Mapping fourteen shots from a guide and a video

To lay out the whitewood, the build needs to know where each of the fourteen shots sits and which flipper feeds it. Neither answer comes from a single source.

Where the shots are

The table guide includes a picture of the playfield taken straight from above, so a spot on that picture is a spot on the playfield. That became the base map, with each shot marked as a numbered ring and the flippers, slingshots, lanes and plunger lane drawn in.

The gameplay video is filmed from low down at an angle, so it can’t be traced directly. Instead, its view was straightened to match the guide’s picture, using points both show in the lower playfield: the lane slots, the Kickback stars, the flipper tips, the arc of plants and the Flower Pot hole. The lower half lines up well. The upper half doesn’t, because the upper playfield tilts and the ramps stand up off the surface, so those positions are the least certain and were checked by eye.

One thing neither source shows is which C-R-A-Z-Y letter sits on which lane. The five letters are in one row, and C and Y sit above the Kickback stars, so they’re taken as the outlanes. That’s marked as a guess until something confirms it.

The picture and the table don’t share a shape, either. The picture includes the apron and frame, and the playfield is proportioned differently, so laying out means matching landmarks, like the lower left flipper, rather than simply scaling up.

Which flipper makes each shot

The rules name a flipper for some shots. For the rest, the video had to answer. The ball was followed by its color through about 24 minutes of play, and every flip that sent it up the table was traced to where it ended, then checked frame by frame for the clearest cases. Each answer is backed by the moments in the video it came from.

Some of what turned up:

• The Left Orbit and the R-I-P targets were made from both lower flippers, so either one counts.
• The Flower Pot and the Brainz Ramp are cases where the rules and the video disagree. The rules win, and the disagreement is noted.
• The Mini Orbit and the Brainz up-kicker were never seen made from a flipper. The up-kicker is probably fed from another shot. Both are marked as not seen, along with what was searched, rather than guessed.

The video answers are weaker than the rules, and that’s noted too. The ball is about twelve pixels across, the camera cuts to close-ups, and there are often several balls in play.

What’s next

With the map done and the shot test working, the next step is building the lower playfield and then the shots themselves, each one landing with a passing shot test. When all fourteen pass and the whitewood has been played and signed off, the rules work begins.