Overall I was very happy with how the game came out, it had all the elements I wanted including the Timed boss fight. Even though it was near the end of the semester (the projectocalypse) I had enough time to dedicate to this project that I could be really proud of the final product. The biggest things that I think really made this machine shine was the audio, and the model of hornet spinning around during the boss fight. These elements are big callbacks to the actual game tying in the theme in the way I wanted.
Another big thing that I wanted to do was have multiple goals such as the drop target charms and the Trigger Bosses. This was my big advancement when compared to the basic game. By having multiple levels of game play it brings in the user for more. If I had more time I would have wanted to have some extra things to trigger multi balls or a different boss fight mechanic but I think I got my point across without too much loss.
The biggest issues I had with making this machine is the fact that there is just so little documentation when it comes to scripting. A lot of this came from googling very specific things and looking at other code to figure out what to do. One example of this was with the audio. There are like 4 play sound functions but the one I needed doesn’t even get auto completed almost like it doesn’t exist. But even with all of the lack of documentation I did manage to figure out some major bugs such as the lack of movement of a primitive due to a weird setting.
My theme was very well received as this is a very popular game. So I think it wasn’t so much getting people to like my theme as much as it was about making people think I did a good job representing it. I think I did a good job with that as I incorporated visuals and audio all from the game.
Overall it was pretty playable and the ball never really got stuck and their were never any major issues. But I had to modify the locations and angles of a lot of play elements to allow easier access to game necessary progression.
Setting up for the strong was pretty eventful as I was a driver for 3 other people one of which was very sick. This meant that upon arriving I had to turn around and take someone back to campus. But even after that I had plenty of time to set up and make some minor modifications to my game such as adding new sound effects and a rule modification. Other than that the visit to the strong was not too eventful with the main event we were there for being canceled. Due to this attendance was slow and we only had a small handful of people try out our games. But regardless the people that did test our machines seemed to generally like it and think that they were cool.
From what I noticed people tended to gravitate to the physical machines unlike the digital one I brought. This meant that if I was to do this again I would do my best to bring my advanced pinbox as I feel it would get more people to play it.
Everyone was really nice and the people working there were very helpful, and overall it was a very relaxed event. I had a lot of fun and I think it was a good way to wrap up the class. I will say that due to the event being canceled it meant that the expected 5 hours was much longer than necessary and luckily due to this we were released early at 3 p.m.
The game I chose to bring is my advanced visual pinball machine. The reason I chose to bring this is due to the fact that the size of my advanced pinbox means I cannot fit it in my car easily. Therefore I thought it only right to bring the other homage to my favorite game my advanced visual pinball.
I think that this game is very representative of the amount of work and learning that I have gotten from iterating over the last 5 machines, both physical and digital. I feel that with this machine I can show the kids at the strong, how cool Hollowknight is, while also letting them play a really cool game!
Return to Hallownest
is a homage to my advanced pinbox design Into Hallownest. I feel that after my
pinbox I did not use enough theming to really classify it as a game that
represents my favorite video game. It is based on the game Hollow Knight and
therefore I tried to play on the different aspects of the game. Some of these
aspects are the boss fights, the sword, and the art style.
A big part
of this game was the idea of having multiple levels of play. As you can code
with this machine, I felt that I could really bring it to the next level by
adding different goals other than just keeping your ball alive. To do this I
wanted to portray a boss fight. In Hollow Knight you shouldn’t just run up and
try to fight every boss as soon as possible. To have a good chance you need to
prepare, upgrade your nail, explore and get money, and equip charms. Some
bosses even require you to defeat other bosses before you can even see them. All
these aspects were something I felt I could use to make my game better.
My original
design was very rough due to me wanting to base it off two other machines. So
above you can see my rough draft. They gray shapes are more general geometry with
the ovals being flippers, and the curved shape near the top being a ramp. The
blue circles are bumpers, and the orange rectangles are different targets. I
plan to use a variety of objects to complete my goals such as triggers and drop
targets. I plan to use drop targets for charms in front of the ramps, and
triggers to signify the minibosses.
The scoring
of this game is going to be minimal with a focus on how quickly the player will
be able to complete the goal and with the minimum amount of balls. The idea I
plan to have is a multiplier that gets reduced base on time, and the balls affect
the score linearly.
The biggest
issue I feel I will face is making the goals completable in a timely manner. This
may occur because if I want to have all these goals, if one goal is placed in a
bad spot, it could delay the entire game. Pinball is never fun if you must do
one small thing that is virtually impossible in order to proceed. Therefore, it
will have to take a lot of testing to make the game feel and play well.
