Dungeon Delver Pinball: Visual Pinball Edition

The Cardboard Prototype of Dungeon Delver Pinball.

Cardboard to Digital:

My original plan was to keep the Visual Pinball machine as close as possible to the cardboard Pinbox 3000 version, with some improvements that can be made in the digital version. However, the Visual Pinball template has a much larger playfield than the Pinbox, the flipper can output much more force, and the ball seems to have less friction than the marble on cardboard. In short, there is a lot more space in Visual Pinball, and the ball can easily get there.

Perhaps the most frustrating challenge of Visual Pinball was the scripting. I know a few programming languages fairly well, but Visual Basic was not one of them before starting this project. I knew logically how all of the code should work, but I did not know how Visual Basic handled things like random number generation, resulting in quite a bit of time spent in documentation learning the syntax.

Initial Build:

The initial Visual Pinball build is almost identical to the cardboard version, but with functional targets and bumpers, as well as a gate to keep the ball from falling back into the plunger lane. However, this approach did not provide much of a challenge, given the increased playfield size and flipper strength, the Kraken spinner was no longer challenging to hit. To help correct this problem, I added a ramp in the center as the only path to the spinner, and added some kickers and gates to send the ball back into the rest of the playfield. Unfortunately, the centralized ramp did not give the ball enough space to move between elements, creating a boring game. Playtesters also reported a fair amount of deadspace in the upper portions of the playfield. They also noted that it was hard to see the images on the playboard elements to aim appropriately and maximize their points.

I did succeed in scripting the game. There is a hero system where each ball is randomly assigned to be a Warrior, Thief or Archer, and scores more points for hitting certain targets. The selected hero is indicated by text on the backglass and by lights just above the flippers. There is also score tracking on the backglass. The game is coded to give players five balls, and once the game ends, pressing the “1” key resets the game.

Final Build:

For the final build, the first thing to fix was the board spacing. My first attempt was to move the ramp over to the right wall, but that caused problems with the launch gate. I decided to move it against the left wall, and flipped where all of the elements were. I had to put a short wall under the ramp to prevent the ball from getting stuck. Flipping the board seemed to help a little, but the unicorn spinner ended up being too difficult to hit. I had to shift the nearest bumper and target a little to the left and widened the gap leading to the spinner. Unfortunately, this version did not get much playtesting, so I am unsure if it needs further adjustment. I also made most of the playboard elements larger to make the graphics on them easier to see, but they can only get so big before the game becomes too easy. I also added more bumpers to fill the remaining dead space I noticed. In terms of scripting, I added a seed for the random number that determines what hero the ball represents to avoid the same patterns from repeating. I also added the rules to the backglass for ease of access.

Overall, my Visual Pinball machine is still fairly simple, but I am proud of how it turned out. I managed to add a fairly unique mechanic with the hero system that should help spice up the game. I also managed to make a playfield where every element is worth engaging with, if only just a little. My only issue is that I didn’t have time to add more complex heroes.