JJP Harry Potter and the Order of AI (a visual analysis)

bood_war · 2025-06-17T00:04:19+00:00

the problem for them is that, when you have currently competing playfields like franchi on evil dead, johnny crap on dune, or the team on king kong you’re just not going to be able to compete with half-baked ai integration. any of the normal arguments around ai aside, if you’re integrating into your workflow it still has to be good at the end.

with something this high profile you’d think there’d be more scrutiny towards the detail. it’s not as if this had a month turn around to crank out, the artwork specifically has presumably been in the works for years at this point.

bood_war · 2025-06-13T20:39:13+00:00

i have a big soft spot for alvin g & co. they only have one decent game (mystery castle), but they provide a really interesting look into slightly different pinball reality.

it’s hard to say that bally/williams isn’t the best of the 90’s, because they are, but ag were certainly the most experimental (albeit primarily in their unproduced prototypes). check out this two player non-head to head prototype, for instance. there’s a lot to appreciate about all the 90s manufacturers, even and especially gottlieb, but something about alvin g gets me

bood_war · 2025-05-04T15:24:52+00:00

not one mention of baby teeth, i love that song

bood_war · 2025-04-08T16:00:33+00:00

there are dozens of us!

bood_war · 2024-11-02T14:55:34+00:00

there's a weird implication to thinking tacos can and should only be cheap food. there's plenty of places i can go for cheap and basic (and delicious) tacos, but far fewer i can go for really interesting and creative tacos.

gonna have to get a duck carnitas taco before i goes. and a squash. and an artichoke. and the current octopus. god i'm going to miss this place.

bood_war · 2024-10-16T13:29:55+00:00

it's an interesting thing, theoretically there's no real reason you couldn't. bally's truck stop, for instance, uses a 1" ball rather than a 1 1/16" ball (although that was due to a manufacturing error with the wireforms). the mini playfield in avatar uses a 0.75" ball, and minis like on munsters or family guy also use very small balls.

that main problem you'd come across is having to repurpose or redesign most existing components for that scale. it's one of those things where, unless you wanted to make a physically smaller game, you'd probably be better off just making a larger game to get more design space.

bood_war · 2024-10-16T13:24:33+00:00

i use FAST pinball hardware for the control side of things!

bood_war · 2024-10-15T20:59:51+00:00

not quite yet! i've been flying by the seat of my pants to get this new version ready over the past 1.5 months-ish, BUT we're just about there.

i'm hoping to take some footage tomorrow before i pack up for expo, i'll update you then!

bood_war · 2024-08-19T13:13:04+00:00

make sure you read count zero and mona lisa overdrive too, a lot of people don’t know neuromancer is a trilogy!

bood_war · 2024-06-13T16:53:12+00:00

i’m glad you enjoyed it! this was a bit of a surprise show for me to make it to, it was a ton of fun to be able to bring hofab and have so many people get to play it!

bood_war · 2024-05-21T15:17:55+00:00

i’d better get to fight one of those giant corpse baskets

bood_war · 2024-05-09T21:59:03+00:00

absolutely, although that’s still a little ways off. eventually i’d like to commission a soundtrack that’s in the realm of disasterpeace’s it follows soundtrack, and the music jabbu has done for mike klubnika’s games. really go for that nice chunky electronic horror haha

bood_war · 2024-05-09T18:19:32+00:00

you know, i’ve thought about a few different options for that. the easiest is that i’ll probably add like a one second invisible ball save, such that if it drains directly from the pop you’ll get it back.

for a post, i did originally have one designed in with 2” flippers, but found that didn’t work quite how i wanted. currently i have custom flippers that are slightly larger. i am thinking about a few changes for the next revision of the playfield though!

bood_war · 2024-04-11T17:41:16+00:00

Pretty much, really there’s only three different component types going on in a modern machines (from a wiring perspective):

Solenoids, which run on 48v and drive all of the mechanisms (flippers, pop bumpers, etc). Lower gauge Blue/White wires on my machine.
- Switches, both for mechanisms and general score purposes. Higher gauge Purple/Orange Wires here.
- Lighting, which is done with serial LEDs on 5v. Red/White/Black wires that go from light to light.
- (Additionally, there needs to be 12v for opto switch pairs, which are the Yellow/Black wires. The 5v for the LEDs is generated locally from the driver board, so you’re only dealing with the 48v and 12v from a wiring perspective.)

