Visual Pinball is a

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for t ...

and source available

video game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software i ...

for

pinball Pinball games are a family of games in which a ball is propelled into a specially designed table where it bounces off various obstacles, scoring points either en route or when it comes to rest. Historically the board was studded with nails call ...

tables and similar games such as

pachinko is a mechanical game originating in Japan that is used as an arcade game, and much more frequently for gambling. Pachinko fills a niche in Japanese gambling comparable to that of the slot machine in the West as a form of low-stakes, low-st ...

machines. The software is composed of an editor and the

simulator A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the s ...

part itself. It runs on Microsoft Windows. The program is also able to operate with Visual PinMAME, an

emulator In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use pe ...

for

ROM image A ROM image, or ROM file, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, or used to contain a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's main board. The term is frequen ...

s from real pinball machines. A huge variety of user-created Visual Pinball tables are available on the internet. Players can choose between faithful recreations of existing pinball machines with or without ROM emulation and original pinball simulations based on licensed themes or completely self-designed tables. Visual Pinball's scripting capabilities can also be used to create pinball-like games (such as pitch-and-bat baseball, pinball bingo,

bowling Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a ball toward pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). The term ''bowling'' usually refers to pin bowling (most commonly ten-pin bowling), thou ...

cue sports Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as . There are three major subdivisions o ...

, and

). Visual Pinball can be used to play the simulations on a common desktop PC and

monitor Monitor or monitor may refer to: Places * Monitor, Alberta * Monitor, Indiana, town in the United States * Monitor, Kentucky * Monitor, Oregon, unincorporated community in the United States * Monitor, Washington * Monitor, Logan County, West ...

, but also allows for cabinet support, including different monitors and TVs (to display the playfield and backbox similar to a real pinball machine, including the option to use 3D televisions), giving the illusion of playing real pinball. Newer versions also added touch controls, making it possible to play on

tablet computer A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being com ...

s and

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s. In February 2010, the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

of Visual Pinball was released under a license that allows free use for non-commercial purposes.Visual Pinball
at

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continu ...

Design

Every Visual Pinball table includes two main parts: the "physical" playfield design and the

script Script may refer to: Writing systems * Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire * Script (styles of handwriting) ** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of handw ...

which controls the table gameplay directly, or establishes the wiring of the emulation (through Visual PinMAME) to the simulated table components, such as lamps, switches and the flippers. The editor uses Microsoft

VBScript VBScript (''"Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition"'') is an Active Scripting language developed by Microsoft that is modeled on Visual Basic. It allows Microsoft Windows system administrators to generate powerful tools for managing computers ...

for user programming. The program itself is written in

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

with the

Active Template Library The Active Template Library (ATL) is a set of template-based C++ classes developed by Microsoft, intended to simplify the programming of Component Object Model (COM) objects. The COM support in Microsoft Visual C++ allows developers to create a v ...

for making

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide We ...

controls.Visual Pinball: Build Your Own Pinball Machine
from DigitalPostProduction.com Visual Pinball is based on DirectX and thus can run on

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...

(or newer), although its newest incarnations require at least

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

due to modern Microsoft

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...

s abandoning older OS versions.

History

Visual Pinball was first released to the public on December 19, 2000, by programmer Randy Davis. In 2005, David R. Foley purchased the rights from Davis for modification of the suite for a full-sized pinball cabinet based on the Visual Pinball software.UltraCade Licenses Visual Pinball
from RetroBlast.com

Chicago Gaming (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

purchased rights for licensed tables from

Williams Electronics WMS Industries, Inc. was an American electronic gaming and amusement manufacturer in Enterprise, Nevada. It was merged into Scientific Games in 2016. WMS's predecessor was the Williams Manufacturing Company, founded in 1943 by Harry E. Williams ...

. The Visual PinMAME team and the Visual Pinball development community also joined in the effort to produce improvements to the suite product and a few tables. This project, known as

UltraPin UltraPin is a Multi-Game pinball arcade game that holds 12 digital recreations of Williams Electronics real pinball games in a single pinball cabinet. UltraPin is built in a traditional style pinball cabinet to look and feel like a real pinball ma ...

