Author Topic: Predator - by SkitBPinball  (Read 78752 times)

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Offline pinsanity

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Predator - by SkitBPinball
« on: March 24, 2012, 08:48:26 PM »
Here's an interesting custom pinball being made by a group of hobbyists (skitbpinball) in the US.

http://skitbpinball.com/index.html

They started working on this machine last year and things progressed slowly at first with only a few updates, but there has been quite a bit of activity on their website in the last week or so, so thought I would make a post.

Their plan is to be a custom run of 200 machines and pricing was semi-finalised a few days ago at $4750 US. It uses a standard DMD screen with proper animations and a partially complete whitewood playfield layout was released a couple of days ago (as below):



Here are the DMD animations which look very impressive:



If you are interested, there are plenty of other in progress photos on their website, such as cabinet art but most of them are mockups so could be subject to change at this stage.
http://skitbpinball.com/photos2.html

Update: skitzpinball have just announced on rgp that their prototype is almost complete and will hopefully be playable at the next major pinball meet in the US. There will also be an optional laser kit that will ship with the game that is CPU controlled to shine you at certain times in certain modes.  

Preorder list opens in April, too.

Hope we can get some footage!
« Last Edit: March 28, 2013, 08:57:06 PM by swinks »

Offline swinks

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Re: Predator custom pinball machine.
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2012, 09:27:38 PM »
Nice find, will be interesting to follow their progress.

Thanks mate
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Offline Pinprick

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Re: Predator custom pinball machine.
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2012, 10:01:25 PM »
Nice find, will be interesting to follow their progress.



Always thought Predator would be a cool theme. I will keep an eye on these guys too.
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Offline coon82

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Re: Predator custom pinball machine.
« Reply #3 on: March 25, 2012, 07:07:06 PM »
Interesting project. Thanks for sharing.
Wanted:   Black Hole (1981Gottlieb)

Offline swinks

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Re: Predator - Custom Pinball
« Reply #4 on: March 30, 2012, 01:12:15 PM »
some recent released photos
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Offline pinsanity

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Re: Predator - Custom Pinball
« Reply #5 on: April 06, 2012, 08:35:24 AM »
Prototype gameplay vid:

Love the soundbytes.  ^^^

« Last Edit: April 06, 2012, 08:39:32 AM by pinsanity »

Offline swinks

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Re: Predator - Custom Pinball
« Reply #6 on: April 06, 2012, 09:02:28 AM »
Yeah just watched on pinside, beat me to the post. The hunt mode at the 3min 50sec mark is cool as well as the orbit shot with the pop up post control.  ^^^
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Offline Mr Pinbologist

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Re: Predator - Custom Pinball
« Reply #7 on: April 06, 2012, 09:11:17 AM »
WOW that looks AWESOME!!

I've been thinking for years of building a Predator theme pin (im a big fan of the Predator movies), these guys have beaten me to it  :lol
I still might do it one day just for my own amusement, i have some what i think are cool ideas in my head to incorporate into a game

Will be following the progress of this game with much interest  *%*

Thanks for posting  ^^^

Offline pinsanity

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Re: Predator - Custom Pinball
« Reply #8 on: April 06, 2012, 09:21:04 AM »
WOW that looks AWESOME!!

I've been thinking for years of building a Predator theme pin (im a big fan of the Predator movies), these guys have beaten me to it  :lol
I still might do it one day just for my own amusement, i have some what i think are cool ideas in my head to incorporate into a game

Will be following the progress of this game with much interest  *%*

Thanks for posting  ^^^


Tell me about it. I am rapidly running out of themes that I had in mind for a custom pin since most of them are being done now by private pinball collectors - Ghostbusters, which has already been done was my number 1 choice just to have that Ray Parker Jr song intro playing when you press start.


Offline swinks

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Re: Predator - Custom Pinball
« Reply #9 on: April 06, 2012, 10:36:04 AM »
They are considering making 200-250 units which all depends on interest @ $4750, very tempting  ^^^

They will be at a small this weekend and starting to talk orders.
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Offline swinks

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Re: Predator - Custom Pinball
« Reply #10 on: April 07, 2012, 01:50:24 PM »
They are looking into a power change for Europe and Aus to anyone interested should put there name down.

Here is a statement from the guys at Skitpinball:

"We're going to open up pre-orders here on Pinside early. Not necessarily open only to Pinside members only, so if you have friends that are interested go ahead and let them know, as well. If you'd like to get on the list, send me a PM here or send me an email to kevin@skitbpinball.com with the following information:

Name - This will be engraved on a numbered plate on the apron, so make sure it's spelled right and it is the name of the person who will actually receive the game.

Preferred production number - Games will be marked with their production number. If there is a number you'd like to have, like an old high-school football jersey number or something, let us know. It's probably best to include 2 or 3 numbers that you'd like, in case the ones you like have already been taken.

Contact information - An email address is good to have, but a phone number is necessary in this situation.

Where you live - Country, State, City. Full address would be preferred, but isn't totally necessary.

