Finally some progress! Been really busy the last 6 months... finally got engaged to an amazingly patient woman that supports this goofy habit.
No significant changes to the exterior of the Skeeball machine, but this beast is undergoing a COMPLETE overhaul in terms of software and scoring.
My fiance and I have been wanting to get the Skeeball league up and running, but I REALLY wanted to have my own software on this thing before that happened. 3 weeks ago I set out to create my very own Skeeball software using Flash, and I just finished the first complete version of it a few days ago. I had never really done any serious Flash coding (if you can consider Skeeball software "serious") so a LOT of my time was spent just learning through trial and error. A lot of if/else's later, I've got my first working prototype that includes all of the game modes that I set out to create on this first version. Aside from the new game modes, I also coded in a "debounce" delay that is controlled by a variable, so I can stop the triggers from accidently double-scoring (which was a huge pain to manually tweak before). Anyway, I'll show a screenshot and brief description of each game mode below:
Menu:
Regular: This is fairly obvious since it is just the basic Skeeball rules. The player rolls 9 balls and tries to get the highest score by getting them into the rings.
Old School: This is to simulate the older machines before they came up with the 100 rings on each side. Exactly the same game as regular, except 100 rings are disabled... if the player hits one it only counts for 10 points.
Cliffhanger: For those familiar with The Price is Right, you might recognize the visual similarities between this and the game from that show. When you hit the 10 ring he climbs to the 10 (and does a pretty sweet yodel), when you hit the 20 he climbs to the 20, and so on. The objective is to get to the top of the mountain (100) in the least number of rolls.
310: A game based on the dart game "301". The player starts out with 310 points and needs to get their score to exactly 0 by subtracting points as they hit rings. If they score more points than they have left, the points don't get subtracted and it still counts as a roll. The objective is to get to 0 in the least number of rolls.
Three Skee: Aside from the crappy name, this game plays like the dart game "Shanghai". The player is given 3 shots at every ring, and they need to hit that specific ring or they don't get any points. The objective is to get the highest score after rolling 3 balls at every ring.
Cricket: The last of the dart-based games, this game mode is based on the game "Cricket". Clever name, I know. Essentially, the player needs to hit every ring number 3 times to close it out, and the goal is to close out every number in the least number of rolls.
Flash: This game is inspired by the Neo Geo arcade game "League Bowling" and will hopefully be a blast to play. It plays like regular Skeeball except there is a score multiplier meter along the side that moves up and down between 1x, 3x, and 5x. When the player scores a ball in a ring, they get whatever multiplier that is currently highlighted.
Bowling: I have a feeling this is going to be the most fun to play. This is meant to play similar to actual bowling except that for every 10 points that you get, it counts as 1 pin. For example, the 50 ring counts as 5 pins, the 100 rings count for 10 pins (a strike), etc. The big difference is that on the first roll of every frame, you get a multiplier based on how many neon pins (1-5) are lit up at the bottom. This is to make it so the player has a better chance of picking up a spare, since if we went on just the ring #'s the only way to get a spare would be to either get two 50's in a row or finish your second roll with a 100. The scoring and scoreboard operate exactly like real bowling, which really surprised me in how difficult it was to get everything working for this game. This was by far the hardest game to get working and took about a week just by itself.
Combo: When enabled, this mode actually effects Regular, 310, Three Skee, and Old School. Basically, players get a multiplier by hitting the same ring twice in a row. For instance, if a player hits 30 twice in a row they get 60 for the second roll roll, 3 times they get 90, and the 4th time they get 120. The multiplier maxes out at 4 to stop people from being able to aim for the lowest ring the entire game and still ending up with a decent score.
So now that I've got the software working 100% (at least on the computer) I need to modify my machine to be able to use it. I had originally configured this thing so that 100's are actually just 50's triggered twice, so I need to lay everything out so that each ring is completely independent of the others. I was very sloppy in my rush to get things playable, so my trigger setup left a lot to be desired and the overall layout left room for errors in the scoring. I'm also going to take this opportunity to cut back on the majority of noise this thing creates by removing the wooden back underneath the scoring panel and replacing it with some memory foam stuff we have lying around. This should cut down on noise significantly, as most of the noise right now is the "crack" that you hear when the wooden ball drops through the hole and hits the wood backboard.
Finally, I would like to again thank RandyT for letting me use his software before I had written my own. Without knowing his Jumpball software existed, I may not have even built this thing. I will eventually post a link to my software for any potential / future / would-be Skeeball builders out there, but I really want to make sure everything works first. I'm hoping to get everything up and running by Thursday, and tomorrow I'll post more pics of my complete rewire of the scoring area. Thanks for reading!