VPX Gottlieb Flipperless Recreation Cloverleaf, 1932 by Gottlieb for VPX

druadic

20+ YEARS as a VP author. How time flies...
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Updated to run from VP9 to VPX - each line of script has been checked and numerous fixes to the playfield have been implemented. Plays just as fast and furious as the VP9 version. Have fun!!!


UPDATED TO VERSION 1.4!


See other post.
 

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Nifty design. I tried playing it right away and was kind of astonished how fast it can go!

As a matter of fact, I might have run in to a problem in that my VPX version is slightly older, and the table started doing slightly odd stuff by the third game or so. Guess I better upgrade, huh?

The one obvious thing that stands out is that the ball doesn't match the table very well. Or at all, really. IMO it could deffo use some dark wood tones. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that with these older games with less bells & whistles, a lightly animated ball could work quite nicely. Possibly also some rolling sounds as it moves around the PF.

If you recall my Billiards engine, I added simple animations to the striped balls in order to make them look a lot more realistic. It was only five frames per ball in a loop, with each striped ball being displayed in absolutely random positions one after the other. I thought it would look pretty ridiculous when I was implementing it, but somehow it works out rather amusingly.

As for a rolling sound, I remember it being used in a version of Paragon from roughly 2003 or so. Doesn't look like it's uploaded here, but I guess I could search around if you're curious.
 
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All rolling and clacking sounds from VPX have been implemented. It's all been updated.
 
Hmm. I checked VPF, and they only have version 10.5 of VPX, same as what I have here.
But when I was running this table, it specifically asked for 10.6.

Where did you pick up your copy of 10.6?
 
Okay, thank you.

After some quick checking, I see that VP 10.5 is indeed the latest official, stable version, which is what I'm running.

I think I'd rather not get in to running an experimental version, unless it came from destruk or someone like that. Sorry about that.
 
Okay, thank you.

After some quick checking, I see that VP 10.5 is indeed the latest official, stable version, which is what I'm running.

I think I'd rather not get in to running an experimental version, unless it came from destruk or someone like that. Sorry about that.


Not a problem. I just wanted to stay up to date so I use this one now. There is another version which is a step higher than this one but it gave me serious KERNELBASE.DLL errors which can cause very big problems for Windows itself. Amazingly it was just VPX and not my version of Windows which was the culprit.


But anyway, there is a post in VP Forums which have another version updated for VPX 6.
 
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.
 
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Working on it Ike. Give me a few days as I'm currently working on other projects. Thanks! I currently have the plunger max set at 80 and will implement the post while holding down the start key.
 
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