Future Pinball can best be described as a virtual Pinball table construction kit. It can be used to build realistic, playable pinball table simulations replete with a state of the art physics engine and sophisticated 3D-rendered graphics. It is 100% free.
If you’ve ever wanted to design your own pinball table then this is your chance.
Future Pinball is a sophisticated tool that allows you to place all the components that you desire on a virtual pinball table, edit them, move them around, tweak them, and see how they play out.
There is an impressive range of objects and components to choose from, and each object’s properties can be modified through an object property dialog window.
Examples include everything from width, height, and color of an object to the glossiness of its reflection (depending on the object).
I was initially expecting to just plop a few components together on my pinball table and see how they play out togther. And while it was certainly possible to do that, I quickly found out that building a pinball table requires a lot of thought and, most importantly, an understanding of the physics of how these objects will behave in relation to the ball and to each other. This tool is geared to the serious game designer and to get anywhere you really have to know what you’re doing. If you think you will enjoy building and designing your very own pinball table this program will deliver for you, although you will need to use a graphics and audio applications for some of the graphics you will need and the audio track.
To see what this software is capable of producing make sure to install ‘Sci-Fi Classic’, a playable pinball table that you can examine or modify in your quest to learn the dynamics of how this thing works. As a stand-alone pinball game this one is really cool not just in that it shows what you can do with Future Pinball, but because of its sheer playability. It also shows off the power of the 3D graphics engine. Although the Future Pinball website promises that the program will do the most out of whatever graphics card you may have, note that you need a fairly powerful video card, and that Future Pinball may run slow or have corrupted graphics if your graphics card is not up to snuff. Press the function keys to switch across the different possible views (its truly impressive).
If you are interested in pinball or designing/building games you should check this one out. There is a community of users around this program have made the Future Pinball forums a goldmine of information and useful resources that you could look into. This is also where I found a number of playable pinball table recreations that are amazingly well made and playable.
If you would like to PLAY pinball download this software and play the ‘Sci-Fi Classic’. You could also find ‘PartyLand’ and ‘Stones and Bones’, two very playable recreations, in the links below; you won’t be disappointed.
Version tested: 1.6b
Go to the Future Pinball page for the latest version. More downloadable Pinball Tables here; Roney Pinball page; also the unofficial tables list .
