3 replies to this topic

[Bluebook]

Hi, apologies if this has been dicsussed before -

Similar to Visual Pinball, has anyone considered a crazy project of seeing how close we can emulate our favourite Fruits?

We must be close (feasibility wise) given the fact that we have touch screens available and amazing hardware like the LED WIZ that can control lighting/relays/hardware etc. not to mention the ipac to control our buttons.

Has anyone here ever considered this? I would love to add to my games room a real fruit machine cabinet but using say dual monitors installed, with real buttons controlled by an ipac/LEDWIZ. With the ipac and LEDWIZ hardware it may be possible of controlling relays to output both insert coins and pay out. just a thought - or too crazy?

Edited by Bluebook, 20 October 2012 - 01:23 PM.

[Taylor525]

If I remember correctly, there was an Horrizon cabinet style touch screen machine called 'The Player' and had games on like DOND and Bejewelled for example. Don't know who made it, but it had 2 LCDs on it and the surrounding areas of the screen changed colour.

It was a rare machine and only saw one at Minehead butlins and several here in Blackpool.

there's also now the ASTRA Serve machines that not only have £500s on, have games like DOND and roulette. I think this was called BTS (Betting terminal station)

So not impossible or crazy at all

...Though I would imagine it costing a lot to make your own, with 2 screens, buttons, pc, etc- Tho not expensive if you introduced it to the industry!!

Edited by Taylor525, 20 October 2012 - 05:38 PM.

[Bencrest]

If I remember correctly, there was an Horrizon cabinet style touch screen machine called 'The Player' and had games on like DOND and Bejewelled for example. Don't know who made it, but it had 2 LCDs on it and the surrounding areas of the screen changed colour.

It was a rare machine and only saw one at Minehead butlins and several here in Blackpool.

there's also now the ASTRA Serve machines that not only have £500s on, have games like DOND and roulette. I think this was called BTS (Betting terminal station)

So not impossible or crazy at all

...Though I would imagine it costing a lot to make your own, with 2 screens, buttons, pc, etc- Tho not expensive if you introduced it to the industry!!

It wouldn't cost a lot at all. However, I think it would make more sense to just use single screen, mounted in portrait, such as a 24" in the top of the cabinet.

Old fruit machine cabinets are pretty much free, 24 or 26" monitor would be about £100, you'd only need a fairly modest PC (say £200 for cheap case & PSU, mainboard, CPU, graphics card, HDD, and RAM).

I assume the main cost would be in the interfaces between the inputs (buttons e.t.c.) and the PC itself.

I was planning on doing this with my old JPM Vogue cabinet (formerly home to a JPM Cluedo SWP, before I kept the glass and skipped the rest), never got around to it though!

Edited by Bencrest, 20 October 2012 - 05:58 PM.

[Bluebook]

Hi, thanks for your response guys. I need to catch up and read up everything on this site so I dont start asking stupid questions (so forgive me if I do;)

The reason I mentioned dual screens is that the majority of fruit machines (expecially my favourite era of MPU3 Fruit machine) do have a separate top and bottom panel section and in order for the "real" fruit machine cabinet to look, play and feel right, a "cabinet" download version would be required (and no doubt changes to the emulated software as well - or perhaps a new type of software for cabinet users.

- The thought of having a proper generic fruit machine cabinet with a front end interface that can play hundreds of your favourite fruits would be fantastic and wondered whether anyone else would be up for this challenge?

It would be the same principal that is applied to Visual Pinball where they have one version for "desktop users" and another for "cabinet users"
I noticed there are many different resolutions available here for the games - with some opting for landscape with usually the flyer to the right or the optimised portrait version since this is more 'native' to the actual layout of a fruit.

Recently using the LEDWIZ Hardware if my digital pinball cabinet showed just how much we have progressed where we can control basically anything from software (although some electronics expertise will be required) It should be possible via a relay to control coin payouts and well as controlling the buttons and lighting.
Unfortunately I dont know anything about how our favourite fruit machines are emulated and coded but I could check with the LEDWIZ developer (Randy) to see if it is feasible to interface his hardware with fruit machine software.

Getting the cabinet/building a comp/finding buttons/LEDWIZ/IPAC are the easy parts for me. The harder challenge would be adapting or coming up with new emulated software for cabinet builders. I guess it depends on whether others are as interested as me in this crazy project