Thanks to all of you again for all of your interest and excitement!"
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Offline swinks

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Re: Predator - Custom Pinball
« Reply #11 on: April 09, 2012, 05:30:10 PM »
Some technical stuff:

FromPinside
badbilly27 said:
Noticed something in the video. Did it save you user name and game?? I thought I saw at game start you pick your user name. Or did I see something wrong?

"You definitely saw that right. This leads me to the next comment:"

The_Dude_Abides said:
I think we will be able to save up to 4 profiles and it will save some play info on those with options to delete and start a new one.

"If I explained the system in full, it would take up like 4 paragraphs and get extremely wordy, so here's the abridged version:
The game will save virtually infinite users, limited only by the amount of flash memory that the game comes on. The files are SUPER small, so it really is spit-in-a-river in the grand scheme of things. Without doing any real math, I can tell you it would take about 2 million user files to fill the game up and cause an issue. To log in, you simply hold the login button (pretty much in the placement of your usual buy-in button) while you press start. If you don't have a user on the game already, you just pick "NEW USER" and enter your initials as if you were entering a high score, then pick your newly created user name. Users can be removed individually from the settings menus, or you can keep the file and simply clear out the stored data or Wizard Points information.
The game stores a ridiculous amount of information about you as a player; way too much to list here. The point is, the data goes very deep. Think of it as something of an expanded 'audits' file that is personalized to the player, with even more information than your standard audits file would care about. Some examples:
Tracks how many times you've attempted each mode,
Games played, extra balls, avg ball time, avg game time, etc,
Your personal highest and lowest completed game scores, along with an average score,
Tilts, warnings, left drains, right drains and center drains,
Hunts stocked, hunts attempted, hunts completed,
Game also remembers how many times you've made each individual shot, such as left & right ramps, left & right loops, "jungle hole" scoop shots, how many times you've advanced your multipliers, total pops hit and total successful skill shots. There is quite a bit more, but that is the really important stuff that I think people will be wanting to check up on.
The user file also stores info for the "Wizard Points" you can achieve. If you haven't already guessed by the context, Wizard Points are akin to achievements or table goals, if you will. There are three brackets of Wizard Points, cleverly categorized as Easy, Medium and Hard. You guessed it, the easy ones are entry-level achievements, medium ones will challenge an average player fairly well, and the hard ones are, for the most part, extremely difficult to pull off. I would be extremely surprised if someone (with the glass on!) could complete all of the Wizard Point goals within their first year of owning the machine. Here are just a few examples of the goals:

Ramp Redemption - Easy - Collect an Extra Ball earned by completing a set amount of ramp shots.
Big Money, No Whammy! - Easy - Collect your first multiball jackpot.
What's In The Box? - Medium - Collect all available mystery awards in a single game.
Money In The Bank - Medium - Collect over 100,000,000 in bonus.
Good To See You, Major - Play 250 games.
Stocked For The Winter - Complete 75 successful hunts.

Many of the hard goals are collected over time. No one could be reasonably expected to complete 75 successful hunts in one game, obviously. These are just examples of a few of the Wizard Points in the game; there are of course many more that you'll just have to earn to figure out   This post is now officially too long, so I'm going to willfully make a dbl post after this one to answer another couple of elaborate questions that were recently asked. Bad etiquette, I know, but so is an 8 paragraph post  "
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Offline swinks

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Re: Predator - Custom Pinball
« Reply #12 on: April 09, 2012, 05:35:26 PM »
some history of the guys

"There is. The name has been with me for a LONG time, and has been used for lots of different things in its days. Used it as my Flash "Studio" name for awhile when I was much younger and made Flash animations out of boredom. It was also my company name when I used to buy/sell/trade new and used video games, arcade coin op stuff and pins. While we were in the process of making the Predator and it came to our thoughts that we were going to need to become a company of some sort to make it happen, Skit-B was the obvious choice simply based on the idea that we think it's neat, based on its history within our small group here in Mid-Michigan, and the fact that coming up with a new and flashy company name would only slow us down. Oh, and as for the meaning, it's an acronym. Skit-B literally stands for "Some Kids In The - Basement." We are oh, so clever, I know "
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Offline swinks

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Re: Predator - Custom Pinball
« Reply #13 on: April 09, 2012, 06:16:45 PM »
Another quote from Pinside in relation to the playfield art.

toyotaboy said:
what about a thermal mode when the general illumination goes off, UV black light turns on, and it reveals UV paint that wasn't visible before

Did I mention we just love you guys? Nothing gets past anybody here. You can't see it on the whitewood because...well...it's a whitewood, but that has been the plan all along. UV-only colors are applied over the existing playfield art to turn all the leaves blue and all of the characters different shades of red. One thing we're thinking about changing is allowing the two closest red GI lights to the flippers to stay on during hunt/hunt multiball, just to help you keep an eye down on the flippers. Thoughts on this?
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Offline swinks

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Re: Predator - Custom Pinball
« Reply #14 on: April 13, 2012, 12:50:09 PM »
They are setup at the Michigan Pinball Show (14-15th April)

Don't to forget to check out updates at
http://www.skitbpinball.com/

Also they have been taking pre-orders at Pinside and will be mopen to the public at this show so if you want to reserve a position for one of these do it today - send a email and request a number at this stage.
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