The Game I am designing is Into Hollownest based on the game of similar title Hollowknight. This is focused around the different things you see around the landscapes as you adventure through the game. I plan to have a variety of objects that the player can interact with and influence.
The reason I chose this theme is that I really like the game and I am always excited to work with the environment and the features of the world. I am also excited because in week 1 I had the idea of using the sword as either a tunnel or a ramp and I feel like this would be a great time to do that.
The pinball design – By Sam Unferth using Photoshop
This design is meant to be somewhat advanced with an extra flipper, ramps, rails, bumpers, and spinners. But the real advanced idea I have is to make the machine 2 times bigger in all dimensions for a total of 4 times board surface area. The black angled lines are the locations for the flippers, The object on the right is the plunger, the red shape is the spinner, the faces are bumpers, and the sword is a tunnel.
The biggest feedback I have was to make sure my scope is manageable and that the theme was exciting. As this is a very well loved game I really hope I can do the theme justice.
There isn’t much scoring planned for this game so right now I don’t have a main goal for the player to complete.
The biggest issue I may have with this project is the actual construction of the machine itself. As I have not really taken into consideration how large this machine will be or how I am going to build it, that could cause me to run into roadblocks. Based on initial testing the flippers may cause issues due to the needed size and force. After working with some cardboard it may be too hard to build the frame sturdy enough so I plan to work with a few other possible materials.
This game was originally going to be much different with
more elements, but the issue was the time we had to create it and the size of
the playfield. In the original design we planned to have ships carved out of foam
and cardboard, but we found that if we did put the ship there the ball would
have a hard time making its way through the central playfield. The other option
was that we could put it on the edge, but we felt that there was no reason to
do that since the ball would not really end up there in normal play. Because of
this we simplified the game significantly.
Another thing that we had to determine was the ability to
move the ball form one machine to the other, which we determined that we could
use ramps and pathways. This was a consideration as we wanted to make sure that
we could make it slightly more interesting than just one path. To do this we
considered having a one-way ramp on either side. To do this we had a ramp and
railing so that only one person could pass it over.
The building of this game was a major process especially for
Sam as he ended up cutting his thumb open with an exacto knife and burning his
skin with a hot glue gun. With the experience that we got from building our
first machines we were able to make our machines much better this time around.
One example of this is the spinners and bumpers. On Sam’s machine he had issues
with the spinner getting caught and the bumpers acting more like ramps but with
the testing we made it much better. Another thing that we learned was to use
spray adhesive first to lay down a background versus having to fit it around
the other elements.
The machine being played Picture by Samuel Unferth
People generally liked our theme of Battleship, though
people did note that the playfield thematically was kind of bland, which
admittedly it was. People liked the idea of using pins as life points on the
battleships themselves, but wished we did more to bring the spirit of
battleship into our design.
The playability was the most well received part which is
good because that’s where our focus was primarily. They liked that unlike some
of the other machines on display, ours felt like a direct head to head
competition with decent length rounds, and the ability to pass the ball back
and forth easily enough without it being effortless. A lot of people also liked
the plunger launching the ball to the other playfield if the player is skilled
enough to do so, giving them a distinct advantage right at the start.
If we had more time and sanity frankly, we would have liked to implement a grid on the playfield where the players would have to ships each and be able to place them freely at the start of the game in order to make it more difficult for the ball to drain, without it obscuring their own shots too much. Every time a ball drained, the other player got to pick which ship got hit, and when it got hit enough times, it’d be removed from the playfield. Once all ships are removed, that player would lose. It’d be an incredible application of our theme, but unfortunately it seemed too difficult to make from a logistical standpoint.
All assets were created by us. The theme of the game was based on Battleship by Hasbro.
Overall a lot of people tried my game and enjoyed it and I only had a few major issues that would be changed if I had more time to work on this.
My game turned out fairly well with a lot of great pieces that all contributed to the theme.
Building the machine was a lot harder than I originally thought it was going to be. All in all it took about 5 hours to build, with a lot of just trying things, them not working, then trying again. The hardest thing I had to build was the spinners. While they worked ok, the straws they used were too big when compared to the pins causing them to angle and get caught. This issue would cause them to catch the ball and not let the balls fall into the designed pockets.
