I felt that this iteration went fairly smoothly to build. I didn’t really run into any major issues with the software and was able to implement my design how I wanted it.
Themewise, people really liked the implementation of the Devil May Cry IP. They felt it made for a cool pinball experience. The sounds and the music were what really sold it for people though. Some of the targets were difficult to see though so that’s something I’ll have to adjust before the Strong museum.
People still have an issue where it’s too easy to hit the ball into the outlanes, so I’m going to adjust the size of them, and add a Royal Guard kicker to both sides to prevent that from happening too often.
Overall, though I’d say with some minor tweaking, this machine will be very good and I’m happy with my progress so far.
For my second iteration of my visual pinball, I want to continue working on my Devil May Cry design. The original version focused primarily on just hooking up code to all of the objects which allowed them to play numerous sounds. Now I want to focus more on complex scoring and possibly some layout changes.
Numerical scoring is a must this time around but I want to make it interesting. I was thinking of incorporating DMC’s style ranking system where the player gets more red orbs for the higher the ranking is during combat. I’d translate that simply into a score multiplier that activates based on how well the player is doing. I haven’t decided how I want to implement that yet however.
I want to tone down the difficulty a bit somewhat as well since players seemed to have a difficult time defeating Vergil even once. So I’m deciding to make it 5 balls instead of 3, and lowering the amount of hp Vergil has to see how much that helps.
Stretch goal would be to incorporate the devil trigger mechanic somehow where the player fills up a gauge and then transforms Dante into his demon form where he’s more powerful. I’m not sure how to tie that into gameplay mechanics yet though. Maybe he does more damage to Vergil during that state? I’m not sure yet, but that’s not a priority yet.
I felt that my experience at the strong was positive if a little light on players. I did have several kids come up and play my machine and the feedback was always positive. I’d say the most common feedback I received was about the sound design which makes sense since that was a major focus of my machine. I couldn’t see people as they played but it seemed that no one played long enough to beat Vergil once but that might also have been an atmosphere thing, it’s probably uncomfortable to play for a long time in the middle of a room while someone is staring at you, so I understand that. Overall though everyone who played looked like they were having fun, so I felt it was worth it. From the feedback I got from classmates, I think I’d change the elasticity on the outlanes so the ball bounces less predictably but that’s probably the only major change I’d make.
I was very happy with how this iteration came out. I felt very comfortable navigating the Visual Pinball program and was able to complete everything I set out to do which is very reassuring for the future. The goal of my game was simple at this point: knock down the three drop targets in front of Vergil and then hit him 5 times before they raised back up.
The feedback I received was also very positive. People really liked the concept of the theme, and especially the implementation of sound effects and music from the games in order to really sell the theme. They found the concept very fun, though a bit simple. They wanted some more goals and targets to hit, which is fortunate because that’s exactly what I intend to do in the next iteration.
Moving forward, I’m excited to take this concept to the next level and make a complete and robust scoring system that includes multipliers and even a Style Ranking system similar to the games.
For my advanced Pinball I decided to do a complete overhaul of my original idea. Originally I planned on just recreating the basic functions of my Castlevania pinbox, however I decided to scrap that in favor of a theme that I felt would fit pinball better.
Devil May Cry is a fast-paced character action series with a strong focus on style, and I felt that would be the perfect fit. For this iteration, I only plan on making the basic playfield and having a simple objective. I’m unsure if I’m going to add numerical scoring just yet.
A big focus this time around will be nailing the theme, so that means a lot of art assets from the game and especially sound effects. For my next iteration, I plan to expand this concept immensely.
I genuinely have mixed feelings when it comes to this machine. I feel that the idea and concept were very strong, but I didn’t have the ability to accurately portray it with the pinbox 3000. Building the external ramp and table proved more difficult than I though which pushed back the time I could use to work on the other aspects, on top of frequent printer issues that caused the art to have to be manually edited and then colored by hand. These issues forced me to scale back my original design, while keeping the core mechanics in place. For the visual pinball assignments, I intend to build the machine as I originally intended.
Feedback was mixed, a lot of people liked the theme and the boss mechanic a lot, but the ramp leading to the subweapons was way too difficult to hit, so they barely got to play the rest of the machine since they had to spend their time hitting that one shot. They also found the rest of the playfield to be a bit barren or pointless which I agree with.
As I was building this machine, I came up with several cool ideas which unfortunately I could not implement since it would have required me to start from scratch, but if I could, I would have implemented them. One such idea was to have the plunger launch directly into the subweapon ramp so that players always start with at least something. I’d also modify the steepness of the ramps so that players can go up them much more easily. Thankfully, with visual pinball I’ll be able to implement these features and much more, so I’m greatly looking forward to that.
