Been a while since I posted something here, which means I'm busy with a lot of things;
First made some changes to the website. Dropped a few categories from the homepage and other index pages, decided I will not maintain these anymore. These are pinball in Belgium, the agenda of shows and the things I learned (which was updated bi-weekly).
I'm busy shopping my Attack From Mars pinball machine. Playfield has been removed from the game, everything on top is removed. Now have to remove the bottom assemblies and clean everything.
Cabinet has been sanded, ready to put new cabinet decals on.
I had shopped this machine when I bought it (7 to 8 years ago) and it's amazing how dirty it is and even how worn some rubbers were. The slingshot rubbers almost broke, theywere so thin !
I'm also busy on making a new Whitewater missing mountain mod.
If you've ever seen the whitewater pinball machine, you know there are mountain shaped plastics in different places. There's a large ramp that's on the left side of the playfield which has a U-shaped turn on the top left of the playfield. Underneath there's nothing, it's completely open, showing the back/side black wood of the machine and an exposed microswitch. Not a nice look.
Someone else had made a mod for this years ago, he had made a new mountain plastic that fit inside this hole.
It made the machine look so much better, it really belonged there;
The mod isn't for sale anymore, so I decided to make my own mountain plastic.
Last week made the base shape using modeling clay. Now it was dried out enough, so yesterday evening I finalized it, build up onto this shape adding the details. I tried to make it look like the other mountai plastics, although that was not easy to do, I'm not a sculptor. Now it has to dry again for a few days.
Then I will make a silicone mold out of it and cast a mountain.
That one I can paint and then I'll see how good it is.. (the model now is in white clay so it's not easy to see it shape correct and predict how it will look painted, as the dark brown paint will stay into the deeper parts).
Showing posts with label whitewater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label whitewater. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Friday, July 22, 2011
Whitewater adjusted
Opened up my Whitewater pinball machine this evening - someone was looking for a part and I still had it. I keep my game-specific spare parts inside the cabinet of the game so they're always together.
Now I had taken off the glass, I thought of having a look at the left side of the playfield. Slow or fast balls sometimes take a different path, sometimes they nicely bounce onto the flipper, sometimes they just drain. It seemed to depend on the speed but not always.
I was certain it had to be with the end of the metal rail that goes all along the back, at the left side of the playfield (somewhere along the middle) it ends, there's a post and then there are the blue river targets.
I remember when I shopped the game a few years ago that I had bent the end of the metal so the ball would nicely go onto the left flipper.. so why didn't it stay consistent anymore ?
I pushed against the metal.. and it moved.
Wow - wait, let me try that again.. hmm.. moved again ? that's not good !
Partly removed the long ramp, removed the mountain plastic underneath it and I could finally access the part behind the metal guide.
Seems the screw hole at the end of the part was too large, the screw could move around a bit.
Put some parts of a toothpick in it, secured it again.. and now it's tight.
Let the pinball roll by hand a few times, slow, fast, and it always ended nicely on the left flipper (or could just be caught by the tip of the flipper). But certainly no more drains SDTM !
Assembled the mountain and ramp again, played a few testgames, and my Whitewater suddenly behaves. It's like a total new game !
I know adjusting and fine-tuning a game is important and I always try to do it as good as possible (although I have to admit most of my games can need a little bit more of tuning), but this is the first time that one little half loose screw made such an important change to gameplay.
Now I had taken off the glass, I thought of having a look at the left side of the playfield. Slow or fast balls sometimes take a different path, sometimes they nicely bounce onto the flipper, sometimes they just drain. It seemed to depend on the speed but not always.
I was certain it had to be with the end of the metal rail that goes all along the back, at the left side of the playfield (somewhere along the middle) it ends, there's a post and then there are the blue river targets.
I remember when I shopped the game a few years ago that I had bent the end of the metal so the ball would nicely go onto the left flipper.. so why didn't it stay consistent anymore ?
I pushed against the metal.. and it moved.
Wow - wait, let me try that again.. hmm.. moved again ? that's not good !
Partly removed the long ramp, removed the mountain plastic underneath it and I could finally access the part behind the metal guide.
Seems the screw hole at the end of the part was too large, the screw could move around a bit.
Put some parts of a toothpick in it, secured it again.. and now it's tight.
Let the pinball roll by hand a few times, slow, fast, and it always ended nicely on the left flipper (or could just be caught by the tip of the flipper). But certainly no more drains SDTM !
