Skee Ball build

[fatsheldon]

Mostly just wanted to say thanks for others here with skee ball builds.  I learned a lot from you.  Especially this one:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=91011.0

A few years ago I obtained a really old SKEE Ball unit for $300 and this year finally got around to getting it working.  The electronics were in sad shape so after much hemming and hawing I just decided to gut the entire thing and wire it all up to an LEDwiz controller.  It has turned out fantastic.  I'll attach some pictures.

Here is a link to the software I'm building.  It's not real mature yet, but it works.
https://github.com/fatsheldon/SkeeBawl

[thatpurplestuff]

Welcome to the club!  It's awesome to so many people building/writing Skeeball games!

[fatsheldon]

Welcome to the club!  It's awesome to so many people building/writing Skeeball games!

thanks!  I'll be taking a closer look at your thread this week to get some more games coded.  I'm super impressed with your graphics work.  I'm really more of a code guy and I struggle in that area.  I got the main "Model S" type graphic from another post somewhere, but I can't find it now (I'm dumb).  Did you do all the graphics work yourself or do you have a good resource?

[thatpurplestuff]

Welcome to the club!  It's awesome to so many people building/writing Skeeball games!

thanks!  I'll be taking a closer look at your thread this week to get some more games coded.  I'm super impressed with your graphics work.  I'm really more of a code guy and I struggle in that area.  I got the main "Model S" type graphic from another post somewhere, but I can't find it now (I'm dumb).  Did you do all the graphics work yourself or do you have a good resource?

The graphics for Free Skee are a bit of a mishmash.  Came up with some on my own, some from stock photo sites, some from Google images... really just had ideas in my head and looked to see if the assets were already out there, and if they weren't I created them.

[fatsheldon]

This is the guy that made the Model S image: http://www.johnkalnin.com/skee/

His site has tons of great diagrams, images, flash stuff, etc.  For example my LEDwiz wiring is nearly identical to this: http://www.johnkalnin.com/skee/LEDWiz-wiring-diagram_wRelay.jpg  One exception is that I don't have the light on top, instead I use the solid state relay to run the solenoid that releases the balls on start.

I can't find that guy on the forum, though I'm sure I saw him somewhere.  Anyhow, thanks John Kalnin.

[thatpurplestuff]

ahh yeah he goes by the name "nickels" on here.  I know he was interested in collaborating on software... you may want to drop him a line if you were interested in teaming up with someone to write your game with.

[fatsheldon]

Thanks.  I did send him a message.

[PL1]

ahh yeah he goes by the name "nickels" on here.

His build thread is here.


Scott

[fatsheldon]

His build thread is here.

got it.  thanks!

[nickels]

I'm here.  Sorry been busy adding LED lights to my build and writing games. As you know these games take forever to code properly. Almost done my third game and looking forward to writing the next bunch of games. Probably will be 2017-8 before I have all of my games written... if ever. I look forward to seeing what you do with your machine! Good luck 

[nickels]

ahh yeah he goes by the name "nickels" on here.  I know he was interested in collaborating on software... you may want to drop him a line if you were interested in teaming up with someone to write your game with.

Just to be clear I do not want to team up where we share Flash code and write games together. I just wanted to co-ordinate our efforts so that all of the games we made work for each other's skee ball set-up. Stuff like keeping each game as its own swf file, configurable controls, compatible lighting effects for the LEDWiz, etc. This way we could have a ton more games that worked across the board. I want no parts of sharing code and working on games with anyone but myself. ThatPurpleStuff has way more games and time invested so far, so it makes sense that he wants to keep his games separate from mine.

[fatsheldon]

That's cool man.  I think I'm actually the odd man out here as I have no intention of writing any flash.  I've never done a bit of flash before, but have a good understanding of .Net and all the environment resources at my disposal so I went with that.  The LEDWiz interface is a wrapper around the .dll provided by GroovyGameGear.  Yes, this all pretty much ties me to a windows pc, but I have plenty of those laying around and so far it runs pretty well on an old one.

I'm all for sharing resources.  My code, all the images, and sounds are up on github.  That's where I'll push all the development - more for my own personal organization than anything else.

It occurs to me now that folks might not be able to compile it, so I can make an .exe available for anyone that wants to see it.  It works with a keyboard similar to how your flash program does.

[fatsheldon]

First release is up here:
https://github.com/fatsheldon/SkeeBawl/releases

You might be able to run the .exe in the zip file.  That's what I have running on the machine now.

What do you guys use for sounds?  I created the sounds for the "classic" game here:
http://soundation.com/

I'm certainly no expert, but it's a start.  The sounds are based on a few Model S machines my wife and I saw at this place a few weeks ago:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/orbit-pinball-lounge-saint-louis

Honestly though, that's the first time I've ever used a Skee Ball machine where the sound still worked and it was quiet enough in there to hear it!

[ed12]

nice work...
congrad's

ed