Slashdot Mirror
Multimorphic Teases Open Source Multi-Game Pinball
New submitter ghops spotted Engadget's coverage of an interesting gaming machine at SXSW, writing: "Multimorphic shows off the P3, an innovative multi-game pinball platform. With a 27" 'touchscreen' LCD in the lower playfield and modular shot layouts comprising the upper playfield, the P3 delivers a 'one machine, many games' system where the physical pinball can interact with graphics on the screen as it rolls towards traditional, physical objects (ramps, loops, targets, etc) on the upper playfield. The system will ship with two games, one designed by famed pinball designer Dennis Norman, and it's an open platform allowing anybody to develop their own shot layouts and/or software. Because of its ball tracking technology, it can even play itself!"
That sounds fun.
ZOMG pinball.
ZOMG touchsreen.
ZOMG programmable.
ZOMG PINBALL
*nerdgasm*
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The video screen is cool, but the actual pinball looks pretty boring. They probably should've less time on the video screen and more time on how to make a kickass pinball game.
According to the article, "targeted at the home user" for $9,500 to $10,000 unit... Yes, I can see this thing really taking off!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Sounds sort of like Jr. Pac-Man, except in reverse, along with "touch". I think I'll reserve judgement for now...
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
LCD screens and it can run rom based tables and other tables
The android / ios ones are too locked down and the screen size is too small for pinball.
http://virtuapin.net/
I played this at expo last year and it felt like a little to much was put on to the screen part also the lack of scores / displays on the head seemed out of place.
Layout did not seem as good as other games.
http://www.virtuapin.net/
$5,000.00 - hundreds of pinball machines, traditional designs, all video, super-realistic, everything you always wanted in a pinball game except having to maintain the rubber/playing field. Many existing pinball machines playable, created using Virtual Pinball emulator.
So, tell me WHY this modular pinball HACK is better than Virtuapin?
I played this at the Pacific Pinball expo this last year. I 100% agree that the too much focus was put on the under-ball display. In fact, during one of the games, I couldn't even see the ball due to all the explosion animations happening around the ball that I lost a ball. It was much too distracting. The rest of the play-field was just boring as well, symmetric and didn't invoke any reason or story to even play the game.
That would be neat to use with this. I don't know about physical parts. That might be hard? Maybe you can do it like Lego does?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I love pinball. Some day, when I grow up (if this is a thing that will ever occur), I will dedicate a large room in my house to nothing but pinball and perhaps a pool table. I like pinball games because they are tend to be visceral and real, and not at all related to modern video games, and that they're self-paced: I can hold a ball and plan a shot for as long as I want, at least until the machine resets after a half-minute or so of inactivity.
But I don't like many incarnations of modern pinball: Anything with a video display that I have to divert my attention to in order to score detracts (or distracts) from the physics of just getting the shots right.
The more I have to take my eye off of the ball to understand the progress of the game, the more the game tends to suck. I don't want to hit fictitious targets on a display; I want to hit targets that are mechanically interactive with the ball. Bumpers, pop-ups, magnets, traps, ramps, that sort of thing.
If there are cues that enable better scoring with different targets, then those should be plain so that they can be seen at a glance (such as playfield lamps) instead of on a twitchy-feeling, ever-changing video display with zero mechanical interaction.
I really don't want video eyecandy, at all: I just want physics, scoring, and cues. The big orange dot-matrix LED scoreboard display on seeming every pinball game released in the past twenty years is a nuisance that I never even see unless I'm waiting for the next ball to drop. (I'll check my score when the game ends, thanks, and I'll stuff my first quarter(s) in based on how the playfield looks, not based on how fancy the signage is.)
Otherwise, I might as well fire up the PS3 or 360, which I also enjoy, but not enough that I'd be willing to dedicate a room of my house toward gaming with one (or several). So when I grow up, I'm not getting one of these machines described in TFA.
(On the other hand: If there were a video-based pinball with a good basic mechanical layout and a way to bounce the ball around with non-distracting video targets (grids of electromagnets making linear motors of arbitrary orientation?) and predictable fake physics, I might be fully sold on the concept. But nobody seems to be doing that.)
Kid-proof tablet..
I suppose they're fun if you're a deaf, dumb and blind kid though
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it