Go to file
m3ultra 7347ec4db7 Pinball: Rules, Juice, HUD, a table probe — and the three bugs it found
Four lanes built in parallel onto the data-driven spine:

- Rules.gd (509) — score with a decaying combo multiplier, 3 balls, ball save,
  escalating drop-bank bonuses, lit rollover lanes that level up when swept,
  saucer-lock multiball, two-warning tilt, end-of-ball bonus, per-table high
  scores in user://pinball_scores.cfg.
- Juice.gd (784) — 12 procedural voices synthesized at boot, no assets. The
  spinner ratchet is timed to Table.gd bleeding spin_left at 6.0/s so the ticking
  stops exactly when the blade does. Pooled voices/lights/sparks, quadratic-falloff
  shake, and a damped spring for nudge. Palette-tinted lights with a value floor,
  because a light the colour of a near-black saucer illuminates nothing.
- Hud.gd (935) — score that ROLLS UP rather than snapping, combo, award callouts,
  plunger meter, tilt banner, ball save, game over panel.
- dev/probe_tables.gd (480) — the gate: builds every table and checks parts, part
  overlaps, playfield bounds, flipper swing, that the ball actually DRAINS, and
  that everything settles.

The probe immediately found three real bugs the flipper autotest could not see:

1. The drain sat 3 cm PAST the playfield lip, so on four of five tables the ball
   rolled off the end into the void and the trigger never fired. A table you cannot
   lose a ball on is not a table. Moved inside the slab.
2. Inlane posts were level with the slingshots and interpenetrated them on three
   tables — on a real table the posts sit below. Moved down-table.
3. THE DIG's counter ramp ran through the crate bank, and a 15 deg yaw over a 28 cm
   ramp swings its far end 7 cm sideways, which then walked it through the left rail.
   Less yaw, tucked in, crates slid right.

PROBE_TABLES: PASS 5/5. AUTOTEST: ALL TABLES OK.

Still open, and it is an ENGINE finding not a table one: godot-box3d does not enforce
HingeJoint3D angular limits — flippers swing 147-160 deg against a 62 deg limit. The
probe reports it as a NOTE per table. Worth an upstream issue alongside the motor-sign
inversion already in the README.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-09 18:18:15 +10:00
.github/workflows Vendor SpaceCadetPinball, build for Apple Silicon 2026-07-27 19:05:12 +10:00
CMakeModules Vendor SpaceCadetPinball, build for Apple Silicon 2026-07-27 19:05:12 +10:00
Doc Vendor SpaceCadetPinball, build for Apple Silicon 2026-07-27 19:05:12 +10:00
godot Pinball: Rules, Juice, HUD, a table probe — and the three bugs it found 2026-08-09 18:18:15 +10:00
Platform Vendor SpaceCadetPinball, build for Apple Silicon 2026-07-27 19:05:12 +10:00
SpaceCadetPinball Add DAT inspector; scope the other two Full Tilt tables 2026-07-28 14:27:52 +10:00
tools Add DAT inspector; scope the other two Full Tilt tables 2026-07-28 14:27:52 +10:00
.gitattributes Vendor SpaceCadetPinball, build for Apple Silicon 2026-07-27 19:05:12 +10:00
.gitignore Add Godot 4.7 physics testbed: Box3D/Jolt/GodotPhysics A/B pinball table 2026-08-06 05:33:07 +10:00
build-mac-app.sh Vendor SpaceCadetPinball, build for Apple Silicon 2026-07-27 19:05:12 +10:00
BuildForWindows.ps1 Vendor SpaceCadetPinball, build for Apple Silicon 2026-07-27 19:05:12 +10:00
CLAUDE.md Add Godot 4.7 physics testbed: Box3D/Jolt/GodotPhysics A/B pinball table 2026-08-06 05:33:07 +10:00
CMakeLists.txt Vendor SpaceCadetPinball, build for Apple Silicon 2026-07-27 19:05:12 +10:00
CMakeSettings.json Vendor SpaceCadetPinball, build for Apple Silicon 2026-07-27 19:05:12 +10:00
CONTRIBUTING.md Vendor SpaceCadetPinball, build for Apple Silicon 2026-07-27 19:05:12 +10:00
LICENSE Vendor SpaceCadetPinball, build for Apple Silicon 2026-07-27 19:05:12 +10:00
mingwcc.cmake Vendor SpaceCadetPinball, build for Apple Silicon 2026-07-27 19:05:12 +10:00
README.md Vendor SpaceCadetPinball, build for Apple Silicon 2026-07-27 19:05:12 +10:00

SpaceCadetPinball

Summary

Reverse engineering of 3D Pinball for Windows - Space Cadet, a game bundled with Windows.

