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Pinball 2000 + Ethernet = ...
Eric Priepke writes: "I have 2 "Pinball 2000" machines, both of which I've added ethernet to. Via that ethernet, it's possible to telnet in to the pinball machine and get to a shell. I'm using that shell to dump out a bunch of statistic information on the games, and then build a web page with a backend perl script. Any time my games are on, the local FreeBSD box notices and updates the web pages every 1/2 hour." The link is to a mirror. Really impressive hack. Revenge from Mars is among my favorite pinball tables. Since Williams is giving up on Pinball 2000, it would be sweet to see if we couldn't make new games out of the old hardware.
You can read information about the pinball 2000 machines here http://www.pinball.wms.com/pinball2000/home.html.
They appear to be run off a standard PC so a ethernet hack shouldn't be too hard.
I don't really mind double posts on
The mirror was my own idea. The real thing runs on my measly cable modem, and is essentially for my own amusement and the amusement of my friends that get to come over and play. I've seen plenty of things on /. get burned by traffic, so I figured I should put it on the biggest server I had access too.
-Eric
Indeed it was, a tough decision, but sound from a business perspective. Consider the following:
An operator wants a few things in a pinball machine:
From the Williams perspective, to retain top pinball engineering talent (i.e. Mr. West above, Tom Uban, Patrick Lawlor, et. alii), you have to keep them paid and producing. If you produce, you have to sell...
In the heyday of the late 80s-mid 90s, arcade operators were gung-ho about purchasing the latest machines because it generated revenue. But as the arcade traffic began to dwindle, operators that were still in business were more and more reluctant to purchase a new machine to replace an older, popular one.
Add in the fact that Pin2000 has great tech, research expenditures, expensive monitors and other factors that drive the cost up, coupled with customers that don't want to buy in the first place, and you've got a division that won't be profitable. As much as I hated it and felt deep down that we were losing a piece of Americana/history/my childhood, I understand the reasoning.
I only hope that someday the effort and knowledge used to produce these machines will be made public or otherwise put to good use, and not left in a closet until the shredder comes.
These opinions are my own and don't reflect those of my employer *G*
Indeed it was, a tough decision, but sound from a business perspective.
:)
I have no doubt that it was.
The sad, sad day comment was supposed to be the reflection of the fact that pinball playing in specific and arcades in general had fallen to such a state. (Also, I knew quite a few people who worked there, so I was sad to see them have to find a new job, especially because they loved the one they had.) I sympathize with the operators because, compared to their video game cousins, pinball machines are very high maintenence in terms of both time and money. I also sympathize with the players because games are getting harder and harder to find, and its even harder^3 to find machines kept in good condition.
That reminds me, I need to buy a bigger house, so I can own some games.
I only hope that someday the effort and knowledge used to produce these machines will be made public or otherwise put to good use, and not left in a closet until the shredder comes.
Yeah, should all pinball companies everywhere deceide to throw in the towel it would be great if all the technology and ideas that are sitting around as "IP" inside the various pin companies was released to the public in some way. (Man, I don't want this to sound like the obligitory "yeah, man, open source!" slashdot comment.) It would be horrible if this knowledge just "disappeared." That's one reason I give mad props to people building their own machines at home, prehaps some of the knowledge will be retained within that small community.
In any event, I figure, like most things, pinball playing will come back into style. Thanks to home video games, people have been driven into their houses, when that gets old, and people want to socialize more, prehaps they'll go back to the arcades. Okay, maybe not, but one can only dream.
On a somewhat related note, places like Dave&Buster both give me hope and depress me. They give me hope because people DO want to go someplace and play video games. They depress me because I find most of the games uninteresting. Its either driving or shooting. Did everyone forget that there are other kinds of games out there?
I'm also putting my pinball machine on the web. Only difference is, mine is a 1977 Bally Night Rider Electro-Mechanical (anyone remember those?)
I'm using the TINI processor, www.ibutton.com/TINI and a 20x4 lcd screen www.matrix-orbital.com. In case you're not familiar with TINI, it's an embedded java processor on a SIMM. It's got onboard ethernet and serial, as well as its own proprietary "One-Wire" IO.
I will start out by keeping track of the high scores and storing them on the embedded java computer. Once I get that down, there's no end to what I should be able to do. This project has just started, it's not even documented online yet, but if anyone is interested in it, or has any ideas or opinions, please let me know.... beb1964@cs.rit.edu
I'd love to see someone do this with Dance Dance Revolution. If you got the ball rolling (so to speak) people wouldn't just compete with people, arcades could compete with arcades! "You hang out at the Metreon? Damn, those people know how to stomp. I've seen the stats (and the replays)!"