Assembled the mountain and ramp again, played a few testgames, and my Whitewater suddenly behaves. It's like a total new game !
I know adjusting and fine-tuning a game is important and I always try to do it as good as possible (although I have to admit most of my games can need a little bit more of tuning), but this is the first time that one little half loose screw made such an important change to gameplay.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Empty gameroom..
..well she's half empty that is.
Just re-read some of my posts here. In januari I posted we were going to sell some pinball machines but I never followed up.
Anyway for those interested, our gameroom is about half empty now. It really was too full, 2 rows of pinball machines with only some space to walk in the middle. Nice to play pins but not a nice room to sit in and relax.
So we sold some games, put the repainted fridge in there, a small coffee table and two comfortable sofas..
When you now enter our gameroom, the left side was like before: a whole row of pinball games. On the right side the only pinball machines are Black Hole and Orbitor One).
The rest of the right side is a family part now - fridge, seats, toys for our daughter she can play with in the garden, .. so the gameroom isn't for daddy alone anymore but to be enjoyed by the whole family.
At the moment I only have 8 working pinball machines in my gameroom.. quite a difference as we always had 14 in our gameroom, and about 5 years ago when I still had an external storage place we once even owned more than 20 pinball machines at the same time..
More updates on old posts: those dvd's I made in 2007 ? Well they're since a long time not for sale anymore.. there just wasn't any interest in them and for a few euros I made on them I didn't want to bother sitting at my computer for half an hour waiting until it was burned, going to the post office, ..
Well if anyone is really interested then you can always mail me about them, but I took down the pages on my website.
First 2 dvds I made are still available in the USA, see the trailers at:
http://www.webwidevideo.com/showproject.php?project=P1062
and
http://www.webwidevideo.com/showproject.php?project=P1063
Third dvd is only available from me as I even didn't bother to make an NTSC version and send it to the USA for distribution..
And that Whitewater switch problem I had since last year - I posted about it in december 07: it suddenly disappeared.
I have no idea what caused it and what made it go away ?!?!?!
I still played Whitewater but not very often as I had to wait for the ballsearch to get the pinball out of the lostmine. My daughter wanted to play the machine too last week, and suddenly the game worked fine ! It must be my daughter is some kind of magic-pinball-repairlady as I have no other explenation for it. But I'm happy, another game without any problems :)
Just re-read some of my posts here. In januari I posted we were going to sell some pinball machines but I never followed up.
Anyway for those interested, our gameroom is about half empty now. It really was too full, 2 rows of pinball machines with only some space to walk in the middle. Nice to play pins but not a nice room to sit in and relax.
So we sold some games, put the repainted fridge in there, a small coffee table and two comfortable sofas..
When you now enter our gameroom, the left side was like before: a whole row of pinball games. On the right side the only pinball machines are Black Hole and Orbitor One).
The rest of the right side is a family part now - fridge, seats, toys for our daughter she can play with in the garden, .. so the gameroom isn't for daddy alone anymore but to be enjoyed by the whole family.
At the moment I only have 8 working pinball machines in my gameroom.. quite a difference as we always had 14 in our gameroom, and about 5 years ago when I still had an external storage place we once even owned more than 20 pinball machines at the same time..
More updates on old posts: those dvd's I made in 2007 ? Well they're since a long time not for sale anymore.. there just wasn't any interest in them and for a few euros I made on them I didn't want to bother sitting at my computer for half an hour waiting until it was burned, going to the post office, ..
Well if anyone is really interested then you can always mail me about them, but I took down the pages on my website.
First 2 dvds I made are still available in the USA, see the trailers at:
http://www.webwidevideo.com/showproject.php?project=P1062
and
http://www.webwidevideo.com/showproject.php?project=P1063
Third dvd is only available from me as I even didn't bother to make an NTSC version and send it to the USA for distribution..
And that Whitewater switch problem I had since last year - I posted about it in december 07: it suddenly disappeared.
I have no idea what caused it and what made it go away ?!?!?!
I still played Whitewater but not very often as I had to wait for the ballsearch to get the pinball out of the lostmine. My daughter wanted to play the machine too last week, and suddenly the game worked fine ! It must be my daughter is some kind of magic-pinball-repairlady as I have no other explenation for it. But I'm happy, another game without any problems :)
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