With Outrun I have ended the semester on a high note. I implemented an additional mechanics, refactored the board based on player feedback, and added more visual elements and instructions to the board.
Outrun in its final state, with lights, translucent board, gas meter, music and improved decals.
Regarding the Theme, people really liked the implementation of the outrun / vaporwave aesthetic. It made for a unique pinball experience. The sounds and the music were what really sold it for people though. Hearing HOME – Resonance really gave it that future funk feel, in conjunction with the backglass it sold the aesthetic.
A fellow student enthusiastically playing the game
Some of the issues people had with the last iteration were fixed. The goal was unclear, but I added instructions and messages on the backglass to inform players of what they are supposed to do. It was not obvious that the elevated platform was elevated and player lost track of the ball when it was behind it, I moved the board down and made it semi-transparent to remedy this problem. The problems I had, the lack of lights and low jpeg quality decals, were fixed. There is now a set of lights that indicate your place in the race of the game, and light that indicate your fuel level.
Overall, I’m happy with my progress and that I ended the semester with a polished machine.
My advance VP board is just going to be an extension of my previous one, building off of it by adding more features, more missions, and pushing more out of the visual pinball framework.
Reminder of what the board looks like, for those who don’t remember
I will be adding outrun music to my outrun themed board, specifically HOME – Resonance. I will make the second level transparent and reimport the rival graphic / place emphasis on it in the board to go on the theme a bit more. Then I’m going to add a spinner underneath the elevated board that acts as “gas” and the player will need to spin it every once in a while at risk of running out of fuel and losing the lead. Finally, I want to add lights indicating what place the player is in and how much fuel they have left.
I think these will make for fine additions to my board and bring it to a higher more advanced level.
Wow how about that, I was able to get my table together and y’all played it. I’m very happy with how the machine turned out.
The board in all its glory, ready to be played
The Good
I got the mission working! Though there was some difficulty getting the flags to work properly, I eventually got it all working (thanks Chris). I’m happy with getting the second level and ramps working, all the messages work as intended. I think my vision for the board really came through
The Bad and The Ugly
Some of the visual elements, such as the rival car decal above the R A C E drop targets, don’t work as well as I’d want. It’s also a little unclear that the second level of the board is a second level. It can be a bit jarring for players as the second level isn’t transparent so it’s unclear where the ball is. Finally, the ball could sometimes spend a lot of time on that second level of the board, which was boring and not conducive to play. I plan on using this as my base for my advance machine, so I hope to remedy these issues in the next iteration.
What I’d Change
I didn’t add vaporwave or outrun music to my outrun themed board, that would be change number one. Then I would make the second level transparent and reimport the rival graphic / place emphasis on it in the board to go on the theme a bit more.
For the first Visual Pinball assignment I am making a burnout themed pinball machine.
The design sketch for my pinball field
This board is based around the idea of a “race” where the player is tasked with upgrading their engine and beating out the other racers. I want it to flow like this: 1. Hit the relay lane to upgrade your engine. 2. Hit the targets R A C E 3. Pass the the racer by accelerating your engine with the top ramp
Now this mission system has proven difficult to implement, so I think I’m going to settle with the theme and getting the layout of the board done on this one. Perhaps I’ll expand on it with the mission system for my advance Visual Pinball.
Gold Rush was a resounding success. I hit all of the goals I had set out to do with the machine. Firstly, the advance element of the external ramps, while not entirely reliable in action, did work most of the time. Second, this was by far my most aesthetically put together machine. I think it captured all the aesthetic nods I wanted to hit and felt relatively cohesive and themed as a machine.
My friend playtesting the machine
On the theme of the board I got high praise, the board captures the Americana aesthetic. The features of the ramps as mineshafts and the silver ball as a minecart mesh with the aesthetic, and I got verbal praise for that as well. The main complaint was that the ball would fly off the ramps on occasion, but every player, save for one, was able to successfully get it up the ramp and through the middle hole at least once. Which was the win condition I had set for the board. If I were to do this again, I’d make my ramps out of cereal box cardboard, which is a bit sturdier and I can easily add walls to prevent the ball from flying off.
Overall, the board was a lot of fun to make and it seemed like people enjoyed playing it despite some minor hiccups.
When the 49ers went out west to claim their fortune, I doubt they were looking for a silver ball. In my Advance Pinbox 3000, you take on the role of those 49ers and try and find your own fortune.
Design mockup of the board
In Gold Rush you are tasked with retrieving the gold from the mine, to do this you must open the door at the top and then go up either of the ramps to collect the gold. Once the gold has been retrieved, you win.
Additionally, there are bumpers of TNT and spinning pickaxes on the board. These are for thematic, obstacle, and bonus purposes and don’t satisfy the win condition.
I hope the external ramps will be much more friendly to player than in my head-to-head, and to ensure that I will be decreasing the angle of the board so it’s not so difficult to hit the ball up the ramps.
I will be adding better decals than my previous designs and hope that it will be a very aesthetically pleasing board. I want to take inspiration from Norman Rockwell and many Americana works.
This is the Paradise Island Duel-Play our goal was to make a Duel-Play that
Resembles paradise on a tropical island
Makes players feel relaxed as they have fun
Uses ramps to connect both playboxes
Implements use of thematic spinners and studs
Incorporates fair scores for both players
Alex’s Side of the MachineKent’s Side of the Machine
We feel, based on the feedback from the play session and the aesthetic of the board, that we accomplished our goals. Our board looks like a tropical paradise, and the play board isn’t too chaotic as to stress players out.
Alex also made a rulesheet for the game:
The rules, tying in with our aesthetic goals even further, thanks Alex.
