Recently I have had a couple of ideas regards how I think pinball could be improved and am interested to know what people think. This post is about “Open Source” rulesets
this is the idea that pinball manufacturers would open their source code to the public.
it would allow community developers to develop custom code sets and digital assets for pinball tables.
similar to how video games support modding, it would extend beyond pinball owners physically modding machines, but also being able to change the code for machines.
this could be opened up to various degrees, in it’s simplest form it would enable community developers to fix bugs in pinball company code and submit additional features for consideration that companies could consider adopting.
in a more sophisticated world you could have repositories of full game code that individuals could decide to download and install on their machines.
it could be beneficial for companies like Stern to leverage the ideas of the broader community and allow pinball owners to more fully leverage their machines.
Are people aware of any attempts to do the above in the industry present or upcoming? Do people think their would be an appetite for owners to be able to download custom rulesets for their machines? Interested to hear opinions…
Homepin actually did this with their Blues Brothers table where they released it to the public, and then gave the code to everyone so they could edit it into whatever they wanted. Unfortunately, it was Homepin who did it…
Interesting, I see that came out just last year. I wonder if that turned out to be a good experiment for them or not.
Even without allowing custom code, I’d like to see companies have online bug tracking open to the public so you can see/be aware of issues or problems with tables and know that it is on the list to be fixed at some point. I guess they are potentially worried about cost impacts if everyone were to know a certain issue were present, but I think people figure that out already through other platforms (Facebook groups etc).
It would also provide a place for people to suggest new features/table enhancements.
Stern was going to attempt this at some point but I think they backed away from the idea for the same reason you brought up, risks of cost impacts and harassment from the pinball community.
There are many gotchas with this concept, some more obvious than others:
For licensed titles (the majority of modern pinball), the licensor typically has very specific ideas about how their license is presented. The licensor is not likely to be happy with a manufacturer/licensee if that manufacturer facilitates the misuse of the licensed content. In an extreme case, the licensor could cancel the license, instantly making the machine unsellable. Nothing like having millions of dollars of inventory suddenly worthless.
If a player walks up to a public machine that appears to be a known title from Brand X, and it contains modified code that is buggy, unfun, etc – that reflects badly on Brand X, because the player probably doesn’t know that the code is not stock. Again considering an extreme case: bad code on a pinball machine can literally cause a fire or other physical damage to the machine, and that could reflect really badly on Brand X.
Doing this sort of concept “properly” typically involves creating some sort of SDK for the pinball environment, documenting it, providing developer support, etc. Who’s gonna pay for all of that?
That said, at least one manufacturer, Multimorphic, did build the company from the ground up with the idea of allowing developers to create totally new code for existing playfields, so you could check out their offerings if you’re interested in making custom code for pins. (Multimorphic’s platform also has some capability of doing online interaction, as you discussed in a separate “ideas for improving pinball” post.)
One big consideration is that you’re dealing with things like coils and magnets that use a lot of power. Alter how they’re used in the wrong way and you could break things.
Many years ago, there was an arcade DDR type game called In The Groove 2. You could play the factory songs, or you could create your own song and upload it via a USB port on the front of the game. Lots and lots of youngsters, always boys, got ahold of a version where every correct step would make the game blurt out a swear word. Think Sopranos swear mode.
Probably half a dozen times at different locations, kids would come in while I was playing pinball and play the swear game. Always ended the same. Song lasted maybe 2-3 minutes, then the boys ran out of the arcade giggling. At the mall, mall cop showed up a few minutes later. So lots to consider when you go open source.
TNA was an open source project before Spooky got involved IIRC.
I doubt any serious manufacturer will spend any time on this but having a “pinball construction set” sure would be interesting for the tinkerer.
Envision a web based IDE where you could build your rules with your assets and then apply the ruleset on your game and share with friends. It doesn’t even have to be open source this way, just a pinball machine with an online game editor, like any odd PC game that comes with a map editor or other “custom game” engine programmed in some high level language like LUA. It’s not like it hasn’t been done before.
For stern, if you email the bug report email with bugs, it makes the list. They don’t like committing to code updates because over promising and under delivering has gotten them in trouble in the past.
Multimorphic has a 3rd Party SDK available to anyone who wants to develop for the platform. You can make games for any of the modules, and release them on their store. There are 13 third party add-on games right now.
The kind of things you mention I am interested in too, and some others:
Making cooperative truly coop, not just adding two scores together but also game progress.
For home machines having visitor high scores as well as home team high scores, to allow friends coming over to track their progress too.
Friend group high-score tables, where it show a combined high score table of your friends on Insider connect.
I think the IP argument goes away a little for say Stern machines when you look at machines like Kong which isn’t dependent upon external IP.
Also home editions reduce some of the brand impact since basically they aren’t out in the open and facing the public - the home use case is growing.
I think a number of guard rails could also be put in place like:
have people sign disclaimers who request the dev kit.
have any changes that are made need to go through Stern and be approved by them.
limit exactly what people can change.
I get that there are challenges, but I am interested to know if they could be overcome, because ultimately it would allow Stern to develop more feature rich products for a lower price and to engage the community more.
An even simpler reason a major player will never do this. If you can re-code the game easily you are refreshing the game easily. If you can refresh the game easily you aren’t buying a new game.