Month: October 2019

For my head-to-head pinball design, I wanted to make a game with two boards that were very similar in layouts and contrasting in theme. My design developed into a Summer vs. Winter theme rather quickly. With my theme set in stone, I began to draft out some elements that I knew I wanted to incorporate into the playfield, such as rubber band bumpers and ramps.

After sketching in some of the elements that I could easily think of for the summer themed field, I had do come up with some elements that could contrast nicely and thematically. I started with the umbrella bumpers and decided that some snowmen could be a nice comparison. After that, it was just finding similarly shaped or purposed pieces that could be added in as close to a symmetrical way as I wanted.

When I first heard we were doing a battle mode pinbox, my first thought was to make one themed around a fighting game. I love the rivalries that exist in a lot of these games (Ryu & Ken, Scorpion & Sub-zero, etc). However, as I thought about potential fighting games, none of them stood out to me as a particularly interesting theme for Pinball, until I consider Dragon Ball FighterZ. I’ve always loved the energetic, exaggerated, and fast paced fighting of the Dragon Ball franchise, and thought this could work excellent for battle pinball machine. I thought about the tropes of the show, and was drawn to the quick multi-punch shuffles that often happen. I thought this could be well represented by having a large amount of balls in play at once. This would also help capture the eclectic, fast-paced nature of these fights.

When I first conceived using a large amount of multi-ball, I thought back to Hyperball, which i played at the strong. Hyperball features hundred of pinballs that the player can shoot in any direction they aim. The sound and feel all of the balls being constantly shot felt great, and helped give the game a sense of speed and intensity. This gave me confidence that the idea could work for battle pinball.

This machine is going to have some sort of levy system, that will drop all 16 balls for both players at the same time. Players will keep going until all the balls have been drained. Once this happens, players will count the balls drained on their side, and whoever has less balls drained will be the winner of that round. Best 2 out of 3 rounds wins the game.

My initial design sketch has a somewhat barren playfield. I tried adding some holes to the design to help with that, but I’m not particularly pleased with this though. I want to keep the playfield generally very simple. I think a complicated playfield with this many balls will just be anxiety inducing instead of simple fun. That being said, I think right now it’s still a little too barren. I think some obstacles (cardboard walls) that lead balls to drain to the center will be a better move. I’m also considering moving the ball-drop-levy system to the center of the the two pinboxes, so balls will start falling down. I’m not exactly sure how, but I think it’d also be a good idea to have an odd number of balls so that way ties will not be an issue. Perhaps a locked ball staring in the center ramp? Only Iteration will tell.

I had two ideas for what to work on for the two player pinball. I waffled on which one to present and could not completely conceptualize either one. When I set out all I knew is I did not just want a game where the objective was to drain balls in the opponents drain. Both concepts ended up being cooperative and asymmetrical.

The first concept was called Hives & Hornets, and was inspired by bugs and the game Killer Queen. The origin for this was when I told professor Ian about this assignment and he mentioned the idea of attempting to adapt Killer Queen to a pin ball game. I drew a few messy sketches for this concept and wrote down some mechanic ideas for the game. The goal would be to pass balls between the players that would lock in to other parts of the field and release another ball to pass back. I felt like the idea was too impractical as it would require parts to recognize specific balls.

The second idea I came up with was called Fight the law. The concept of fight the law was inspired by the song I fought the law, and a joke by John Mulaney about old time bank robbers. In fight the law the players are bank robbers, one is in front of the bank holding off the cops while the other attempts to open the vault and collect money. Fight the law is a cooperative pinball game where the fields are not connected, though actions on one side effect the other. The game runs on a timer, the player in front of the bank adds time to the timer and prevents obstacles from reaching the other player, while the player inside the bank builds the players combined score and provides bonuses (like multi balls) to the first player.

To start off I thought that the play test was going to be for feedback and that we were going to modify our designs further. I spent a lot of time getting the wheel to turn properly. Two of the biggest breakthroughs in getting the wheel to work was removing the bottom of the wheel and my friend advising me to use a washer between the wheel and the board.

I placed some pins at the top to get some variance, then shot the ball a few times and placed pins bellow the wheel based off of where the ball went. I planned to cut holes in the board, but because I thought we would iterate on the design I placed pins to hold the ball where the holes would go. That way if I needed to fix the hole placement I wouldn’t need to make a new board.

