I hadn't planned to show the pinball table yet. It's still on the bench, it isn't finished, and it was meant to stay behind a closed door. Except the door wasn't closed: the workshop unlocked as early as the fourth vacuum mission, and all it took was a trip back through the Players menu to walk straight into it.
Several of you found it. So much for the surprise — and just as well, because it made up my mind to build it properly.
Why a pinball table?
Because a pinball table is a solenoid machine. The first one you build will be a 1970s table with no electronics at all: solenoids, relays, a cam motor to put it all in sequence, and a lot of wire.
The score reels will be mechanical too. A wheel turns from 9 to 0, a lug closes a contact, the tens wheel steps on by one: that's the carry in an addition, made of brass.
Complicated to build, easy to understand.
Where I am
I'm on it full time at the moment. The playfield is drilled to the same pitch as your bench, with the same holes: the parts from the kit screw straight in, unchanged. Walls are no longer picked from a list — you draw them from hole to hole. The flippers are yours to build, solenoid included — you already know how that works. And the shooter rod has a real spring: you can pull it, but you can also push it, just to see how far the coils will close up.
I'm already having fun designing it, and I hope you'll have fun building it.
In the next update, the pinball workshop will open at the end of the robot vacuum missions.
