That's How I Roll! (Skeeball build)

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thatpurplestuff:
Thank you for the kind words n88n and samej71. Drventure, your build continues to inspire me to eventually finish my cab using a sweet theme... awesome stuff.

Had a big scare last night when I put the finished software on the machine... the visuals looked great but the sound was playing way too fast. The yodeler sounded more like a chipmunk than a human being and the bowling pins sounds were just awful. I was running Windows 98 on the computer, but after a few hours of tinkering with Flash settings and sound drivers and nothing working, I figured I would throw an install of XP on and hope that this slow computer can handle it. Got XP on tonight, and the game ran slow as molasses. The sounds were normal but since the score "rolls" upwards and makes noise while it does it, it was actually taking about 5 seconds to count from 0 to 100 when it should only be a second or two. After a few hours of tinkering with settings, I finally thought to reduce the screen resolution to 800x600... and everything works like a charm.

Attached are a few pictures of the back of the scoring area, as well as the keyboard encoder with the quick connects ready to rock and the new buttons on the machine to navigate the menu. I plan on using different, smaller buttons for the final layout but since I'm going to replace that piece of wood anyway I figured I would use what I have for now. Green moves the menu forward, red goes backward and the blue buttons move up and down. Nothing is connected right now, but hooking up everything should be a breeze tomorrow.

I do still have one big problem though... I have yet to figure out how I am going to detect gutterballs with this layout. The layout that I had previously used worked great to count gutterballs because the only way a ball would count as "played" is after it triggered a switch on the ball return. That way, the ball would hit some points at the top and roll all the way down before it hit the "played" trigger. If you missed all the points and hit the trigger, that was a gutter. Now, the balls get counted the instant that they score, which works great for everything except gutterballs. I have to figure out a way to guide the gutterballs so that they avoid just dropping back into the ball return, while at the same time putting the switch in a place that only gutterballs can hit. I'm probably not making much sense right now but it's late and I've been staring at this thing for too long. Thanks for the interest everyone, and I promise I'll take the time to answer specific questions soon.

Here are some pics of some of the things I was talking about, and I couldn't help throwing in a picture of bowling loaded up on the Skeeball machine even though the switches aren't hooked up. I rolled a great game using the keyboard though.

DaOld Man:
Hello thatpurplestuff!
Long time thread watcher, first time commenter here..
I have to say that this is a freakin great build!
I played several skeeball machines when my kids were in that "it's cool to hang out with Dad" stage.
(They dont stay in that stage forever, trust me).
Anyway, if I had the room, I would build one of these babies, using your build as a guide.
Great job!
:applaud: :applaud: :applaud:

Chicken McNobody:
My want to play. . .

Pinball Wizard:
The best part of this Skeeball machine is that the bezel isn't correctly seated so that the CD-drive can be hooked up and hold another extra spare. With all jokes aside I envy this. I love diversity of games and don't mind skeeball. Great build of such a game. Tempting me to build one so bad.

samej71:

--- Quote from: thatpurplestuff on December 04, 2009, 01:55:23 am ---I do still have one big problem though... I have yet to figure out how I am going to detect gutterballs with this layout. The layout that I had previously used worked great to count gutterballs because the only way a ball would count as "played" is after it triggered a switch on the ball return. That way, the ball would hit some points at the top and roll all the way down before it hit the "played" trigger. If you missed all the points and hit the trigger, that was a gutter. Now, the balls get counted the instant that they score, which works great for everything except gutterballs. I have to figure out a way to guide the gutterballs so that they avoid just dropping back into the ball return, while at the same time putting the switch in a place that only gutterballs can hit. I'm probably not making much sense right now but it's late and I've been staring at this thing for too long.

--- End quote ---

What if you ignore the gutter trigger (the one in the ball return) if the last trigger was a scoring ball? That is, if the last trigger was a new game/turn or a gutter ball, then the gutter switch would count as a ball.

Have a variable named "ignore_gutter" and set it to "true" (or "1", depending on type) on any scoring trigger. When the gutter/ball return triggers, check the status of "ignore_gutter". If it is true, do not adjust the count and then reset the variable to false or 0. If it is false, then add 1 to the ball count.

--- Quote from: thatpurplestuff on December 04, 2009, 01:55:23 am ---Thanks for the interest everyone, and I promise I'll take the time to answer specific questions soon.

--- End quote ---

Cool. Looking forward to it! :)

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