During the playtest I got a lot of positive feedback. The biggest feedback I got was how great my theme was. As I used cards and other things to make it really pop, my theme was very well received. I think with the time I spent to make each of the objects look like they belong was really well used and nothing looked like it was there just to be there. For example, the guardrail was either made completely out of cards, or carboard covered in cards. The biggest negative feedback I got was how my spinners and bumpers did not work super well. Every once in a while they would get stuck or the ball would bounce over them. This caused some break up in the flow of the game, which I agree was a major issue.
If I could have more time I would lay down the construction paper down first using spray adhesive as it would require less precise cuts and would not allow bumps to form allowing the ball to jump. Another thing I would do differently is the construction of the spinners and bumpers. They both were not super well designed and with more time I feel like they could be very fun to use instead of a hassle.
All assets were created by me minus the cards which was just a generic bicycle deck from Walmart.
My Game is called “Bar Games”. It is based on games that you could expect to see in a Bar such as Pool, Darts, and Cards. The idea was that while it could be anywhere it could show a bit of where it came from. The interesting thing is that while it has some representation of the past it also incorporates futuristic features such as bumpers and spinners.
I chose to theme this game since while the mechanics are simple, it can interact with the decorations in a more advanced way. For example I will place a target at the bullseye of a dartboard, and 6 targets at the locations of the holes on a pool table.
The original design was based on the picture above. With the orange dots being where the holes are, the stars being spinners, and the black dots being where pins will go. Based on the feedback I’m going to keep mostly this design with only slight modifications. The modifications that I am going to make are having more pins and turning some of the holes into pockets with pins. The Holes upon testing were harder to make well, so by replacing some holes with pockets it should be much faster to construct.
The scoring of the game is centered around the range of 250-2500 points. In one location to the top left, I have a times two hole. This means that in a game of 5 balls, if you land one in the times 2 hole, the point ranges will now be between 500 and 5000.
The biggest issue I may have with this game is the game flow. I am worried that the ball will just go around the top curve every single time, which will lead to a very repetitive game, but due to not having flippers I feel like it will be hard to modify that too much. So I will try to test this game to minimize that upon building. Another Issue I may have is with using the pins, as they are short, it will be hard to keep them in the board, so to fix that I plan on using hot glue to hold any pins that will be on any constant pressure. For the spinners I plan to use T-Pins and straws with cardboard flaps glued on. Based on minor testing it seems to work, but I am worried about friction causing issues with the spinning.
Pachinko is considered to be a
major feature of Japanese culture. They have massive halls dedicated to this cousin
of modern-day pinball, where walls upon walls of these machines sit. Playing
this weird game is about as close to gambling you can get without outright gambling.
The point of it not being classified as gambling is because gambling is illegal
in Japan. The reasons that it cannot be classified as gambling consist of the
need to purchase balls to play, getting balls back as reward, and then only
being able to exchange balls for prizes. The one caveat and what makes this so like
gambling, is that while you can only get prizes at the hall, usually down the
street places will purchase the prizes you win for cash. Meaning that you can
in a roundabout way put cash in, play pachinko, and then win more cash when you
leave.
These big halls of pachinko are
called pachinko parlors. These places are loud, crazy, and smoky and are almost
always packed. Inside they are bright and colorful and have a wide variety of
machines, including many different games. Some even have a few slot machines,
which play a form of pachinko called slot pachinko. But the classic game is still
the biggest portion of these stores. These machines have many different designs
but as arcade machines became more complicated so did these machines. Now a lot
of machines have animated screens displaying some information or a separate game,
and some are even fully animated.
Pachinko much like pinball has
themed machines. These themes vary wildly from different shows, to cute
characters, and in the past even representing different games (Such as a
popular video game). The biggest difference from a normal casino game and a
similarity to pinball is that each game can take a while, it’s not just put a
ball in get a random amount back, each game is different and can take a while.
For example, 10,000 yen or around 93 USD, takes around 40 minutes to go
through.
This was particularly interesting
to me because games in other cultures always stood out to me. A game I had
never heard of is one of the biggest games in a culture across the world and to
me that is fascinating. Another reason why I picked this was because of how
interesting and convoluted the gambling system is. While gambling is illegal in
the US normally many places get around this with a much simpler solution.
Bagatelle
Something
else that stood out for me was the game Bagatelle. Bagatelle was the precursor to
Pinball in that it had pins and a ball, but other than that it was very
different from the game we know today. Bagatelle is classified as a gambling
game as it was only really designed to have the player launch the ball then
land in a pocket at some point. The pockets could be drilled into the board or
could be created by pins raised up to catch the ball.
