My Visual Pinball you can find here, <- Although it was not shown at either for reasons of software issues and technical difficulties with mobile ports of VPX ( S.J. knows)
Imagine RIT General content
This was during my shift. I arrived shortly thereafter
My shift was the first one of the day on Imagine show day. I never was able to get a picture of me there with my table on my shift. The middle picture was during my shift and taken a moment before I arrived. The idea of tabling wasn’t new to me as I had done it all 4 years up until that point. I didn’t get to stay for too long past my planned block as I had to attend my capstone most of the day (9-5), and didn’t have a laptop (despite the fact it never got to run my VP project) as I was running that same capstone project hosted from my laptop the whole day in Gannett
I made some repairs ON my arrival. The machine looked more like the one above and I had added all the large walls and edges around the outside that are on my final. I was still in a “playtest” phase because I wanted to get more usage data to see how hard or where players were hitting and where it went off the table. While I didn’t get a formal player feedback documentation and not a ton of people to play the machine in that short hour, I was able to see how people interacted with it and what needed change or rework immediately. I saw the plunger needed strength and stability as an example. Older and very young play testers tended to struggle with the finesse the one rubber band and my playfield internals were set up. I made that note and change among others for Strong.
Made the walls permanent (you can see them in the final version at the Strong) and added more rubber bands to my launcher to increase pull back tension and power.
Strong Museum Pinball Day
This did feel like a long time. I did have some trouble arriving (showed up late into the first hour) because of needing to pick up a laptop from the library when it opened to install and run my VP. This attempt ALSO did not work and left me only being able to run .vpt which was not what I had setup. So I just wanted to perfect my Visual Pinball based on what I saw that day. Linux on my daily laptop did become the bane of my digital project :(.
I learned a lot more people than I thought were very adverse to playing because they were in “hands off” mode since most of the parts of the museum are record keepsakes that can’t be touched. It made people more reluctant to use our machines despite no issue
I learned that the designers and I had similar areas when adding created “branding” to the tables. On close inspection, I did see their elements were a lot higher print quality, but got feedback from Ben that said he really enjoyed the smoothness of my playfield heavyweight print, which made for good ball physics. He and his team also complimented a small but favorite thing about my table which was my “ball save peg” in the middle of the flippers on my cabinet that was heavily inspired by machines I love to play with that feature.
Takeaways From The Class
I GOT TO TAKE A PINBALL CLASS!! Just that fact alone was pretty darn cool. I hadn’t had a physical or tabletop-akin design and development class: I had wanted to take one and this course gave me that opportunity. ALL WHILE BLENDING PRIOR INTEREST AND PASSION! I loved the craftmaking and print-marketing design work I used and it made me feel truly confident in my creation skills. It made me feel comfortable (aside from Linux package things) and knowledgable enough to play or work on VP, tables which were something I had heavy interest in before this class but didn’t know where to start. It was also a joy for me to learn the history, see The Strong pinball behind the scenes, and “talk shop” about favorite tables others and I have. It was a blast of a class and something that lived up to my internal hype. And it never ceased to suprise someone: “YOU CAN TAKE PINBALL AT RIT??!”
This drafting was a stripped down version of my original intent because after looking into with the idea in mind of digitizing Gridiron Gauntlet. Eventually I moved away from it, but in this, I wanted to keep “buckets” where they are, then use ramps to have multiple levels of the field. I had bumpers and targets planned in the back. I sort of gave up on the idea of complex light coordination based on what I saw it was built like in the software. I tried to just keep it simple within reason for myself, also advised by S.J.
Visual Draft Version
Physicals
The above draft and demo video, as mentioned, was a digitizing of the table on the right. While doing so and building it out, I realized things just weren’t panning out creatively and the gameplay wasn’t as engaging. I realized that Hockey Night (left) was much more engaging and well recieved by players. I also felt more stimulated by its straightforward gameplay and more concise assets. And while it was originally a bagatelle, I just tweaked some placements and it ended up fitting pretty well into that format.
I went with this for VPFinal pinball and my Strong Demo
This is my screenrecording for my final Visual Pinball game. It ended up coming out pretty solid and I think it is fun and a lot more stimulating than the direction I was headed before.
I couldn’t get the targets to go down as low as I want but everything else sort of worked with me for the most part.
I do wish I was able to have run the projects more often to get more user testing ( (but alas, laptops seemed to be my entire and seemingly always asured downfall) but I did get positive feedback from those I did test with outside of class.
An Anonymous RIT Student Playing Dungeon Delver PinballThis Young Man Could Not Contain His Excitement When Playing Dungeon Delver Pinball!
