SpaceCadetPinball

Summary

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

How to play

Place compiled executable into a folder containing original game resources (not included).
Supports data files from Windows and Full Tilt versions of the game.

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	https://github.com/averne/SpaceCadetPinball-NX
webOS TV	mariotaku	https://github.com/webosbrew/SpaceCadetPinball
Android (WIP)	Iscle	https://github.com/Iscle/SpaceCadetPinball
Nintendo Wii (WIP)	MaikelChan	https://github.com/MaikelChan/SpaceCadetPinball
Nintendo Wii U	IntriguingTiles	https://github.com/IntriguingTiles/SpaceCadetPinball-WiiU

Platforms covered by this project: desktop Windows, Linux and macOS.

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.

On macOS

• 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.

Plans

• Decompile original game
• Resizable window, scaled graphics
• Loader for high-res sprites from CADET.DAT
• Misc features of Full Tilt: 3 music tracks, multiball, centered textboxes, etc.
• Cross-platform port
  • Using SDL2, SDL2_mixer, ImGui
  • Maybe: Android port
• Maybe x2: support for other two tables
  • Table specific BL (control interactions and missions) is hardcoded, othere parts might be also patched

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