I figure, we’re looking at a 5 to 10 year plan here, given my current amount of free time and competing hobbies.
It breaks down like this:
- First Edition – Really simple. 2 flippers, slingshots, some pop-bumpers and a couple targets. No real ‘game’ to speak of. More to get a feel for the wood-working involved in making the playfield and for the electronics and software. Probably use the gutted cabinet from my Hurricane, a WPC-95 driver board and an embedded single board computer with a digital I/O board (there are about 5 million possibilities there). Sketchup and emachineshop.com will probably come in handy.
- Second Edition – More stuff on the playfield, a ramp or two, maybe even some modicum of a game. Sounds, scoring, interesting shots maybe?
- Third Edition – The real thing. Real game, real art, real sounds, music, and an actual theme (my current favorite choice is Homestar Runner). Note that this will never happen.
I have been wanting to do this for about six years. I decided to start working on it in tiny pieces, rather than waiting until I can devote all of my attention to it (which will also never happen).