I spent two hours at Imagine RIT showing off my Pinbox build, Dungeon Delver Pinball. The goal of the event was to show off our projects and advertise for the Strong Museum of Play’s pinball events the following Saturday. My shift did not feel like two hours while I did it. However, I did feel the drain soon after leaving the table. I am an introvert and am not built for events like this. My main jobs at the table were supervising guests playing the pinball machines, answering any questions, and handing out fliers for the Strong Museum’s pinball day. The people most interested in the fliers were parents who brought their kids, with some even signing up for the Pinbox 3000 workshop before they even left the table.
The cardboard machines were very popular with kids, but most of the adults did not interact with them much. Some of the kids could be rather rough, pounding on the flippers and pulling the plungers too far back. I had to swap out all the rubber bands afterwards so they would hold up at the Strong Museum. But as long as the kids had fun, it was all worth it.
I also spent a lot of time explaining the Zodiac Bagatelle game to guests. It is not my machine, but the professor chose to leave it out for the entirety of Imagine because it was the best of the bunch. A lot of the kids were a little upset at the lack of flippers and had little interest in my little history lesson on bagatelle. Maybe it is for the best that I decided to major in game design instead of teaching. Once I explained that it was a fortune telling machine, the kids had some fun with it. Unfortunately, most of their fortunes read “leeches”.
The other person at both of my shifts opted to present their Visual Pinball games on their own. Most of the guests did not interact with them unless the owner gave them the go ahead. I will remember this for when we present everything at the Strong Museum. I assume that most people did not want to be touching expensive laptops without permission, which makes sense. I’ll be sure to let people know they can play my Visual Pinball at the Strong Museum. There wasn’t space at the table for me to present both my Pinbox and Visual Pinball machines, so I was unable to get any playtest results on it, and as such had no changes to make.
Overall, it seemed that the kids just wanted to play and the adults wanted to know the details about the machines and the course. Most of them were surprised to find out that we were presenting class projects, they had assumed we were part of a club. There were even a couple RIT students that wanted to take the course, but unfortunately the future of the course is not set in stone.
Strong Museum Pinball Day:
Both the Pinbox 3000 (Left) and Visual Pinball (Right) Versions of Dungeon Delver Pinball
The showcase at the Strong Museum of Play was not what I expected. The original plan is that us students would take shifts helping representatives from the Cardboard Technology Institute run their Pinbox 3000 building workshop and showcasing our own Pinbox and Virtual Pinball builds. In the end, they did not need much help from us, so our whole time was devoted to showcasing our projects.
The representatives from the Cardboard Technology Institute came and looked at my game. One of them even played it. He said that he liked my bumpers with the rubber bands wrapped around them, they created a satisfying sound when hit. He also liked that I used the included graphics from the kit for my pieces. Though I was a little disappointed that none of the representatives offered any criticism, I cannot grow as much as a designer without knowing where I can improve. I wish I had a better analytical eye to draw from the machines the representatives brought. They managed to use the space much better than I had, but it was also a little too crowded to spend much time analysing.
Less people approached our table than at Imagine RIT. Our Imagine table had almost constant visitors who all wanted to chat and/or play some pinball. Most of the people I saw at the Strong Museum were parents with toddlers, for which marbles are a pretty significant choking hazard. Most of the people who would have been the most interested in our showcase were preoccupied with the Pinbox workshop down the hall. It is also possible that some museum guests did not know that our machines were open for play. At least one parent told their kids not to touch as they walked by, and several people were hesitant to touch anything until we told them it was ok. Even then, most guests opted to play the cardboard machines over the Visual Pinball machines.
I think the difference in guest behavior is mostly due to the difference in venue. Imagine RIT is a full-on showcase space where it is expected for guests to go up to tables to talk to presenters. The Strong Museum is more of a looking venue, most museums do not allow for much touching. Also, at Imagine, we had a big sign behind our booth that explained what our display was for, which we did not have at the Strong Museum. All guests could see at first glance was that we had pinball machines and laptops, but there was no indication of who we were outside of the odd RIT jacket.
Most of the people who did approach our table were parents with kids ranging from four to twelve years old. There were not very many college students besides us presenters. The kids had the most interest in playing, with their parents mostly helping them to learn how to play or use the plunger. Like at Imagine, most of the younger kids just slammed on the flipper mechanism repeatedly, trying to keep the ball alive. The few adults that played used a lot more finesse, trying to hit specific shots. While the kids played, parents would ask some questions about how we build the cardboard machines. They were very interested to hear that they came from the Pinbox 3000 kit, probably because it is something they could make with their kids.
