ohwaitnvm

So pair programming?

Love it! Super creative :)

How about a skier with little jumps or obstacles at each header

I couldn’t find the right combination of search terms to provide a citation, but I’ve heard stories of plane crashes where locals took the flight data recorder or other critical pieces of evidence from the scene before officials arrived. Rewards had to be announced and paid out to get people to bring back parts so that investigations could proceed.

I picked up my first two last year - they require a decent amount of maintenance -- more the older they are.

Home use only machines will be in better shape - my 2018 Stern pin (3rd owner, home use only) has only really needed replacements of the coil stops and sleeves for the the upper flippers.

On the other hand, my 2002 Stern machine (3rd owner, but first was on location in a Century theater where it saw thousands of plays) required in just two months of ownership:

- diagnosis and replacement of a bad bridge rectifier for the controlled lights,

- new plumb bob (machine info showed it had never reported a tilt before - looks like it had been removed before ever been played),

- clear mylar patch on the playfield near the plunger lane exit,

- replacement of the main power cable -- someone had ripped out the third/ground prong (which is apparently very common),

- redoing the connections inside the power box -- someone had decided all the connectors should just live in giant solder balls.....,

- replacement of the coin door lock mechanism,

- replacement of a flipper return spring

and it has a few cracked pieces of protective plastic that just aren't worth trying to find replacements for.

In total all together that's still less than $50 in parts, but figuring out the lights issue took weeks, and some of these required soldering. (And desoldering! I strongly recommend the Hakko FR301 desoldering tool instead of mucking about with copper braid.)

For the prices you listed, I would guess you're looking at older machines, which will probably have more issues sooner than new (but not brand-new!) pins. I suggest pinside.com for the classifieds and also the "_X_ Machine Owner" forum threads which might have game-specific info for you. Stern has very detailed manuals, and pinballlife/marcospecialties have just about every part you might need when you do have a problem.

Good luck, and have fun!

Nice! Direct access seems like the way to go if you're not worrying about the single player modes and shot structures, and if all the sound is from the physical interactions. I appreciate the API info offer, but I've already got the FAST Neuron controller, so I think it's a different path for me

I think y’all are both right and I appreciate the additional contexts. It’s just awkward to headline the article with a term that has a pinball-specific usage and not define it or dig into it a bit more.

I’m super impressed though Andy, did you use MPF or something else to program it? I’m only just dipping my toes into building my own pin, it’s quite intimidating realizing the breadth of skills required.

EDIT: another post clarified that it is on MPF - nice!

It actually doesn’t seem to qualify as an electromechanical pinball machine at all. Given the 17 computers in control and modern playfield mechanisms and sensors, it is almost certainly considered a solid state pinball machine.

EM machines use much older tech - look at Gottlieb machines from the 40s-70s. Even they switched to SS by the end of the 70s

You don't add the salt to the ice cream, you add it to the ice that surrounds the ice cream-making container.

Maybe it's the first away-team win for an EBUG

I was going to say the same thing, but with deteriorating vision they may be already past the point of seeing meaningfully-clear view of the world.

Yeah I find that I can remote pair for maybe 5-6 hours a day. Catching up on non pairing work things (email and slack and whatever) takes another hour or two, and I’m beat by 4 or 5.

Thanks for the response! I guess the big difference is being on camera. My team has been 100% remote of course since Mar’20, and split across SF and Toronto for the most part.

We use Zoom for cross discipline meetings (and nearly everyone has camera on most of the time, though there’s no explicit rule) but discord+drovio for remote pairing. Discord has been nice for the ability to drop into another pair to ask for help, or for non devs to know who is pairing and drop in as well.

One other thing I’ve noticed is that some team members play music in their headphones while pairing/mobbing. While the others can’t hear it, it’s certainly not helping our communication or focus… and it certainly feels disrespectful to me.

I’ve been pairing at all but one of my jobs in the last ten years, and love it, but I found mobbing to almost always be a driver, a half engaged navigator, and a third basically napping or distracted by a smartphone.

The devs in question were experienced in pairing and happy to do it, but I pretty much always found adding more than a second head was effectively net neutral if not negative.

So I’d love to learn how to make mobbing better for the rare times it comes up. What do you have to change or be more disciplined about to make mobbing a net gain?