#like i need a design problem. so far i've thought of a couple angles but you truly need to do the fieldwork to understand.

[soft-serve-soymilk]

See for everyone else their viscomm research is all serious like going out and taking photos and brainstorming and meanwhile me viddy games go brrrrrrrrr

[ultrasuperexplore]

DESIGN THOUGHTS: OFF THE WALL

having spent a lot of time both playing a bunch of pinball machines and messing around with pinball table design software (which i'll talk about another day), i'm frequently thinking about how slight changes to one part of a playfield can greatly affect other aspects of the game. a good example would be that "fork" scoop protector on 'Rush' - by closing off the entrance to a scoop from the sides, the game becomes slightly more challenging overall, but the gradual physical wear around the scoop entrances is greatly reduced.

in a couple of my latest designs, i've had to rethink sets of stand-up targets that seemed to only ever cause bad experiences in my (far-too-frequent) playtesting. by doing those adjustments, i think i've gained new insight into what i need to think about when adding any sort of static target to a pinball game.

this starts with 'Fastpitch', a game i started this summer and one that i am trying to push to 'completion' state with fully-written scoring logic.

this is probably the earliest screenshot i have of Fastpitch. early on, i kept this bank of 7 spot targets perpendicular to the wall, since i figured it was the natural thing to do. a little later, when i added some placeholder indicator lights (the red circles), i decided to have the row of lights bulge out a bit from the wall, since i thought it'd look neat - perhaps i was also subconsciously floating the idea to change those targets' layout...

later in the summer, i doodled a table layout in my graph paper notebook, and the next day, sketched out the design in VP.

in this layout, the left ramp's entrance is fairly close to the flippers. two narrow targets flank the ramp's entrance, acting as 'guardposts' of a sort, and just below this cluster would be a set of 3 spot targets.

in my original doodle, those 3 targets were simply perpendicular to the left wall. (now that i think about it, i very often tend to place targets like that when designing tables, just to have *something* to hit above the inlanes...) upon playtesting, a problem with this setup became clear: when shooting for the targets from the right flipper, balls would ricochet off the targets, continue up the board, and crash into one of the ramp's guardpost targets.

i generally consider "guardposts" to be targets pinball players want to avoid, in most situations. in a modern pinball table, completing a shot - especially a ramp shot - usually means that the player gets a short rest period while the ball travels through the table, letting them prepare for when the ball comes back to the flippers. by contrast, hitting guardpost targets straight-on typically means the ball will immediately rebound back towards the center drain, which could very suddenly lead to a lost ball.

so, i had a situation where a deliberate shot to a valuable target is followed by an inevitable rebound that crashes into an undesirable target - not good! that's the sort of thing most pinball nerds like me would call an "unsatisfying" shot. i wanted to make sure that a player could take direct shots at the 3-bank without having to deal with such nasty rebounds, so i made a couple of simple changes:

the 3-bank of targets is now angled inwards, so balls that ricochet off of them will now travel much more to the right. additionally, i altered the ramp entrance, pushing the right entrance guardpost back to allow these ricochets a clearer path towards the right side of the table. these changes actually had a great knock-on effect, as now the ricochets naturally head towards the lanes on the right side!

after setting that sketch project down and returning to Fastpitch, i realized that the wall of 7 targets on its left side had the very same issue. shots from the flipper would usually hit the bottom pop bumper, sending the ball back down to the flippers at high speed. i also recognized this as being "unsatisfying", and likely, even harder for the average player to deal with.

thankfully, i had already figured out a solution!

by changing the targets' shape from a straight line to a curve - matching the way i initially laid out the indicator lights - a ton of variance is added to direct shots to the wall. the bottom pop bumper is still a likely destination, but by hitting the inward-angled targets, the ball tends to rebound further to the right, and the ball is more likely to get between the bumpers to score a bunch of hits. having the ball enter the pops at such an angle also makes it more likely that the ball will hit the Advance Pops rollover star, which is above the center loop, a spot that is near-impossible to deliberately aim for.

best of all - the lowest target on that wall happens to be placed & angled just right for a direct shot to rebound straight into the center loop! hell yeah!

as a hobbyist pinball designer, going through this review & revision has helped me realize how important ricochets are to consider for any pinball shot, not just static targets. it's certainly something i'll be taking into account going forwards!

i think this has also helped me improve my own pinball play - lately, i've been paying more attention to how the ball will rebound off a shot when it's attempted from different angles. sometimes, making shots from awkward angles on the flippers, like "backhand" shots, can have favourable properties compared to a shot from the flipper that has more direct access to the shot's entrance. for instance, backhand flipper shots are usually less powerful than direct flipper shots - while a shot may be harder to actually complete when the ball is moving slowly, a *missed* shot would also be slower, and therefore, easier to respond to.