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Community Members make suggestions to the team as they work on their mini pinball kit. Feedback includes a suggestion for making a two player pinball machine based on a model that uses a tabletop CNC router; suggestions for adding pop bumpers, slingshots, drop targets, spinners, ramps, and habitrails; and the use of Story Mode to reach a younger audience. |
Community Feedback comes from rouverius , f5kn , plyanthony !
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rouverius has a suggestion for making a 2 player pinball machine based on project that uses a tabletop CNC router. The idea is to give your pinball game head-to-head competition by getting rid of the backboard and have the two pinball fields face head-to-head. He dubs it the plywood love child of pinball and air hockey. The concept lacks electronics so she suggests combining efforts on a collaborative build. Karen recalls a similar project at Bay Area Maker Faire that was also lacking in electronics. While Ben thinks it’s neat, but it’s something that already exists. There was a pinball game based on the arcade game Jost and a pinball version of American football come to mind immediately. However, it could be something fun to do with the Mini Pinball Kit they are building if you were to line them up, smooth the top, and move the electronics down.
f5kn finds the following pinball machine features indispensible: pop bumpers, slingshots, drop targets, spinners, ramps, and blinking lights everywhere. Habitrails would be cool, but hard to put on a customizable machine. He suggests having 2 different pinball machines available to accommodate this need. Ben responds by letting him know that they have pop bumpers coming, slingshots they don’t have, drop targets they sort of have, no spinners but those would be easy to make, and ramps they’re going to do. As far as habitrails, they were talking about using thin rubber tubing and putting it into little links, so you can use the rubber tubing to create almost a roller coaster, and the ball can roll down that.
plyanthony was born in 90’s before the whole “pinball era”. He grew up playing game consoles so real pinball machines never crossed his mind. To reach those in his age range he suggests putting an emphasis on the story mode, making it known to the player they are progressing by using soundbytes or light arrows. This will help remind people that have never experienced pinball that there is an actual game and a story to progress. Ben also feels strongly about this and when he makes pins he thinks there should be character and depth.
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