TiltLab · Machine 09 · On the floor
STEADFAST
A pinball machine lashed to the deck of the Prism Light game's frigate, under sail on an open sea. The ship rolls on the swell and the ball rolls with her. The weather follows the balls you have left: high noon and dolphins on the first, a squall on the second, a thunderstorm on the last. And a few seconds into the last ball, something comes up alongside.
The idea
What if the table were on a ship, and the ship were at sea?
Every TiltLab machine so far has stood still in its room. PRISM LIGHT stood on a lighthouse gallery and looked down at the Prism Light game's bay, with its frigate sailing in the channel. This one goes aboard her.
The sea is real, and it moves. The frigate rides a swell of Gerstner waves, heaving, pitching and rolling, and the roll goes into the physics as a sideways pull on the ball. At noon it is a gentle lean one way and then the other. In the storm it is hard enough that you time your shots to it.
The weather is the clock. It follows the balls you have left, so the first ball is always a bright day with dolphins off the rail and the last is always a thunderstorm. That gave the table a place to put a boss: the Kraken waits for the last ball, when there is nothing to lose but everything.
On the playfield
Every part, and what it does.
| Part | On the ship | What it does | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| The chart | The voyage | The playfield is a daylight sea chart of the voyage: buff islands, pale shoal water, rhumb lines from a compass rose, the ship's course in red dashes from the apron to the top, a pod of dolphins in the margin and a sea monster in the deep water where the Kraken comes from. | – |
| The Waist | Amidships | The middle, where a mark crosses the table. In fair weather it is the lead dolphin, surfacing and diving. On the last ball it is the Kraken's eye. | 4,000 · leap 40,000 · eye 150,000 |
| The Bowsprit | The bow | The left orbit, with a bell spinner in it. Takes the Bow Ride when it is lit. | 6,000 · Bow Ride 250,000 and up |
| The Shrouds | The rigging | The left ramp and its loop. Green water, or one of the Kraken's arms, can come over the rail in front of it. | 20,000 |
| The Yardarm | The main yard | The right ramp. It carries a ball to the Great Cabin's lock when one is lit, and the second wave or arm rises in front of it. | 12,000 |
| The Great Cabin | The stern | The scoop at the top right. Lock balls here for All Hands and collect the super jackpot. | 7,500 · lock 50,000 |
| The Crow’s Nest | The masthead | All the way round and down the right wall onto the upper flipper. | 8,000 |
| Green water | A sea over the rail | In the squall and the storm, a wall of water rises in front of a ramp. Hit it twice to beat it back. Leave it and it washes over: the ship loses way. | 15,000 a hit · beaten 50,000 |
| The whirlpool | Amidships | A turntable that opens in the storm and spins anything that rolls over it. | 2,000 a spin |
| S-A-I-L | The sails | Four top lanes over three bell-buoy bumpers. The flippers move the lit lanes. All four raise the bonus multiplier and turn on kickbacks. | 2,500 · all 15,000 |
| R-U-M | The ration | Three drop targets in front of the Great Cabin. Down all three to light a lock. | 3,000 · all 15,000 |
| Flippers, slingshots, plunger | – | Chrome Orbit's lower playfield, unchanged for a ninth table, in cream, brass and Prussian blue. Plunge into the flashing lane for a skill shot. | skill shot 30,000 |
The rules
Fair weather, foul, and what comes up.
- The weather. Ball one is fair weather at high noon. Ball two brings the squall: the glass falls, the sky greys and the sea gets up. The last ball is the storm. Within a ball the weather worsens a little the longer the ball lives.
- The roll. The ship rolls on a seven-and-a-half-second swell, and the ball feels it as a sideways pull. It is gentle in fair weather, stronger in the squall and hard in the storm, and hardest of all while the Kraken has hold of her.
- The pod. Every so often in fair weather and the squall a pod of dolphins comes alongside, and their leader crosses the Waist, surfacing and diving. Hit her while she is up and the pod leaps. Three leaps light the Bow Ride at the Bowsprit for fifteen seconds.
- The voyage. Every shot adds knots, and the ship slows when you stop shooting. The leagues she sails add up, and every thirty is a landfall at a named island, with its own award.
- All Hands. R-U-M lights a lock at the Great Cabin. Two hands below and a third ball start a three-ball multiball. Every shot is a jackpot, and three jackpots light a super jackpot at the Great Cabin.
- The storm. Green water comes over the ramps. Lightning strikes the yards and leaves Saint Elmo's fire burning on one shot for ten seconds: make it. A whirlpool opens amidships.
