                  Müslifresser Softworx proudly presents...

 
                             E M B R Y O N	                        (v1.2)


pinball machine design (c)1981 by Bally  (production run 2250)

much enhanced modification 4SloPC copyleft 2001 by CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler,
based on VP release by Germax & Schindler (used with permission).

Don't miss also to download "Boomerang" - the world first emulated EM pinball
game,created by me as open source with full illumination & all sound - you
must see it.Unlike this rather messy script,"Boomerang" is written in literate
programming and though also a perfect example to learn VP programming from.
(Boomerang has also much more detailed playfield graphics than this game.)

File list:
~~~~~~~~~~
This ZIP archive should be named "Embryon4SloPC1.2.zip" and contain the fol-
lowing components:

  Embryon 4SloPC v1.2.vpt      - the game itself
  Embryon_4SloPC.txt"          - manual (the text you are reading)
  privateParts_Embryon.zip     - useful stuff for programmers
  embryon_1.jpg                - flyer picture of the pinball machine
  Embryon_blueBackglass.jpeg   - picture of the bluish backglass variant
  Embryon_redBackglass.jpeg    - picture of the redish backglass variant
  Embryon_artwork.txt          - an interpretation about the backglass
                                 artwork of Embryon.

You may not distribute modified versions of this ZIP archive under the same
name.

This game needs Visual Pinball 0.4.1930 and was successfully tested on a PC
with AMD K6 300MHz CPU and 128MB RAM.(A slightly slower PC may still work but
this game is quite CPU intensive due to the captive balls.)

About:
~~~~~~
"Embryon" is certainly one of those pinball machines with the most beautiful
and unique backglass pictures - a modern genesis fantasy* that can be regarded
as the cyberage's equivalent to the classical painting "Birth of the Venus".
It also reminds somewhat to a piece of latex trance art.

*(Don't worry - I don't intend to clone human beings.Yet the mankind is nei-
 ther clever nor wise enough to do such steps.More about the meaning of the
 Embryon backglass artwork and why it almost was censored in Germany can be
 read in Embryon_artwork.txt.There is also a little prophecy about the man-
 kind's genetic future in it.)

Since I saw the backglass in a pinball book (which didn't show the playfield),
I wanted to see the game of it and know how it plays.Though when I discovered
Visual Pinball,already before I made "Boomerang" I thought about programming
a remake of this game.Fortunately Germax (Gerd Augustin) & Schindler did 
already most of the work,although minus the backglass and it refused to run
on my PC.Though I made a very much improved version of "Embryon" based on
that program.

The original version 1.0 needed an extremely fast PC and crashed on my AMD K6
300MHz CPU due to the 5 captive balls wasted excessive CPU time by a Visual
Pinball bug when they came entirely to rest and though touched their posts
all the time.Though I reworked the thing and added the "MolecularMotion" me-
chanism that keeps the table in perpetual motion to circumvent the bug.

If you think it plays now like on a rolling truck by this,you can try to dis-
able the mechanism in the 'operator settings' section of the script file (set
slowCPU=false);but be warned - this will crash the game unless you have a very
fast PC (or bugfixed future version of Visual Pinball).

Some dunnos complained that the mechanism would look unrealistic and would not
be neccessary at all,because tweaking the captive ball posts would anyway solve
all problems.But this depends very much on the CPU; on only slightly too slow
PC you likely can move the captive ball posts etc. and all runs fine,but on a
300MHz CPU there is no chance at all to play it with 5 captive balls otherwise.
And playing with less captive balls disturbs the gameplay much more than this
little ball rattling. (Most early homecomputer pinball games also had continu-
ously jerking balls to make the algorithm move the ball along the internal ras-
terization of the lanes. E.g. Vectrex "Spinball" is a very extreme example for
this,but even in the PC game "Pinball Wizard 2000" I remember some subtle boun-
cing when balls lay on the flippers.)

There are also various other options in the 'operator settings' section.
If your PC is even slower than mine and crashes already with this version,
you can try to tweak various other stuff to make it playable on your PC.
E.g. you can remove some of the captive balls;removing the 2 upper center
ones helps a lot.

