More of my first table

This week I began to slowly design a table. The hardest part of designing a table is definitely the flow of the table. As a designer it's really up to only you as to how the table is played. This means deciding on destinations and targets the ball can reach and then on top of that making it physically possible for these targets and destinations to be reached. Here so far, is my first table I think I'll be adding lights and more ramps next. I've found that for beginners, Vertical Kickers make ramps much easier to go up since my experience lacks the vision I need to properly make normal ramps that will just take a ball traveling at a  fast enough velocity.

Right now, the table plays rather okay now. But I will soon be adding points to the drop targets on the sides and the leaf targets as well as beginning lanes.

A scripting note. In order to get the kickers to kick I had to write the following code

Sub Kicker1_Hit()
'Kicker Solenoid pulse
Kicker1.SolenoidPulse()
End Sub

This code told my program to create something to do when this kicker was hit by the ball and it's command was to pulse the solenoid. And then end the Program. Without any scripting the kickers do nothing on their own.

-Eric

My first table attempt

Here is my first attempt at a table! Personally, I really liked the game "Hurricane" a William's machine. I liked it very much because of it's ramps. I particularly liked how the game began with the pinball shooting up a ramp and starting above the actual play field. In y first table I have a simple lay out. It has a beginning ramp that has a gap in the middle. This gap is for skill shots. So that if you can apply just enough force to get through to gap but not past it you can land into the bumper and earl a lot of points. While it currently seems a little plain. I'll be working and hopefully finishing it by the end of this week! So far. I've only worked on the upper part of the the table. But I'm thinking of putting a special ramp in the bottom of the table and taking out a drain. But we'll see how that goes!

Ramps will be the subject of the next few posts, that an kickers and how I will be using them together.  Hopefully, with these tools I can make some good interesting ramps!

-Eric