User blog:Entertainmentz/Reworks of the Angry Birds pinball tables

After creating the three pinball tables based on Angry Birds animated media and looking over them, I decided that they all needed a few tweaks and reworks to make them more faithful to the source material and/or refine the gameplay mechanics.

Here are each of the major changes I have made to each table below:

The Angry Birds Movie Pinball
 * After some thinking, Bomb's crossramp has been changed into a vertical upkicker that rolls the ball down Mighty Eagle's right wing habitrail, as well as change the hurry up mode to better reflect one developing moment in the film where he finds himself.  In this new mode, instead of finding and hitting TNT crates, the player races against time to unleash Bomb's explosive powers, which he finally begins to master during the battle of Pig City.  This is done by charging up his power by hitting Red's bumpers to raise a bonus score pool within a limited time, then shooting Bomb's VUK to finish the mode and redeem those points.  The player can also take a risk and try to get more bumper hits for a bigger score, but may not have enough time to redeem them if the VUK is not shot in time.  The VUK will also function as a locking sinkhole for one of the locks of Anger Multiball.
 * Matilda's random award is now called the Meditation Award, in reflecting how she can reward those who can control their anger.
 * All voice lines in the table are now taken completely from the script and are best utilized depending on the current mode or event.
 * One rule change has been made to the missions: draining the ball will now skip a mission instead of cancelling it. This is an attempt to make the mission completion rules completely different across all three tables.  In the Movie 2 table, all missions must be completed successfully without draining the ball to access the Wizard Mode and in Stella, missions must be attempted without draining the ball to progress to the Wizard Mode.
 * In an attempt to make combos trigger certain effects across all tables, I added the ability to make combos start up a time-limited chance to boost bumpers and once they are struck enough times in that state, a multiplier hold can be awarded.

The Angry Birds Movie 2 Pinball
 * The first mission, Prank Wars, now has a second part in which crabs invade the playfield and advance towards the flippers, similar to some of Zen's tables like The Walking Dead: Season One, Plants vs. Zombies and Aliens where drop targets move en masse towards the flippers. This better reflects the opening battle scene, especially when Bomb is seen rolling like a ball to crush the crabs.
 * The Debbie On Ice side mode is no longer attributed to Debbie and is changed to another hurry up side mission where Silver uses her crest braids to rescue herself from imprisonment. The playfield is still frozen as always to make things challenging, but now the player must pull off a series of shots in order for her to make a calculated swing of the braids to hook the air cap of the inflatable recliner she's frozen to and pop it open, with a chance to increase the escape reward.  If time runs out and the ball is still in play, the rest of the team comes over and rescues Red and Silver automatically for a low score bonus.  Completing this side mode successfully for the first time awards an Extra Ball.
 * A new, multi-tiered reward system called the Teamwork Level is established, based on the longest Team Combo made. After some considerations, the Teamwork Level system would work like this: The Teamwork Level starts at 1 at the start of a ball and increases when a longer Team Combo is shot. The level it rises to depends on the longest multi-step Team Combo performed during the current ball, and resets when the ball is lost.  Level 2 protects TEAM rollovers so that they do not darken if the ball hits a lit rollover or is lost.  Level 3 holds the teamwork score multiplier so that it carries over to the next ball.  Level 4 boosts the TEAM rollovers so that they only need to be spelled once instead of twice for a multiplier raise.  The final, highest level, Level 5, grants an extra ball.
 * Silver's random award is now called the Achievement Award.
 * Seeing that most pinball tables have three multiball modes, a third multiball mode called Teamwork Multiball, is added to the table. A lock for this mode is lit when 5 multi-step Team Combos of any length are performed and balls are locked inside the submarine to be stored for the multiball.  Jackpot lanes are the hero lanes, with Silver's crossramp being the Super Jackpot due to her leadership and invention of super string.
 * The final step of the second phase of the Wizard Mode at one point involved shooting a series of lanes to derail the stolen ice ball. After some thinking, this is now changed to just a shot of Silver's crossramp for easy flow.

Angry Birds Stella Pinball
 * When the mini-playfield was first designed, a further look at it reveals that it may be too difficult to shoot unlocked sinkholes as branch-off lanes from the main orbit. This is corrected by hiding the sinkholes behind each pair of JUMP targets, similar to how there is a hidden sinkhole behind a row of targets in the Zen Pinball table Adventure Land.
 * An extra multiball mode dedicated to the Ham-some Pig, Ham-some Pig Multiball, is added to the table, based on the said character's efforts to woo his superior, Gale, the Bad Princess. The few episodes in the series where the two are seen together do not give any easy way of making a fun multiball mode that reflects the content of these episodes, but it is there to add more multiball variety.  This mode uses 2 balls and starts after the left rebound is hit a predetermined number of times, causing a second ball to pop out of the middle sinkhole.  Only one jackpot lane is lit (which cannot be a sinkhole), and it can be increased by hitting both sinkholes once.  The Ham-some Pig will try to flatter Gale and impress her every time lit lanes are hit.
 * Willow's random award is now called the Art Award.
 * If the player misses the skillshot, Dahlia will say "Snooze alert!", something she allegedly said in The Angry Birds Movie 2.