När Wayne Gillard köpte licensrättigheterna till Williams Flippersektion nämndes att "Ask Uncle Willy" skulle återupprättas. Jag hade ingen aning om vad detta hade varit för ngt, men häromdagen stötte jag på ett gammalt Ask Uncle Willy-inlägg på r.g.p.

Ask Uncle Willy var som en frågelåda där folk fick maila in frågor om Williams/Bally-spelen, eller flipperfrågor i allmänhet. Frågorna besvarades av "Uncle Willy" (tydlig referens till Williams grundare Harry Williams), officiellt sett en okänd individ med bra kopplingar/kunskaper om Williams/Bally. Frågor med svar postades tydligen på nyhetsgruppen r.g.p. Som det verkar var det programmeraren Ted Estes som postade dessa svar, och förmodligen var det även han som "var" Uncle Willy.

Söker man på Ask Uncle Willy får man fram massor av trådar med dessa postningar (Länk). En del av frågorna är ganska tråkiga och har självklara svar, men där finns även en del guldkorn med intressant läsning. Låt mig ge ett par exempel:

Info om tidiga TZ-regler

Question:   In The Twilight Zone pinball flyer, it shows some door panels
            differing from the production games (Player Piano, Quick
            Multiball, etc.).  Is there anyway I can get software that has
            the rules associated with these door panels, and if I do, will it
            work in a production Twilight Zone machine?


Answer:     As anyone with a Twilight Zone flyer and access to a Twilight
            Zone game knows, there are many labels on the light inserts
            which changed from the game pictured in the flyer.  (As best as
            Uncle Willy can recall, there were only 2 or 3 Twilight Zone
            games assembled with the playfield as pictured in the flyer.)


            Some of the lamps that changed labels are:  "Clock Millions" ->
            "Power Payoff"; "Jackpot" -> "Camera"; "Quick Multiball" ->
            "Camera"; "Player Piano" -> "Super Slot"; "5 Million" -> "Lite
            Gumball"; "Gumball" -> "Bonus X"


            Several other small changes were also made.  Most of these changes
            have been noted in discussions on rec.games.pinball.


            Getting back to the question of "early rules" in Twilight Zone,
            Uncle Willy suspects you would be severely disappointed if you
            were to install an early ROM into your game, assuming that you
            could find one.  Many of the rules for the labels on the old door
            panel lamps were never implemented.  For example, there never was
            a "Player Piano" rule, and "Fast Lock" was never implemented as it
            was envisioned.  (What *was* "Quick Multiball" was renamed as
            "Fast Lock".)  The lamp labels as shown in the TZ flyer are the
            result of the design team sitting around on the last day before
            the artwork screen for the black portions of the playfield had to
            be finalized.  The "Hitch Hiker" and "Player Piano" labels were
            created with the expectation that an appropriate feature would be
            attached to them later.


            Much of the rules from the finished Twilight Zone game were
            missing at the time of the photo shoot for the flyer.  As one
            would guess, many of the effects -- sounds, lamps, and display --
            were also missing.  It was after many of the rules had been
            implemented, and the design team started to balance the scoring,
            that it was decided that a "5 Million" award on the door panel
            was not very exciting.  (Thus, the "Lite Gumball" label in that
            position.)


            Another interesting piece of trivia is the initial rule set for
            MultiBall on Twilight Zone.  Originally, the MultiBall had a
            roving jackpot shot.  The jackpots were lit in order as:  Piano,
            Camera, Dead End.  (This explains why the Camera has a "Jackpot"
            label in the flyer.)  The Lock shot would relight jackpot after
            the third one was collected on the Dead End.  The consensus of the
            design team, and others at Williams who played that version of the
            rules, was that jackpots were awfully difficult to make, and that
            MultiBall was pretty frustrating as a result.


            As you can see from this brief discussion, the task of creating
            rules for a pinball machine is not simple.  As much as the design
            team carefully thinks out features and rules for a game, there is
            no substitute for actually playing a given rule set.  Rules and
            features get modified, enhanced, and scrapped many times over
            during the course of pinball game development.
 

Insyn i hur programmeringsarbetet måste kopplas ihop med den mekaniska och elektroniska utvecklingen av spelet. I detta fallet gällde det DM:

Question:   On Demolition Man pinball, how does one score a "special"?


Answer:     Uncle Willy loves these simple questions.  There is no way to
            score "special" on Demolition Man.


            The history behind the lack of a "special" on Demolition Man is
            not quite as simple.  Early in the development of the game,
            Demolition Man suffered from a lack of controlled lamps.  As
            Uncle Willy recalls, ten separate lamps were originally allocated
            for the Cryo-Claw.  In order to have enough lamps, none were
            reserved for the outlanes.  The design team wasn't real keen on
            "specials", anyway, so it didn't seem to be a big loss at the
            time.


            As it turned out, the playfield was finalized long before the
            entire Cryo-Claw mechanism was designed.  Getting one lamp
            mounted near each of the five Cryo-Claw awards was difficult
            enough, and the five extra lamps were abandoned.


            By this time, it was too late to add any lamps to the playfield,
            so even though there are two unused controlled lamps on Demolition
            Man, they could not be added to the outlanes.  (The other three
            controlled lamps ended up under the "Acmag" ramp.  The lamps there
            had originally been on a general illumination string.)


            Uncle Willy recalls several times during the final rules develop-
            ment for Demolition Man where a conversation similar to the
            following transpired:  "What sort of award should we put here?"
            "Well, if we had lamps on the outlanes, we could light 'special'."

 

Har ni funderat på varför det även i våra datoriserade tider bara finns möjlighet att skriva in tre bokstäver på en highscore entry?

Question:   Why does one only get to enter 3 initials for high score to date?


Answer:     Hey, what's the matter with a little tradition?  Actually,
            experience has shown that giving players more than 3 initials
            results in all sorts of creative and potentially offensive names
            on the high score list.  Trying to filter out the offensive words
            just ups the creativity level as players think up letter
            combinations that get by the filter.  Trying to catch words from
            other languages greatly increases the difficulty of the filtering
            task.  In general, the slight benefit to be reaped from allowing
            more than 3 initials is just not worth the effort involved.
 

Hittar ni några fler intressanta grejer får ni hojta till! :-)