The biggest complaint we got was over these ramps, the loop on Kent’s side, and the walls adjacent to the ramps on Alex’s side:
Kent’s RampsAlex’s Ramps
These ramps are really difficult to get the ball over on to the other side, making it difficult for either player to have a meaningful or consistent cross play between the two sides. If we were to remake the machine, the ramps would be shallower as to allow the ball to ascend easier.
The loop worked, players were able to successfully loop the ball several times, but it killed the momentum of the ball, making the middle gate nearly impossible to get the ball through, making for an inconsistent and frustrating experience.
The walls on Alex’s board are directly in line with both the plunger and the “bozo zone”, making shots bounce back very quickly and the ball being sent to the gutter pretty often if you weren’t tact with it. This was counter-intuitive to our design goal.
Alex’s Side of the board getting playedKent’s side getting played
On the theme of the board we got high praise, both sides capture a beachside aesthetic, but Alex went the extra mile and got a variety of nice aesthetic touches that added to the theme, specifically the leaves used as ramps, the cocktail umbrellas used in the spinners, and the sand-looking textured paper. Our features all mesh with the aesthetic, and we got verbal praise for that as well.
Despite some of our notable hiccups, the board was playable and the class was generally receptive to our take on a laid back form of pinball.
Kent’s assets were obtained through the kindness of our classmates and the Magic Center office.
The concept of my bagatelle is to incorporate a more unifying theme to justify some of the more common design tropes of a traditional bagatelle. When we learned about bagatelle machines, I couldn’t help but notice most of them were lacking in theme or had no theme at all. So, the challenge becomes finding a good theme for a board and game that’s so oriented around straight lines, holes, and not much else. The best theme I’m able to think of to fit the specifications is a train theme. With the tracks acting as justification for the pin placement and their destination being the holes.
Nothing about my concept is terribly revolutionary, but I hope to make something aesthetically and conceptually cohesive rather than a vague “game”.
The feedback I got in class was that while my concept seemed sound, it was lacking in actual trains, and I couldn’t agree more I’ll be adding train decals to the final machine. The other suggestion I received was to add a whistle, while it’s a neat idea I doubt I could implement it.
This is the thesis of my bagatelle design, which, among others, was played on Tuesday last week. I had wished to have more theming, as I thought the playtest was more of a test of design rather than aesthetic, but c’est la vie.
Still shot of the machine, with a bit of the theming I had wanted
I had a lot of fun assembling the PinBox 3000. I found the process almost therapeutic. Punching out pieces, folding the cardboard, sticking them together, it was very easy to follow and felt near painless to get the thing together. As for the design of the board, I wanted to take the theme of “train” and implement it on the board. The station peg at the top is what the player is aiming for, if you hit it, it’s easy to go down the different “tracks” that have the different pockets for scoring. An easy to follow metaphor, it adds a bit of level design and depth to the simplistic gameplay.
Dakota plays the train themed bagatelle.
As for feedback I got on the design:
Theme
People seemed to like the theme, verbally people told me they liked how the theme meshed with the design a bit. They also quipped my quip about “Trains are cool and good”. It seemed though the art wasn’t as developed as I had wanted people were still able to connect it with the theme.
Implementation of theme and features
People really liked the implementation, with someone nearly directly quoting how I intended that it was cool how I had implemented the “station” into the game. The fact I expected the player to be a bit nuanced with the launcher was noted.
Playability
The reaction was a bit mixed, some said that the shots were satisfying and I had a good eye for placing them. Others commented that it was way too easy to gutter the ball, which was true.
What you’d do differently
I’d like to have made the art more developed. That would have added a lot to the game and the train theming, though I’m glad that the theme wasn’t lost on people.
I got all of the push pins and poster board for my machine from the office supplies in the MAGIC Center.
Oh boy oh boy, do y’all love pinball? I sure hope so because I’m gonna give you some spicy extra information on some of the material we covered this week and I hope you’re ready for it.
Steve Ritchie
Steve frickin’ Ritchie
We briefly mentioned the designer in class, but the “master of flow” Steve Ritchie deserves our full attention. As the best selling pinball game designer who ever lived, Ritchie defines the medium. His work laid the ground for many of the modern era pinball machines. Throughout the late 80s and early 90s Ritichie proved himself a master of design during his time at Midway Bally. With games like High Speed, Terminator II, and Star Trek: The Next Generation his level design and method of communicating a story through the machine were immaculate and done on a level never seen before. Since the downfall of Midway, he’s continued making pinball machines for Stern. All in all, he’s a noteworthy designer and I hope we discuss him more in class.
New York I Love You, But You Don’t (Didn’t) Love Pinball
The famous photo of NYC pinball destruction.
As we discussed in class, New York, and many other states following the example, banned pinball in the mid-20th century. Pictured above is Police Commissioner William O’Brien smashing an illegal pinball machine. While this image is very striking, I don’t think it does the whole ordeal justice. When they rounded up these machines in the early 40s they didn’t mess around. NYC Mayor LaGuardia issued a mandate for the NYPD to round up pinball machines and arrest their owners. Thousands of machines were rounded up in a matter of days. Then they were smashed them with sledgehammers. Then the machines were dumped in the rivers. This moved pinball to its underground days, where you would have to go to backalleys and questionable stores to get your “fix” if you were in an illegal state.
Collector Pinball
Look at those bad boys
We discussed very briefly the rise of pinball of a collector’s market rather than an arcade market. To recap, we essentially discussed that collectors arose in 70s and were a market of necessity as Pinball was banned in arcades, making selling to a large portion of that market untenable. Manufacturers identified an opportunity with collectors who played pinball privately.
