So I believe I first played this machine at the Pacific NW Pinball show last June.  Kriss and I both really enjoyed it, along with Count-Down as two of our favorites of the show (also Capersville and Laser Cue, yes we are old :) ).  While I now own a Count-Down machine, Buck Rogers is still at the top of my list of system 1 machines to acquire.  In the mean time having them done in VPX  will be a fun alternative.

This started out as an upgrade to Sindbad’s vp9 table found over on VPF.  Hauntfreaks did the inital layout and lighting etc in VPX last summer from a beta sindbad had put out during the vp10 beta phase and it’s been mostly hanging out since then. I rebuilt all the code, keeping mainly the vari-target scripting form Sindbad’s table, found some nicer plastic images courtesy of the interwebs and went to town this week.

New the top of the script is a line that currently reads “Const VT_Delay_Factor = .88”.  What this line does is controls how fast the vari-target slows down the captive ball that hit’s it.  The smaller the number the more it slows it down.  I’m not sure exactly where this number should be, but I do know a couple things: 1. it is possible to set the vari-target to the very back in one shot, I’ve seen it done in videos, 2. .8 I think makes it too hard to every achieve the 1 shot reset of the vari-target, 3. .95 makes it too easy to make that shot.  So somewhere in the middle is where we sit.  I have not yet made it in one hit with the current settings, but I have come close, it takes a timing shot with momentum on the ball to make it happen.  Feel free to play with this variable and report back what happens.

While I have an image that I believe is slightly better, wildman has a nice db2s over on VPU, http://vpuniverse.com/forums/files/file/2342-buck-rogersgottlieb-1980/  I did use my image for making the desktop backdrop.

As usual my settings are for portrait mode, I have included a landscape.xml that you can import an get you close if you have your cabinet setup the wrong way.