design

Early Themes

Human-sized frog playing pinball machine.
Human-sized frog playing pinball machine.
So we had lots of ideas for themes for the pinball machine. And we would start designing ,and collecting resources, untill another idea came along that was better than the last.

The Frog

One of the earliest game ideas.

  • Frogs are cute.
  • Artwork is plentiful.

Rules can come from locations like:

Some quick work on the computer gave concept art: 

Early Example Of Superb Graphic Design.
Early Example Of Superb Graphic Design.

Later designs were moderately improved: 

Later Example Of Graphic Design.
Later Example Of Graphic Design.

The frog concept eventually failed for us. It lacked coherent theme and felt like a school project.

Cestus

Boxers Mosaic from Getty Villa.
Boxers Mosaic from Getty Villa.
A cestus is a battle glove sometimes used by Roman gladiators.

This theme would give us the whole of Ancient Rome to draw on; all the gladiator-related fun of murdering people in public to achieve socio-political goals.

This idea came about because I had the option to buy most of a Bobby Orr Power Play (IPDB). The head had been removed by an “accident”. I didn’t need the contents of the head, so it would be fine, and even I could make a wooden box!

Pinball Lost Head.
Pinball Lost Head.

It was a good theme for us, and fitted the playfield design of Power Play quite well. I made a comprehensive re-design of the playfield to confirm suitability (see below):

Cestus Playfield Design.
Cestus Playfield Design.

But by the time I had the design worked out, the unit had been sold. This turned out to be a common problem for me.

TOTM - Treasure Of The Mummy, Tomb Of The Mummy, The Mummy’s Tomb, Tomb! Treasure! Mummy!

Treasure Of The Mummy.
Treasure Of The Mummy.

One planning session was hilarious as we re-enacted a mummy sitting up in its sarcophagus as the ball went past. There is, fortunately, no footage of my impressions. When I was testing DMD emulation on LCD screens, I included a mummy test:

Mummy Test.

PBGM1

TOTM was the last of the “Named” pinball designs. By Named, I mean that while we were designing themes, I was banging away in the background with software, learning the intricacies of The Mission Pinball Framework (MPF). Changing the names of everything in my test code was quite irritating, but much better than having unreadable code like switch_3 and lamp_42, especially when learning. So a generic working title (just like the movies have) saved a lot of that, hence PBGM1. The 1 on the end is because we might¹ make 50 different machines…

PBGM1 had a few iterations of ideas that are not particularly memorable, but eventually lead to…

Wrath Of Anubis

Wrath Of Anubis.
Wrath Of Anubis.

We are sticking with this one - it has everything needed for:

  • Great playfield art.
  • Great cabinet art.
  • Great backbox art.
  • Deep ruleset.
  • Dedicated mechanisms.
  • Unique music.
  • Unique callouts.
  • etc.

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¹ Won't.