Hipster Ben is ready for Maker Faire!

Thanks to my sponsor Element14.com, I will be attending Maker Faire 2012 and doing a few panels and presentations. More information to come, check show schedules.

See you all then! Makerbots!

Ghost Squad whitewood

So the big news is we scrapped “Lost” pinball. This was for a variety of reasons, the main being we spent so much time trying to cram things into it that we didn’t spend enough time making it play well. So it’s a beautiful game with boring loops and bad ball returns.

But, much like our independent film projects of the past, we took this as a learning experience of how NOT to build a pinball machine. Since then we’ve been working with John Popaduik who’s taught us a lot, and is even putting me in his Zombie game!

Our next pinball project is a custom game inspired by the 2011 Halloween episode of The Ben Heck Show… Ghost Squad! It started as a way to test our new system, but is developing into a game as well. Here’s why we picked this theme:

• Easy-to-create assets. Like everyone else, our pinball is going video and our backbox is basically one big LCD. One issue with this is you need far more art assets than an old DMD game. With Ghost Squad we already have access to our characters and can easily film content in front of a green screen. Compare this to a hand-drawn game like “Tesla Vs Edison” where we’d have to create everything from scratch.
• Unlicensed Theme: While Ghost Squad is obviously inspired by the 94,000 Ghost Hunting shows on cable, it’s an original theme which means we can build multiple copies and sell them.
• Humor Potential: The theme is great for satire, we can’t really insult anyone with it, and since women love those kind of shows, it might even be The Pinball Machine Your Wife Likes Too. (holy grail of collectors)

We’re also trying to have more ball interaction toys than our previous efforts. Special features include:

• Spooky Door. A plastic door than opens, closes, traps balls or can be bashed open. Has a VUK (vertical up-kicker) behind it for ball locks or flow interruption for mode start.
• Hellavator. An elevator from Hell. Balls can enter from behind (“first floor”) or enter via a ramp shot (“second floor”) The Hellavator can change floors, release the ball and also lock it. The ball can also fall through into the Basement of Horrors.
• Basement of Horrors: A tunnel under the playfield that leads from the Hellavator to the Basement Scoop. Balls can be blocks and collected in the basement.
• Spirit Magnet: A moving magnet under the playfield, like in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Playfield art in that area will be a Spirit Board (Ouiji is copyrighted so we can’t call it that) so the ball “moves by itself” to answer questions from the dead!
• Ball Jump: One shot is up a broken staircase to a balcony, and you have to actually jump the ball across a gap to get there. We’re working hard to make this shot around a 50/50 probability of success.

So keep on eye on this site, my YouTube page and of course the Ben Heck Show!

We’ll be doing 2 panels – Ben Heck Zombie Advenure on Saturday at noon, and Spooky Pinball Homebrew discussion Sunday at noon.

See you all then!

You could see your ideas come to life!

We based it off the Arduino shield from Rocket Scream. For more information, and plenty of detail to build one yourself, check out their site!

Aside from classic gaming they also have lots and lots of Pinball! Enjoy homebrew games from Team Heck and Spooky Pinball such as:

1) Lost – hopefully with the final playfield installed!

2) Godzilla – now with sound!

3) Bill Paxton Pinball – with an improved shooter lane and a Start button that actually adds players the right way.

Hope to see you there!

No better way to spend a Sunday afternoon! John Popaduik gave me one of his spare LED Vishay displays so I thought it would be fun to hook it up to a microcontroller (MCU)

Because it has 8 simultaneous cores and does not require interrupts, the Parallax Propeller seemed like a good bet. The code still had to be written in machine language to be fast enough.

You can download the resulting code here. Wire your DMD to your MCU by cross-referencing your machine’s pinout to the commented code (you need 6 signal wires + ground) or by looking at the Vishay docs.

A single COG is launched in SPIN and will continuously spit out data to your display. The variable array “displayX” holds your screen memory and requires 2 bits per pixel.

This gives you 4 shades of color: 0ff (00), dim (01), medium (10) and bright (11). Check the code comments for more information.

Hopefully this may be of use to anyone modding or doing homebrew pinball – have fun!

• Services section. The end goal is to have CNC and laser work be available to clients over the internet. So if you’ve got a project idea, we can help! I’m working on a very detailed tutorial to help you make the best files possible.
• Store. Common items such as Controller Monitors and accessibility mods can be found here. Also possibly kits in the future.
• Very comprehensive “Downloads” section. Free access to almost all of my classic designs and projects, right up to things as recent as “Lost” pinball.
• Live Shop Cam via Ustream. If we’re broadcasting, you’ll see it on the homepage.

And as usual, the forums are available as well. Have fun and I hope to add even more features soon!

Now you can own a piece of Ben Heck History! Own the original portable work bench as seen on older episodes of the Ben Heck Show.

You can check out the eBay auction here – no reserve, actual cost shipping.

Yes, believe it or not, we’ve done a year-end podcast! We’ve got a lot of topics, including:

• How Liam Neeson might organically slip the line “You Sunk My Battleship!” into Universal’s $250 million “Battleship” movie.
• Our favorite games of 2011, and biggest disappointments.
• Tom Cruise, Scientology and the expense of going to the movies.
• Zombie trend in gaming, and why a zombie apocalypse wouldn’t be as cool as nerds would hope.
• Our latest adventures in pinball.
• Tablets and phones versus portable gaming systems.
• Speculation about the next Xbox and what if it’s ARM based.
• Why “Project 10 Dollar” is just the tip of the digital download only future.
• The problems with Rocky 4. Yes, it has problems.
• Netflix and the future of media.

Enjoy and have a happy new year!

Download Ben Heck Dot Com Podcast # 76!