Caltrops - Gamerasutra





	[quote name="Fussbett"]<a href="http://futurepinball.com/" target="future">Future Pinball</a> came out last year, and is the exact opposite of Visual Pinballs brilliant concept paired with a terrible execution. This pinball engine is all about a great player experience. Future Pinball crushes Visual Pinball in the graphics department (shaders, hardware lights, trilinear blah blah, etc), each table looking <i>beautiful</i>, but it sadly lacks the PinMAME support, so unfortunately the tables are all pre-80s, aka before ramps. What you lose in over-the-top pinball craziness of the 80s and 90s, you get back in authenticity and charm. Sure the Harlem Globetrotters table sucks, but it's hard to get angry at it. I had to fiddle with the settings to get decent performance. I was originally getting 150+ FPS, but for some reason the ball looked choppy at times. VSync cured that, and now I'm running 1600x1200 2xAA and it's great. I also use the F2 view and then press F11 for the "manual" camera, which locks it in place (I get sea sick with the auto-tilting) but lets me move the mouse (!!!) to look up at the back glass when I want (!!!). The best news about Future Pinball is that it's being actively developed by some ex-Amiga <a href="http://members.iinet.net.au/%7Ecleathley/" target="amiga">game/demo dude</a>, so I'm hoping for constant improvements. Maybe PinMAME support one day? Anything is an improvement over Visual Pinball's "I'm never touching this thing again but neither can you" author. Anyway, here's the quick list of Future Pinball tables I like so far: Firepower Cyclone Truxton Cyclone?! I thought I said that there were no PinMAME tables! Apparently 5 dudes are hand coding the programming instead of relying on the ROM. I don't pretend to know how the Scandinavians do it, but their superior school system means that now I'm playing an awesome rendition of Cyclone, and it's only at version 0.66. <img src="http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/4756/cycloneyl5.jpg" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us"/> Truxton?! Yeah, some guy made an original table based on Truxton, and it's great. I get the feeling there are more great original tables out there too. <img src="http://www.pinballaddicts.com/components/com_remository_files/file_image_9/img_9_01.jpg">[/quote]