3D Pinball for Windows (1995) | Hacker News Reader

3D Pinball for Windows (1995)

98.js.org

117 pointsmushstory49 comments

Recently stumbled across a YouTube channel (no affiliation) where a guy is documenting his process of building a working physical replica of Space Cadet Pinball. I found the process pretty interesting. If you're intrigued: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU_02HABZ4s

I remember that it was a lot easier if I had 10 instances of Winamp running at the same time, it was not just that time slowed, the physics was different. Was this ported?

I dont know why but this feels like some esoteric enchanment that would unlock higher dimensions of possibilities if only explored further. Perhaps new harmonies could have been discovered,

Did anyone think to try this with excel? or notepad?

much like the original titan quest, nuking cpu to 99% would let you cheese the game completely

a few winamp visualizations (milky something? someone help me out here) would certainly do the trick

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/MilkDrop

After all this time, I still don't know how to select a mission, or what missions are

Where did you see missions?

This guide is impressively thorough and can help answer this: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/563047-3d-pinball-space-cad...

Man, Gamefaqs always had such amazing guides. I always wondered how these people knew every single little thing in the games they wrote walkthroughs for.

I am of the impression that the mission is defined by having the pin ball hit the places where the blue arrow points within a set amount of time.

It's a bit of a shame that Microsoft only licensed Space Cadet Pinball from Cinematronics for Windows 95 and XP [0].

[0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20181221-00/?p=10...

IIRC, it was a decision based around not porting to 64bit in the newer versions of Windows. I agree it's a shame it didn't move forward... same for a lot of things that were in earlier versions that didn't make the cut.

There's a set of lights in the lower left-hand edge and on the very upper right-hand edge. When it's time to select a mission look for the yellow arrow near those lights. Hitting the lights lets you select a mission. Sending the ball up the ramp confirms the mission. I don't quite remember what the missions were - typically "hit some combination of things" - but they were worth a lot of extra points and/or an extra ball.

Do you see the flashing arrow? You have to hit one of those tiles, and then launch the ball up the ramp.

If you're on Linux, https://flathub.org/en/apps/com.github.k4zmu2a.spacecadetpin...

Before I install it, how is it?

I dunno. I've only played on it a bit

Did it always have this music? I don't remember it having music.

Apparently it did, but it was turned off by default since it could have a performance impact on slower machines.

Definitely did - that MIDI file is etched into everyone's soul who played Space Cadet but this was early days, maybe it's possible the win9x machine you played on didn't have a sound card?

EDIT: From what others have said it sounds like it's off by default. It's been decades so I don't remember.

Huh, I don't remember turning it on. Who would want it off? The music is amazing, and it laid the seed for me to get into chip music, especially early keygen music (much of which can be found here: https://keygenmusic.tk/#).

Right? Space Cadet, Tempest 3000, One Must Fall 2097 - so much fire tracker/chiptune music from that era.

This site's been around for a while and is really good as well (has a bunch of classic collections including High Voltage SID)

https://chiptune.app

Thanks for the link!

Yes. It's original.

I only discovered very recently that it was supposed to have music as well. I played on Windows XP back in the day, and I'm 99% sure the music must have been turned off by default.

https://youtu.be/2zMoblLZyto

With link to .MID

That brings back memories. I didn't check if it store highscore, but remember finding how to edit to highscore list in the original game to totally destroy my brothers best score

Or https://pinball.alula.me/

In this port, using the menu to disable the music has no effect. Surprisingly, typing "hidden test" does have an effect, but the interpretation of mouse movements is weird and uncontrollable, unlike the original Windows EXE game.

space bar - shoot ball

z / - press it

x . - shaking

Exactly what I was looking for for my non-US keyboard :)

Does the shaking even do anything in this game?

Definitely. Looking at the code it weirdly changes ball accel, which is not how nudging works in actual pinball.

https://github.com/alula/SpaceCadetPinball/blob/master/Space...

Possibly because it's easier to approximate the ball's position moving vs the table than simulating the table's position in space moving (which is what happens in real life with a nudge?) and the ball's trajectory not altering?

I recall shake/tilt was most useful in the sections of the field where rolling over a sensor would toggle a light, and lighting all three toggles yielded a prize. There is one cluster at the top centre, and another in the left purple platform. The ball is moving slowly enough here that a nudge can send to one toggle or the other.

I bought this knowledge with my uni gpa, NO RAGRETS.

you are correct in what you say, but the other thing you need to do is hit the flippers, not to impact the ball but because they rotate the lights that are on and off (your goal being to light all three) so if you see the ball rolling toward an on-lite, rotate them till it's an off light. nudging the table is bit more useful to get repeated bounces off the bumpers near by

Does x help you avoid that deadspot in the middle, where the flaps cant reach?

I never really got into the 3D pinballs, for some reason those are less fun, maybe because visually they are harder to read?

I always preferred the "2D" pinballs, with Pinball Dreams and Slam Tilt my two favourites. I still play those from time to time.

This is actually a web port of Space Cadet for Win 9x which has sort of a prerendered 3d look but is still basically a 2d table, as opposed to stuff like Pinball Arcade or the FX compilations by Zen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Tilt!_Pinball#Space_Cadet

I also liked a lot pinball illusions, it had great music, graphics and gameplay. Given that it was created by Dice, the studio that years later created the Battlefield franchise

It was a mini-game included by default in Microsoft Windows 2000.

oh man i love this game thanks...why no scoreboard tho?!

if you're playing on a phone, the right side of the window might be cut off. you could rotate the screen, or you could select the desktop version in Chrome options (but it will be very small).

People have build IRL Space Cadet pinball machines.

CNCDan is working on one right now, here's episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU_02HABZ4s

getting: Uncaught InvalidStateError: Failed to execute 'drawImage' on 'CanvasRenderingContext2D': The image argument is a canvas element with a width or height of 0. at start_freeze_frame (space-cadet-menus.js:140:18) at MutationObserver.<anonymous> (space-cadet-menus.js:429:3)

Unrealistic physics.

I had a ball last more than 10 seconds.

I wasted my youth on this thing!

So now I should waste my working hours on it?

Remind me my computer lesson of primary school

this brings me so much joy. thank you!

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