Sorcerer WIP

PacDude

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This is the VP/VPM table I'm currently working on (Williams Sorcerer System9 game ala 1985). What you see in the preview is about 3 days work. The table is fullly playable, but table lights, flashers and working GI effects still need to be done plus a few other finishing touches.
 

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Only 3 days!

Wow, you've got that down to a science. I remeber playing shiva's version and I really enjoyed the game. I guess you've worn me down enough, I'm going to have to reinstall VPM. I sure hope I still have the CD on which I backed up all the VPM tbables I had downloaded. Is there still a special site for DL your tables Dude?

John
 
It is a job much beautiful .
Un saluto dall'Italia.
Furio
 
Hey there PD,

Even though my fave era in RL pinball is the '80's, I've never seen Sorcerer.

My faves are Fire Power (really), Quick Silver, Centaur, Black Hole, Buck Rogers and Black Knight.

But as far as Sorcerer goes, ??????????????

I'll be glad to try it out but. Of course.

CU

RH
 
Well, I already made Firepower, RockingHorse (see AJ's). I never actually got to play a real Firepower or a Sorcerer. But that doesn't stop me from making the tables. I've got a good idea in general how pinball tables play just by looking at them anymore (I've played a LOT of real tables over the past 10 years) and I always try to get fine-tuning details from people that have played them or own one. In this case, it seems that Nitrodude has 2 Sorcerer machines and has scanned plastics, etc. for me (although I mostly ended up using the high-resolution flyer for those as it was easier and turned out great anyway plus I was missing a few scans). I've made the playfield from a really high resolution overlay and edited in new wood textures, etc. overtop of it to make it look more real and adjusted the colors and lighting, etc.

Now I've created hand-made lights (like I did for Firepower) with The Gimp and used some "layer" combination tricks (mulitplier effect) to combine the lettering from the overlay playfield with the new hand-made lights and went from there to create the fading playfield lights. Here's a preview with the lamps installed (AJ's seems to be down at the moment, so you guys are the first to see this preview):
 

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This is what my Firepower table looks like (again, at AJ's):
 

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And TiltJP, if you like EMs, you might want to try out my version of Fireball in the form of Fireball Classic (solid-state remake of the original EM from '72). It's at Shivasite (AJ has made a slot for it yet) and looks like this:
 

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Great PD,

I have played the RL Fire Power about 15 years ago at our local Bowling Alley. I clocked the machine and even though I got the score based free games I didn't get the High Score three free games because there was a glich in the scoring system that meant that after the score rolled over past all nines it reset back to ZERO and I scored "officially" about 200,000. Bummer.

But it is still one of my all time faves.

CU

RH

BTW, I knew you had been working on Fire Power but the last version I had has vanished. I'll get it and say Thank you now rather than later for your considerable efforts.
 
Thanks for the heads up on Fire Power, PD. I've just reinstalled VPM, and sad to say, I seem to have lost my back-up CD . . . I'm the world's worst mover, . . . so I'll have to DL all the tables, starting with yours mostly, and all the roms. Eventually I'll grab all the tables, just so I'll have them, and hope I never have to move again.

And although this isn't pinball related, if any of you move, be careful not to lose your birth certificate. I did, along with a ton of other stuff, and it cost me $24.95 US to order a new one online. Hope I get it soon, there's so many things I can't do until I get it, in about another 10 days.

tiltjlp
 
I've now got the 3-bank flashers and Sorcerer bank flashers installed plus the back wall "EYES" overlapping GI and Flasher effect lights done (The eyes are handled by a 7 frame animation reel with 2 sets of fading lights; one for the red GI eyes and the other for the bright white flasher eye effect) using the overlapping light reel handler.

I've also now got the main standup banks animated (like in Firepower) to move backwards a bit briefly when hit.

That mainly leaves making the rest of the GI lights turn on/off plus some other finishing touches.

Overall, I think the game is playing pretty darn well at this stage. The eye effect came out really well and looks great during the game (the eye flashers activate in sync to the game speech for one thing). The table lights look much cooler than the pictures really show (better than Firepower in some respects, IMO). I'm pretty happy with the way this one is turning out (and how fast it's turning out).

Hopefully, I can get it done sometime this week after work and then get started on another table and/or finish
CC.
 

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Hey Tilt,

I might be wrong but I'm sure we included a whole lot of roms in your Christmas CD last year. Have a look on it before you try elsewhere. As I said, I could be wrong but try Right click and open the disc. You might get lucky.