Notes:
~~~~~~
-Some people complain my new version would be too dark and have too much
 colour compared to the flyer scan,but I am convinced that in the opposite
 the flyer is bleached out and/or was scanned with a scanner that has a redish
 hue/too little contrast. (Download the "Spanish Eyes" flyer scan - it's also 
 much more pale redish than the game should be.) I don't know if the female
 being on the playfield should be that redish,but e.g. in comics such extreme
 colours are quite common,and the rest looks very correct to me.Has anybody
 access to the original pinball machine or good photos of it for a comparison?

-Unlike in Germax's release,in my version of the playfield the right lower post
 does not always but only sometimes bounces the ball back into play,because due
 to the red flipper I regard the always working rebounce as unrealistic (other-
 wise there would be no need for the flipper).Also the layout of my center 
 captive ball building is different,because according to what I see on the 
 flyers,there seems to be no high center platform in that building.(But I am
 not sure if I did it wrong,because the pictures on the internet are of very
 low resolution.)

-I didn't change much of the game rules and electronic sound code nor I added
 multi-player support,because Embryon is allready supported by the Visual
 PinMAME emulator.I hope someone else will soon write a script file for it
 (and that it won't be too slow for my PC;in a quick test with PinMAME emula-
 ting "Embryon" ROMs in the background made the VP game rather jerky,although
 at least it didn't crash).

-There seem to exist 3 different backglass versions of "Embryon",because the
 more bluish backglass picture I found in the pinball database does not look
 at all like the redish/greyish one from the flyer,and also the backlit version
 I scanned from the book for this game has many subtle details those are not
 visible in the other versions.(Look e.g. at the fine white structures on the
 head and breasts of the female being;it might be that these details only
 appear in backlit state and though there are only 2 versions,but I guess 
 these are rather 3 different ones.)

-The trademark sign at "MolecularMotion" etc. is a hoax to kid capitalism.Some
 dunces really thought it would be some nasty kind of anti-open-source measure
 or the like.

-No matter what ever you may flame,I definitely won't remove the popup reques-
 ter at program start,because it does NOT disturb the game in any way.You not
 even need to fumble your mouse out of that waste paper basket under the desk
 where it always comes to rest when you search for it. ;-) It is not necessary
 to grasp a mouse to click the OK button;a simple hit on [return] is enough to
 get the thing out of your face immediately.

-My name is not "Cyber-Yogi" or the like,but CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler.Cyberyogi
 is just a spiritual title (much like "brother" for a monk) and neither a
 name nor my nickname.


Known bugs and limitations:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-no multi-player support

-incomplete rules

-The entire electronic sounds (added by Germax) are not original.Especially
 note that there is an FM synthesizer tune ("Pinbot" highscore theme?) in the
 background despite Embryon is fron 1981 and FM soundchips were not available
 until 1983.

-I didn't model the playfield as detailed as in my "Boomerang" emulator;especi-
 ally it is made of way less layers because 1. I have not the time for this 
 and 2. the resolution of the pictures on the internet is way too low to see
 details well.Though there is currently no playfield illumination simulated and
 I also have no clue which parts of all these grey surfaces were intended to be
 translucent or backlit.

-The original playfield seems to have some walls made of shiny,mirror-like re-
 flecting material. 

 "Mirrors® - specially designed for you to discover a completely new,exciting
 world behind your behind..." ;-)

 (Unfortunately these can not be simulated well with Visual Pinball.)

-Behind the upper drop target bank there seems to be an orange object that 
 looks quite much like a giant additional drop target.I placed an orange block 
 there but I neither can see what it really is,nor I know what it should do.I 
 am also not sure if the rubber band should be behind or in front of it due
 to the low picture resolution.

-The ball rolling noise is just simulated by invisible playfield rollover 
 triggers those start samples,though it may be sometimes a little out of
 sync with the ball motion.(I find it quite ok,but people those are habitted
