Edit: The Pinball Labs Kickstarter is LIVE!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1820215579/pinball-labs

Hi guys!

I'm the developer of a new pinball simulator, editor and API called "Pinball Labs".

In addition to the virtual pinball community, I'm hoping to make Pinball Labs useful to homebrew enthusiasts by providing an interface to development frameworks and hardware controllers.

Ideally this would allow using Pinball Labs as a testing environment for research and development: Game play and controller logic could be inexpensively experimented with, in a modern software simulation, before committing resources to expensive parts, labor and materials.

Here's a quick video (downloadable demo links in the description.)

Here's a playlist showing progress made over the last couple of months.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAdBdx7wOXT5nSpRKJ810wBPY6YrNON0E

I hope to launch a small Kickstarter soon to allow me to work on Pinball Labs full time. The Kickstarter preview page goes into more detail about the proposed features and timeline.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1820215579/1338300277?token=606ce3f9

If Pinball Labs sounds interesting to you, I'd love to get permission to use images or video of your homebrew project in the Kickstarter.

I'd also love to hear what you think of the project!

Thanks!
tmek

Thanks guys.

I showed Pinball Labs to the Mission Pinball guys and I think there was some interest there. I attempted to contact FAST but I was getting an error using their website's contact page so I tried through Twitch. I'm not sure if they ever received the message.

I think it would be great to see a sort of standard protocol for streaming pinball events evolve. Basically a "MIDI" for pinball devices and controllers.

I did a proof of concept of a lightweight binary protocol that I call Pinball Event Protocol (PEP). It allows me to stream switch, lamp, driver and DMD events across different processes or even different machines.

Here's a video showing it being used to drive a Pinball Labs table with a PinMAME controller. Again, what's unique about this is the controller is being hosted in a completely separate process, it could very easily be running on another machine or conceivably a stand alone hardware controller.

(Excuse some of quirky physics in this example as the table has some bad geometry.)

Here's another video showing a single controller (again PinMAME) communicating with multiple separate processes.

As I'm working on the editor components for Pinball Labs I've been seeing things fall into two main categories.

Group 1.) Things that interact with controller hardware or have moving parts. (dynamic)
Including switches, lamps, solenoids and their various compound devices: bumpers, flippers, slingshots, gates, drop targets, toys, diverters, etc.

Group 2.) Things that do not interact with controller hardware and do not move. (static)
This would include ramps, habitrails, lane guides, wall guides, wire guides, plastics, posts/rubbers, etc.

"Devices" seems to encompass group 1. Does an umbrella term exist in real world pinball design that encompasses group 2? Perhaps Flow, Structure, or Layout components?

Hey guys!

I'm excited to announce the Pinball Labs Kickstarter is now LIVE!

full url: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1820215579/pinball-labs
tiny URL: http://kck.st/1YaC8dH

Pinball Labs is amazing new pinball simulator, editor and API, featuring highly realistic physics
and visuals with support for PC, VR and Virtual Cabinets.

Most of all, we want Pinball Labs to be a lot of fun! Join us on our adventure to write the next
chapter of Pinball's time-honored, storied gaming tradition, by making our Kickstarter a reality.
Make a pledge today and spread the word about Pinball Labs!

Pinball-Labs-Kickstarter.png

Yes to both! The idea is that pinball labs API will manage an event stream for virtual and physical switches, lights, solenoids and other devices. Check out this video where I demonstrate this. All communication is done over an event stream hosted by a server process. An infinite number of client processes can connect and read or write pinball events to the stream. The concept is a lot like MIDI for digital musical devices. There will be an easy to use software library that allows easily interfacing with the Pinball event stream.

Secondly, I absolutely want to allow homebrew to simulate their creations in Pinball Labs tested against their actual logic written for PROC or FAST Pinball. This is something I'm very interested in myself. Bear in mind that interacting with live simulations with platforms like PROC and FAST pinball will take some time so it will probably be one of the latter features added.

Yes, .FBX will be the format for custom models. Although I hope to limit the need for that as much as possible. There will be built in spline based editing for walls, surfaces, rubbers, ramps and habitrails. So hopefully custom models will only be required for things like toys.

Hi Erik!

Pinball Labs is built using Unreal Engine 4 which supports several platforms.

While the Kickstarter version will be Windows only initially, I hope one day to have Windows, Mac and Linux versions with full editor support. The VR support for Mac and Linux would be dependent on Unreal Engine's support at that time.

On the mobile side I would like to explore creating Android and iOS versions of the Pinball Labs simulator that allow you to download and play tables but without the built in editor support.

These would be things I would explore after the current Kickstarter rewards have been met. But I am pretty excited about the potential there.

Thanks for backing Pinball Labs!

Yes, it will be a standalone application like retro arcade game room. Probably 300-400MB installed and a ~130MB compressed download based on some of the other projects I've done. There will be a subfolder called \Tables under the main folder. Each virtual pinball machine will have a folder under that with machine definition, artwork, sound files and so on.

I made a post early on about how these files might be structured and laid out and talked a bit about it here:

http://i.imgur.com/MxsKoGo.png

There's quite an extensive discussion about the project on this forum post if you are interested in more details like that:

http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=32576&page=1

(By the way I love that retro arcade VR demo. It really takes you back to when you were a kid!)

There will be a list of standard sizes but you'll be able to define custom playfield sizes in millimeters. If you get too large things may of course start to look a bit silly.