CU

RH
 
Thanks for mentioning it, I'll check. It would save a lot of trouble. I sure hope that CD survived my move. So much stuff is Lost/Missing.

John
 
I've finished the GI lights. All I can say is it's freaking fantastic save one problem. Because there's drop walls right in front of the upper flipper (the center bank there), VP exhibits the "ball over flipper" problem there wherein the ball appears "over top" of the flipper graphic (also seen in Big Bang Bar because of the flipper logo drop walls, but less of an issue from that angle with the dithered ball bottom). I really don't like how it looks when the ball is resting on that flipper. The only thing I can think of offhand (short of eliminating the flasher and GI effects there) is to put a trigger there to alter the ball graphic to try and compensate. I don't know how well that would work out, really and that would pretty much hard code the ball image at that point. I'm just not sure what else can be done at this point.

Otherwise, I think that just leaves trying to put some plastic caps in place and what not (maybe try some reel flare bulbs out as well) and create a backglass backdrop of some kind. I'm going to send a copy to Nitrodude to test out before public release to work out any gameplay issues, etc.

On the plus side, my first big game with all the GI lighting and flashers running I somehow managed to spell Sorcerer three times and claim the extra ball all on my very first ball! (the ball drained out the right side eventually so I didn't get the special which was on the left side at the time). Hell's bells worked pretty well (Unfortunately, it only goes off when you collect the extra ball as far as I can tell; you hear nothing for winning replays). I also had the bonus multiplier up to 6x (all that stuff resets on the next ball with the default settings). I think I scored over 2 million points on my first ball and started multiball like 2-3 times. Unfortunately, my remaining 3 balls (2 + extra ball) didn't do so well at all and I ended up with like 2.3 Million points, which gave me 2nd place (2.5 million is the default 1st place high score).

All in all, I think the table is pretty hard, really, but obviously you can get "in the zone" there. I'd like to know more how I fell out of the zone after the 1st ball. I must have been too excited about winning an extra ball. :peace:
 
No Roms, darn

The actual CD you sent me is among the missing, RH. I vow to never move again!! But I had copied it all to my HD, and there are no roms. Now if anyone would be so kind as to send me a set of CDs with all the roms and VPM tables, I'd of course repay them, and consider them my personal hero for life. Anyone crazy and nice enough to consider doing this, PM me for my snail mail address, and thanks in advance. It sure would save a lot of time and effort via my 56K dial-up connection.

tiltjlp
 
Alrighty then.... This is the backglass based backdrop scheme I came up with tonight. The brown boxes around the score boxes and the player numbers show up on the game room backdrop as well.

The preview also shows the latest light lens scheme I tried out tonight plus the added screws, plastic caps, etc.

Unfortunately, I noticed a few days ago that the backwall "eyes" light/flasher is "stretched" looking. This is because Nitrodude apparently didn't scan the entire width of the plastic so only the center 1/2-1/3 or so is present. I've asked him if he can scan the outer sides so I can patch it back together, but I haven't gotten a response yet.

I also still need to put the ramp blocking hood in front of the lock area and try to create some flared bulb effect reels for the slings and two of the plastics where bulbs would be visible. Then there's the upper flipper that still needs some kind of solution for the ball appearing overtop of it due to drop walls in front of it.

I think that's it for the most part.
 

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This is how a light test using a new lens effect based on a lens photo MrHide provided came out. These are handmade lights that I made in paint program (originally for Firepower) combined with a playfield overlay's lettering and MrHide's lens photo using layer tools to create a combined labeled, lens filtered light effect instead of VP lights with decals). They also fade out (with some bulb retraction effects where the light seems to recede into where the bulb would be). There's a bit of detail loss due to JPEG compression, though (mostly on the red lights). It's taken from a 1600x1200 snapshot, though. I'd kind of hate to ever use regular VP lights again....
 

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That is simply stunning, Dude. I like that it's not only crystal clear, but bright too. So many table I play are so dark I can hardly track the ball, which can sure mess up your game. The only bad thing is that I'm just that much further behind the cutting edge.

I couldn't begin to do anything like that, not only because of poor vision, but because I don't have the ability or the paitence. How long does somethin like that take you to complete?

