From Design to Dots!

In the early days of pinball/bagatelle, keeping score was often left up to the player. This would take the form of either writing down which holes/pockets the balls landed in, and adding the numbers up. An assembly called a "totalizer" gave players a single place to look, to find all the points they scored, though adding it all together manually was still called for. (Some *total*izer, am I right?)

Totalizer from Genco's 1933 "Silver Cup". Source: IPDB.org

The 40's and 50's also saw a similar way to display score with "light bulb/lit scoring". This involved grouping numbers into sections based on their place value (Examples: 1~9 and 10~90), and lighting the numbers corresponding to the player's current score.

Severely damaged backglass from Gottlieb's 1952 "Queen of Hearts". Lit scoring numbers indicated with green rectangles. Source: BGResto.com

Starting in the mid-50's manufacturers began incorporating score reels to indicate a player's score. These metal (and later, plastic) wheels, printed with the numbers 0~9; paired with a ratcheting mechanism, would ratchet forward as players scored more points. Sometimes, "dummy reels" (semi-circular brackets that look like score reels, but don't move) would also be included to add trailing zeroes, giving the impression of a higher score.

Behind the backglass of Williams' 1976 "Grand Prix", with dummy score reel for player 1 indicated by a green rectangle. Source: IPDB.org

With the maximum score of 9's on every score reel (often four), a mark of high skill would be to "roll over" your score. This is when a player would reach, for example; 99,990 on a 4-reel machine (plus 1 dummy reel), but still be scoring points. This would cause the displayed score to wrap back around to 0, and continue scoring. Some games would feature a lamp that would indicate such a high score, with the next place value (100,000 in our example).

With the introduction of solid-state technology to the pinball industry in the late-70's, manufacturers began to incorporate digital displays as the means of displaying a player's score. These were initially limited to only displaying numbers (often 6 or 7 digits), until Wico's 1984 "Af-Tor" utilized alpha-numeric displays, displaying both letters and numbers. The more well-known manufacturer, Williams, wouldn't use alpha-numeric displays until 1986; with the release of "High Speed".

Behind the backglass of Williams' 1986 "High Speed". Only the upper two displays are alpha-numeric. The lower two are only numeric. Source: IPDB.org

The last display technology, before Stern Pinball's "Batman '66" began the current trend of using LED/LCD screens; was the dot-matrix display (DMD). These used a series of dots in a grid to generate complex graphics. This was possible due to the sheer number of dots (a standard DMD had a resolution 128x32 dots), as well has having multiple brightness levels for each dot. The first game to use this technology was Midway's 1991 "Gilligan's Island", and would remain the industry standard until the aforementioned "Batman '66" was released in 2016.

A sample DMD render from a Williams 1993 "Star Trek: The Next Generation"

With that history lesson out of the way; we step back into the present. As this "3D Pinball - Space Cadet" project moves along, thought needed to be given with regards to what sort of display would be used.
-Using a DMD would be accurate to pinball machines of 1995, but would have the orange glow seen in the render above, due to the gas-plasma nature of the display.
-Having an LCD display would allow for a greater amount of detail and color, but wouldn't be correct to the time period I'm working to emulate.

Which brings me to what I've settled on: an LCD display, with hand-drawn 'dots'. This won't be a graphical 'mask' giving the look of a DMD, with detailed images sliding around underneath. Rather, graphics will be drawn, the DMD 'grid' set on top, and the appropriate brightness value set for each dot. In the case of animated graphics, each frame will be handled individually to ensure choppy, almost cinematic, appearance of a traditional DMD. By using a DMD, I am also able to use a custom 4-color palette, to emulate the purples used in the Windows 95 classic.

As a proof-of-concept, I prepared a roughly one minute attract mode sequence. The extra space around the "display" is padding so that it positioned correctly on the speaker panel. (Just don't actually send emails to space.cadet@wms.com, it won't go anywhere.) (An actual "Contact Me" form is in the works)

Until next time, enjoy this proof-of-concept attract sequence, as well as a snippet of it running on an LCD. And remember, I frequently stream my design work on this project over on my Twitch channel: TerpohGaming

"3D Pinball - Space Cadet" proof-of-concept attract mode sequence

Sample of proof-of-concept running off of my laptop, on an LCD screen