 11, 2008, 12:34:59 pm »

Valamir: ~~30,000 units sold is not a failure. It's more units sold than Stern Pinball sells in a year.~~ * Retracted - I misread a post here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=81666.msg852391#msg852391

David,
You would gain more traction in these forums if you just said "I made a mistake. It was wrong to try to steal the MAME trademark." Your tactics may have been necessary in your view for business purposes, but you're talking to "consumer" level people here. Any defense that pushed the boundaries for business purposes is still going to appear underhanded, so no one will ever sympathize with your defense.

davidrfoley · « **Reply #15 on:** July 11, 2008, 12:44:53 pm »

I'm not going to make up some false statement about how I tried to steal the MAME trademark when that simply isn't the case.

I appreciate your suggestion, however I could hand out free crisp $20 bills and the haters here wouldn't take it because they are so closed minded that they can't possibly admit that maybe THEY made a mistake in persecuting me without knowing any of the facts.

Like I have said before, the MAME topic is a very dead horse, and continuing to beat on it is a waste of time.

I'm not going away. I'm here to make positive discussion about current products. If people can't get beyond that, then they shouldn't participate in the discussion. This isn't a flaming forum, it's a forum to discuss arcade controls. I suggest those that despise me may do so, and since they will never buy or use anything that I am associated with should excuse themselves from the discussion and allow those that actually have something to contribute get on with it.

ValamirCleaver · « **Reply #16 on:** July 11, 2008, 01:15:58 pm »

Quote from: RayB on July 11, 2008, 12:34:59 pm

Valamir: 30,000 units sold is not a failure. It's more units sold than Stern Pinball sells in a year.

I didn't claim units 30,000, you did...

Quote from: RayB on July 11, 2008, 12:25:07 pm

Quote from: ValamirCleaver on July 11, 2008, 12:02:17 am
Seeing how "well" things went over with a Visual Pinball and VPinMAME powered UltraPin I wonder what makes them think a Future Pinball powered MultiPin will do any better?
Do you happen to be privy to Ultrapin sales figures or something? How can you know it wasn't profitable? In the arcade business, selling just a few thousand machines can be enough to cover your bottom line.

According to David Foley himself, they sold 30,000 Ultrapins. That's more units than Stern Pinball
sells in a year.

It's one thing to dislike a guy, but to let that cloud your judgement ...

Let's see what Foley himself personally posted yesterday...

Quote from: davidrfoley

Originally posted by davidrfoley @ VPForums
If they swapped out for your version and didn't license it from you, then I would contact Global VR and demand your royalties. Since the product is dead, there isn't much to gain, but they did ship about 150 to 200 machines, so it would be worth something.

150 to 200 machines is a far cry from 30,000...

ChadTower · « **Reply #17 on:** July 11, 2008, 01:19:57 pm »

Quote from: davidrfoley on July 11, 2008, 12:24:08 pm

This is the controller inside (hey, where is my money, it's not a wiimote)

My statement was "first person who opens one up". Send one out to one of us and we'll do just that.

shardian · « **Reply #18 on:** July 11, 2008, 01:23:52 pm »

Just upload your pictures here. Obviously that company has budget issues if their bandwidth can't manage a 100k picture or 2.

NIVO · « **Reply #19 on:** July 11, 2008, 01:25:52 pm »

ill take one for a hardware review foley. Send one my way...........free publicity is good no?

FrizzleFried · « **Reply #20 on:** July 11, 2008, 01:35:56 pm »

How hard would it be to wire a couple buttons up one on each end of a box...include 2 weighted leaf switches (for example, like a slam switch) on each side...one with a short throw that activates a "nudge" and one with a longer throw that activates "tilt"...even add some to the front and back of the box if you desire wired the same way...hook it all up to an ipac or keywiz and you're good to go... not hard.

missioncontrol · « **Reply #21 on:** July 11, 2008, 01:40:01 pm »

:popcorn

davidrfoley · « **Reply #22 on:** July 11, 2008, 01:40:43 pm »

I never claimed 30,000 UltraPins were sold, I claimed 30,000 multi-game arcade machines. UltraCade never sold UltraPin, it was released after Global VR took over.

ChadTower · « **Reply #23 on:** July 11, 2008, 01:43:11 pm »

Quote from: FrizzleFried on July 11, 2008, 01:35:56 pm

How hard would it be to wire a couple buttons up one on each end of a box...include 2 weighted leaf switches (for example, like a slam switch) on each side...one with a short throw that activates a "nudge" and one with a longer throw that activates "tilt"...even add some to the front and back of the box if you desire wired the same way...hook it all up to an ipac or keywiz and you're good to go... not hard.

