Progress on "66"

[druadic]

Just a quick screenshot of Globe Manufacturing Company's 1934 "66". Shooting for a SUNDAY release on 05/03/2020. Just a few more tests and tweaks.

This was a "slide in" board to replace other machine(s) play fields. It was used to replace Mills and Rockola play fields. See the AD from the 1930's below which will be included with the official VPX release.

SPECIAL THANX to Carl Tanner for NUMEROUS play field images and other goodies to make this one as special as it can be considering it's rarity on IPDB has not a single image. Carl actually OWNS this super rare replacement board that was put into a rockola machine, so the original board was pulled and replaced by this one.

From step one I had to re straighten the entire PF. I then had to clean up around each and every single image that should not be removed from the original machine. This alone took about two and a half weeks of off and on work. Play testing is still taking place currently for realism and proper scoring.

PS: This table requires a bit of nudging!

EDIT: Current screenshot is the one attached.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Wow, looking good!

That background is pretty boss, too.

 

[druadic]

Thanks Ike. I too like that background. It seemed to fit the table perfectly and it just made understandable as to why Globe called it "66". I figured it was justified to give the game a proud look with that background image. I actually thought I wouldn't even get to this stage with some of the problems with the re drawing, but I can't stand a play field image that hasn't been at least cleaned and straightened up. After most authors started to kick themselves into higher gears and proved that cleaning their play fields and parts across the releases really made a huge difference. I may not go that far as to turn the images I get into what is classified as "ultra high end" graphics but you should have seen the original photo. YIKES! Poor thing was so neglected - whom ever owned the machine before Carl let the pins become twisted and bent, the play field was coated in dust and many of the holes looked smeared with various colors of play field paint. ALL the fore mentioned had to be removed and redrawn.

I sent the screenshot to Carl Tanner himself and I think he was thrilled with the result. I used messenger in facebook to send it to him and got a thumbs up.

Back in the days of VP7 and the lower releases, I couldn't have cared less of how the image of the play field looked.

It's been one of my biggest PEEVES since VP 8. I just won't play a VP release without it being cleaned up and correctly straightened in the program so it looks and plays right. A five minute play field straightening can make a HUGE difference.

Anyway, I think it came out just about right and I'm having a ball playing it. That ball is as smooth as silk when it bounces around the board, but I'm still not good at the nudging at the center bottom to rack up those points!

Hope folks will like this one. I'm having a blast with it.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

That reminds me that when I was going through the flipperless entries, I couldn't believe how many tables people like John and Patrick were pumping out with just atrocious starting material.

I guess this is (or was) a pretty controversial thing to say at one point around here, but it's been many years now, and I doubt anyone's going to get offended by my talking about it.

But yeah, I can understand starting with a photo of a machine that's been neglected for years, but worse than that is how terrible the image quality was for so many of those tables. "Was it really worth making the table?" is a question I often found myself asking when looking at them.

Of course that's with the benefit of hindsight, when there's probably much better starting material for lots of these, now. Or maybe not, since you yourself wind up redrawing so many playfields.

 

[druadic]

Well I realized I missed placing four pins and two of the point areas were wrong so those have been fixed. Still in play testing mode for now.

 

[druadic]

Actually Ike, ANY table from the 30's era is completely worth making IF you have decent play field images. If you can't straighten out the PF itself then sometimes the best option is to redraw the entire thing and pull specific items from an actual image to put into your redraw. I've done this as well since there are so many really crappy or dirty images but it is worth it when you take the time to get that realism to show.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Actually Ike, ANY table from the 30's era is completely worth making IF you have decent play field images.

Absolutely. But when the source image is awful and the author isn't willing to get it redrawn, then you got trouble, my friend. Right here in River City.

Do you still have an older crowd asking you to convert flipperless games to VP? I remember a long time ago you were kind of snowed under with requests. I'm not sure I would have handled that as well as you did.

 

[druadic]

Some groups across the web have asked for more tables which surprises me and even a few folks have told me they have played my tables through the years and love them. Pretty much makes it all worthwhile for sure. Amazingly, there is a pretty large base for flipperless pin machines but they don't really frequent these forums too much so I've been on a mission to get them to come over here when they can.

As for redrawing table images, it doesn't take much to use MS Paint and GIMP 2.10 to get the job done. Like I said, after VP6 I was starting to see all the other authors using higher end graphics and vector/ray tracing work so I decided to just find some decent images of tables I thought would be worthy of VP and started to redraw them.

 

[druadic]

This table will be up sometime this week. Still a few more things I have to fix and check. IT WILL be up this week though.

 

[druadic]

Here is the ORIGINAL table image. YIKES!!!View attachment 13876

 

[druadic]

"66" is now uploaded to the downloads area! Enjoy!