Unbelievable free pinball game!

General Discussions
#1

So, while not a Java game, I had to post this here. I am a huge pinball fan and own pinball games on most of my consoles. I have recently found one of the best pinball games I have ever seen on the PC, and it is completely free!

http://www.futurepinball.com

It’s not only a complete pinball game, but a complete table editor. Some of the player made tables are absolutely fantastic! I have downloaded the Puzzle Bobble and Sonic 2 tables. Fantastic!

-Chris

#2

Cool!

If you want great free pinball check out Visual Pinball and PinMAME… (just google it)… It takes a bit of setup and only runs on Windows, but there are some really well done tables, definitely worth it. They always use the original ROMs, much like MAME so it’s decent practice for the “real thing”. I have a pinball machine in my basement (“High Speed”) and we have 3 at work in the lunch room. (One of the guys I work with is a bit of a collector.) There’s definitely something about the old-school mechanical pinball machines that I really enjoy.

The person that did Visual Pinball made the mistake (IMO) of using VBScript to connect ActiveX controls to make the game… so you need a really powerful machine and even then in some multi-ball modes is slows to a crawl… I’ve been toying with the idea of re-doing the Visual part in Java + JOGL + JODE and creating JNI bindings to the PinMAME engine that runs the ROMs… if only I had the time. Sigh…

EDIT… oh wait… I see that Future Pinball uses the same VB Scripting… looks like it is derived from Visual Pinball + PinMAME. Interesting. Of course that means it suffers from the same performance issues… VB Script is absolute crap for that sort of thing and it REALLY shows.

Ah yes,it’s all here: http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Pinball

Interesting that they didn’t use the best part of Visual PinMAME (i.e. the PinMAME engine) yet they kept the absolute worst part, the part that was an obvious blunder… VB Script… What were they thinking ???

Definitely would make more sense to use a Java front end on PinMAME.

#3

Very familiar with VP and PM. I was just blown away by the resolution, graphic, playability and physics of FP. Although there were a couple of times when the ball got stuck and would not drop, even though it should have. As well, the editor is crazy good, but not for the faint of heart.

Huh. How about that. A game using VB Script that does not totally suck! :slight_smile:

-Chris

#4

So…

  • the “tables” button links to a page of screenshots with no titles and no download links, so you can see tables but you have to “guess” what they’re called then google or search for them on other sites
  • the first suggesed link for downloading tables has download links that all redirect to forums with no file attachments
  • the best tables on the suggested download sites all seem to be on pinball-originals.com

…and then, eventually, I found out that you are not allowed to download files from that site without registering as a forum member and logging on.

At which point I thought “**** this for a game of soldiers, I’d rather a play a pinball game where you just 1. Download it, 2. Run it, 3. Enjoy” :(.

Looks fun, but having spent 20 mins trying to get to the point where I could even play the game, I’ve run out of lunch break :(.

#5

Heh…downladed stuff and then app crashes when table is about to load…damn. >:(

#6

I found FP last year and Bubble Bobble was the table I used most :slight_smile:

I started working on a table design but work got crazy, 6-7 days a week and I dropped it.

Yeah it does take too much work to get tables, but you have the basic outline there now for others to follow.