Lynn's Rec Room Projects

[LynnInDenver]

So, over 3 years after we moved into the house, I finally was able to get two projects firmly off the ground and into a playable state.

   

First, our new virtual pinball build, Radiant Silverball. Hundreds of pinball tables are at our fingertips, at least digitally. I based it in part on the vintage pinball machine we already had. Part of why it exists is that we only have room for two pinball machines.

   

Second is our MAME machine, Legacy of the Stick. A fairly streamlined four-player machine, streamlined as in it's just for joystick games. I really don't like how layouts feel shoehorned/compromised when the trackball and/or spinner is included in these builds. I'll probably build a dedicated "bartop" for those games later on. We also have a party trick to this setup - the monitor can ROTATE. It's a 40" screen, so you can kind of picture how big Punch Out is (yes, it does show the correct over/under).

And with this, our rec room is officially out of room for more stuff.

[Black Aeronaut]

NOICE.

Wish I had room for fun things, but unfortunately my place is still packed full of crap from when my folks were here.

(I fucking called it. They started pulling a bunch of stuff out of storage to sort through it, but it never went back in. nyyuuuuurrrggghhh....)

If I had the room for it though... I'd like to have only of those nice little game rooms that have the Xbox, PS, Nintendo trifecta, plus a sick-nasty looking PC to round things out for PC games and video. (Because, let's face it. Netflix, Crunchyroll, and Vudu all SUCK BIG BRASS ONES on console systems and lag horribly.)

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, I envy you. Both of those are things I'd love to have but for which we have no room at all.

[LynnInDenver]

Well, Bob, our two things are in part in response to the problem of not enough room (and technically not enough money). Much of the room in our house has been claimed in some way or another. We don't actually have any real good storage areas as it turns out, but that's good in that we can't stockpile (and hoard) a lot of stuff. The one area that we've been using for storage, we're finally converting into proper use, and we'd always intended to do so. Probably the only reason we even have a place in the house for the pinball is a friend offered to give us a pinball machine knowing that we were house hunting, and that - by default basically - claimed that corner of the rec room when we moved in.

[Labster]

Yeah, I really wish I had room for a foosball table. Oh well, still not moving away from the coast.

[Star Ranger4]

You BUILT a mutli game virtual pinball table. OMG Lynn.

[LynnInDenver]

Well, I am a bit of a maker. Granted, most of the pieces were bought in some form or another. Legs and lockdown bar are vintage Bally kit, leg bolt plates were bought new from a place called Marco Specialties, coin door probably came from a 6-player X-Men cab. The computer is a Windows 7 machine we picked up, and the Visual Pinball software is available on a couple of sites, as well as hundreds of tables for it. But yeah, the cabinetry is more or less all me. I'm not the first to do it, and I won't be the last.

[Bob Schroeck]

... And the Addams Family glass for the upright. Nice.

[LynnInDenver]

Being a virtual pinball machine, the backglass does change based on the table currently loaded. I just used Addams Family for the picture.

[Bob Schroeck]

...that never occurred to me. Very cool.

[Mamorien]

So what's the physical pinball machine? I can't read the name off the backglass worth a fat damn, nor do I recognize the image.

[LynnInDenver]

The real pinball machine in the corner is Gottlieb's Solar Ride. It's player condition, but a very nice player condition. My husband thinks it's Home Use Only. We're something like the 3rd or 4th owner of the machine.

[LynnInDenver]

   

So, both projects survived the first encounter with guests yesterday. Had one fix to do to the pinball, basically fixing the last "poor choice" with regards to trying to use quick disconnects on the flipper switches. There's still tweaking to do to the pinball machine - I've still got some front end media stuff to do, and I need to redo part of the tilt bob assembly because I can either have it not working, or way way way too sensitive. Plus, four more tables were released by the community TODAY, which takes us up to 481 - which would be more, but I made a curation decision regarding duplicate playfields (more vs less players, add-a-ball over other types, mostly with Gottlieb) so we wouldn't have over 600. Pictured is one of those tables, from the player's perspective.

   

I also 3d-printed some control labels for the MAME cab, as there was mild confusion regarding start and coin up. The text colors are Gauntlet;the background colors are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I've kind of had ideas for character art of Shadowrun style characters done in DAZ Studio, but we might try the otherwise all-black look first.

You'll all notice there's some specific choices made towards "minimalism" in our interfaces here. The MAME machine doesn't really have any sort of system buttons. There is an option to exit a game involving button <em>combination</em> (basically second and third Start buttons). I set up something similar on the pinball, so that it literally presents like the front of a large number of real pinball machines.

   

Yes, you can "coin up" on this without a quarter. I 3d printed a lot of replacement pieces for inside that coin door to replace the original coin mech brackets and block the slot off... and brackets to hold switches. You press a coin reject, and it coins that coin slot. To exit a table and get back to the menu, you hold down the white Extra Ball button, and press Start.

