TiltLab · Machine 10 · On the floor
MUD TRUCK ’99
A pinball machine standing in the infield mud of the Mud Truck ’99 fairground, right beside the south ramp. The race behind the glass is real. Your red truck runs laps as fast as your shots drive it, and every truck that comes past throws mud on the table.
The idea
What if the table stood in the mud beside a real race?
Mud Truck ’99 is a racing game in GameLab: a lifted red truck, a rainy county fairground at night, cyan and magenta gates, ramps, puddles and three sponsor trucks to beat. This machine stands in its infield, a few strides from the track.
The race out there is the one you are playing. Your shots are your right foot. Make shots and your truck pulls away from the field. Stop shooting and it slows down, and you watch the sponsor trucks go by.
The mud is the other half. A truck coming past throws mud at the cabinet, and it lands on the table. Three patches of the playfield cake up and slow the ball. Mud on the table is mud on your tyres, so a dirty table also slows your truck. The rain washes it off slowly. A shot through the Puddle, in the middle, washes it all off at once.
On the playfield
Every part, and what it does.
| Part | At the fairground | What it does | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| The infield map | The track from above | The playfield is the fairground’s infield at night: wet mud, tyre tracks, and the game’s own Fairground Gauntlet route turned on its side, with its ramps, puddles, gates and the chequered start line. | – |
| The Puddle | The middle | A shot up the middle washes every patch of mud off the table. When a rival is alongside you, his truck rides the track across it: hit him to pass. | wash 20,000 and up · pass 40,000 and up |
| The Drift | The far turn | The left orbit, with a little wheel for a spinner. Fires the BOOST when it is lit. | 6,000 · BOOST 250,000 and up |
| The Launch | The big ramp | The left ramp and its loop. Every trip round is big air, more with Long Travel springs. | 20,000 |
| Splinter Run | The crate line | The right ramp. With the shortcut lit it turns off into the Pit. | 12,000 |
| The Pit | The garage | The scoop at the top right. Each ball left here gets a part from the game’s garage on your truck. Two and a third start Demolition Derby. | 7,500 · pit stop 50,000 |
| The Grandstand | The crowd | All the way round and down the right wall onto the upper flipper. | 8,000 |
| Soft ground | Where the mud lands | Three patches of the table that cake up when trucks go past. The deeper the mud, the harder it drags at the ball. | – |
| Mud berms | The infield sliding | In the rain, a heap of mud rises in front of a ramp. Hit it twice to knock it down. Leave it and you bog down and lose half your speed. | 15,000 a hit · busted 50,000 |
| The bog | A soft spot | A turntable that opens in the rain and spins anything that rolls over it. | 2,000 a spin |
| G-R-I-P | The tyres | Four top lanes over three stacks of tyres. The flippers move the lit lanes. All four raise the bonus multiplier and fit tyre chains (kickbacks). | 2,500 · all 15,000 |
| M-U-D | The crates | Three crates in front of the Pit. Smash all three to light the shortcut. | 3,000 · all 15,000 |
| Flippers, slingshots, plunger | – | Chrome Orbit’s lower playfield, unchanged for a tenth table, in cream and County Red. Plunge into the flashing lane for the holeshot. | holeshot 30,000 |
The rules
Mud, rain, and a race behind the glass.
- The race. Two laps make a race. Your truck runs at the speed your shots give it, and speed bleeds off when you stop. The three sponsor trucks run at their own pace: Bayou Bolt is the fastest, Delta Diesel the slowest. Finish first for 300,000, then the next race starts on the next track in the game’s campaign, Rookie Ring to Championship Mire.
- Passing. When a rival is side by side with you on the lap, his truck comes up on the middle track and weaves across it. Hit him and you get by: he slews sideways, a panel comes loose, and you move up a place.
- The mud. Every truck that comes past the cabinet throws mud on one of the three patches. A muddy patch slows the ball and a muddy table slows your truck. Bog Claw tyres from the pit halve that. The rain washes the mud slowly and the Puddle washes it at once.
- The boost. Jumps, drifts, smashed crates, passes and washes fill the bottle. Full, it lights the BOOST at the Drift for fifteen seconds. Make it and your truck runs flat out for eight seconds.
- Demolition Derby. M-U-D lights the shortcut. Each ball in the pit is a pit stop and a part: Bog Claw tyres, Twin Thunder exhaust (more speed from every shot), Long Travel springs (bigger jumps), a Burst Cell bottle (a faster boost). Two in the pit and a third start a three-ball multiball. Every shot is a jackpot, and three jackpots light a super jackpot at the Pit.
