[HN Gopher] Play Windows Pinball (Space Cadet) on the Web
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Play Windows Pinball (Space Cadet) on the Web
Author : pr337h4m
Score : 87 points
Date : 2022-12-05 19:13 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alula.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (alula.github.io)
| pr337h4m wrote:
| Source code: https://github.com/alula/SpaceCadetPinball
| rand0m4r wrote:
| nice ... it would be nice to know how to play though
| jkingsman wrote:
| z and forward slash for left and right bumpers. Press and
| hold space to pull back launch plunger and release to launch.
| x and period to tilt table.
|
| Worth noting that F8/Player Controls dialogue doesn't work,
| and neither does disabling the music.
| compsciphd wrote:
| I'm not sure I ever knew you could tilt the table. child me
| wishes he had this knowledge. (I assume if you tilt too
| much it triggers a tilt failure?)
| inanutshellus wrote:
| My jaw may have dropped at learning this from GP's
| message. Alllll this time and I'm learning you could tilt
| Space Cadet _now_?!
| EarthLaunch wrote:
| I think it's a funny example of great UI discoverability
| still having failures. I say great because having the
| tilt keys adjacent to the paddle keys seems like a setup
| for accidentally hitting tilt in a moment of heat,
| thereby leading to discovery of the tilt keys. Though
| perhaps 'moment of heat' is exactly when the player is
| least likely to realize they hit the wrong key.
| aledalgrande wrote:
| or left/right click for bumpers
| boringg wrote:
| Am I the only one who found this game to be super frustrating for
| some reason? Still tons of memories though.
| narag wrote:
| It was easy for me after enough hours playing, IIRC I had a
| ~100M record... must have the record file anywhere.
|
| Actually I have the game installed in Windows 10, but I no
| longer play it. I lost the aim in the central targets that give
| endless extra balls.
| Arrath wrote:
| Its digital pinball why does it have coin-sucking ways for lose
| the ball without recourse??
|
| Or do I just not know the deep lore of pinball and how to keep
| the blockers deployed in the side routes 100% of the time.
| ndiddy wrote:
| It's because you're not tilting, it's an intended mechanic.
| monocasa wrote:
| The physics seem really off. Almost no power out of the paddles
| for instance.
| x0n wrote:
| Doesn't seem to work with Microsoft Edge :/
| jabberwik wrote:
| Works fine here, Edge 107
| benj111 wrote:
| 107 already? Isn't Firefox and Chrome on a similar number
| despite having a 5 (?) year head start on the stupid number
| inflation game?
|
| Does MS still believe that higher = better?
| retrobox wrote:
| I think it's more that Edge follows Chromium's version
| numbers
| ceautery wrote:
| Naturally.
| rzzzt wrote:
| I can turn off music for ~3 seconds, then it starts up again.
| battles wrote:
| Same. I didn't even know this game had music. It's ruining my
| nostalgia high.
| throwaway2203 wrote:
| OMG I've been looking for this for so long, it made me so happy!
| aliqot wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThxdvEajK8g
| hxugufjfjf wrote:
| Would kill for a way to play on a mobile browser. Currently only
| the left flipper works when tapping the screen
| kernal wrote:
| If you're on Android you can install the APK.
|
| https://github.com/fexed/Pinball-on-Android
| matbatt38 wrote:
| Crash on startup here :( (Android 10)
| [deleted]
| swyx wrote:
| i spent so much of my childhood in this game. so glad to see it
| back but grown up me doesnt find the appeal of wasting so much
| time anymore. kinda sad to see my childhood go.
| aledalgrande wrote:
| OMGGG so many memories
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Now all I need is rock-paper-scissors from ICQ without ICQ and my
| collection is almost complete.
| jarboot wrote:
| typing 'hidden test' before launching the ball still activates
| the same cheat as the original :)
| LaLaLand122 wrote:
| Aren't there pinball games any more? I remember spending a lot of
| hours playing Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Illusions in an Amiga
| 1200.