 to play on real pinball machines may find it sounds strange.) I already stop
 the sound where the ball is known to be motionless,but by my knowledge a phy-
 sically correct simulation of ball rolling noise is not possible with Visual
 Pinbal yet,because there is neither a way yet to detect the actual ball po-
 sition directly,nor to control the volume and pitch of a sound sample.
 (The noises can be disabled from 'operator settings'.)

-The wonderful backglass picture was retouched a lot (using parts from other
 Embryon backglass pictures) because a vertical stripe of it was missing by
 the fold of the pinball book I scanned it from. (Look e.g. at the head and 
 back of the right embryo being on it.)


Private parts:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the "privateParts" ZIP file you can find some graphical elements etc. those
may be useful for other Visual Pinball programmers.Most of the .bmp picture
files use black (RGB 0,0,0) or white (RGB 255,255,255) as the transparent co-
lour.(Actually these are 2 transparent bumper decals, a ball texture,the
Embryon sideart stickers and a peace symbol.)


Revision history:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Version 1.2:

-Licence completely reworked (see source code).Some people rushed a hate cam-
 paign against me that I would pirate other peoples VP code and lots of similar
 goatshit,after I had quickly copied the previous licence together from a few
 seedware paragraphs without minding much how this affects the initial parts
 of the code those were not programmed by me.I had regarded it as a matter of 
 course that such parts always stay as free or unfree as they were before,and
 that everybody can still download the unmodified Embryon version to see this;
 now it stands explicitly there.

-Text Embryon_artwork.txt added (artwork interpretation and a little prophecy
 about which nonsense the mankind will do in future with genetic engineering
 of human beings).

-Playfield colours tweaked (dark wood parts are better visible now,slightly
 less colour saturation and drop targets changed to light blue).

-Various playfield changes to simulate the original geometry of the mirror 
 walls and other details.

-Embryon pinball machine sidearts converted and placed as "stickers" on the
 playfield front cover.

-More click noises added to targets and made some clicks quieter.

-Bug fixed(?) that could start a game without stopping demo mode when a locked
 ball was ejected from the upper kicker after gameOver in certain situations.

-Much more realistic looking shiny balls added; the previous ones looked like
 when a child had them in his jeans pockets for 3 years. ;-) Thanks to Frank
 Gigliotti for the tip and the picture for the shiny ball. (I modified con-
 trast,brightness and the transparent part of the picture to make it match 
 better with the playfield. You can find 2 versions of it in the privatParts
 ZIP file.) If your PC is extremely slow,you may set const ballTexture=false
 to get the default balls again,because the new ones seem to consume a little
 extra CPU load.


Version 1.1:

 First reworked 4SloPC release by CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler.Main improvements are:

-"MolecularMotion" mechanism added that reduces CPU load by magnitudes.

-tilt pendulum simulation added (had been just a nudge counter).

-some bugs in Germax's tilt logics fixed.

-playfield completely reworked. New picture with much better contrast and co-
 lours added.Realistic rubber bands and spinner modelled and various miscon-
 ceptions of the mechanical layout of Germax's playfield parts corrected.(E.g.
 the arrangement of the center captive ball mechanism looked completely wrong
 to me.) The spiky Gottlieb EM style flippers replaced with rounder Bally
 ones =>aiming is much easier now.

-very pretty hires backglass picture added (scanned from a pinball book).

-many mechanical sounds and ball rolling and hit noises added.


Initial versions up to 1.0:

-created by Germax 
 (See his homepage at http://home.t-online.de/home/schindlergerhard/ )


                        MAY THE SOFTWARE BE WITH YOU!

*============================================================================*
I                  CYBERYOGI Christian Oliver(=CO=) Windler                  I
I         (teachmaster of LOGOLOGIE - the first cyberage-religion!)          I
I                                      !                                     I
*=============================ABANDON=THE=BRUTALITY==========================*
        {http://www.informatik.fh-hamburg.de/~windle_c/e_index.html}

e-mail: windle_c@informatik.fh-hamburg.de