- The rain. It follows the balls you have left: a drizzle on the first, steady rain on the second, a downpour on the last. In the rain, mud berms block the ramps, the TV camera picks a shot for ten seconds, and the bog opens in the middle.
- The Championship Mire. A few seconds into the last ball the championship starts, and Bayou Bolt jumps the start eight lengths up. He runs the middle track. The Mire’s berms block both ramps; bust both and every hit on him gains two lengths instead of one. As you close in, a sinkhole opens and grabs at the ball until the tow hook throws it back. Catch him and take the flag, and the Victory Lap gives you two balls with every shot a jackpot.
The room
The infield, on race night.
The cabinet stands in the mud inside the grandstand straight, between the south ramp and the start line. Almost everything around it is the Mud Truck ’99 game itself, imported from GameLab when the machine starts. Nothing in the game’s folder is changed.
Out on the track
- The fairground is the game’s Fairground Gauntlet: the churned track, the ramps, the puddles, the gates, the hay bales, the fence, the grandstands and their crowd, the parking lot and the floodlights under a storm sky.
- The trucks are the game’s. Your truck is its red-and-cream model, and it wears the parts the pit fits. The three sponsor trucks are its rival fleet, with the dents and loose panels its damage model gives them when you pass.
- The jumps: each truck rides up the game’s ramps and flies off the end, and your truck leaves the game’s tyre tracks and flung mud behind it.
- The rain is the game’s rain and ground mist, heavier as the weather turns. In the downpour there is lightning.
In the mud
- The cabinet is painted like the truck: County Red, a cream band, a chequered strip, and mud thrown up its sides. A small copy of your truck stands on the roll bar over the backbox, with two amber beacons.
- The backglass is a race-night poster: the weather and a rain gauge, a speedometer, the track and the lap, your place, the running order of the four trucks, or the lengths to Bayou Bolt, and the night’s tally.
- The pictures: six taken from this machine’s own spot in the infield, shown on the backglass as the night goes on and kept in a gallery off the title screen.
- The voices: the announcer, your spotter and the crew chief, typed out as they call.
Under the glass
What makes it run.
- Physics
- The shared TiltLab table rig: Rapier 0.21 at 120 steps a second. The mud patches are Margin Aces’ drag zones. The rival and Bayou Bolt are one mover across the middle; the berms are the walls in front of the ramps; the bog is FIELDWORK’s turntable and the sinkhole a magnet. When a truck thunders past, the ground shakes the ball sideways for a moment.
- The race
- The rules keep every truck’s distance round the lap. Your speed comes from your shots; the rivals run at their own pace, a little faster when they fall far behind and a little slower when they get far ahead, so the race stays a race. The room stands each truck on the game’s route at that distance.
- Two worlds
- The fairground works in the game’s units and the table in millimetres, so the fairground is drawn first with its own camera, standing where you stand, and the cabinet is drawn over it. One table metre is half a game unit, the scale at which the game’s trucks stand taller than you.
- The infield map
- Baked by a script: seeded mud, tyre tracks and the game’s own route, with type in Anton and Barlow.
- Testing
- A headless bot plays whole games in Node to catch stuck balls in the mud, behind the berms and in the sinkhole. A script plays one whole night through the rules: a race won, a pass, mud washed off, the boost, the pit stops and Demolition Derby, the rain, and the Championship Mire from the start to the flag.
- Sound
- The game makes all of its sound in code, and so does this machine. The engine under the table is the game’s own, pitched to your speed, and the game’s splashes, crate smashes, landings and rival hits play when the same things happen here. The air horn, the crowd, the PA chime, the thunder and the trucks going past are written for this machine with the TiltLab sound kit.
- Music
- The fairground PA plays Voidleaf Riot’s The Wider Rising from MusicLab, a different song each ball. The championship gets Burn the Crown Ledger and the Victory Lap Keep the Comet Loud. The lamps flash on each track’s measured beat.
- Controls
- A / ← and D / → (or Shift) for the flippers (the right one works both right flippers), Space to plunge, Z and / to nudge, Esc to pause. A gamepad works. On a phone, use the pads at the bottom of the screen. Drag to look round the infield, pinch or scroll to zoom, and reset the view with the button that appears.
In the lineage
Machine 10, after STEADFAST.
MUD TRUCK ’99 starts from STEADFAST: its playfield and parts, its two-pass room inside the game it comes from, the weather that follows the balls you have left, and the boss that waits for the last ball. From Margin Aces it takes the drag zones, now mud. From FIREHAWK it keeps the moving target across the middle and the walls in front of the ramps. From Chrome Orbit it keeps the lower playfield, the sound kit and the start-up loader.
Its new idea is a room that keeps score. The race behind the table is the game you are playing, and it comes back at you as mud.