Then of course there's playing Street Fighter N against someone in another city or country. eventually there won't be such a thing as a 1P game, they'll all either be physical head to head, or networked against someone in Taiwan or Amsterdam. Nifty.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
P2K hack: Very impressive. Hope WMS Industries does not bring a suit against this.
Pinball in general: I enjoy playing so much, that I always look for pinball games when I travel. It is difficult to find a game that is in complete working order (easiest way to tell if a game has something wrong with it is to look for a '.' next to the number of credits in the game. If the '.' is not there, then all switches do work). I'm also saddened by the shutdown of the pinball division of Williams. P2K was a step in the right direction. Only way I can see reviving the industry is to start a company whose sole mission is to construct pinball games with parts that are cheap and durable. That way, owners will be able to achieve maximum profit from a pinball game, since the parts can be produced in mass quantities, and can be replaced at a minimal cost to the operator.
Pingball
lol
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
It actually counts TILTs, Slam TILTs and a few other stats of the same variety, but I take the tilt plumbs out of all my home machines, so they're all 0 stats and not very interesting :)
-Eric
This reminds me of a pinball machine I saw at Burningman this year called The Visible Woman. There was no score keeping, and you basically played until the woman in the game made orgasmic sounds.I got to talking about the machine with the technical guy behind it, and it runs on linux. There are 10 or 11 triggers on the pinball machine, and each of those corresponds to a pin on a serial cable. There's a tiny computer hidden underneath the pinball console, and that emits the sound. There's no mention of the technical aspect of this game on the web site, so this is all from memory.
Here's a picture of people playing the game. You can see the computer underneath covered up by a blanket.
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
This is so l33t! I'm gonna h4X0R into the machines and get r00t. Then I'll put my name at the top of the list with 999,999,999,999 points! I'm so k-rad, just wait and see!
Actually, Bally-Williams (under the Bally name) put out a basketball themed pinball game where you could hook two of them together and you could play truely head to head. As there was a basket and you played for points similar to regular basketball. The local Dave&Buster's had them set up like this for awhile and it was a very neat variation on head-to-head pinball.
http://www.pinball.com/games/fastbreak/ is the URL of it. Unfortunately, this web page doesn't really talk about that "networking" aspect of it.
Now, to make it complete, you need to add webcams to this setup!
We should be able to SEE you get that high score!
If anyone actually takes the time to read this guy's site, you'd find out that there was no "hacking" involved. The game is DESIGNED to have an SMC ISA network card installed, and it's DOCUMENTED how to do it. The game is DESIGNED to spit out all those cool stats, and the commands are DOCUMENTED.
There was no soldering invovled, no deciphering some obscure OS or byte codes. All he did was follow directions. Hell, even *I* can do that. Sure, it was a cool idea to have a web page updated live with the machine's stats, I'll give him that, but hardly a "hack".
After spending some time reading the rest of his website, I was much more impressed with the section where he describes restoring old pinball machines.
Come on Slashdot! This is yet another example of you guys not reading/researching your own stories. I guess with was a slow news day.
Posting as AC cuz I feel like it.
Pinball is not very fun.
I've owned an Addams Family machine for a few years, and I've never tired of it. I don't play it every day, but it has outlasted a number of (software) video games I have owned.
Some pinball makers had the right idea by adding lots of lights and pseudo-video-game displays to the machines, but they never took it far enough, and the same boring slap-the-ball gameplay was the core of the game. Sorry, but I'm not a retard. I need something a bit more challenging[...]
Saying that pinball is just "slap-the-ball gameplay" is like saying that video games are just "press-the-buttons gameplay" or that role playing games are just "rolling some dice". Although on one level it's true, you're mainly missing the point.
Note that people have managed to find entertainment for years with things as simple as a slab of wood and bunch of black and white stones (the game of Go). Also consider athletes; runners do nothing more than put one foot in front of another, but there's no shortage of people who find challenge and reward in it.
So instead of saying "X is for retards", try saying "X is not my cup of tea". Because acting like you're the final arbiter of all that is interesting is, well, for retards.
Only one thing i can say:
/]#
[root@pacman
I am !amused.
embracing a hardware hack like this, and communicating with curious hackers, could allow the entire community to breathe life into new and old willians pinball systems. this is a good thing because the world needs more pinball.
.brad
Drink more tea
organicgreenteas.com
flesh eating ants records
Sometimes practical application has to take a back seat to geeky coolness when it comes to leisurely activities. Very cool!