[Wiregeek]

That's a fine arcade setup. One of the things on The List is a half-depth Mame cab, with a two player rotatable input module (joy+button on one face, spinners and balls on the other).

But that's got to wait over the #1 entry on The List - The Shop.. 40x60, 10' ceilings, in floor heat, potty.. it's gonna be a hell of a project.

[LynnInDenver]

Thanks, Wiregeek.

As a note, if I hadn't managed to find that wall mount that lets us rotate the monitor to portrait (not motorized, but it moves really easy), I was going to bury the 47" that's now in the pincab into an upright arcade cabinet, in such a way we would have had an addressable marquee and a squared up region for the main screen area.

Why'd the 47" get moved to the pincab? Because it was actually too big without moving the MAME pedestal 3-4 feet from the wall whenever we wanted to play. Fortunately, we got a 40" as a hand-me-down to use for that.

[LynnInDenver]

*blasts the dust off the thread with a shop compressor*

Got the pinball cabinet stripped down, art applied, reassembled, and with some upgrades. We now have actual chimes, side rails, proper exhaust fans to the back, and a little internal cleanup. All I need is proper glass to cover the playfield, and a wood bezel to replace the backbox temporary bezel, and it's basically done.

   

[Bob Schroeck]

Nice. I wish I had one of those, and the room to put it.

[LynnInDenver]

   

OK, now we're adding a level of "insane" to our "Console Room" (what it says on the tin, we keep the game consoles there).

   

They're seats with speakers that were once bolted to an arcade driving game - in this case Ridge Racer V: Arcade Battle. The intent is to replace the couch in the console room with them. They even have speakers and a subwoofer each, so I'll be fitting an amplifier into each so each one is it's own self-contained sound system. A bit insane given we have 7.1 surround in the Console Room right now.

[classicdrogn]

Well, you know what they say, you can't be crazy awesome if you don't go at least a little crazy.

[robkelk]

Is that a self-portrait? I think it might be the first one you've posted here...

[LynnInDenver]

Yeah, Rob, it's a self portrait. I'm pretty sure it's the first, or at least, if there was another one it was lost in the move from Tapacrap.

[Star Ranger4]

... Wow.

Your man is one lucky male, Lynn.

[LynnInDenver]

He seems to think so.

Yeah, so we will need to determine how invasive the amplifier install will be (I can add a custom footrest box bolted to the existing brackets, or cut into the existing plinth to install one), install replacement t-molding (it's completely gone from the bottoms of the plinths, and we need to determine what color goes on), and create some seating cushions for longer-term comfort. Then last one can be handled after they are moved downstairs, but the first two need to happen before they go downstairs.

Also:

[LynnInDenver]

So, some new additions for the "console room" portion of the basement, thanks to Best Buy having a sale... so, "get the snorkel".

   

Yeah, it's the bar golf game Golden Tee. It plays a darn sight better than me trying to use a small trackball on my computer in MAME.

   

The "countercade" version of Centipede is a bit weird. Arcade1Up Countercades only have two games each... on here the second game is Missile Command. What makes it weird is that Centipede is portrait mode (and so is the 8" screen here), but Missile Command is landscape mode, so it's severely letterboxed on that 8" screen, although it is actually playable. That Millipede would have been a fit in theme and mode makes it a little more confusing. So Centipede will probably be going on the workbench for a brain transplant once the warranty runs out, so that it can serve for several trackball games. I'm on the fence about sourcing a larger screen that fits the cabinet when it comes to that; such a modification would require me to source a used LCD monitor, most likely, especially if I try to get one that's a true 4:3 ratio.

[LynnInDenver]

OK, technically NOT a "rec room" project... dismantled the "Uncle's Estate" paint booth in favor of my own build, with key pieces of the old "living on" in the new one.

   
   

The blower motor for the exhaust and the lights are from the old booth, everything else is new and built to what I've determined at the current time is my needs in a paint booth:

Ability to sit OR stand (I could only sit before). This should help increase my painting time by letting me change my posture throughout a session.
Correct deck height from the start (I had to use some bed risers to get it almost where I wanted it).
Power panel on the right wall for blower, compressor, and both lights (versus power strip for lights, wall switch on top for blower, reaching underneath to turn on compressor), with added advantage that the compressor is no longer in the way of storing things underneath the booth. My little shop is only 8'x9', so every little bit of space I don't waste is pure gold.
Generally wider and taller, better filling the space available. I no longer feel like I'm hunching my shoulders together to actually work in it, and now the limiting size factor is the depth of the booth instead of the height. The old one was something like 28x22x18 for the inner volume, now we're at 33x23x30 for the inner volume.
There's an "order up clip" rail on the left side of the booth that I can clip a sacrificial pieces of cardstock into to paint on for pattern testing. It's convenient, yet kept off the work, and I can replace it as needed easily.
It's all higher grade materials. The old one was mostly OSB with some 2x2 timber framing... now we're mostly 3/4" birch plywood with the exception of the legs.

I'm hoping to get a good test run in this week to put the new build through its paces. It already feels better than what it replaced.