Future Pinball

[Occulus]

Well, well, well. Someone finally did it right: a free pinball table editor that can achieve truly stunning results.

It's called Future Pinball. Here's a screenie of the editor in action:



And here's the table visible in the editor:



As you can see, this application can produce some amazing work. I'd put the table shown, called Three Angels, on par with the professionally-produced Pro Pinball series for the PSX. It's easily the toughest pinball table I've ever played, and is also a whole hell of a lot of fun.

And it's free. Enjoy.

[realisticphish]

1. grr

I can't wait for my macbook pro, so i can dual-boot. I also thought about just dropping 400 bucks on a cheap dell or something for stuff like this, but meh; rather save the cash for the main purchase (which, at the moment, exists only in a fantasy realm filled with elves and unlimited cash)

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

2. Oooh. I'm going to have to check this one out.

Electronic Arts (back in the 80s when they were innovative) created the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Construction_Set">Pinball Construction Set and I spent hours working with it. Couldn't get it to work right, though.

[Occulus]

3. The editor is rather complex on this one, as you can see

That is the actual gameplay table I posted, too, and not a mockup of some sort. I can get 60fps out of that :D

The "Three Angels" script file comes out to over 1400 pages in OpenOffice, Courier New 6pt. It's huuuge. It is, however, the best example I've seen of what this little app can do.

[Systematic Chaos]

4. I've been playing this for a couple of years, and I LOVE it.

My only complaint is that not enough of the tables I played starting in the late 70s are available. I'd try and make them myself -- or at least facsimiles of them -- but I couldn't script my way out of a wet paper bag.

[Occulus]

11. The scripting is Visual Basic

and there are lots and lots of learning sources for that online. If you've been using FP for a couple of years, I'm sure you've played with the table editor by now. The language is a popular one; if you have an idea for a table, you really owe it to yourself to try to learn the scripting.

Disclaimer: I haven't bothered to learn the scripting myself, but I'm focusing on Blender right now...

[Forkboy]

5. It started as Visual Pinball.

It was pinball heaven, and in some ways I still like it more than F.P. But either one is worth any pinball fan's attention.

[Occulus]

10. That looks like a fun table, too

I want to see someone make a replica of Pro Pinball's "Fantastic Journey" for the PSX. Before I played "Three Angels", "Journey" was my all-time favorite, and I still think it's a perfect example of what pinball should be. I'm sure it's doable in FP, but without the ability to import models, it would be difficult at best...

[FormerDittoHead]

6. Is anyone else old enough to have had EA's Pinball Construction Set?

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3923/the_history_of_the_pinball_.php

I had the version for the Commodore 64.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

7. *Raises hand*

Pinball Construction Set
Racing Destruction Set

And the ultimate set they did:

Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set.
All for my C-64, too.

That gives me a great idea for a new post. I should write it up and post it tomorrow...

[Systematic Chaos]

14. I used to spend hours making tables for the Atari 800 version.

I had the one Bill Budge made for the Sega Genesis too, but that came up a bit short to me. There weren't enough options for exact placement of elements and so forth, but you could still do neat things with it.

[Mojambo]

8. Great Googly Moogly!

That looks amaaaaazing.

[Occulus]

12. That table is a lot of fun, too.

Don't expect to score more than 20,000 points the first time you play it, if you end up downloading the app and the table. It's a hard table. Brutal, even.

[lazarus]

9. so I want to do this

and it won't work. Is it Win7 that's the problem? I can get one of the stock sample tables to sort of load, but have no controls. I can't get the one in your post to even load properly, it crashes.

[Occulus]

13. Apologies- you have to put the files in the .zip in the right places

The .fpt file goes into the /tables directory under the installation directory, and the others go into /libraries. If you're using Win7 (I'm sadly not at the moment), you may have to set permissions on the future pinball directory to properly load the files. I'm in XP right now and I don't think I tested FP under Win7, but it should at least load the default table.

To insert a coin, press 5. To start the game, press 1. Enter acts as the plunger, and the shift keys are the flippers.

edit: you may need DirectX if you haven't already installed it.

[lazarus]

15. okay, I didn't have the fpt in the right place, but

it still got to the end of the load and crashed. So I downloaded DirectX, goes to the end of the load and crashes.
The program itself will come up, but when I try to load a table to play, it loads and loads, then right at the end, it crashes (stops responding, Windows error message).
:shrug:

I tried setting permissions, but I'm not sure what I did. I just set all permissions I could find to yes.

[Occulus]

16. Hmm. Are your video drivers up to date?

And do you have the other files (the .fpl files) in the ./Future Pinball/Libraries folder?

What video card are you using, anyway? Also, how much RAM do you have, and what's your OS?

Another thing you might want to try doing is to turn the graphics quality down to low and tell the program to run in a window. To do this, open Future Pinball, pull down the Preferences menu, and select Video/Rendering Options. Hit the Minimum preset button in the lower right, and make sure that Full Screen, 1/3 of the way down on the far left, is unchecked. Your video card (or drivers) may not support one or more of the program's rendering methods, which could be causing the crash.

Let me know if you make any headway; this should function fine given you have a reasonably recent PC/OS/video card.

[lazarus]

17. it's a relatively new laptop

that I got for Xmas. Win7, 4 GB RAM. When I go into the control panel and tell it to tell me the name of the video card, it just says "Mobile PC Display".

I don't know Win7 very well, so I have no idea how to update the drivers. I'll check that out, but they can't be very far out of date.

I tried turning the graphics quality down. The program still loads fine, but it won't launch the table to play. It gets to about 95%, then I get a Windows error.

Thanks for helping, by the way. :hi:

[Occulus]

18. What's your exact video hardware?

Also, what's the error text Windows burps at you?

Then there's this, from the official site:

"A Pentium / Athlon processor of 1800 mhz or
greater, 512meg ram and at least a (or better)
Geforce FX / Radeon video card.
Video Card MUST support shaders."

I suspect the bolded text might have something to do with it; we need to know your exact video hardware to check. Do this: run dxdiag (in Win7, open the start menu and type dxdiag in the box). Go to the "Display" tab. Your particular video hardware is shown in the upper left, under "Device".

I hope I can get this going for you :D

[lazarus]

19. okay

Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family
DAC type: Internal
Approx. Total Memory: 1759 MB
Current Display Mode: 1366x768 (32 bit) (60 hz)

Driver is dated 8/27/09. Version 8.15.10.1883

My processor is an Intel Core2 Duo T6600 @2.2 GHz

DirectDraw Acceleration, Direct3D Acceleration, and AGP Texture Acceleration are all enabled.

This is turning into a challenge. :hi:

[Occulus]

20. It may be as simple as updating your video driver

Try this link:

http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/intelgm45/

I do know that Intel graphics chipsets do not play well with some game titles; this may be one of them.

[lazarus]

21. no luck

Thanks for all the help. It basically will load one of the other tables, but not let me play with them, and won't even load the Angels table. I just get a window telling me Future Pinball has stopped working.