Some of the kids preferred the Visual PInball version of Dungeon Delver Pinball because it was easier for them to time the flippers. Most of them just spammed the shift keys like they did with the flippers on the physical machines, but they still had fun. I just wish they would listen when I told them hitting the key harder did not make the flipper flip faster or plunger launch faster. I also realized early on that I should have programmed a reset function that could trigger at any point, not just when the game was over. Most of the kids played until they lost a ball, then gave up and walked to another machine.
In the end, I think the longer shift wore down on everyone. I know as an introvert, I had a hard time keeping up a peppy facade towards the end. Luckily, Jay was there to cover for the rest of the table. Since everyone was there at the same time, we were all getting slowly worn down over the course of the day. I think a lot of people also woke up much earlier than they normally would have on a Saturday, so the overall energy was a little low from the start.
Overall, the Strong Museum was a good experience. I just wish it could have been a little more constant like Imagine was. The longer periods of downtime were not good for morale and people started itching for things to do. Most guests did not go to each table to see all the machines, so we did not always have something to do. It was nice to watch the families have fun and to see the surprise on people’s faces when we told them we took a pinball class. I think if the kids had fun, it was worth half a Saturday in the end.
Takeaways From the Class:
I chose to enroll in the History and Design of Pinball because I needed advanced elective credit, it sounded unique compared to most of the other advanced electives, and I hoped that it would have a fairly low workload. I was initially worried when I had to wait a few weeks for a working schedule to be posted, since that meant less time to spend designing and building pinball machines. I managed to finish all three projects, so everything worked out.
I wish there was more time spent on pinball design theory. Almost all of it came from a presentation by George Gomez (Chief Creative Officer at Stern Pinball, and I am still in disbelief he had time to talk to our class over Zoom), who obviously knows a lot, but he only had 50 minutes to teach us as much as he could. When it came time to build my Pinbox machine, I was a little lost at first. It was also challenging to figure out what I could actually accomplish without the electronics and mechanisms that make pinball machines work and that communicate information back to the player. I think this course could benefit from having more lecture material to help guide the early design process so students have a stronger foundation when building their machines.
Overall, this course was very valuable. I got to learn a lot about a topic that is glossed over in game design and game history. Building bagatelles and pinball machines is fairly similar to level design, a career that I am heavily considering embarking on. Both have a lot of constraints with area and need to find a sweet spot between open and closed spaces. For both disciplines, placement of gameplay elements is key, as the player needs to be able to find everything they need to interact with. I am glad I had the opportunity to take a course that expanded my skill set differently than most of my peers. Plus, it was a lot of fun!
I absolutely LOVED presenting at Imagine RIT! My shift was from 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM, and it was almost constantly busy. The hour flew by, and I honestly didn’t want to be done when my time was up. I loved talking to the parents and kids alike.
I had to cannibalize some of the rubber bands from my playfield to help DJ, since the rubber bands in his machine’s flippers had broken twice due to rough play from kids. Afterward Imagine, I put some new rubber bands on my machine and all was well.
I didn’t present my digital pinball at Imagine as I wasn’t finished with it, and I was more proud of my physical machine. I did finish my digital version before the Pinball Event at the Strong Musuem!
Strong Museum Pinball Day – 05/03/25
In comparison to the Imagine shift, the 3.5 hour shift was much slower. There were less people overall, and the table I was sitting at got the least amount of foot traffic due to where it was situated. It was honestly more tiring than the Imagine shift, even though I was talking and doing a lot more during the Imagine shift.
I know I need to not be so hard on myself regarding my work, as people did enjoy my visual pinball version of my physical game, and I learned that if something has a good design, people will understand how to use it even without words or explanation.
It was great to see so many ways to make a successful pinball machine with the examples brought by the Pinbox 3000 team. Some were artsy, some were more traditional, some had a goal like to hit a certain target or land in a specific area, while some used a point structure. I loved seeing the different art styles and elements brought from each machine, and I could tell that Ben and Pete really had a passion for how Pinbox 3000 can connect people.
The most “fun” machines didn’t have the most toys and complex rules- but ones with a solid concept and a few well-placed elements can be just as memorable as fancy professional machines.
Takeaways From The Class
Learning about the rich history of pinball was something that I never imagined that I’d do in college, or maybe in my entire life. However, after this semester, I can definitely say that I will be on the lookout if Stern Pinball has any open positions!
