Introducing Nova Pinball and Island Flight
The blog now has a Games page with two original browser games. Nova Pinball is a pinball table with an observatory theme, and Island Flight is a small-plane course over nine real cities.
The blog now has a Games page with two original games. Both run in the browser with nothing to install, and both work with a keyboard or a touch screen. High scores and best times are saved in your own browser, so they stay on your device.
Nova Pinball
Nova Pinball is a 3D pinball table with an observatory theme. You get three balls per game, and if a ball drains within seven seconds of its launch, you get it back. Around the table you'll find:
- The Orbit ramp, which carries the ball up the right side, over the top of the table and back down to the left flipper. A shot without enough speed rolls back out.
- The Observatory scoop on the left, which catches the ball and kicks it back out.
- Four N·O·V·A targets on the right, three pop bumpers, three top lanes, and a bank of three drop targets on the left wall.
- A kickback in the left outlane, which fires a draining ball back into play. It's lit when the game starts.
Missions and ranks
The game gives you one mission at a time. Completing one scores points and raises your rank, from Stargazer to Observer, Astronomer, Astrophysicist and finally Cosmologist. Reaching Astrophysicist also earns an extra ball.
| Mission | Goal |
|---|---|
| Comet Hunt | Hit the pop bumpers 12 times |
| Spectrum | Knock down all three drop targets |
| Constellation | Light all four N·O·V·A targets |
| Orbit | Shoot the Orbit ramp twice |
| Lens Alignment | Light all three top lanes |
| First Light | Shoot the Observatory scoop twice |
After the sixth mission, the list starts over with bigger goals.
Scoring tips
- Lighting all three top lanes, or knocking down all three drop targets, raises the score multiplier, up to ×5. The multiplier applies to everything you score, including the bonus at the end of each ball.
- Each flipper press shifts which top lanes are lit, so you can line up an unlit lane before the ball rolls through.
- Lighting all four N·O·V·A targets scores 10,000 and relights the kickback.
- Three Orbit ramp shots light Supernova. Then shoot the Observatory scoop to start multiball, where every ramp shot scores a 25,000 jackpot.
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| ← or Z | Left flipper |
| → or M | Right flipper |
| Space or ↓ (hold) | Pull back the plunger, then release to launch |
| N | Nudge the table |
| P | Pause |
On a touch screen, tap the left or right half of the screen to flip, and hold the Launch button to pull back the plunger.
Island Flight
Island Flight puts you in a small high-wing trainer on a runway in one of nine real cities:
| City | Airport |
|---|---|
| Chicago | Midway |
| San Francisco | San Francisco International |
| Seattle | Boeing Field |
| Los Angeles | Los Angeles International |
| New York | LaGuardia |
| Paris | Le Bourget |
| Munich | Munich Airport |
| Reno | Reno–Tahoe |
| Champaign | Willard |
Take off, fly through the eight rings, then land back on the runway. The clock starts at the first ring and stops at the last, and your best time is saved for each city.
The plane flies like a light aircraft. It needs speed before it lifts off, and it stalls if you fly too slowly or pull up too hard. A landing that's too hard, has a wingtip low, comes in nose first or ends in the water counts as a crash, and a few seconds later you're back on the runway.
Each map covers a 24 × 24 km area. The terrain, coastlines, lakes and rivers, main roads, runways and land use all come from real map data. Buildings and trees are placed using the land use: houses in residential areas, taller buildings in commercial areas, low wide ones in industrial areas, and trees in forests and parks. They show the shape of each city, but they aren't its real buildings.
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| ↓ or S / ↑ or W | Pull up / push down |
| ← → or A D | Roll left / right |
| Q / E | Rudder (also steers on the ground) |
| = / − | Throttle up / down |
| B (hold) | Wheel brakes |
| C | Switch between the chase and cockpit views |
| R | Reset to the runway |
| P | Pause |
On a touch screen, drag to steer and use the on-screen throttle buttons.
How they're built
Both games are drawn in 3D with Three.js. Their code loads only on the game pages, so the rest of the blog stays as light as before.
Nova Pinball's physics runs in steps of 1/960 of a second, which keeps a fast ball from slipping through a flipper or a wall. Once the ball enters the Orbit ramp, it follows the ramp's 3D path until it drops out at the other end or rolls back.
Island Flight works out the lift, drag and thrust on the plane many times a second. Each city's map is a grid of ground heights, with a point about every 83 m. Each point also has a byte that marks it as water, forest, park, residential, commercial, industrial or airfield. The heights and land use for a whole city take about 250 KB.
Credits
Island Flight's maps are built from OpenStreetMap data, © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License. The elevation data comes from Terrain Tiles on AWS Open Data, which combines public sources such as SRTM, USGS 3DEP and GMTED2010 (full attribution).