, was acquired by

Global VR Global VR is company based in San Jose, California, that makes arcade games. The company once manufactured virtual reality stands as well. It has also developed electronic kiosks and offers development services for mobile platforms. History ...

following the acquisition of certain assets

UltraCade UltraCade Technologies, also known simply as UltraCade, was a computer and video game hardware company, founded in 2002 by David R. Foley. Founded on the original UltraCade multi-game platform that Foley's design team developed in the mid-1990s, ...

,Global VR to Purchase UltraCade Technologies
from a web archive and was discontinued in 2008. In 2008, NanoTech Entertainment acquired the rights from Davis for the use & distribution of the engine for inclusion with its ''Pinball Wizard PC Controller''. NanoTech also released version 9 of the engine back to the community, featuring many updates that had been developed between 2005 and 2008. Version 9 of Visual Pinball includes some major improvements, but no full backward compatibility, therefore some older tables still need version 8 to run properly. In 2010, the

of Visual Pinball 9.0.7 was released under a license that allows free use for non-commercial purposes like the original MAME license. Davis and NanoTech are no longer involved in development since (at least) version 9.0.8. Since then development is solely driven by various open-source contributors. Visual Pinball X (referred to as VPX) was released on December 24, 2015, again breaking

backward compatibility Backward compatibility (sometimes known as backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with input designed for such a system, especiall ...

with version 9 (as tables can only be loaded, but not played directly without changes). However, it carried significant graphical improvements, as well as improvements to the program's physics engine. Current efforts include the VPVR branch which adds support for dynamic virtual camera movement, including

Virtual reality headset A virtual reality headset (or VR headset) is a head-mounted device that provides virtual reality for the wearer. VR headsets are widely used with VR video games but they are also used in other applications, including simulators and trainers. VR ...

support.

Visual PinMAME

The simulation of most modern pinball machines (especially those made after 1992, using large portions of DMD animations and digital sound samples) require the Visual PinMAME (sometimes referred to as VPinMAME or VPM) program in order to behave as close to the physical machine as possible. VPinMAME adds to Visual Pinball's system requirements and, like other emulators, uses image files of the actual ROMs from the physical pinball machines, executing them as simulations of the embedded CPUs, sound chips, and displays from the real life machines. Visual PinMAME is a program (a COM class) that was designed to work in combination with Visual Pinball (or nowadays any other program that can make use of the COM class, e.g. '' Unit3D Pinball'' ) to allow for 3D renderings of actual

table designs. Specifically, Visual PinMAME is responsible for

emulating In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use peri ...

CPUs A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...

and the connected

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

s used in modern pinball tables, as opposed to tables with solid-state

electronics The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...

/electro-mechanical mechanisms that contain no ROMs or advanced ICs in their hardware design. Visual PinMAME displays the

LEDs A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light (cor ...

or DMD of the machines in a separate window and also delivers emulation of the integrated sound chips. In order for Visual PinMAME to work properly with a rendered pinball table, it requires that specific table's ROM images. Visual PinMAME was written by a team of programmers including Steve Ellenoff, Tom Haukap, Martin Adrian, and Gerrit Volkenborn, and had its first public release March 30, 2001 with version 0.99 beta. The underlying PinMAME core, that drives all emulation components and is also responsible for the rendering and output of LEDs, the DMD and playback of the emulated sound and music, was already started in April, 1999. The program is named after the original

MAME MAME (formerly an acronym of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a free and open-source emulator designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms. Its intention is to preserve ...

program for emulating arcade games and is based on some parts of the MAME core .7X. In the beginning the project started as WPCMAMECOM (and its underlying core as WPCMAME, based on the WPC and MAME acronyms). Visual PinMAME is written in the

programming language, whereas PinMAME is still based on C. On August 1, 2008, the full source code of PinMAME 2.0 was made available to the public. Since then, development continues with the help of various open source contributors.

References

External links

* * * {{MobyGames, id=/visual-pinball Arcade video game emulators Pinball video games Windows-only freeware Video game level editors Freeware games Video game engines Video games with stereoscopic 3D graphics Video games with available source code Windows games Proprietary video game console emulators

Design

History

Visual PinMAME

See also

References

External links