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History: shivaEngine is part of the full install with Visual Pinball done by Cold1 and myself. It is labeled "Tutorial" in Visual pinball's full install, but it's included with the top gear table, so it's part of the standard package. A couple years later, I wrote shivaEngine2, which was aimed at the advanced user as a System 9 engine, and mid 80's Bally. It was very full featured, and could do just about anything even System 11 games could do in terms of a feature set. shivaEngine 3 was a middle ground, in that it had all the main features of se2, but using the modern scripting style of pre-made scripts with "hooks" inserted into the main engine. In it's own right, it is just as powerful as se2, and was designed to emulate all arcade games up to 1985 as perfectly as possible, without needing VPinMAME. There are 4 tables that used the se3 engine, Star Trek se3, Playboy se3, Kiss se3 and Power Play se3. The system is a modular concept, so you can in fact mix and match external scripts if you wanted to, setup took less than 5 minutes in most cases se4: The se4 engine builds on these concepts from before, but already, there are some major new features that are in place, with a lot more to be added. One of the biggest features of the xse engine is it will adds multiple preset scoring and control routines to standard objects and parts of a common table, (such as drop target banks, lanes etc) using a collection based system. Like the engine itself, this will contain multiple settings for each section, so there will be multiple types of scoring and routines capable for each section. But most importantly, there is a new menu system, that will allow you to adjust and set any of it's routines, settings, scoring, and rules while in game. In theory (and so far) there is no need to do any scripting at all! There are preset styles in case you don't want to change the settings yourself, and now a navigation and help menu that helps you in case you do. No more long text files that people don't read anyway in other words. As it Stands: At the moment, due to time, health and real life issues, se4 has stopped development. There are quite a few things that are missing from the table example, but lack of time prevents me from doing them, if ever. It would be such a shame though to waste this, as it could have such a dramatic effect on the community, and actually get a lot more people to make their own tables, so the table is out, and hopefully, people who do know how to script, and table devs, will step forward and help finish the engine. People who do can just contact me, I will help as much as possible, and still handle keeping track and organizing things, but to help, I have written a "to do" list as a guide of the things I had planned to add myself. Next planned version (beta 2) Keys and VBscript menus ' - In se4 b1, the system has a menu based system outline using display and text boxes. Though this does work, it's a bit clunky, hard to work with, and very inflexible. I am presently looking at alternate ways, that will give far more flexibility and ease of use. At the moment, the new menu will be more than likely HTA based, as a dedicated webpage system, with far more options and capabilities. As well, it will be far more adaptable with changes caused by new releases of visual pinball. All work on the engine and example table will stop till a new menu system is done, so if there are people who want to add to the engine, hook up missing elements, or improve the engine, they can do so, as the menu system is completely seperate from the rest of the engine and table. Just submit the changed table to me, and I will incorporate the changes into future releases, with proper credit.