2000 · Pinball · Simulation

Visual Pinball

Visual Pinball is a freeware and source available video game engine for pinball tables and similar games such as pachinko machines. It includes a table editor as well as the simulator itself, and runs on Microsoft Windows. It can be used with Visual PinMAME, an emulator for ROM images from real pinball machines.

Released: 19 December 2000
Platforms: Windows
Genres: Pinball Simulation
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric

About

Visual Pinball ("VP") is a freeware and source available video game engine for pinball tables and similar games such as pachinko machines. It includes a table editor as well as the simulator itself, and runs on Microsoft Windows. It can be used with Visual PinMAME, an emulator for ROM images from real pinball machines.

A huge variety of user-created VP tables are available on the internet. Players can choose between faithful recreations of existing pinball machines, with or without ROM emulation, and original pinball simulations based on licensed or completely original themes. VP's scripting capabilities can also be used to create pinball-like games such as pitch-and-bat baseball, pinball bingo, bowling, cue sports, and pachinko.

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Development

Every Visual Pinball table includes two main parts: the "physical" playfield design, and the script that determines table gameplay, establishing the "wiring" of the emulation (through Visual PinMAME) to the table components such as lamps, switches and flippers. The editor uses Microsoft VBScript for user programming. VP itself is written in C++ with the Active Template Library for making ActiveX controls. VP is based on DirectX, so it can run on any Windows version from Windows 98 on, but most recent VP versions require at least Windows XP due to modern Microsoft compilers abandoning older versions of the OS.