Before this class, I had a very narrow understanding of what pinball is and what it can be- flashing lights, metal rails, and sound effects to a ricocheting silver ball. However, (as alluded to before), you don’t really need any of that to have a successful pinball machine.
The hands-on approach of this class was definitely my favorite part. Drafting, tinkering, and tweaking my playfields for my bagatelle and pinball game were probably my favorite project of the entire semester. I also really appreciated the cultural history of pinball besides it’s plain factual history- “Pinball Wizard” has become a permanent fixture to my playlists.
Thank you again to Professor Jacobs for this amazing experience, and I wish him all the best for his retirement- he deserves it!
For our final, instead of a typical exam, our final was in the form of presenting and demonstrating our pinball tables at two events: Imagine RIT, RIT’s signature showcase events, and a pinball workshop hosted at the Strong National Museum of Play. As such, I had brought Storm the Castle! for demonstration, both in its physical layout and the version made with Visual Pinball.
Imagine RIT
Imagine RIT was hosted on April 26, 2025 across the entire RIT campus, showcasing all the various aspects of student activity at the university; for us, it was a place to show off what we’ve been working on all semester.
There was more than just this sign, believe me.
I showed up a bit early, mainly to make sure I was there, but also to get the gist of how others were running the table. It was mainly just answering questions or explaining how the Pinbox 3000 kits worked, but it also served as a way to promote the upcoming workshop at the Strong Museum, which was exactly one week later.
Being at the table was a very interesting experience, all things considered. We had people of all ages show up, but there were a significant amount of children; I anticipated seeing children, just not to the extent that we got.
Most of the questions came from adults asking about the class, or the design process that came behind making the tables. A lot of the times the only things we’d say to the kids were to just be more gentle with the machines, as they would mindlessly smash the flippers on the Pinboxes. In fact, I had to replace the rubber bands on my table because kids wouldn’t stop being so aggressive. (I don’t think Storm the Castle! would’ve been my final concept had I known most of the people trying it would be kids…)
Since I spent more time at Imagine RIT than I initially anticipated, I left the Visual Pinball version of Storm the Castle! at the table for people to look at; there weren’t as many comments on that, but I suppose that’s fair given the fact that there were cardboard pinball tables right next to it, and those are definitely more of a rarity.
Refinement
Since we had a week between Imagine RIT and the Pinball workshop at the Strong Museum, we had one last class before Finals Week to tweak any issues we had with our Pinboxes or Visual Pinball tables. Since I’d basically already finished the latter already, I just used that time to repair my table; I set some more hot glue on loose spaces, replaced the broken rubber bands on my kit, and fixed up the bent flag on the castle. Besides that, there wasn’t much left to do besides bag up the Pinbox and get it ready for a trip to the Strong.
The Strong National Museum of Play
In case you’re not from around the Rochester area, The Strong National Museum of Play is a museum dedicated to, well, playing; whether it’s toys, board games, video games, the Strong is a place for people of all ages to understand this sort of entertainment. Because of the large impact that games have on play, they’re featured very prominently, and pinball is no exception to that. The Strong has Pinball Playfields, an exhibit dedicated to the history of pinball, with many machines available for anyone to play (given they have the tokens, of course.)
Being at the museum before opening felt very liminal.
On May 3, 2025, our class helped with a workshop all about making Pinbox 3000 kits just like the ones we made for our class, assisted by none other than one of the co-creators of the Pinbox 3000 kit (and founder of the Cardboard Deck Instantute) Ben t. Matchstick. Not only were our kits showcased for people to see, but several other kits made by the Cardboard Teck Instantute team were also present, executing ideas that I wish I could’ve come up with. It was a really pleasant delight to meet with some of the team there and talk with them a bit about the kits that we’ve grown familiar with over the semester.
A cardboard sign for a cardboard pinball table. What an absurd idea.Some of the tables created by the Cardboard Teck Instantute team.Swamp Quest, with visual assets done by renowned artist GhostShrimp (NehruvianDoom,Adventure Time).This table (no name, as far as I know) impressed me the most; they literally thought outside the box with this one.The Sesame Street design was very cute.
We had demo tables up just like the ones at Imagine, but this time the Visual Pinball tables we made had a bit more of a highlight. Passers-by noticed the Pinboxes more, mainly due to the concept of making a pinball table out of cardboard. Ben came by and played all of our tables, and having one of the creators of the Pinbox 3000 system compliment your idea and execution for a pinball table was a very nice feeling. Of course, because the Strong is all about play, more children were present, which meant the ever-continuing struggle of making sure they don’t smash in the flippers to the point of breakage. Besides that, both the workshop and our showcases went off without any hitches.