John
 
I think those lights took maybe 6 hours or so to make. It helped that the palyfield was an overlay since that had the light labels against white, which meant I could combine them as a layer effect and essentially get auto-labeling out of it. Likewise, the lenses were just cut & paste onto a layer and then combined with the multiplier effect. Creating the hand-made lights and actually cutting/pasting/labeling all the walls (3 each plus an unlabeled off one in this case) is the most time consuming part. Plus earlier this year, I spent a LOT of time building my VP replacement fading-capable light system (with handlers for lights, walls and reels, all with fading or non-fading or 2-state capability plus overlapping light/flasher handlers, etc.) But that stuff is already done now, so it's just plug & chug. I created it so anyone could use it, but PK is the only one that's used it other than me so far that I've seen. I even made a tutorial table and made it original table friendly (the tutorial is an original table) plus included code to show people how to use F6 style GUI menus in original tables. Overall, I think I was wasting my time trying to make things user friendly as no one else seems interested. Oh well, it just makes my tables look that much better. :)

As for being lit, those are working GI lights there. The table goes dark quite nice, but still maintains an ambient bit of light so it's not totally dark. It looks something like this with the lights out (this is an earlier preview posted elsewhere so it's not quite up to date with all the table changes, but you can get an idea. Sorcerer turns the GI lights out and flashes them quite a bit under various circumstances.
 

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That unlit version is head's above the other Sorcerer table, which is a very good game, but the graphics don't compare to yours at all. If you'd like, you can upload your Tutorial table to our Tutorial Download section, we'd be honored to host it, since I see it as a valuable asset to VP.

Or you can send it to me at [email protected], and I'll load it into our database. The more I get to know your work, and you, the more impressed I am.

tiltjlp
 
I've added 4 new handlers to my light system (now internally at V5.4 and also now in Sorcerer V1.1 as a core insert). The new handlers are variations on the Fading Wall Light Handlers. Essentially, they assume the stationary wall (or playfield) is the ON state instead of the OFF state (as with the regular FadeW type handlers). This has the effect of there being no drop walls raised when something like the GI Lights are ON most of the time. The main purpose is to avoid overlapping drop-wall issues with things like slingshots where the slingshot animation might not be visible if a drop-wall is raised (which would be the case when the GI lights were ON with the old handler that raised a drop for ON instead of lowering all drop walls for the ON state as it does with these handlers).

Basically, this eliminates the problem of the left slingshot animation not showing in Sorcerer as all the playfield GI lights are now reverse handlers with the main playfield being the ON version now instead of the OFF version (and the ON drop walls changed to OFF ones for the new handler). Other items that are on or off about 50% of the time (like pop bumpers in a table like Firepower) would be a trade-off choice as to which state the animation would show up in. Basically, this just shifts the animation glitch of the left slingshot so it doesn't show when the GI lights are OFF (which they rarely are when a ball is anywhere near them). Since the GI lights are usually on, it's the best choice to avoid overlapping glitches here.
 
Dude, although I don't understand most of what you've done, I can see the results, and every time I see the SS I'm more impressed. I wonder if you'd giev me permission to host your tutorial here at Pinball Nirvana. While it might not seem to fit in here, I'm trying to make as many tutorials of all kinds available. I'd apprecite it, and I can do the uploading, since it's on my HD. And I know I could just add it hear and you'd probably couldn't mind, but as an author myself, I won't host anything without permisson.

tiltjlp
 
Yeah, go ahead. The tutorial isn't up to date with the latest light system, but it's mostly to show how to use it in general anyway. It didn't seem like anyone else was using the light system except Pinball Ken (who seemed to figure it out eventually) so I haven't bothered with updating it. The best effects are with wall or reel lights when constructed to show the various light stages more accurately than a simple VP light can show, but even regular fading VP lights (or just 2-state lights with a brighter off state option) look better than the standard VP lights, IMO.

Frankly, I'd like to see how something like Kurt's Fathom table would look if it had the 2 extra dim states added to the existing reels and the light system added to handle it. I think it'd look much better yet. He'd have to make the reels, though since they're from a prerendered 3D program (Truespace). I used The Gimp to make the lights in Firepower and Sorcerer.

Meanwhile, I've added a prototype Knocker option to Sorcerer (enabled in the F6 options menu). Apparently, the software was designed for and supports a knocker (even though it didn't ship with one). The bell in the game only plays for collecting the extra ball. The knocker solenoid fires with a replay (like you would expect). I've made it an option to enable since the real machine didn't ship with it and called it a prototype option.
 
Thanks for your OK. Maybe with it available on more sites, folks will look at it and give it a try. It's way beyond anything I can begin to understand, but I'm sure authors with some talent would find it useful.

tiltjlp
 
Wow pac the sorcerer turned out well,you do good recreations:)
 
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