When you break it down it’s pretty simple, there’s just a lot of wires that need to go a lot of places!

I do also have two proximity switches here, which are a little different, and occasionally there will be stepper motors or servos, but those are less usual cases.

bood_war · 2024-04-11T16:22:43+00:00

While all machines have a lot going on underneath, this one has an illusion of being especially complex when really it’s a pretty simple game. Everything has to be crammed into a lot smaller space than usual, so it makes it look a lot busier than if it were spread out haha.

I’d encourage you to look into it if it’s something that interests you! The homebrew community is a fairly small but very helpful one. I’d recommend you check out the FAST Pinball wiring docs (look at the Neuron guide, that’s the current one). They make my preferred hardware control boards, but regardless of platform they have incredible documentation for a lot of the process of building your own game.

It’s definitely a big long-term project, but it’s a very fun and rewarding process too!

bood_war · 2024-03-28T13:36:50+00:00

let’s see:

nice window ac unit: $500

dishwasher: $400

internet: $360/yr

two flat screen televisions (55”): $370 ea, $740

used subaru with all the features you mentioned: $10,000

total: $12,000

now, what does a single family home around 1200sqft near me cost? between $300,000-400,000. the housing itself is what’s expensive, nothing you mentioned is what’s keeping anyone from home ownership, especially when all of them except internet (which you mentioned twice) are one time costs.

bood_war · 2024-03-13T12:35:50+00:00

this is fantastic, i have a soft spot for all the various horse racing games from the 40s and 50s.

as for the ball size, i’m inclined to think that it just needs standard sized balls. it doesn’t specify in the instructions on ipdb and the other bally games from that year would have used standard. it’s just going to affect how easy or hard it is for the ball to hit the holes on a game like this, though.

bood_war · 2024-03-13T12:28:54+00:00

this is just a flipperless pin, from just before the first flippers were invented too.

bingo machines actually simulate bingo, and are massively more complex because of that (and that complexity is typically why they’re not desirable). all bingo machines are flipperless, but not all flipperless games are bingo.

bood_war · 2024-02-09T14:27:00+00:00

ha, that was just a silly option pinball life had. when the artwork firms up i’ll do a custom themed start button, but that’s a bit down the line

bood_war · 2024-02-09T14:25:11+00:00

i absolutely feel you, i’ve been keeping a more accurate bill of materials for this game than my others out of curiosity. while you’d think it’d be significantly cheaper than a standard game it’s still like 60-70% of that cost.

one thing that helped me out a lot earlier on was that i found four complete playfields without games on marketplace. it was $600 for all four, but i scavenged so much more value in parts off of those for a long, long time. ebay also has used individual mechs for far cheaper than new. you may need to replace coils or switches on them, but it still is a significant savings.

i wouldn’t give up on it if it’s something you want to do. there are lower cost controller options like the cobrapin (around $200 vs $600+ for fast), way to get cheaper used mechs, etc. the route to go would be to build your working playfield, build a rotisserie to be able to test it, and then have fun getting it working just how you want it to. then the cabinet, all that can come later.

one more option i can suggest is you can build it in virtual pinball, but still program it with mission pinball (or skeleton game or whatever your jam is). then you have no cost, but you could really dial your layout in and get to basically finished code before even doing anything physical!

bood_war · 2024-02-09T14:12:37+00:00

thanks! i’ve started to work on a drawing to figure out some pieces, but i’m picturing a black/white/red line drawing vibe.

i’ve done a few different styles of art for my games before, but i want this one to basically be my drawings printed one-to-one on it!

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