| rzzzt wrote:
| One or both of these had an MS-DOS port with VGA graphics
| (smooth scrolling!) and excellent MOD playback using PC speaker
| output.
| compsciphd wrote:
| Epic's shareware pinball game, paid for the development of the
| initial version of unreal. Epic as we know it today doesn't
| exist without pinball.
| gwill wrote:
| i recently discovered demons tilt and enjoy it a lot:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/422510/Demons_Tilt/
| adamrezich wrote:
| Pinball FX3 (available on Steam, and other platforms) is pretty
| good if there's specific real-world tables you're interested in
| playing. Volume 1 has Medieval Madness, which I have logged far
| too many hours in.
| agentwiggles wrote:
| Medieval Madness is my all time favorite table. I recently
| bought the version for Pinball FX3, and it's not half bad. I
| could complain about all kinds of things about PinballFX3,
| it's very emblematic of the problems with modern gaming, but
| the tables themselves are pretty good recreations.
|
| It's nowhere near as fun as real pinball, but the one thing
| that I found really cool was that I was able to play the game
| on "training mode" and get a better sense for the different
| things I could do and how to set up certain situations.
|
| My best Medieval Madness score is something like
| 50,000,000... the table I play on has a high score of about
| 190,000,000 so I have a long way to go to have a chance at
| putting in my initials. But I can generally go for a pretty
| long session on a single credit. Even still, I hadn't ever
| seen half the stuff that I got to see while playing the
| virtual version, and I've taken some of that knowledge into
| the real world when I visit the bar where that table lives.
|
| So overall, digital pinball is cool in my book, if flawed.
|
| Quick edit/addition: Medieval Madness is unique among nearly
| all the tables I've played in that it doesn't bullshit you
| much. Most of the time when I lose balls, I know exactly the
| wrong thing I did (in particular, trying to hit the castle
| gate or the trolls without multiball is pretty dangerous).
| Most tables I've played will suck up a credit in a few flips
| in ways that seem pretty unfair, but Medieval Madness seems
| pretty fair. I would love to own a table but they're
| shockingly expensive, maybe someday!
| toast0 wrote:
| > I would love to own a table but they're shockingly
| expensive, maybe someday!
|
| MM has always been on the higher end (or at least for the
| last long while). And pricing went crazy during covid. But
| it's a great table, so there's that. Probably fiddly to
| keep working with all the dodadds though. Personally, I
| like the very end of the alphanumeric era, right before
| DMDs came and started stopping the game to show you
| animations, but collectors seem to prefer DMD games.
|
| Most games you can do a good job of advancing the plot by
| just shooting for the flashing shots, but maybe avoid
| center shots, unless you have a good setup, because a
| missed shot may be hard to recover, although the trolls can
| be hard to recover from a hit too. Advancing the plot
| usually results in good scores.
|
| In terms of video pinball that's not virtual physical
| tables, Demon's Tilt is fairly new, and pretty fun. I was
| deeply amused when I got a ball stuck and had to use the
| 'call attendant feature' and got some sort of bonus. But
| like a lot of video pinball, at some point it is too much a
| game of skill, and you can have epic ball times and then
| it's kind of boring.
|
| Yoku's Island Express is also interesting, it's several
| years old now, and widely ported. It's an adventure game
| with pinball segments. Boss battles are pretty fun, imho
| agentwiggles wrote:
| I like to think (although reality may one day humble me)
| that I would enjoy the tinkering aspect of owning a
| table, at least one that I liked enough to make the
| tinkering worthwhile. I also stumbled on the strategy of
| just going for the flashing lanes - although you can do
| quite well for yourself just trying to hit the castle
| too.
|
| I have been meaning to check out Demon's Tilt. Yoku is
| fun but didn't grab me enough to go much past the early
| game.