Bagatelle was originally created
for the rich with the origins being attributed to starting in the French aristocracy,
which was then brought to the French military, and then brought to America. This
game was based on a yard game where pins would get knocked down by balls being
rolled. The yard game was put onto a table with pins that could be knocked down
but setting them up was too time consuming, so as a solution they were fixed to
the board. This meant the target of knocking them over had to be changed to
something else. This something else became landing them in specific goals like holes
or specific areas on the board.
These old versions were played with
a larger handheld cue, which would over time change into a spring assisted
launcher. The first patented spring assisted launcher game was made by Montague
Redgrave in 1871. This launcher and this basic idea are what would end up
evolving into the very basic pinball system that we have today.
The reason I chose this is because
while the game is so simple, just the way it led into the machines today is
cool. Bagatelle was one of the first bar games which would end up leading to
all types of games. While the yard games were the first step towards pinball,
we would not have anything close to what we have today without the steppingstone
bagatelle was.
Mechanical to Electric: Evolution of Pinball
The
final thing that stood out for me was the evolution of pinball machines. This was
talked about at the Strong museum when looking at the various machines. While
most machines use similar parts in a time period, the way of building machines
has changed wildly. Originally machines were formed almost fully mechanically
with only very basic circuitry. Now they are games that are electromechanical
with lots of circuitry and only some mechanical parts. There are even games
that are fully digital.
From
Bingo, to Baffle Ball, and beyond the pinball machine has always been evolving
and changing. The pinball machine that exists today is made of many different additions
from old machines. Some of these changes consist of the tilt mechanism,
bumpers, flippers, and layout.
Something
that was very interesting to me about the addition of flippers is how they
found their location. The first game to really feature the flippers is Humpty Dumpty.
There were 6 flippers facing towards the inside of the machine and were
positioned along the outside edges. Overtime designers tested out different
locations, orientations, and spacing until it became what we have today.
The
tilt mechanism was interesting for me to learn about as I always thought the
only control the player had was using the flippers, but I found out recently
that tilting the machine is an intended part of gameplay. While tilting can
cause you to lose your ball if you tilt the machine too much, it can also save
your ball if it looks like it is going to go down the wrong way.
Another
big evolution was the progression into a more digital version. Games like
Revenge from Mars took one take of combining video games and pinball into one
experience, and while that worked partially on a whole, other games tended to
fail harshly. Other games took on a different route, with the games becoming
fully digital allowing for much more complicated behaviors and processes that would
just not be possible in real life.
The evolution of pinball is just interesting to me because it went from being so simple to so complicated. From a yard game to bagatelle to games like swing time to digital pinball.
Deadpool Pinball Manufactured in August 2018 by Stern Pinball
At the strong museum they have a few different sections each with a different theme or purpose. A few of these sections consisted of old machines showing the history of pinball, others were focused on specific companies, and another consisted of just weird machines. The one that caught my eye was the Stern Pinball section. The machines in this section ranged from sci-fi to superhero and beyond. The machine in this section that caught my eye was Deadpool Pinball. I chose this machine because of the enjoyment I have for the movies, comics, and the characters.
This game felt really good to play, it was responsive and very quick. There were tons of different ways to score points and complete objectives so there was never a time where it felt like you were pushing the ball around for no gain.
Before this trip I had only played pinball a handful of times in arcades. So I was very bad at controlling the ball starting out. I started out getting a pretty bad score after dying extremely quickly of only a few million. The next game I got a lot better and scored over 50 million points. That play through I even got a few key things such as multiball and certain places I could lose got blocked off. As time went on I got better at landing the ball in a few of the key places and even starting to accomplish some of the major goals of the machine.
Some of the goals I was able to achieve consisted of completing all of the Deadpool Targets, Boom, and Battles. The battles were very interesting because I hadn’t really seen anything similar in the machines I have played in the past. Once you triggered a battle, you could deal damage by hitting certain targets to deal damage, or to collect weapons or other heroes. The only villain I managed to defeat was Juggernaut.
Overall the game felt fun and action packed. Unlike many machines it was a partial mix between the game field and a small video game with the battles. This combination was something that really stood out to me. With the placement of the different goals it was a challenge while not being impossible for new player to get used to. The point system was highly inflated with the scores starting out in the millions, which while making it seem like you are doing really well because of the high scores, almost start to feel meaningless.
When I go back and have more time I definitely plan to play this machine a few more times to see if I can out do my poor score of 54 million. Especially considering the hi-scores on this one machine went easily into the billions.