- The Kraken. A few seconds into the last ball the Glassmire Kraken rises alongside. Its arms come over the rail in front of both ramps; two hits beat each one back. With both arms down, its eye opens in the Waist. Eight hits on the eye sink it, in three phases, and the angrier it gets the sooner an arm reaches for the ball in the middle of the table. Beat it and the storm blows through: the sun comes out, a rainbow stands over the sea, and Fair Winds gives you a two-ball multiball with every shot a jackpot.
The room
The deck of a frigate, under sail.
The cabinet stands on the waist of the Prism Light game's frigate, its own Blender model, lashed down on the starboard side with the sea over the rail. Everything around it was built for this machine: the sky, the sea, the clouds, the weather and the dolphins. The Kraken is FIELDWORK's.
At sea
- The sea is six Gerstner waves on a grid that follows the camera out to the horizon, with foam on the crests, a wake behind the ship and the sky's colour in the water. The same waves, computed in JavaScript, lift and roll the ship and the dolphins.
- The sky runs from a high noon sun to a storm deck, with puffy cumulus drawn as soft billboards and a dark layer of cloud that comes down over them. Rain, lightning bolts and their thunder come with the storm; a rainbow comes after it.
- The pod: seven dolphins that swim alongside, leap when the table's leader is hit, and ride the bow wave when you take the Bow Ride.
- The Kraken comes up a ship's length off the starboard side, its six arms posed bone by bone, its glow turning from cyan to amber to red as it is hurt.
On deck
- The cabinet is Prussian blue with gold rope moulding, a cream gunport band, the frigate and a dolphin on its sides and a watch bill under the glass. A small model of the Steadfast stands on the backbox and rolls with the real one.
- The backglass is the captain's log: the weather and a barometer falling from fair to stormy, the knots on a dial, the leagues to the next landfall, the pod's leaps or the Kraken's eight lamps of strength, and the voyage's tally. Its painted sky darkens with the real one.
- The pictures: six taken from this machine's own deck, shown on the backglass as the weather turns and kept in a gallery off the title screen.
- The voices: the bosun and the lookout, 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 ship's roll is Margin Aces' sideways lean, set every step from the swell and the weather. The dolphin and the Kraken's eye are one mover that rises and sinks across the middle; green water and the Kraken's arms are the walls in front of the ramps; the whirlpool is FIELDWORK's turntable and the Kraken's grasp a magnet.
- Two worlds
- The sea works in metres and the table in millimetres, so the sea is drawn first with its own camera, standing where you stand on the moving deck, and the cabinet is drawn over it with its own depth. The camera rides the ship, so the horizon rolls and the table does not.
- The game's models
- The frigate and its materials are the Prism Light game's own, imported from the GameLab at run time; the Kraken is FIELDWORK's model, posed the way the Prism Light game poses it. Nothing in either game's folder is changed.
- The chart
- Baked by a script: seeded islands and coasts, hachured hills, depth lines and soundings, with type in IM Fell English SC and the machine's book face, Cormorant Garamond.
- Testing
- A headless bot plays whole games in Node to catch stuck balls behind the waves and in the whirlpool. A script plays the whole voyage through the rules: the pod and its leaps, the Bow Ride, a landfall, All Hands and its jackpot, green water beaten back and washed over, Saint Elmo's fire, the whirlpool, and the Kraken from its rising to Fair Winds.
- Sound
- The shared kit for the parts, the Prism Light game's effects on top: the bell buoys and the ship's bell, the creak of the hull, gulls, splashes, thunder, the Kraken and its tentacles. The dolphins' clicks and whistles, the bosun's pipe and the bells are written for this machine. The sea, the wind, rain and the storm are the game's beds, mixed by the weather.
- Music
- The ship's radio plays Sola Nacre's The Ocean Keeps the Beat from MusicLab in fair weather and the squall, a different song each ball. The storm is the Prism Light game's storm loop. The Kraken gets FIELDWORK's duel, and its victory fanfare when it goes down. 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 deck, pinch or scroll to zoom, and reset the view with the button that appears.
In the lineage
Machine 09, after PRISM LIGHT.
STEADFAST starts from PRISM LIGHT: its playfield and parts, its two-pass room, and the frigate that sailed in its bay. From FIELDWORK it takes the Glassmire Kraken and its music. From FIREHAWK it keeps the moving target across the middle and the walls in front of the ramps. From Margin Aces it keeps the sideways lean, now the ship's roll. From Chrome Orbit it keeps the lower playfield, the sound kit and the start-up loader.
Its new idea is a table that moves. The room is a ship at sea, and the sea gets into the rules.