During the play test people liked the wheel. A common criticism was that the bottom of the board was kinda empty. For the next I assignment I think I will include more interactive elements on the board.

My concept for the Bagatelle assignment was inspired by an episode of Over the Garden Wall. In the episode, the main characters sneak on a ferry boat where all the passengers are frogs. The boat in the episode made me want to theme the bagatelle around a ferry boat. Since I wanted some form of unique mechanic, I thought that I could make the wheel of the ferry boat part of the board and have the ball turn the wheel. The layout I made for the design is mostly a place holder, as I wanted to see how the wheel affected the ball .

My vision for this two-player pinball machine is inspired by a theme park. I envision this having bright colors and multiple “attractions” that players can interact with on the playfield. For my first layout drawing above, there would be two roller coaster-themed ramps connecting the two machines symmetrically. Each playfield would have bumpers that resemble bumper cars and the fields would be bridged by a Ferris wheel with a tunnel through the middle. I’m also thinking of having a tunnel either on or connecting the fields and themed like a haunted house. Many people liked the tunnel from my previous design, so I’d like to explore that mechanic more in this next project.

Each player’s main goal would be to visit all of the attractions, rather than rack up the most points or drain the other player. Other considerations include making sure that the tunnels and other edges within the playfields don’t break the flow of the game. I would want to focus on rounding out the corners and placing more bumpers around edges to keep the flow smooth.

For my bagatelle, I intend to recreate the “Lucky Hit” style of game featured in the Dreamcast game Shenmue II. While I intend to use a mostly similar ruleset from that game, the actual board design will be entirely my own, of course.

When I initially presented the game, I said I was going to have little note cards on the bottom so the player can swap out the Xs and the Os so the game can vary from game to game. However after thinking about it, considering that the pockets are going to have different depths due to the way the pinbox 3000 is shaped, I don’t see a simple solution to this problem that wouldn’t see kind of jank. So I modified the rules so that both players shoot a marble first, and where those two marbles land are considered the “winning pockets” that the players should be aiming for when the game actually begins. After that though, I intend to keep the rest of the rules the same, being that players alternate shots, both getting three each, with the winner being the player who shoots it in the winning pocket the most times. In the event of a tie, players continue shooting until one player ends the round ahead.

For theming, I found this Shenmue poster I happened to have that fits into the bagatelle nearly perfectly, so that should give the machine a very polished and professional look, I feel.

Initially I was a bit concerned on how well actually building my machine was going to go, but to my surprise it all went pretty smoothly. Granted my design was fairly simple, but I’m more confident in making more complex designs now as a result which was something I was reluctant to do for this first machine. I also learned what an incredible contraption a hot glue gun is; so useful.

Most of the feedback I got was very positive for my machine. For those who understood the theme, they loved it, however it was a bit obscure which definitely isolated some players. However this did not hinder their enjoyment of the game itself. Many liked having clear win and lose conditions as well as the direct head-to-head gameplay. They also really enjoyed the pins I used since it made a very satisfying “ping” sound when the ball hit them. Most of the criticism came from a lack of clarity on the rules if I wasn’t around to explain them since they are just complex enough that the machine doesn’t inherently tell the player through its design alone. Another criticism was on the layout of the pins, or rather the lack of additional pins in empty space since the ping was so satisfying that players didn’t like shooting the ball in the corners since there were less pins there.

If I had to make another one, I’d probably pick a more well known or understandable theme, as well print out the rules in some capacity so players can easily understand what they are supposed to do without me having to tell them. I’d also adjust the pin layout to fill in some of the empty space at the top that came about from me putting in the pins starting from the bottom.

Overall though, I’m very happy with how the machine came out considering we didn’t have time to iterate after the initial playtest to iron out some of the flaws.

Sources:
Shenmue 1+2 by Sega

Mountaineer Madness has a 4 lane design that slowly ramps intensity as the game goes on. The goal of the game is to lock your balls in the opponents gutter. when you send it over the ramp at the top right it comes out of your opponents top left lane and bounces around obstacles putting the ball in a pretty bad spot. in the left middle lane there is a “boulder zone” where you can free a ball and bounce your shot around. There is a ball lock mechanism on the right side of the table. when releasing a ball it bounces out off of the rubber band to its right and comes to the center. The last element is the campfire ball. You want to try your best to avoid this ball because it is enemy colored. when you re shoot you must re-fill the campfire.