Modern Firepower returned to the Southern-Fried Gaming Expo

Three years ago, Modern Firepower made its public debut at the first annual 2014 Southern-Fried Gaming Expo.

While schedule conflicts prevented return appearances in 2015 and 2016, Modern Firepower was able to make the trip again for the 2017 Southern-Fried Gaming Expo.  A big thanks to Dan and Joe for making room for Modern Firepower.  An even bigger thanks to Troy, without whom the trip would not have been possible, and Steven, who also assisted with moving duties.

This year's expo itself was a smashing success, with a reported 270+ pinball machines and arcades.  The show was a lot of fun.  If you missed it, be sure to attend next year.

Firepower vs. Modern Firepower at the 2017 Southern-Fried Gaming Expo

Read on for show highlights...


Organizers made sure to have Modern Firepower reside next to an original Williams Firepower (thanks Dan!).  It was really cool to be able to play both versions back to back.

Firepower is still an awesome game, and to me the enhancements made to Modern Firepower significantly elevates the experience.  I think most attendees agreed.

For me it was fun to watch and talk to gamers who played Modern Firepower.  Some were very confused by what they were seeing, as both Firepower and Modern Firepower seemed similar but different.  Just like the first outing, most did not realize that Modern Firepower is a custom machine.

Gamers of all ages enjoyed Modern Firepower

Every so often, I would flip the display between the translite and the debug screen.  The debug screen showed the "Chameleon Pinball Engine" logo proudly front and center, and an outline of the playfield with real-time light, switch and solenoid activity represented.  Whenever the debug screen was up, gamers would do a double-take, realizing that there was definitely something different with this pinball machine.

Often there was a line several gamers deep waiting to play MF.

While the machine didn't perform flawlessly, there were only a few issues throughout the 3-day event.  

• Once or twice, the game appeared to think that a ball was in play, but no ball was on the playfield.  In both cases, I was able to manually pop a ball in the ball shooter lane, and the game auto-recovered from that point.  Considering how many hundreds of games were played, this almost seemed to be a fluke, though I will add some code enhancements to better deal with this scenario.

• On another occasion, an airborne ball got lodged between the apron and the glass.  The problem here is that I have re-used the original apron in a modern style cabinet, which leaves a gap between the apron and the glass.  I need to see if taller modern aprons will fit onto a 1980's style playfield.

• On two occasions, multiple playfield switches stopped responding at the same time.  The root cause is the U-HID controller, which has 50 switch inputs, but a maximum of 32 inputs definable as joystick buttons.  Any additional inputs must be defined as keyboard characters.  If the game window looses focus, the keyboard characters are not directed to the game and those switches appear broken, even though the switches defined as joystick buttons continue to work perfectly.  The short term fix is simple, I just had to click on the game window with the mouse to restore game focus, and the game instantly works correctly again.  An enhanced fix may be possible in code, to force the program window to always have focus, though this would probably have unwanted side effects.

This focus issue has already been addressed by my new Chameleon IO Controller, which provides 56 switch inputs, all definable as joystick buttons.  The new controller will be making its debut in The Black Knight Rises build, though ironically the Black Knight playfield only has 32 switches, and would not have been susceptible to this issue.

• The last issue popped up late on Sunday, day three of the event:  The right flipper stopped working.  I was happy to discover that it was just a loose connection on the right flipper button.  I had used slide-on connectors instead of solder so that I could easily test different button mechanisms like micro-switches, mini-leaf switches and real leaf switches - and the connector had simply vibrated off of the switch.

In general, the game played wonderfully.  I didn't notice any lag issues, which can still pop up occasionally on this 3-year old code.  My new code has done much to further improve performance and reduce lag (not to mention tons of new features), though I've yet to migrate my enhancements to this older platform.  I'm primarily focused on developing for my new Chameleon IO Controller.  Outside of the two occasions where the ball was missing in play, I didn't note a single gameplay bug.

Theme Swap: Terra-forming Pinball

On Saturday I was honored to be one of four guest speakers on the "Theme Swap: Terra-forming Pinball" discussion panel.  While the audience turnout was on the small side - seems most people are just interested in playing pinball, not customizing it - the discussion was lively and, for me at least, very enlightening.  I'm not sure if the panel was recorded, but if I locate it, I'll be sure to share a link.

Yours truly, talking smack.

The best part for me was meeting the other innovators on the panel:

John Marsh - Spaceballs the Pin:

I didn't know who John Marsh was before the panel, and had only seen his new custom pinball machine briefly the day before.  I had no idea what I was missing.

About 3 years ago John started the "Spaceballs the Pin" custom pinball build.  He crowdsourced a lot of design ideas, and shared his progress, on Pinside:  https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/spaceballs-the-pin

I just skimmed through the thread - lot's of great stuff in there - and the path John took reminds me a lot of how I started some 8-9 years ago: trying to figure out what controllers to use, making electronics, writing code.  I was never as ambitious as John, though, since he tackled making a playfield and custom game rules.  And toys.  OMG the toys!  I'd be hard pressed to think of a better theme for a pinball than Spaceballs, with its rich fountain of sound bites and imagery.

John Marsh's Spaceballs: The Pin at the 2017 Southern-Fried Gaming Expo

Best part, John brought an almost working Spaceballs to this year's SFGE!  Just like me, he ran into last minute technical issues.  I feel your pain, John.

Brian Madden - Mission Pinball Framework:

It was an odd experience listening to Brian describe the Mission Pinball Framework, he was nearly describing the Chameleon Pinball Engine.

Building a game on the Mission Pinball Framework

Some notable differences:  MPF is cross platform, free, open source pinball software framework.  It can run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Rasberry Pi.  It is also hardware independent, being able to communicate with FAST Pinball, the Open Pinball Project, and P-ROC/P3-ROC, and more.  It seems like a truly wonderful solution, and I plan to explore it further.

Check out more at http://MissionPinball.org

Obviously MPF is further along in development than my CPE, especially considering they have multiple contributing developers, both part and full time.

Brian expressed an interest is implementing support for my Chameleon IO Controller, as one of his goals is to support all pinball related controllers and peripherals.

Kevin Thoman - Foo Fighters pinball conversion:

I first got to play the Foo Fighters pinball at last year's SFGE.  I was absolutely blown away by this amazing game, and immediately had to research it to find out more.  I thought it was a factory pin that I had just never come across, and was surprised to learn that is is actually a custom pinball, based upon the Rolling Stones pinball.  This is a very high quality conversion, with a fantastic theme that is tons of fun to play and listen to.

Foo Fighters pinball conversion by Kevin Thoman

Check the Foo Fighters pinball machine out here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU-K_KBg9YQ

Kevin shared some great insights into how he re-themed the Rolling Stones donor pin.  He's also had interest from Dave Grohl who wants his own copy!  Me too!


I guess that's it from this year's expo. Game Over.