(That is, I modified an existing VPX to be better, which is how most recreations of pinball tables improve. Nobody would expect everyone to make every pinball table from scratch.)
I've published a virtual pinball table on VPUniverse! It's my version of Star Gazer, the Stern Electronics table from 1980.
This came out of a long conversation with @solar-espeon about VPX tables that have unrealistic physics, and how to fix them. I swear some VPX creators consider friction and weak components to be bugs to be removed, instead of part of the realism of pinball, and thus end up making tables that feel like you're slamming an air hockey puck around with power tools. To counter that, espie and I have found a reasonable range of parameters for things like playfield friction, bumper strength, and flipper strength, which of course depend on the year the table was made.
Star Gazer is one of my favorite pinball tables, and I got to play it in person in Rochester, NY. Knowing how it plays, I wanted to fix some things about the physics in the existing VPX, as well as a couple of playfield text inaccuracies.
espie playtested the heck out of it. She let me know when my physics led to a nearly guaranteed weird bounce on a full plunge. She went deep enough into it that, after I made the release, she found that two DIP switches (relating to when you score a special) have either been labeled backwards in the manual or wired backwards this whole time, so we need to relabel them in the machine options.
Now I need to steel myself for the gauntlet of reviews -- no, not really, everyone just drops a "like" or says "great table!" unless something is obviously broken.