I'm hoping to to generalize playfields as a component called a "surface". Surfaces will be used for main playfields, mini-playfields, plastics etc. You'll be able to define a shape of any surface using a 2D spline. Surfaces are planar but can be positioned and oriented however you like, such as the "boat" mini-playfield in Fish Tales.

Components are attached to surfaces. When you reposition a surface (such as a mini-playfield) it's components are moved with it.

I don't see any reason not to allow multiple large playfields as in the Total Recall example. That's not a problem in itself but having the game generate a custom "cabinet" that auto fits an arbitrary number of playfields laid out in various positions and orientations could be a bit challenging. You would likely have to provide your own cabinet model.

I definitely aspire to that. But something like that would have to come in a version after existing Kickstarter features are met. I have to watch the "feature creep" pretty closely to make sure I can fulfill what I've set out in the Kickstarter in a reasonable time frame.

But just like you I would certainly love to have my own virtual arcade decked out with all my favorite pins! If Pinball Labs is successful I hope to keep evolving it and release a new version with major new features every year or two.

If you haven't tried the alpha demo give it a try! It's not quite a playable game with scoring etc. but it should give you an idea of how the physics and visuals will be.

alpha demo download:
https://mega.nz/#!rIwVFTBS!nPrLgVrwTbQM3mJs6FMjOQhH460ziMis7yo0yj6aBhs

Absolutely, I have been working with Brian Madden over at Mission Pinball Framework and we both want it to be open as possible. I'll probably create a github project for PEP, or whatever it comes to be called, once we have a few working examples. It's not a complicated thing but by having a standard way of communicating should open up a lot of possibilities.

Yes, pinball labs allows you to design/create, play and share virtual pinball machines. Granted it is a commercial product so in order to play one of your tables they would need their own copy of Pinball Labs.

I will definetly be providing at least one scripting option with Pinball Labs. But the API is there so that hopefully others will make other options available.

I also am aiming to provide an easy-to-use and non-scripting method to define game play and logic for simpler designs. I'm not sure exactly what capabilities that will have. Certainly scoring, lighting, sound and having multiple modes but then you get into things like DMD animation which is more complicated. So certain things might still require scripting.

One of the things I'm banking on though is the API. I really want to do great job on and make the protocol easy and open to encourage other developers to write things that extend and interface with Pinball Labs.

Here's something I wrote up on another forum to answer a similar question about gameplay logic/rules and file formats:

http://i.imgur.com/MxsKoGo.png

Habitrails, ramps, railings and plastics will all be laid out and adjusted using splines. (The rubbers in the second half of the Kickstarter video show kind of what that will be like.)

The first version will have the most common playfield devices/mechanisms included, including things like ball troughs. You will also be able to import .fbx models for stationary playfield and ornamental objects.

What I hope to implement in a future release is the "Device Workshop" where you can design your own compound virtual pinball devices built from 3D models, virtual solenoids, motors, springs, switches and lights.

I accidentally quoted my own post.. is there a way to delete a post? :p

Indeed! I used some of those models as reference for the low-poly, game ready models I created!

fyvyKcV_(resized).png

lwkwCjV_(resized).png

Hi guys,

I know many of you don't share the same view as VacFink but he brings up some points that I don't mind addressing.

VacFink, I have to say you don't seem to understand the level of effort it takes to do something like this. It was extremely hard work getting Pinball Labs to a functioning demo and done solely at my expense. I spent probably eight to ten hours every day before and during the campaign trying to market Pinball Labs at my own expense. I was able to get it a huge amount of press attention, RoadToVR, Engadget, Techcrunch and others covered the story mostly due to the virtual reality angle. The traffic to the Kickstarter was significant and I was in every pinball related forum everyday that would have me answering questions and interacting with the communities that weren't yet sold on the idea of Pinball Labs. Support was already pretty strong here.

The fact that it came so close and I DIDN'T relaunch immediately for 60 days should be what alleviates red flags for you about my character. Someone in my position could have easily immediately relaunched for 60 days and it almost certainly would have reached $18,500 and just kept the money. Similarly, I could have had a "family member" plop in $3k and been granted access to the full $18,500 (minus 8% kickstarter fees).

Kickstarter funded does not equal project funded. If the initial Kickstarter had been able to raise $18,500 in that time period with that level of exposure I was personally willing take on the risk of funding and ensuring the project could be completed and on time. Based on the feature set outlined in the Kickstarter that was a really hardcore commitment and an offer not many people would have made. As a comparison you won't even get a quote less than $100,000 to do a very simple iPhone app from a competent developer. It would have equated to me working six months, 40-60 hours every week at about $6-7 per hour based solely on the hope that there would be enough future sales to make it worth while. Unless you've made a similar financial risky offer and are willing to back it up with your own capital and hard work, I don't see how you can be so critical and downplay the effort that was put forth.

I may still pursue Pinball Labs further in the future but I'm sure most of you realize it's a difficult prospect both technically and financially.

In the meantime I created an open source project containing the code and experiments I ran related to the Pinball Event Protocol concept. It's under MIT license so Feel free to fork and do whatever you want with it.

I also received a letter from Epic about a project their Japanese offices developed called the Unreal Engine 4 Pinball Construction Kit. You can read more about it and PEP here:

http://www.vpforums.org/index.php?showtopic=33690

Thanks everyone,

tmek

@VacFink, No problem. I just wanted to clear up any misinformation.

Good luck on your endeavors as well.