Windows' Classic 3D Space Cadet Pinball Is Getting a Physical Re-Creation (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0183423564
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/26/05/26/2053218/windows-classic-3d-space-cadet-pinball-is-getting-a-physical-re-creation
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/05/windows-classic-3d-space-cadet-pinball-is-getting-a-physical-re-creation/
> After scaling and skewing the on-screen, perspective-shifted view of the Space Cadet playfield onto a 1-meter-tall table, he ended up with a rectangular playfield just 56 cm wide. That's on the smaller side for commercial pinball tables and maps to playfield bumpers that are just 53 mm wide -- way smaller than any prebuilt bumpers that are commercially available.
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> Once CNCDan dealt with issues with unreliable plastic microswitches for those tiny bumpers (Hall effect magnets seemed to help), he ran into a separate problem with the even smaller bumpers on the raised playfield. The wiring for those bumpers had to be arranged very carefully to avoid blocking a kickback return alley underneath, a positioning problem that the original designers of the virtual table didn't have to consider at all. CNCDan also ended up adding a physical mechanism to simulate the short delay 3D Space Cadet players may remember, when the ball dropped down a hole from the raised playfield back to the flippers below.
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> CNCDan says he's currently looking for artists to help him with a hand-drawn re-creation of the original Space Cadet playfield, which he doesn't want to use AI for. "I'm sure [AI] can do it, but I'd much rather give this job to a real human being," he said in [3]the video .
[1] https://archive.org/details/3-d-pinball-for-windows.-7z
[2] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/05/windows-classic-3d-space-cadet-pinball-is-getting-a-physical-re-creation/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU_02HABZ4s
Re:Pinball machines are still made (Score:4, Insightful)
because the objective is to build something, not to simply have it.
Re: (Score:3)
I can understand wanting to build it yourself, but reinventing the wheel for bumpers, rollovers, and other standard pinball parts seems a bit too far, especially if you want to it work like the original game. Those 3D printed parts looked rough and will take a lot of fiddling to get them to work as smoothly and reliably as an off the shelf part.
Re: (Score:2)
Because the original only ever existed as a video game, the proportion of the parts are not compatible with off-the-shelf parts.
So the choice is make his own components to the proper proportions and get something faithful to the game version, or completely redesign the table layout to make standard parts work.
He got a resin printer for making smooth parts where required. What he really needs, from what I've seen in the video, are more powerful solenoids.
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:2)
Resin printed part meets a fast moving metal ball == broken resin part.
they don't have the rights to do that! (Score:2)
they don't have the rights to do that!
Re: (Score:2)
Got the money for that?
Re: (Score:2)
Because he decided to scale it down to 1 meter instead of the regular side of 1.3 ~1.6 meter.
So he won't be able to use standard size parts which are readily available.
Hard to get the look right (Score:3)
Trying to get the real table to update the ball at 20fps is proving insanely difficult.
Nice sentiment... maybe (Score:2)
> "I'm sure [AI] can do it, but I'd much rather give this job to a real human being," he said in the video.
Is he offering to pay that "real human being", or is he just looking for someone who'll donate their time and skills to his hobby project for free?
I got an idea.... (Score:2)
Why don't they look at how - other pinball machines work?
Great project (Score:2)
CNCDan has a long way to go to make this game work like a real pinball machine. I used to service and repair coin-op pinballs. The action was provided by large 120 volt solenoids. The biggest being the flippers.
When pinball machines went to electronic play they used 24 volt DC solenoids. Either way the action was fast. Hope he gets the fast play the computer game has. Good luck.
Why not scale it up? (Score:1)
If this guy's problems are all related to the thing being too small, scale it to 125% or 150% or whatever is needed to make it work.
It's a virtual object so it doesn't have a real world dimension so he can set any base unit size he wants and still get an "authentic" table.
Actually, where did he get the size he's working with anyway? Measured it against a background object or something?
Re:Why not scale it up? (Score:4, Informative)
Watch the video. Even at quite a large scale some of the stuff is still too small for off the shelf parts.
Re: (Score:2)
I broke the rules and watched the video. He chose to make it 1m long to fit in his studio apartment, then scaled the playfield until the bumpers were round in order to determine the width.