Your Customized Pinball Kit

I was imagining the habitrails were the bits that guide the ball to the flippers (which is actually an "inlane"), as opposed to the wire "tube" in which the ball would roll.

This is a great resource for the uninitiated (which includes myself )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_pinball_terms

May need to revisit the intended target audience here.

Is the kit going to contain everything you need to assemble it into a working pinball machine in the box (e.g. fun project for kids), or does it just contain the key components and the user needs access to a workshop/fablab in order to fabricate additional parts (e.g. people who want to design their own games). Will there be a supply of add-ons and spares available ?

It may be difficult to include features like habit rails in a totally free-form design unless you expect the audience to have excellent wire bending/forming skills. An alternative might be to consider something like plastic flexirails as used in the Fischertechnik pinball build

fischertechnik GmbH - ROBOTICS - ROBO TXT ElectroPneumatic

and their dynamic ball track builds

fischertechnik GmbH - PROFI Dynamic - Dynamic L2

which can be cut to length and formed as required but you still have the issue of requiring custom supports to hold it in place.

More realistically I suspect you would need to have a tried and tested design which includes a pre-formed habitrail component and it is either used or isn't. However having a kit with lots of left over components depending on the core design chosen, will likely bump the overall cost up.

DAB wrote:

 

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I am not familiar with habitrails, so I need more information.

 

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DAB

I believe that it is the name given to the elevated basket rails that you see on some pinball tables.

If I where to order a pinball kit I would definitely want on of the rail things the ball rolls on.

I'd imagine that with a pinball game that it takes a fair amount of trial and error in order to end up with a playable game. If it is going to be totally customisable, then I can see the base board ending up like Swiss cheese by the time people manage to get the placements right.

With that in mind then perhaps the kit is supplied with a limited number of tried and tested layouts that use the same number of core active components but with some optional passive components such as rails, guides, decals that may or may not end up being used depending on the layout chosen and that could be temporarily tacked in place until the game can be fine-tuned.

Either that or the kit perhaps will need to be supplied with a number of spare base boards to allow several attempts at different layouts.

I would focus on these in this order as they would be easier than the mechanicals:

"various displays, flashing lights, bumpers, and habitrails"

The following pieces would be awesome, but harder to implement in my opinion:

"ramps, additional flippers, drop targets"

I would love to see a multiball mech but don't see it as a realistic package option.

If this goes to Kickstarter, another point would be to make these pieces as either Stretch goals or Add-ons.

Hi Karen,

I think for a mini pinball, you should keep it fairly basic, easy to build and easy to use.

A few bumpers, maybe a ramp, high use of visual displays (you want people to see it and get excited), sound and flashing lights.

I am not familiar with habitrails, so I need more information.

What I would like is a simple game where I have background targets to shoot at with the flippers, a good small maze of obstacles, and a good chance to keep the ball in play for a while as I build up skills.

Note, I am now 65, so do not make it too challenging for us aging pinball players.

Thanks

DAB