Storm the Castle! in its two forms, ready for action at the Strong.
After that, we had the rest of the time to ourselves, so I just went around the Strong Museum and its numerous exhibits (mainly getting some calories burned on the StepManiaX stage) until the others in my carpool group had enough.
Postmortem
Since the Strong Museum workshop was our last real “assignment” for this class, there aren’t going to be any more posts or updates from me here. I’m deciding to use this last post to talk about my time with this class.
I chose to take this class as I was still in need of filling up some free electives, and I had gotten an email from the IGM department in regards to some classes that would be available for the spring semester. Since this email came to me at the right time, I decided to take a look. None of the classes really stuck out to me, save for a class called “History and Design of Pinball”. I think you know what happened after that. I emailed Professor Jacobs, he allowed me to enroll in the course, and it all started to come together after that.
I enjoyed my time putting everything together for this class, from the Skee-Balltelle to both incarnations of Storm the Castle!, and while there were some notable crunch times to get things done (one hour is not enough to get any work done in this class, sadly), I’m still very happy with what came out of my efforts, and it seemed like others enjoyed them, which matters a lot more to me. In fact, it seemed like a lot of people held Storm the Castle in high regard amongst the class’s Visual Pinball tables, which gave me a feeling of solid satisfaction.
This class allowed me to exercise some creativity on something this semester, which was already full of required classes that gave me some significant stress, and honestly just learning about the history of something like pinball is fascinating. If you find yourself needing a free elective and you’re even only slightly interested in pinball, try and sign up for this class. You won’t regret it.
Professor Jacobs also announced his retirement at the end of this semester, so I’d like to wish him the very best in the future, as well as thank him once again for allowing me to take this course.
The Mr. Potato Head tap dancing on the sign for the Toy Halls of Fame will never leave my mind.
The initial design of the Visual Pinball version of Questball: Warrior Edition was originally meant to be pretty true to the original, however, Visual Pinball does not support any sort of multiplayer battle mode natively and I absolutely did not want to take on that hassle for myself. Instead, the VP version of this table is single player, but still is meant to play as though there is someone else “fighting you” and trying to sink the ball down your chute.
What Changed?
With this idea in mind, the new and improved design features a bunch of rails which bring the ball all around the table and spit it out back towards you as though another player was doing so.
Another feature of the original table was the use of ramps, but I found that the use of ramps and rails combined made for very uncontrollable game play, whereas just rails felt just consistent enough to still emulate the feeling of “battling” while still being easy to predict the ball’s movement patterns so that game play doesn’t feel difficult or unfair.
Questball is made up of a series of 3 different Pinbox machines representing different classic RPG classes, the Wizard, the Archer, and the Warrior. These different machines would be set across from each other in “battle mode” so that your balls could be sent to the other person’s board, like a 1-on-1 fight between two RPG heroes/villains. This edition of Questball is centered around the Warrior. The initial idea for the Warrior Edition of Questball was to have lots of “defensive” pieces all around your board, meaning that you’d have lots of ramps that doubled as walls for the opponent, lots of ways to redirect and slow down the ball to make it easier to calculate your hits and how you’ll get the ball over to your opponents board.
What Changed?
As I went along, creating and designing the first iteration of the board for the Warrior, I found that my original idea of “defensive” pieces on the board was going to be very hard to make work properly, because a lot of these pieces that could keep your opponents from scoring on you too quickly also often became a hindrance to you when trying to get your ball over to the opponent’s side.
Eventually, I managed to set up a ramp in the center of the board that would act as a way for you to get your ball easily to the other player’s side, and set up a rubber band bouncer so that your opponents would have a very hard time sinking their ball too quickly when sending their ball down the middle of the board. In addition to this, another ramp was added on the left-hand side of the board, and a block was added to the right hand side. The ramp allows you to have a second course of “attacking” rather than just the middle, though it is much harder to get the ball up the ramp. The block makes it harder for anyone who sends their ball on that side to get you right away with it too, while not really hindering you, since you don’t need/want your ball to go through that side of the board anyways.
User Reactions
Overall, most people found the “battle mode” gimmick a lot of fun, and “choosing your class” was a cool way to mix up the battles between players. I think a lot of people found that the Warrior Edition of Questball had a hard time “attacking” the other player a lot of the time, as it took a good amount of precision and power to get the ball through either of the holes the Warrior has easy access to. Generally though, I think most players had a great time stepping into the role of the Warrior and defeating their enemies!
