SpaceCadetPinball

Summary

Reverse engineering of 3D Pinball for Windows - Space Cadet, a game bundled with Windows.

How to play

Place original game resources (not included) into a folder called "Pinball" next to the NRO. Supports data files from Windows and Full Tilt versions of the game.

Switch controls

• A for launcher,
• L and R for left/right bumpers,
• Dpad left/right/up for bumps,
• X for new game, Y for pausing,
• + for quitting.

The controls as well as audio (music/effects) can be configured from imgui_pb.ini, which is created in the same directory as the executable upon first launch. Refer to https://github.com/devkitPro/SDL/blob/switch-sdl2/src/joystick/switch/SDL_sysjoystick.c#L47-L55.

Known source ports

Platform	Author	URL
PS Vita	Axiom	https://github.com/suicvne/SpaceCadetPinball_Vita
Emscripten	alula	https://github.com/alula/SpaceCadetPinball Play online: https://alula.github.io/SpaceCadetPinball
Nintendo Switch	averne,TSRBerry	https://github.com/TSRBerry/SpaceCadetPinball-NX
webOS TV	mariotaku	https://github.com/webosbrew/SpaceCadetPinball
Android (WIP)	Iscle	https://github.com/Iscle/SpaceCadetPinball
Nintendo Wii	MaikelChan	https://github.com/MaikelChan/SpaceCadetPinball
Nintendo 3DS	MaikelChan	https://github.com/MaikelChan/SpaceCadetPinball/tree/3ds
Nintendo DS	Headshotnoby	https://github.com/headshot2017/3dpinball-nds
Nintendo Wii U	IntriguingTiles	https://github.com/IntriguingTiles/SpaceCadetPinball-WiiU
PlayStation 2	Headshotnoby	https://github.com/headshot2017/3dpinball-ps2
Sega Dreamcast	Headshotnoby	https://github.com/headshot2017/3dpinball-dc
MorphOS	BeWorld	https://www.morphos-storage.net/?id=1688897
AmigaOS 4	rjd324	http://aminet.net/package/game/actio/spacecadetpinball-aos4
Android (WIP)	fexed	https://github.com/fexed/Pinball-on-Android

Platforms covered by this project: Nintendo Switch

Source

• pinball.exe from Windows XP (SHA-1 2A5B525E0F631BB6107639E2A69DF15986FB0D05) and its public PDB
• CADET.EXE 32bit version from Full Tilt! Pinball (SHA-1 3F7B5699074B83FD713657CD94671F2156DBEDC4)

Tools used

Ghidra, Ida, Visual Studio

What was done

• All structures were populated, globals and locals named.
• All subs were decompiled, C pseudo code was converted to compilable C++. Loose (namespace?) subs were assigned to classes.

Compiling

Project uses C++11 and depends on SDL2 libs.

On Windows

Download and unpack devel packages for SDL2 and SDL2_mixer.
Set paths to them in CMakeLists.txt, see suggested placement in /Libs.
Compile with Visual Studio; tested with 2019.

On Linux

Install devel packages for SDL2 and SDL2_mixer.
Compile with CMake; tested with GCC 10, Clang 11.
To cross-compile for Windows, install a 64-bit version of mingw and its SDL2 and SDL2_mixer distributions, then use the mingwcc.cmake toolchain.

Some distributions provide a package in their repository. You can use those for easier dependency management and updates.

This project is available as Flatpak on Flathub.

On macOS

Install XCode (or at least Xcode Command Line Tools with xcode-select --install) and CMake.

HomeBrew

You can easily install the build artifact by using brew.

brew tap draftbrew/tap
brew install --no-quarantine space-cadet-pinball

Be aware that the flag --no-quarantime will disable macOS's Gatekeeper during installation.

Manual compilation:

• Homebrew: Install the SDL2, SDL2_mixer homebrew packages.
• MacPorts: Install the libSDL2, libSDL2_mixer macports packages.

Compile with CMake. Ensure that CMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES variable is set for either x86_64 Apple Intel or arm64 for Apple Silicon.

Tested with: macOS Big Sur (Intel) with Xcode 13 & macOS Montery Beta (Apple Silicon) with Xcode 13.

Automated compilation:

Run the build-mac-app.sh script from the root of the repository. The app will be available in a DMG file named SpaceCadetPinball-<version>-mac.dmg.

Tested with: macOS Ventura (Apple Silicon) with Xcode Command Line Tools 14 & macOS Big Sur on GitHub Runner (Intel) with XCode 13.

Plans

• Decompile original game
• Resizable window, scaled graphics
• Loader for high-res sprites from CADET.DAT
• Cross-platform port using SDL2, SDL2_mixer, ImGui
• Full Tilt Cadet features
• Localization support
• Maybe: Support for the other two tables - Dragon and Pirate
• Maybe: Game data editor

On 64-bit bug that killed the game

I did not find it, decompiled game worked in x64 mode on the first try.
It was either lost in decompilation or introduced in x64 port/not present in x86 build.
Based on public description of the bug (no ball collision), I guess that the bug was in TEdgeManager::TestGridBox