I am just curious, but how difficult do you think it would be to program a pinball game in GameStudio with Lite-C? I am a virtual newbie (despite all my years) with Lite-C. I can normally take scripts and place them properly, even modify they to get them to do what I need, but I've never really sat down and programmed something from scratch ... nothing of any note, that is. But I do want to learn and I am attracted to pinball games all of a sudden. Any pointers any of you can give me?

Well, when you want to use realistic physics (by A7 ODE, PhysX A8) it will be probably more complicated than using "non-realistic" ball behavior.

Generally I think, that this is not a too complicated task. The scripting part - with fixing most bugs, and optimizing would (for me) take a weekend or two.

You will spend more time setting up the level than codding this I think. At least for the physics part of making a ball and a few paddles to smack it around.

the physics part won't be as easy as you think. physx behaviour is too spongy and in pinball machines the balls can move extremely fast which can be a problem too (tunneling,...).

i would use newton. there are some pinball games done with newton.

i think it is easily possible to setup a prototype and tweak it with physiX
first of all i would enable CCD for the ball, so it cannot pass walls or other structures
second step is to design a basic level with two paddles and a the pit
for the paddles you can fix them with a constraint in the level and rotate them with simply adding a torque if you press the corresponding key else rotate in the other direction
bumbers could be done with simply adding a force to the ball in the "bounce"-direction
try some things, should not be to hard

Well, the programming aspect certainly seems well beyond me. Creating the assets, that's a breeze (and the fun part). I was hoping I could somehow learn to get some basic code together to test in a sandbox and then move on to developing the actual table that I want to create. I may have to find someone to team-up with.

Here a 4 Kilobyte Java Pinball game by zeroone with sourcecode.

http://java4k.com/index.php?action=games&method=view&gid=389

What this basically shows is that the ballphysics can be implemented easily in code.
(not that this is ment as tutorial,
I just remembered this specific codesnipplet, and it has no dependencies on
other libraries,
so its showcases a complete pinball-physics implementation)

With the physics and architecture working,
the visualization should be easy to do then (for you)

Its just balls and some textured walls + effects...

---(about casual games)---

Using PhysX is another step to make this game fail as a casual game.
As you have to assure its running on the client machine.
There are so many other PC Pinball games, so making
the game harder to install and run just puts off potential consumers.

I would anyhow suggest to have 2 versions:
-a single exe executable (at least for the demo)
-and a classic installer

and keeping the (demo) somewhere under 20MB

I wouldn't try screwing around with PhysX for something like this. With some effort, you (or someone else) could craft a custom physics system for you that's lightweight and much more controllable. That really shouldn't be too difficult to pull off either, considering the rather two dimensional nature of a pinball board.

Start small. Make a level that has a hill in the middle and goes down on all sides. Now make a ball and make it roll with physics. When done with that add some paddles in differently places that move when a button is pressed thanks to physics. Now test. test a lot. When it works the way you want build the level and add all the pretty things that will take more time to program than the original thing you thought would take the most time.

This is not correct as the physX installer is not needed anymore:


@RealSerious3D: I wouldn't use physX, too, as I'm sure it just wouldn't work very well, at least when you start to use rails and the like. Moreover, the overall task is not as easy as it sounds (esp. with three dimensions), if you work on this project in your spare time, I assume the coding will take you at least 1.5 months. My suggestion is that you start with a 2D pinball game (with 3D graphics).