Do you have details of how you added the ethernet? Were the tables already running a *nix under the covers that you can shell into, or is it a more custom hack? Any other arcade machines you fancy having a go at?
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
Balls Played 1528
Avg. Ball Time 49.28 seconds
That's just such a rich vein of potential humor I don't know where to start.
The ethernet link from the machines seem to be used primarily for payment purposes. You get issued a paper card with x dollars credit "on it", the card contains a unique number that identifies your account on the server. Then with each swipe the money in the account on the server get's reduced by the game cost. You can also "re-charge" your account at the counter.
--
Jon - TheSpork
I always wondered how many people actually read Slashdot...
If the pinball machines are designed to download information anyway, how exactly is this an 'impressive hack'? It seems like he's doing exactly what the designers of the machine expected: download play data and use it. What's to separate Bob and Joe's Circus of Fun's using these stats to determine their next purchase and this guy's posting his high scores on his website?
I don't get it.
Dancin Santa
If only our beloved Williams would start making pinball machines again. :(
I've got a High Speed II - The Getaway at home, and several of my friends have some Williams machines also. I'll hopefully have a Tales of the Arabian Nights next week sometime. Never will I buy a Sega/DataEast machine, they suck.
I could swore the pinball 2000 machines said that they ran QNX on boot.
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Pinball. Heh, I remember when we used to play stickball in the streets and duck in and out of traffic. And then when pinball came out, our parents were happy to keep us out of traffic and in the penny arcades, hitting constrained balls instead of each other. Those were the days, I think.
Pinball is dying now, and it's little wonder why. Pinball machines have countless mechanical parts subject to mechanical wear and requiring mechanical replacements. All that banging around can equal a whole lot of wear and tear, and without vigilance, your shiny new quarter-eating machine is a worthless hunk of scrap. Your video machines, instead, don't need repair and can be upgraded with a single new chip. That's the power of the internet, you know.
I miss pinball already. It was much more real than video games. You were hitting a real ball with your real stick just like back in the streets of Brooklyn growing up with Jimmy and Pudge. When you scored a point, you got a reassuring *thunk*, and not another epileptic seizure like those pokemon games give you. One pinball machine used to be all it took to get a room moving and grooving, but now where are we? Typing away at our individual boxes with big screens and complete sensory deprivation. What would the Who's Tommy have done with a modern video machine? He certainly wouldn't have written a musical; that's what.
We need to keep pinball machines alive. We need to keep the knowledge of tuning them alive. Pinball repair is a necessary skill I'd hate to see us lose. Then, where'd we be?
Read the rest of this comment...
Actually, Atari's San Francisco Rush 2000 games keep track of users/scores and other info.
It displays all sorts of statistics concerning track times, etc.
You can also use the same ID at any of the machines.
I believe it only requires that the machines are able to hook up to some sort of server. I think it dials out to get the information it needs, cause i hear a modem squawking whenever I enter my ID.
Someone else already pointed out some info, but as another former pinball 2000 programmer, I'll add a bit more...
The default webserver in a p2k machine only displays the pinball 2000 logo and the current high scores on the machine. Of course, those were just hacked in there in a couple days to show that http was working. All kinds of stuff could've continued to go into it, eventually you could wire it up online and get updates, tournament results, etc. etc.
There was unbelievable potential for everything that was going on at Williams Pinball at the time it shut down, it's most unfortunate that it'll never see the light of day. But life goes on.
keith
Eric, I understand the motivation to hack CSS/Tivo/iopener/whatever.., but what exactly motivated you to want to hack a pinball machine. Most of us want to hack devices that are copy protected or have their functionality limited by the corporation who built the device, but what advantage could you possibly gain by hacking a pinball machine? This may sound ignorant, but what were your motivations for this project?
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Maybe I'm missing something, or missed an earlier /. post/story, but adding ethernet to a Pinball 2000 machine? Does it already run LInux/*BSD/something else? On the page it said he would have made links the the httpd sitting on the machine. I'll admit I haven't done any research on this as I'm posting, but is there something really special and cool I'm missing about this Pinball 2000 platform?
Other than that - very impressive hack for hack's value. Too bad real arcades don't have something like this set up so people could compete against other franchised arcades for high scores/prizes/etc.
How feasible is it to add such a thing to an older game (if at all)?
Is there a method to derive such information from, say, a Spy Hunter game? (oh please, oh please)
Are there any other ways of extracting high scores, etc from an older game (other than copying it down and typing it in elsewhere, of course)?
