Tutorial 13: Add slingshots, pop bumpers, and other autofire devices

This is part of our Getting Started guide.

The guide starts here.

It's been awhile since this tutorial has been updated. If you find anything that is no longer relevant, please let us know, or better yet, edit or update it yourself!

While we're setting up the basic playfield devices, let's configure the "autofire" devices like slingshots and pop bumpers. (An "autofire device" is anything where you have one switch and one coil and the switch being hit automatically causes the coil to fire.) This makes the game more fun since it's kind of sad to see a ball hit a slingshot and nothing happen. You add these autofire devices in the autofire_coils: section of your machine configuration. It's pretty simple. Just create an entry for the name you'd like to give that device, and then add sub-entries for the switch: and coil: for that device. For example, here's the autofire_coils: configuration for Demolition Man, which has two standard slingshots, and upper slingshot near the pop bumpers, and two pop bumpers (which we happen to refer to as "jets" in this config):

#! switches:
#!   s_left_slingshot:
#!     number: 1
#!   s_right_slingshot:
#!     number: 2
#!   s_top_slingshot:
#!     number: 3
#!   s_left_jet:
#!     number: 4
#!   s_right_jet:
#!     number: 5
#! coils:
#!   c_left_slingshot:
#!     number: 0
#!   c_right_slingshot:
#!     number: 1
#!   c_top_slingshot:
#!     number: 2
#!   c_left_jet_bumper:
#!     number: 3
#!   c_right_jet_bumper:
#!     number: 4
autofire_coils:
  left_slingshot:
    coil: c_left_slingshot
    switch: s_left_slingshot
  right_slingshot:
    coil: c_right_slingshot
    switch: s_right_slingshot
  upper_slingshot:
    coil: c_top_slingshot
    switch: s_top_slingshot
  left_jet:
    coil: c_left_jet_bumper
    switch: s_left_jet
  right_jet:
    coil: c_right_jet_bumper
    switch: s_right_jet

Autofire devices in MPF are somewhat intelligent. They will only be activated while a ball is in play during a game, which means they automatically deactivate themselves during attract mode and if the player tilts. (You can override these default settings as well as configure additional MPF events that will cause them to activate or deactivate. See the autofire_coils: section of the configuration file reference for details, though you don't have to do that now.)

Remember if you want to adjust the strength of these coils, you can do that in the coil's default_pulse_ms: setting in the coils: section of your config.

Check out the complete config.yaml file so far

If you want to see a complete config.yaml file up to this point, it's in the mpf-examples/tutorial/step_13 folder.

You can run this file directly by switching to that folder and then running the following command:

C:\mpf-examples\tutorial>mpf both

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