How to play

Place compiled executable into a folder containing original game resources (not included).
Supports data files from Windows and Full Tilt versions of the game.

Known source ports

Platform Author URL
PS Vita Axiom https://github.com/suicvne/SpaceCadetPinball_Vita
Emscripten alula https://github.com/alula/SpaceCadetPinball
Play online: https://alula.github.io/SpaceCadetPinball
Nintendo Switch averne https://github.com/averne/SpaceCadetPinball-NX
webOS TV mariotaku https://github.com/webosbrew/SpaceCadetPinball
Android (WIP) Iscle https://github.com/Iscle/SpaceCadetPinball
Nintendo Wii MaikelChan https://github.com/MaikelChan/SpaceCadetPinball
Nintendo 3DS MaikelChan https://github.com/MaikelChan/SpaceCadetPinball/tree/3ds
Nintendo DS Headshotnoby https://github.com/headshot2017/3dpinball-nds
Nintendo Wii U IntriguingTiles https://github.com/IntriguingTiles/SpaceCadetPinball-WiiU
PlayStation 2 Headshotnoby https://github.com/headshot2017/3dpinball-ps2
Sega Dreamcast Headshotnoby https://github.com/headshot2017/3dpinball-dc
MorphOS BeWorld https://www.morphos-storage.net/?id=1688897
AmigaOS 4 rjd324 http://aminet.net/package/game/actio/spacecadetpinball-aos4
Android (WIP) fexed https://github.com/fexed/Pinball-on-Android

Platforms covered by this project: desktop Windows, Linux and macOS.







Source

  • pinball.exe from Windows XP (SHA-1 2A5B525E0F631BB6107639E2A69DF15986FB0D05) and its public PDB
  • CADET.EXE 32bit version from Full Tilt! Pinball (SHA-1 3F7B5699074B83FD713657CD94671F2156DBEDC4)

Tools used

Ghidra, Ida, Visual Studio

What was done

  • All structures were populated, globals and locals named.
  • All subs were decompiled, C pseudo code was converted to compilable C++. Loose (namespace?) subs were assigned to classes.

Compiling

Project uses C++11 and depends on SDL2 libs.

On Windows

Download and unpack devel packages for SDL2 and SDL2_mixer.
Set paths to them in CMakeLists.txt, see suggested placement in /Libs.
Compile with Visual Studio; tested with 2019.

On Linux

Install devel packages for SDL2 and SDL2_mixer.
Compile with CMake; tested with GCC 10, Clang 11.
To cross-compile for Windows, install a 64-bit version of mingw and its SDL2 and SDL2_mixer distributions, then use the mingwcc.cmake toolchain.

Packaging status

Some distributions provide a package in their repository. You can use those for easier dependency management and updates.

This project is available as Flatpak on Flathub.

On macOS

Install XCode (or at least Xcode Command Line Tools with xcode-select --install) and CMake.

HomeBrew

You can easily install the build artifact by using brew.

brew tap draftbrew/tap
brew install --no-quarantine space-cadet-pinball

Be aware that the flag --no-quarantime will disable macOS's Gatekeeper during installation.

Manual compilation:

  • Homebrew: Install the SDL2, SDL2_mixer homebrew packages.
  • MacPorts: Install the libSDL2, libSDL2_mixer macports packages.

Compile with CMake. Ensure that CMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES variable is set for either x86_64 Apple Intel or arm64 for Apple Silicon.

Tested with: macOS Big Sur (Intel) with Xcode 13 & macOS Montery Beta (Apple Silicon) with Xcode 13.

Automated compilation:

Run the build-mac-app.sh script from the root of the repository. The app will be available in a DMG file named SpaceCadetPinball-<version>-mac.dmg.

Tested with: macOS Ventura (Apple Silicon) with Xcode Command Line Tools 14 & macOS Big Sur on GitHub Runner (Intel) with XCode 13.

Plans

  • Decompile original game
  • Resizable window, scaled graphics
  • Loader for high-res sprites from CADET.DAT
  • Cross-platform port using SDL2, SDL2_mixer, ImGui
  • Full Tilt Cadet features
  • Localization support
  • Maybe: Support for the other two tables - Dragon and Pirate
  • Maybe: Game data editor

On 64-bit bug that killed the game

I did not find it, decompiled game worked in x64 mode on the first try.
It was either lost in decompilation or introduced in x64 port/not present in x86 build.
Based on public description of the bug (no ball collision), I guess that the bug was in TEdgeManager::TestGridBox