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Starship Troopers (Sega 1997)

Sega Whitestar rescale mod project with practical insights on light falloff scaling, flasher positioning, Fleep integration workflow, and platform-specific fast flips. Built by apophis79, sixtoe, houb., and eighties8.

Table-Specific Details

Mechanisms & Hardware

  • Sega Whitestar fast flips: UseSolenoids values are platform-specific. Starship Troopers uses UseSolenoids = 15. This address can change between ROM revisions -- fast flips working on one version does not guarantee they work on another. Stern SAM uses 1 (off) with its own bypass mechanism.

Art & Visuals

  • Light falloff values must be rescaled when table geometry is scaled (1.85x rescale). Unscaled falloff creates hard visible edges on flasher illumination. A VBScript macro can iterate all 151+ light objects and multiply their falloff values.
  • Flasher disc primitives cutting through lamp geometry: the flasher disc sits "on the glass" and tilts toward the player. If tilted too far, the disc intersects lamp geometry. Move flasher forward (toward player) to sit on front-facing edge of lamp.
  • Camera projection technique for quick refractive ramp textures: take overhead screenshot, project as orthographic texture onto ramp surfaces. Not perfectly aligned but close enough for transparent ramps where slight distortion looks natural.

Physics & Gameplay

  • Physics tuning: original table had excessive friction (0.25) making gameplay sluggish -- reducing to 0.15 dramatically improved feel. Use PAPA/IFPA tournament footage for ball speed reference.
  • Standup target hit threshold of 1.0 (from original table) was too high for consistent registration. Reducing to 0.5 (VPW standard) ensures reliable hits. Target animation timer code accumulated rotation without bounds checking, eventually flipping targets upside down.
  • Plunger groove: V-channel created using paired angled VPX ramps keeps ball centered during auto-plunger launch. More robust than increasing plunger strength.

Known Issues

  • Table glass height should NOT be scaled with geometry. Scaling from 400 to 740 caused exaggerated cabinet POV perspective. Glass height defines vertical clipping boundary.
  • Saved POV overrides table settings including AO on/off state -- a user's saved POV can override the table author's defaults. This is a longstanding VPX issue.
  • European locale systems use comma for decimal separator, which can break VBScript calculations using period-formatted numbers during light rescaling.

Techniques Developed Here

See Also