Date: 25th February, 2013

The latest update from Quetzal Pinball's Antonio Ortuño brings some important changes to the hardware and the software used in the game.

First of all, Antonio has announced that the game's playfield will not be made of traditional maple plywood due to its unavailability in Spain. He said up until now he has been using birch but after a number of tests has decided to use an entirely different product.

Antonio's playfield rotisserie

Rather than wood, the playfield will be made of a Phenolic panel which is a hard wearing thermally fused sheet constructed from multiple sheets of resin-soaked paper. Phenolic panels are typically used for cubicle dividers, work surfaces, cabinet fronts and window sills.

Antonio said there is a five week lead time from ordering to delivery. Then the sheets will need to be routed, printed, clearcoated and cured, though he says he has boxes of parts waiting to populate the playfields once they are ready.

The other change is to the software used in Captain Nemo.

Initially the game used finite state machines in the software which allows a number of states to be defined and events on the playfield would transition between them. However, they are relatively inflexible and Antonio said they were not able to achieve some of the more complex tasks in the game.

So Antonio says he's changed to using a mix of state machines and Java classes, which he says will make it easier to create and modify complex rules in the game.

That's all in this update. Remember to check Pinball News for all the latest news on Captain Nemo Dives Again.

© Pinball News 2013