New Updated Version Uploaded
Haunt, ball shadow fixed with new update, thanks for finding this!
Of course you can set the slings however you like. These are set to be as close to Slydog’s table as possible (from videos he sent me). The reason why the two slings have different values is that at a lower strength, there is a tendency for the slings to just launch the ball back and forth for unusually long periods of time. Making one slightly stronger than the other prevents this oscillation from happening.
There are three things about this table that I really like, the “Bird Ramp” launch, three stage Tar Pit and Volcano.
The Bird Ramp cross table launch shot is an absolutely great game design feature that Ted Zale put into this game. If you shoot too hard you are assured of three lit Thumper Bumpers but no big points. If you shoot too light you miss out on 100 point scores because the bumpers aren’t lit but if you shoot just right, the ball rolls back down with 3000 bonus points. Then any 10 point score shuts the 1000 point bonus off but the ball tends to go right back to the shooter lane so the shot can be made again for 6000 points. To prevent this Zale makes the game shut the shooter lane gate once the ball hits the first rollover on the “Bird Ramp.” Great design.
The second is the three stage Tar Pit with it’s new accurate animated mechanism. This is the second Bally table that I’ve built that has a multistage ball capture (the other is Capersville) and I’ve wondered just exactly how this mechanism works? In Capersville the mechanism is hidden under a plastic so the game just has invisible walls but 4MBC has the mechanism in plain view so I knew we had to do something a little special for this one. If you think from a designers point of view you need a mechanism that always lets the ball move down by only one stage and never lets the ball skip a stage. If you just put in individual stops that drop and raise it is possible that the mechanism cycles too fast and the ball never moves to the next stop and if the mechanism cycles too slow the ball could skip a stage. The solution was to make the ball stop on the front side of a rotating index at the top of the next stage and then rotate that index back to it’s start position to hold the ball there. Bord and I made a multistage routine to replicate the mechanism using invisible walls and rotating primitives.
Lastly the Volcano with its light cycle for point scores of 1000 – 5000 when the ball leaves the saucer is pretty cool. Slydog said that the real game has a small motor that runs when the ball is trapped and that motor controls the light cycle. With his help I was able to find a motor sound that exactly matched the sound his game makes and have it loop while the game is on and a ball is trapped in the Volcano.
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