Skip to content

Creature from the Black Lagoon (Bally 1992)

Long-running build spanning from early playfield scan through Blender toolkit rebuild, notable for ramp transparency tuning, PinMAME Chase Light II board emulation, hologram rendering, and the Lite vs Premium scope debate. Primary developers: sixtoe, apophis79, niwak, tomate80, iaakki, frank_enste1n.

Build Story

Development ran from August 2020 through May 2025, making it one of the longest VPW builds. The initial scope debate between Lite (quick physics/sound update) and Premium (full toolkit rebuild) was resolved in favor of Premium. Tomate80 argued existing primitives were "great" and Lite would suffice; sixtoe argued the table deserved full treatment. CFTBL took the Premium path, spanning years with a dedicated underwater VR room by DaRdog/Rawd.

Table-Specific Details

Mechanisms & Hardware

  • Chase Light II board emulation: PinMAME 3.6 has full emulation of the Bally/Williams Chase Light II board (A-15541), outputting correct values on lamp outputs 91-98. CFTBL likely uses 4 for top ramps and 4 for the bowl. Tables only need to map to correct lamp outputs; PinMAME handles the fading. Bug fix: triacs were previously emulated as transistors (cutting current immediately instead of waiting for next zero-crossing).
  • Backglass flasher solenoid discovery: Solenoids 33-36 used for backglass flashers (upper flipper Fliptronic outputs), not documented in the manual. Discovered by dumping all solenoid outputs during attract mode.
  • Tapered rubber sleeve: The snack bar shot was too easy with standard-size rubber. Real machines use a larger tapered rubber that significantly narrows the shot angle -- "a lot harder" after replacement.
  • Physical kicker conversion recommended from legacy VUK implementation for more realistic ball behavior.

Art & Visuals

  • Ramp transparency tuning: Three approaches -- (1) bakemap alpha overlay (5-8% grey), (2) Blender material alpha, (3) refraction tint darkening. Single-digit percentages is all that is needed; difference between "invisible" and "too opaque" is remarkably narrow.
  • Ramp SSS: Subsurface Scattering creates "slightly less clear glass" matching aged acrylic. Ramp light strings bleed into the material. Reference photos confirm real ramps are noticeably less clear than fresh acrylic.
  • Ramp UV unwrap: If a ramp has a solidify modifier, UV unwrap must be done AFTER applying the modifier -- otherwise bake only renders edges.
  • Animated underwater VR room by DaRdog with swimming creature and bubbles, thematically tied to the table.
  • Flupper insert replacement: cut all inserts from playfield texture and replace for consistency, even ones that look good on scan.
  • Depth masking (Z-masking): transparent objects should have "Hide Parts Behind" UNCHECKED; opaque objects should have it CHECKED. Depth masking on transparent objects is "usually a bug."

Known Issues

  • Double-darkening when both primitive.color and SetRoomBrightness are applied. Use only SetRoomBrightness.
  • Blender blackbody nodes can break when opening old files in newer versions, causing entire render to appear red.

Techniques Developed Here

See Also