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No Fear: Dangerous Sports (Williams 1995)

Full premium VPW build taken from pre-toolkit through complete VLM toolkit conversion. Notable for the FlipperCradleCollision code that became a VPW standard, mayo light implementation, and comprehensive post-import checklist development. Built by sixtoe, apophis79, and tomate80.

Build Story

No Fear was one of the earliest tables to go through a complete toolkit conversion lifecycle. The build established several workflow patterns that became standard across VPW, including the post-import checklist and mayo light placement methodology. primetime5k contributed staged flipper support.

Table-Specific Details

Mechanisms & Hardware

  • Uses the FL-11629 flipper coil -- the most powerful WPC flipper coil (same as Indiana Jones). Combined with no pop bumpers, no rubber bands (only slings), and only sleeves on shot dividers, there is "literally almost nothing to slow the ball down." Physics tuning is critical since the table plays extremely fast.
  • The subway has a ball prepared to kick out to avoid wait time between shots.
  • The ThroughIsFull function must exclude Controller.Switch(35) or the ROM menu pops up during gameplay (ported from Johnny Mnemonic fix -- both are Williams 1995 with the same switch layout).

Art & Visuals

  • Mayo lights simulate flasher bloom hitting the glass above the playfield. Positioned at glass height above flasher locations. The skull flasher mayo was placed along the jawline to be unnoticeable. Careful tuning required -- several were initially "way too bright."
  • VR side rails required a separate Blender collection excluded from the bake, exported as an independent .obj primitive with its own UV-mapped texture. Lesson for future tables: always keep side rails and lockdown bar in their own collection from the start.
  • Ramp transparency responds to GI by tying blenddisablelighting to GI lightmap opacity: lramp.blenddisablelighting = 0.01 * LM_giTop_Parts.opacity
  • Refraction probes for ramps: default thickness of 10 was too much -- values of 1-4 preferred, as higher values produce an overly "dirty" look.

Physics & Gameplay

  • FlipperCradleCollision was first implemented here (v0.043), handling ball-to-ball collisions near the flipper cradle during multiball. This code became a standard addition to VPW tables.
  • Staged flipper support added at v0.042.

Known Issues

  • Toolkit-baked insert lightmaps can appear too dim because high environment light levels overwhelm insert contributions. Fix: double upper light strength in Blender for inserts, or apply a standard "50% more" insert light intensity as compensation.
  • Every Blender batch import resets render probes and other adjustments.

Techniques Developed Here

See Also