I'm Working on a FOSS Linux Pinbal Simulation Engine
45 points by sysrpl 5 hours ago | 14 comments

sysrpl 5 hours ago
As the title says, I am working on a FOSS Linux Pinball Simulation Engine. It is based on my Pascal Tiny.Sim library which has been in github for many years. Tables are designed in parametric CAD (OnShape for now) and imported by my engine as 3D meshes. It simplifies many of the physics bodies into primitives and has options to configure how meshes are convert into a table. The logic for a table is written in Typescript. Users can also edit the table inside the game. The idea will be that users can use the engine to play and share pinball tables of their own designs. I am supporting Linux because I use Linux every day and it needs more support when it comes to playing good fun games.

If you want to help Linux and are an artist, I plan make the initial source code release with 3 different tables and a guide for how to create your own pinball tables. I am looking for artwork to help with table artwork. My contact information is on the page linked to this submission.

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zokier 2 hours ago
How are you doing physics here, what is the physics engine based on? I checked Tiny.Sim on github and it said that it's has just 2d physics?

Thinking of it, pinball makes for a pretty good demo for physics engines

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berkes 30 minutes ago
I'd imagine that pinball is essentially 2D. Maybe some lanes and ramps would affect gravity, but I can imagine the few Z-direction adjustments aren't worth simulating everything in 3D.
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malbs 3 hours ago
I love pinball, personally terrible at it, I always thought a some luck came into play depending on where the ball was dropping/heading, until I watched someone actually good at pinball play.

He showed me there is a fine art in bumping the machine subtly enough to move the balls line so you can stop it from going straight down the middle or into one of the dead lanes... but not so much to trigger the sensors to shut the machine down.

Watching him play pinball blew my mind. I've never been able to do what he could do, but it's definitely an art form...

So, can you implement machine bumping? :-)

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kruffalon 2 hours ago
I would even argue that without bumping and the threat of tilting the table it is not really a pinball simulation, but merely some kind of pinball looking video game.
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Tade0 35 minutes ago
I'm interested in knowing how the physics are realized here.

I've been working on a golf game to play with my friends and the first hurdle I had to go through was the fact that you can't just slap an off-the-shelf physics engine on it and call it a day, because over certain velocities the ball will tunnel through the walls.

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berkes 28 minutes ago
I've been playing and loving Vector Pinball (Floss, on fdroid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.dozingcatsoftware.bouncy...) a lot.

I can only applaud more options for pinball games in the FLOSS world. Thanks!

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panki27 25 minutes ago
Make sure to also check out Visual Pinball, the community has built tons of tables for that.
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boredhedgehog 51 minutes ago
Is it compatible with Visual Pinball? Because that's where all the tables are.
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larodi 60 minutes ago
Make it work with dualshock controllers, so that everyone can benefit from force feedback.
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InsideOutSanta 2 hours ago
The video demo looks great, the physics seem really close to a real pinball machine. I have a digital pinball machine at home, I hope this will support dual-screen machines!
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flossly 3 hours ago
good. we need some quality games that are not on Steam to show to new linux users.

MsPinBall was very good at that for windows.

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Toynbeeidea 4 hours ago
Does it pull or use anything from vPinMAME?
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gavmor 3 hours ago
Very slick!
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jhmeme2026 57 minutes ago
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NorrisFByrd 2 hours ago
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