Playing the Table

Showcade runs a real table in your browser at show.cade.run — real physics, real scoring, the live engine, nothing to install. Everything you need to play it is on the keyboard, and this page is the reference for what each key does.

Controls

Each flipper has two bindings — a Shift key and a fallback letter — so you can play with whichever is comfortable. They drive the same flipper, and releasing either one drops it, so don’t hold both expecting the second to keep the flipper up.

Keys never fire while you’re typing. If a text field or a panel with its own keyboard handling has focus, your keystrokes go there instead of to the table.

Rebinding the controls

Those are the defaults, not the law. Open the ⚙ settings and every row above is in Key bindings, one row per control:

• Click a key chip to replace it — the next key you press becomes the binding, and Escape backs out without changing anything.
• ＋ adds a second binding to the same control (which is how both flippers ship with two).
• ✕ removes one.

Binding a key that another control already uses is warned, not refused — the widget names which control actually fires, so you can move a key off one control and onto another without the first step being rejected. Your bindings are part of your settings, so they follow you to another device once you are signed in, and Reset all settings puts them back.

The editors have their own bindings, in their own settings groups — see the object editor and Node Editor Basics.

Placing the ball by hand

Turn on Debug ball placement in ⚙ settings and the playfield gains a troubleshooting gesture: press anywhere on it to teleport a ball to that spot and freeze it there, drag to aim, and release to launch it along the line you dragged. It is the fastest way to answer “what does this shot actually do?” without plunging and waiting for the ball to arrive.

It is off by default, and it stands down entirely while the object editor is open — the editor owns playfield clicks. Turning it off mid-drag simply releases the held ball where it sits rather than firing it.

The plunger

Hold Space to draw the plunger back and release it to launch. The longer you hold, the harder the shot — a plunger meter beside the playfield fills as you charge, so you can aim for a soft feed or a full-power launch by watching it rather than by counting.

Letting go fires immediately. Releasing focus mid-charge does not — see When focus leaves the page.

Nudging and tilt

Nudging shoves the cabinet to steer a ball you’d otherwise lose. T or Up Arrow shoves up-table; Left Arrow and Right Arrow shove a corner. Each nudge kicks the ball, shakes the camera, and adds to the tilt bob.

Lean on it and the table warns you before it punishes you — keep nudging past the warning and you tilt. Holding a nudge key down does not machine-gun the bob; each nudge needs its own press.

Camera views

C cycles three preset views:

• Player — the default, angled down the table from behind the plunger.
• Top-down — straight down, the clearest view for seeing lane geometry and where a ball is actually going.
• Side — along the table, useful for judging ramp and wall height.

Playing by touch

On a phone or tablet the harness draws three touch zones in a band along the bottom of the screen — left flipper, plunger, right flipper. Hold a flipper pad to hold that flipper, and hold the middle pad to charge the plunger, lifting your finger to launch. They drive exactly the same controls as the keys, so everything on this page about charging, nudging, and tilt applies unchanged.

The zones appear automatically on touch devices; a Touch controls toggle in the ⚙ settings shows or hides them explicitly on any device.

The scoreboard and the panels

The Cade engine panel beside the playfield carries the scoreboard — Player, Score, Ball, In play, Balls left, and Mode — and the actions you can reach with the mouse:

• Sound: on toggles audio.
• Object editor (E) opens the Object Editor.
• Event tree opens the event-tree panel, described below.
• Record captures the session you are about to play, for the Testing page to read back. It asks first, because recording restarts the game and resets your score; the button then reads Stop recording, and stopping downloads the recording.

Both the engine panel and the Browser rail have a – button that minimizes them to a restore tab when you want the full playfield. Before you start a game, an attract screen reminds you to press S to start.

P toggles a performance HUD with frame timing, for when you want to know whether a stutter is the table or the machine. (There’s also a Perf HUD row in Settings.)

The event tree

The Event tree button opens a live view of the events the running table is firing — the switches this page actually sent, read from the same engine you’re playing on. It’s closed by default and stops updating entirely while closed, so it costs you nothing when you don’t want it. Drag its header to reposition it; it remembers both its open/closed choice and where you put it.

The tree claims the arrow keys only while it has focus — click into it to navigate, click back to the table to play. That’s deliberate: the arrow keys are also the nudge keys, so leaving the panel open while you play keeps nudging working.

Clicking a row moves the cursor to it, and clicking a collapsible row toggles it.

While an editor is open

This is the one behavior that surprises people. While the object editor is open, every gameplay key is inert — flippers, plunger, start, and cabinet nudge all do nothing, and C won’t cycle the camera.

That’s not a bug. The editor owns the arrow keys (they nudge the selected device, not the cabinet), it owns Space (the pan modifier), and it has its own camera with its own named views. Letting the game keep those keys would mean fighting the editor for every one of them.

E (close the editor) and P (performance HUD) stay live, so you’re never stuck. Press E again and the table plays normally, with your previous camera restored.

When focus leaves the page

Alt-tab away — or click outside the sim when it’s embedded in another page — and every held control releases: flippers drop and an in-flight plunger charge is cancelled without firing. The moment you meant to release it is unknowable once focus is gone, so the harness declines to guess rather than launching a shot you didn’t aim.

Nothing latches. Come back, and the table is ready for the next press.