Pinball Map Open Thread

General
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I once walked into a bar/eatery in downtown Birmingham in the middle of the day because I had heard they had a few pinball machines. The place was closed and all the lights were off, but the doors were not locked. I proceeded to find the machines, turned on KISS and played about 4 credits on it, all the while expecting someone to come up and ask what the hell are you doing? I played for like 1/2 hour, turned the game back off and walked out. Never saw another soul. True story!

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125

I asked the owner of Ayce, and he told me it’s totally fine to turn them on.

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Site update: We formed a chill partnership with Stern. See our blog post http://blog.pinballmap.com/2016/08/10/pinball-map-partners-with-stern and see their homepage.

Edit: and their facebook post.

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127

Pinball Map iOS app has been updated.

It mostly adds some features that are on the website.

What’s New in Version 3.2

[New] View PinTips for Machines
[New] Show past Machine Conditions
[New] Show the last time a Location was updated
[New] Ability to confirm the information for a given Location is up-to-date
[New] Filter Nearby Map based on a set of distances (From 10-50 miles from your current location)
[Fix] Update list of Regions when main site is updated
[Fix] Minor UI Issue where Machine names would not be formatted correctly

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128

Guess it might finally be time to start a Mid Michigan / Tri-City area region. To encompass the cities of: Saginaw, Midland, Bay City, Flint and the surrounding area. To big of a region or just right?

Just found out about this app/site today to track games on location. Looking towards exploring the region to find games in the wild and meet more players and operators.

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The “tap to confirm machines” doesn’t seem to work on iOS. App is up to date but I’m one iOS update behind.

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Thy will be done (note: we’re chatting in email about this).

You’re right! Good catch. I don’t have an iOS device, so I do all my testing on borrowed devices while people stare impatiently at me. This will be fixed soon.

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Since I last mentioned it, we’ve added these regional maps:

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By the end of this weekend the Mid-Michigan region data will start to grow.

Thanks for adding it.

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And today we added Calgary. No data yet. But soon.

Also, an update to the iOS app has been submitted to the app store (though it’s not approved/released yet). It fixes the bug mentioned above, as well as another one. Edit: The iOS app update has been released. It’s version 3.2.1.

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134

Going into the hottest week of the year I would love to see a filter by which places have A/C.

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For a start, I could add a “message of the day” to the Portland map that says, “DON’T GO TO BILLY RAYS!”

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136

Anyone in Detroit want to be the admin of the Detroit Pinball Map? Our original admin has been unresponsive for a couple years, so I’ve been doing it.

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If you don’t get anyone within a week let me know and I’ll send out some feelers.

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@heyrocker would like you to have that message permanently pinned to the Portland map. I love my B Ray’s, but I’m totally fine with no one else going there :wink:

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I got Cincy added! Question to fellow admins, if I get a location request is it supposed to show somewhere when I login to my admin account so that I can approve it?

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No, it doesn’t show up in there :disappointed: You just get the emails, and a weekly reminder. We’re working on something that’s better integrated into the admin system. However, it’s a fine balance - because I hate to say it but the current setup provides better opportunity to clean up the submissions. If you simply had to approve a location with a click of a button, I have no doubt that some locations would have misspellings, lack of punctuation, and inconsistent spelling/abbreviations. I want to figure out how Yelp does it. They are one of the few (or only) sites of its kind that has an approval process for new locations. And because of this they consistently rank best in terms of quality of data (very few duplicate entries, etc). Because of their high standards, I more or less see them as our model.

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No problem at all. Just making sure I didn’t miss something. Thanks!

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Is it better to submit new locations via the app or the website? None of the locations I’ve submitted on the website have ever showed up.

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It doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing. What area are you submitting them to? If none have shown up, it means the admin is inactive, or you’re submitted them outside the scope of that map. If the admin is inactive, then we’re looking for a new admin (I try to keep up with this - sending them reminders and stuff - but it’s hard to keep on top of it all).