Played this some more, and a couple notes:
- Max pullback is listed as 400 on the rules card, but is actually 250.
- You can hit the left-middle 2,000pts alley every time simply by maxing out the plunger at 250units. That's a pretty significant cheat that almost certainly wasn't in the original game. Indeed, I'd tend to think that pulling the plunger back all the way on the original likely would have led to an "out" ball or very low-scoring ball. That's certainly the way they would have wanted it.
- Right around 200 units seems to lead to an out ball, so if you make no other changes, you might want to think about setting that (or whatever) as a new max.
- The following is a pretty fascinating video showing the special popup that normally blocks the 5000 hole, and also the little gate above that hole. Evidently if you were having a lousy game, you could insert a
second penny, causing the popup to drop, and get a crack at 5,000pts.
Code:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5yB14Mwlz0
- If you jump ahead to around 4:38 or so, it gives you an idea how fast this game actually played. It does look like you have the plunger way overpowered right now. In the real game, it looks like a force of 30 (or even less) was around the upper limit.
- If you wanted to get it closer to the real thing, I'd think you'd want to bring that starting 20 force down to maybe 5 or 10 and increment upwards by proportionally smaller units, like half-units or such.
Of course, I don't know how important strict realism is from your POV. I could definitely see how fiddling with this stuff might add a lot of extra playtesting time, and maybe you're more concerned with getting everything converted over to VPX ASAP. Fair enough if so-- just figured I'd give you my playtesting notes.