For my advanced pinbox, I want to really focus on theming this time around. I felt that my last two projects played very well, but were weaker on the visual and theming aspects. So for this project I decided on the theme first and then designed around it.
Playfield sketch
My playfield revolves around what I feel is a unique concept for Pinball, a boss rush. On the backboard, there will be a spinner with several bosses on it that can only be defeated with a specific subweapon. In order to obtain the subweapon, the player must hit the ball up the left ramp which will take them to a bagatelle-like area with a bunch of holes. Each hole will correspond to a different subweapon. Once the player has the correct one, they must fire the ball up the steep ramp in the center and hit a target representing the boss, and then move on to the next boss.
Right now I just have basic layout of how I want the playfield to look, so just the main mechanics and an extra ramp to assist in making the shot to the left. Once I build the machine, I intend to fill in the empty space with whatever seems necessary.
It was important to me to make a machine that doesn’t rely on numerical scoring since I have no way of keeping track of it. I think the boss rush concept works very nicely as a replacement.
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.
Bagatelle is where we first start seeing a game resembling pinball start to form. It was a game where the object was to launch a ball into a board full of pins in an attempt to land the ball in various holes or pockets. The goals and layouts all varied but the mode of play was all the same. The problem with this is that there is very little input the player has on the ball, meaning it is more of a game of chance than it is a game of skill which after a while left players desiring more, which is where flippers came into play. What I find particularly interesting about Bagatelle is that it’s the genesis of what modern pin related games would later become. After Bagatelle we see a split into different games such as pinball and pachinko, two very different games that share a common ancestor.
Aftermath of the Pinball Ban
Pinball related games may have started out as games of chance early on, but as soon as flippers were introduced and perfected, it quickly became a game of skill. However many did not see it this way and considered it gambling which had disastrous repercussions for the industry. Many games had to have variations where a player being rewarded a “free game” is replaced with the “add a ball” feature which functionally acts very similar but without the risk of being called gambling. In some locations, pinball was outright banned with many famous images of police going out and smashing pinball machines in the street. It wasn’t until 1974 that the ban of pinball machines was finally lifted following a court case where the California Supreme Court ruled that pinball was a game of skill as opposed to a game of chance. This was done due to the contribution of Roger Sharpe playing in the courtroom to demonstrate how much control he had over the game. I found this interesting just because it’s always ironic to see how the next big thing will always be surrounded with the controversy of “corrupting the youth” etc. and how things got so bad that many images of police smashing pinball machines exist from that time. I also find the fact that the case was solved by someone bringing a pinball machine into court and playing it very humorous.
Revenge From Mars
The last thing I want to write about was the Pinball 2000 fiasco that both saved and killed pinball at the same time. In the late 90’s pinball sales where at an all-time low due to the popularity and convenience of other media like video games at the time. This left many companies to dropping out of the business completely, leaving only two companies left, Williams and Sega. Williams was definitely the innovator of the two and management decided that something big needed to change or else they would drop out too. That’s where the idea of Pinball 2000 came from; looking at the success of video games, the designers at Williams deciding that pinball needed to evolve to remains competitive, and this involved merging the two media together. The original design just involved having the backboard replaced with a monitor, but this was destined to fail and the senior designers knew this. They refined the design to use the reflection of the glass to reflect images onto the playfield itself in order to truly merge the two media into one cohesive experience. The first game to do this was Revenge From Mars, a sequel to an earlier successful pinball machine. This was considered a great success, allowing Williams to make a profit for the first time in several years, and work was immediately started on the second in the series: Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.
The second in the Pinball 2000 line
This is where troubles start to arise. Due to the movie being in production at the same time, the designers had to sign a strict NDA which meant that consulting with the other designers and playtesting were difficult if not impossible. This led to an average to borderline boring experience which on top of the increased price causing many retailers to cancel their orders, as well as the movie itself performing subparly, caused a loss for Williams. This was the final straw for Williams as the pinball division was shutdown entirely after this. I found this interesting because the Pinball 2000 concept was shown to be a successful model, but the failure of only the second machine caused Williams to panic and jump ship which is unfortunate. However maybe it was for their best interest since they jumped over to the slot industry where they found much more success with far less risk. I’d find it interesting if the Pinball 2000 model gets resurrected with the resurgence of pinball interest in recent years. For such a unique concept, it’s a shame that only two machines were ever completed.