A lot of patents can be described as "how hard would it be to..." but the reason they have a patent is because they were the first to do it and document it. Sometimes people do things a certain way just so they can be the first and get the patent. Foley did mention a 3 axis "motion sensor", which could be any number of things from weighted leafs to bobs to accelerometers.

davidrfoley · « **Reply #24 on:** July 11, 2008, 01:44:17 pm »

we use a Memsic chip on an I2C bus for motion and a Cypress PSoC processor to run the board.

Santoro · « **Reply #25 on:** July 11, 2008, 01:51:00 pm »

just ... wow.

ChadTower · « **Reply #26 on:** July 11, 2008, 01:53:09 pm »

Quote from: davidrfoley on July 11, 2008, 01:44:17 pm

we use a Memsic chip on an I2C bus for motion and a Cypress PSoC processor to run the board.

MXR9150 or MXR9500? Just curious. I was just poking around some accelerometer specs last month.

markrvp · « **Reply #27 on:** July 11, 2008, 02:11:04 pm »

David:

Does GlobalVR now own the rights to the front end that was used in Arcade Legends? I always liked that front end and thought it would be cool to be able to purchase it for a home MAME cabinet.

davidrfoley · « **Reply #28 on:** July 11, 2008, 02:17:48 pm »

MXC62020J

davidrfoley · « **Reply #29 on:** July 11, 2008, 02:18:53 pm »

Check out UltraStyle, its a freeware UI for MAME that was made after the UltraCade UI design.

ChadTower · « **Reply #30 on:** July 11, 2008, 02:19:53 pm »

Quote from: davidrfoley on July 11, 2008, 02:17:48 pm

MXC62020J

That's only a two axis accelerometer.

davidrfoley · « **Reply #31 on:** July 11, 2008, 02:25:34 pm »

You are correct, we have put two Accelerometers on the PCB, and have an optional 2nd I2C bus connection to allow for the connection of separate orientation of the off board accelerometer. This allows for full 3D motion tracking. The boards supports both the MEMSIC part and the Analog ADXL322JCP-ND on the main PCB, and a second MEMSIC part on the offboard I2C bus.

ChadTower · « **Reply #32 on:** July 11, 2008, 02:38:46 pm »

Elaborate. Why so complex for simple nudge functionality?

davidrfoley · « **Reply #33 on:** July 11, 2008, 02:41:48 pm »

The design was done so that for low cost applications you could just use a single chip. For more accuracy you could simply add a chip. We designed it around the idea that you may want full rotational values for all axis on higher end implementations, and just simple nudging in lower end. The design is scalable, and the extra fiberglass on the PCB is almost no cost.

ChadTower · « **Reply #34 on:** July 11, 2008, 02:52:48 pm »

Oh I read that desc as two on board and one optional off. I couldn't figure out why you would put in three of them.

davidrfoley · « **Reply #35 on:** July 11, 2008, 02:58:46 pm »

Two of them are I2C and one is analog. We decided to go with the I2C in this case, as it performs well enough for our use, but have the analog unit wired in for possible future use.

ChadTower · « **Reply #36 on:** July 11, 2008, 03:08:58 pm »

So I did read it right... it is three and it is overengineered for a pinball CP. Gotcha.

markrvp · « **Reply #37 on:** July 11, 2008, 03:12:31 pm »

Quote from: davidrfoley on July 11, 2008, 02:18:53 pm

Check out UltraStyle, its a freeware UI for MAME that was made after the UltraCade UI design.

It's a dead project. I think the last version of MAME it worked with was .95 or so.

davidrfoley · « **Reply #38 on:** July 11, 2008, 03:47:58 pm »

from the UltraStyle website....

1.14.08 - some news has come about today. I got an email from a great guy from switzerland, Stefan. He has taken it upon himself to right the wrongs in ultraconfig and myrominfo. He snagged the source from sourceforge and was able to get the parser running for MAME v.122. I am putting his file (called ultraconfig3Hotfix) in the download section. Stefan deserves all the credit for breathing new life into ultrastyle. I have been throwing around the Idea of a version of ultrastyle using silverlight on winforms. I think it may do a good job animating. Conceptually an itunes album cover style fe. I don't know if there's already something out there like it. For now I thank Stefan for giving new cabbies the ability to look at ultrastyle, I know it's been a while since it worked with MAME.
*NOTE stefan's changes require .NET Framework 2.0

Cakemeister · « **Reply #39 on:** July 11, 2008, 03:55:35 pm »

David, I don't think the binary was ever updated, but I could be wrong.

However, the source to Ultrastyle is now available. I got MAME version 0.98 to work with it. If I knew how to compile it (it is written in BlitzMax or some language like that) it would not be difficult to get it to work with higher versions of MAME.

Ultrastyle is one of my favorite front ends.


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