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
Williams closed their whole pinball division. They gave up on pinball altogether, not just Pinball 2000. It was a sad, sad day when they did so.
I guess what I'm wondering is how much control you have over the hardware? Are you able to trigger or record events on the playing field? For example, can you record statistics on which players have made the most loops in a row? Are you able to turn on all the magnets at once if the score goes over 100,000,000?
--Alex
Causation can cause correlation
Here's how you update this AMAZING pinball table. (It's amazing because there's a CRT underneath the playfield so you can squirt new backgrounds into it whenever you want, among other things.)
--
The TINI from iButton is the shit for doing this sort of thing - $50 gets you a board that has ethernet, serial, loads of goodies, it's a joke to interface to, and it speaks Java, so it's easy to program, has a full suite of internet connectivity and you can do it in linux to boot! These things are a great deal, and offer all sorts of interesting possibilities with the addition of iButtons and the Java Ring, for instance..
I'm sure this stuff was covered on /., but I'm too lazy to look :).
..don't panic
This is a cool hack! I'm actually surprised it took someone this long to do it, as the P2K machines are heavily computer based. I would have thought this would have been done a while ago, though I suppose most people aren't up for experimenting with a $3,000+ machine.
/. has many users that would be quite capable of designing the video aspect of the game, but to engineer and produce a playfield and the "toys" would require a lot of material, production costs, and people with specialized knowledge in designing pinball playfields (which is a unique talent).
:)
Williams, who also owned the Bally name, made the greatest machines. Sega, Data East, Gottlieb, etc machines just don't have the right feel to them. I love the Williams/Bally line (I own High Speed and Pin*Bot, both from 1986, and I really want an Attack From Mars machine).
A lot of people were not impressed with the P2K set up. I played Revenge From Mars twice and I enjoyed it a lot! I don't know if it is something that I would get sick of, but I did find it fun. I think Williams did an commendable job of integrating the video display onto the playfield.
As for getting together to build another game, that would be quite noble, but I don't know how attainable. Obviously,
I know of one guy locally who DOES design machines for fun, and he has been featured on the Phoenix news stations for different things he's done. Maybe one of these days I'll ask him about what he feels the feesability of a P2K game is. =)
Great hack though!
If only our beloved Williams would start making pinball machines again. :(
Agreed... out of all the pinball I've played, the Williams machines were by FAR the best designed and most enjoyable. (Sorry to anyone who worked on machines anywhere else) I still, someday, am going to have at least a few machines when I have the money and the room, and hopefully I'll still be able to find Williams machines for sale, and they won't have been all snatched up.
*sniff*
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
The most interesting part of all of this is that I think this is the first tim I've seen someone braced for the /. effect... I'm not too much of an old timer, but is this a first? Did the /. crew actually suggest this to someone, or was it his own idea?
When encryption is outlawed, ?o'AZ-,++o+i++##4AoA+-/-C++bI+/.+~
The pinball 2000 system is PC based running an operating system called "XINA". There's a really nice reference about XINA here: http://members.home.net/ratherplaypinball/rfmnotes .htm
(when it works)
The ouput from the XINA shell is basically a plain text dump of info, and I parse that into the HTML.
The real reason he decided not to put a webserver on his pinball machines is:
Too many hits will tilt the damn things!
---
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One thing that immediately comes to mind is the possibility of true head-to-head pinball. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to "bomb" the other player by executing special moves that turn off their ramps, or turns on magnets? The mind just boggles at the possibilities. So, while a shell and web-based statistics are a cool idea, do these people have any plans to do something *really* cool with this capability?
--ALex
Causation can cause correlation
As one of the Pinball 2000 programmers, maybe I can shed some light.
Pin2000 uses PC-Xinu as the basis of its core OS although we added a lot of functionality to it. This was the decision of Tom Uban who was the chief software engineer on the project and all-round hardcore superstar programmer in general. PC-Xinu already includes a TCP/IP stack, and he had already written a packet driver for one kind of Ethernet card because we did all our code and image downloads via ethernet during development. A really simple web server wasn't too hard to write on top of that - all the statistics it reports are already collected by the game and displayed on-screen in the administration menus.
We demoed another use of the TCP/IP stack at Pinball Expo in 1999, where we had a tournament automatically running. We produced barcode badges for entrants, they walked up to a game, swiped the badge in a barcode reader, played, and their score was recorded. We also took their picture with a webcam and printed it on the badge, and the games showed the current high score list including their digitised pictures on all the games during their attract mode (ie. while they weren't being played).
Graham