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georgios cf2c0e4558 Portrait 360x480 table with regular-sized flippers

Rotate the playfield to portrait like a real pinball machine:
- canvas 480x360 landscape -> 360x480 portrait; playfield 308px wide,
  ~390px tall, with HUD, title/game-over screens and HUD re-laid out
  for the narrow format (score/best top row, balls/stars/fever below)
- flippers reduced to a regular ~quarter-width size (82px) pivoting at
  the lower corners, tips meeting over a wide centre drain
- table elements re-placed for the taller field: 3 star lanes up top,
  candy bumpers mid-field, slingshots and floor-level outlane guard
  posts at the bottom; data-checked with the autoplay bot (~350 bumper
  hits / 30k frames, centre+side drains, no stuck balls)
- probes & autoplay policy updated for the portrait geometry; all 13
  pixel-probes pass

2026-09-09 19:02:11 +02:00

3.3 KiB

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🍬 Cosmic Candy Pinball

A cute, 8-bit, pixel-art pinball game, written from scratch in Python with pygame-ce. 100% procedural — there are no image or audio asset files: every sprite, texture, particle, chiptune and sound effect is generated by code at runtime.

Not web-based: it opens its own native window and renders on a low-res portrait 360×480 virtual canvas — like a proper pinball machine — upscaled with crisp nearest-neighbour scaling for an authentic retro look.

Running it

Fastest (uv, already used in this project):

uv venv .venv --python 3.12      # once
uv pip install --python .venv/bin/python -r requirements.txt   # once
.venv/bin/python main.py

Or with plain venv + pip (Python 3.10+):

python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt
.venv/bin/python main.py

Note: the dependency is pygame-ce, not pygame (the community edition supports newer Python versions and is what this was built against).

Controls

Key	Action
`←` `→` (or `Z` / `/`)	Flippers
hold `Space` / `↑`	Charge the Candy Cannon — release to fire
`M`	Mute
`P`	Pause
`R`	Restart game
`Esc`	Quit
`Enter`	Start / play again

How to play

Light the 3 star lanes up top → CANDY FEVER! (double points for 20s — keep hitting stars to extend it).
Bounce off the three kawaii candy bumpers and the two slingshots. Every hit inside 2.5s builds your combo multiplier (up to ×9).
Watch the bottom-centre drain and the two outlanes… or lose the ball.
Every 50,000 points earns an extra ball.
Squirrel says encouraging things. Blush at the cat in the corner.

Project layout

file	purpose
`main.py`	entry point / main loop
`game.py`	game states, scoring, juice, all rendering (pixel art)
`physics.py`	pure pinball physics (flippers, bumpers, slingshots, drains) — no rendering
`font.py`	hand-made 5×5 pixel bitmap font
`sfx.py`	procedural chiptune + music synthesis (pure code, no samples)
`highscore.json`	best score (written at game over)

Dev / test tools (run headless, no window needed):

.venv/bin/python autotest.py 40000    # auto-playing bot, prints game-health stats
.venv/bin/python runtest.py 900       # simulated session incl. rendering
.venv/bin/python shots.py shots       # dumps screenshots of every state
.venv/bin/python probe.py             # pixel-probes the rendered layout

Design notes

Physics: fixed 60 Hz logic with up to 6 collision substeps so the ball never tunnels; kinematic flippers whose angular velocity is transferred to the ball (real "scoop" feel); inward-tilting floor funnels; centre drain + guarded outlanes; a softlock rescue nudge if a ball ever parks too long.
Fun tuning was data-driven: an autotest.py bot plays thousands of frames and reports hit/drain rates per table element, so bumper, slingshot and flipper geometry was tuned against measured behaviour, not guesswork.
Audio: square/triangle/noise oscillators -> PCM at startup; distinct pitched bump sounds that climb with your combo, plus two generative music loops (menu + play).

Licence: MIT — go wild.

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