Chris Bardon said:
Sounds like a cool mod-what platform did he do this on? It's not a full on PROC replacement like CCC...full on reverse engineer?
No P-ROC or computer was used at all for Demolition Time (
aka DT) and the author
James Cardona used
FreeWPC. The WPC engine itself has been coded open source and then multiple programmers have worked on it over the years, although, the majority of the engine has been written by Brian Dominy. The stock DM uses a
27c040 512kbit ROM chip where as DT uses a
27c080 1Mbit ROM chip. All that is needed is a ROM swap and no jumper changes as you can see in my first post above.
Here is the justification James used for rewriting the DM rules and in general what he is trying to accomplish:
1) DM has unbalanced scoring in its features, such that, certain features score more points, and therefore score-oriented players will only do those. This leads to a game that is very limited. Basically, multiball scores the most by a large margin, so the only reason to go for the claw is to hit lock freeze, which locks all the balls and instantly enables multiball.
2) DM has no movie animations in the game.
3) DM has 7 modes of which 2 are pretty lame (lock freeze and prison break) so really only 5 which ranks this game as shallow for me. It does have 1 wizard mode and 4 multiball modes.
4) DM does not support a shaker motor.
5) DM has no video modes.
Having listed all these faults, James can also say that DM has a pretty solid playfield layout with a nice combination of stop-n-go play and also good flow, depending on how the player wants to play it. It is a wide-body game that uses the extra space wisely, having 3 flippers and 4 ramps. Some have complained about the eyeball and carchase shots being dead space on the playfield, but that is a minor
complaint and James actually like those since they can be deadly shots to take. Also DM has excellent body and playfield artwork (cannot say the same about the translate).
GOALS - With the above in mind, James' aim is to:
1) Add movie animations to game displays
2) Eliminate/change the 2 weak modes so that we have 7 decent, full bodied modes
3) Balance the scoring among all modes and multiballs
4) Create 3 wizard modes total
5) Create 3 video modes total
6) Add shaker motor support
7) Maybe some other things
In summary, this is a game that plays very well and would be tremendously improved by fixing the software. Since the theme is an old 90’s movie that certainly isn’t a classic, the machines can be had fairly cheaply also. Finally, there were over 7000 of these made so fixing the code will benefit a larger number of people. Some other games James is considering are
TOM,
TOTAN and once
DT is done
NGG will probably be next.
I've spoken to James and got his permission to post up a bit more information he has shared with me and the small group of testers. I even encouraged him to join here so he could get some feedback and interaction for those who come over and play DT. He is pretty excited and looking forward to some interaction with Adam and had a good laugh at my Risk vs. Reward comment. He said there is no ball save off the car crash or eyeball which makes those shots more dangerous. As a result the point values are increased which makes explode in particular worth going for if you want points.
Anyways, I spent a good hour playing it this evening and I am very impressed so far and how different the game plays now. Here are some pics I was able to snag of the three new video modes.
Video Mode #1 - Kaboom!
Bombs are dropped from the top and must be caught by the player using a bucket. If all are caught then the player advances to the next level the next time this video mode is collected. Each level is faster and / or throws more bombs.
Video Mode #2 - Simon Says
Similar to the "Simon" kids game, a successive series of buttons pushes on the top handles are lit up and the player must repeat the sequence in the same order.
Video Mode #3 - Shooter
This is similar to wolf shot on BSD, a horde of little dudes run down from the top of the screen at the player and they must be shot quickly before they reach the bottom.
Don't worry guys, James has not turned DM into a video game! Video mode is only enabled by shooting the required number of combos; 5, 15, 25, etc. Once enabled it can be obtained at the retina scan saucer or top popper. The type of video mode started appears to go in the sequence above and repeats itself second time around. If there is one you do not like it can be disabled in feature menu or hit the top buttons on the handle to skip.
Anyways, stay tuned for more pics and videos guys.
Enjoy!