| adamrezich wrote:
| this is exactly why I bought Pinball FX3, my local barcade
| got a Medieval Madness table and I remember liking it as a
| kid, and I wanted to learn more about how the game works
| beyond "put a few quarters in and hit some flippers until
| stuff happens", without having to keep pumping fifty cents
| in time after time.
|
| I think the _depth_ that pinball tables (I 'm not enough of
| a buff to feel comfortable calling them "pins" ...yet) have
| is hugely underrated. I remember learning about the
| objectives you can go for in Space Cadet but I was blown
| away by all the different systems/table features/etc. in
| MM! so much to learn and keep track of at once, but once
| you start to get the hang of it, playing & learning more is
| incredibly addictive. my MM high score in PFX3 is somewhere
| around 50M (with the hugely unfair default, not "realistic"
| physics--though I play both), but I haven't been able to
| get anywhere near that irl just yet.
|
| it is interesting just how much irl pinball physics differ
| from their virtual counterparts, there really is nothing
| quite like it.
|
| also, for those unaware, some Medieval Madness trivia:
|
| - a pre-famous Tina Fey voices of some of the princesses
|
| - Tim Kitzrow does his NBA JAM shtick as the joust
| announcer, and even BOOMSHAKALAKAs sometimes
|
| - there's very occasional "Toasty!" and "FATALITY" samples
| from Mortal Kombat (Dan Forden, the Toasty Guy, did sound
| for both games)
|
| really, if you're a fan of pinball/arcade history, it's
| just a real treat, sort of a culmination of the
| Williams/Midway arcade scene, in some ways.
| agentwiggles wrote:
| I honestly can't think of another table that's close to
| as fun as MM, it's got the perfect vibe and so many neat
| little table features. MM was also the first table where
| I started to learn the objectives (I can get the
| multiball with pretty decent consistency now). And again,
| it's probably the fairest table I'm aware of, I very
| seldom say "that was bullshit!" when playing MM.
|
| Most of my prior pinball experience was just "bang in a
| few quarters and watch the lights flash until you lose."
| Imagine my surprise to find that those little cards on
| the tables actually tell you how to play :)
|
| My 50M play was a magical one, I lucked out in all kinds
| of ways. My average is around the 25-30M range (on good
| runs, I'm still not good enough that I don't occasionally
| flame out near 1M haha)
| toast0 wrote:
| > it is interesting just how much irl pinball physics
| differ from their virtual counterparts, there really is
| nothing quite like it.
|
| I think there's probably a couple components.
|
| #1 is virtual pinball physics is usually too simple and
| it plays too deterministically. Real pinball plays
| differently when the machine clean vs dirty, and it gets
| (minutely) dirtier as you play, parts wear, etc.
| Sometimes the ball jumps or otherwise moves in unexpected
| ways.
|
| #2 is flipper timing variability. In virtual pinball, the
| controller is usually sampled once a frame, but pinball
| machines pre-fliptronics had the switches connected to
| the flippers through a relay, post fliptronics, I'm not
| sure if there's a sampling delay, but if so, I think the
| sampling rate is higher than 60Hz. That really increases
| the possibilities, even if a couple ms here or there
| doesn't make a big difference.
|
| #3 tilting on virtual pinball is _very_ precise, but I
| haven 't found it nearly as precise in the real world.
| a_t48 wrote:
| I also wish MM wasn't so dang expensive. :(
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Something that no video pinball communicates compared to a
| physical table is just how violent it is. The force with
| which the steel ball is launched deflected and bounces is
| really quite visceral.
| CharlesW wrote:
| There are! Digital/virtual pinball is huge.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/atgames-legends-virtu...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Pinball
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| But they are physical devices with screens for playfields. I
| think OP means for laptops/desktops.
| CharlesW wrote:
| The first article focuses on form-authentic cabinets, but
| the software that powers those (like the open-source Visual
| Pinball, the freeware Future Pinball, the commercial
| Pinball FX3, etc.) work on ordinary laptops/desktops too.
| bayofpigs wrote:
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(page generated 2022-12-05 23:00 UTC)