# Big Nuts

**Source:** BlahCade Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2015-04-20  
**Duration:** 91m 50s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blahcade-pinball-podcast/episodes/Big-Nuts-e1bkg54

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## Analysis

The Blockade Pinball Podcast episode features hosts Chris Frebus, Jared Mort, and guest Bonzo (from Germany) discussing pinball arcade games and digital pinball. The bulk of the episode is dedicated to a 'Lost in the Zone' segment reviewing the classic Gottlieb EM table Big Shot, followed by an extended Q&A interview with Zolt from Ask (Zen Pinball Studios) covering bug fixes, team structure, table creation processes, licensing constraints, and future platform development plans including PC, Mac, and Linux ports with cabinet mode support.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Zen Studios has 10 co-workers total: four graphics artists (2D and 3D), four programmers, one assistant, and one CEO — _Direct response from Zolt (via interview) to question about Ask team breakdown_
- [HIGH] Zolt joined Ask in 2000 and worked on the first project, eGames Pinball — _Direct response from Zolt to question about his history with the company_
- [HIGH] Hungary's pinball scene experienced a golden age in the past but is now 'lugubrious' with no pinball machines on location due to government extra taxes on arcade machines — _Direct response from Zolt describing Hungary's pinball regulatory environment_
- [HIGH] Zen Pinball PC port development is starting soon, along with Mac and Linux ports, all supporting cabinet mode — _Direct response from Zolt to Sickboy's question about PC availability_
- [HIGH] Granada, Top Hand, and Tropical tables will not be included in Zen Pinball due to licensing issues—these were originally Williams tables that Zen copied — _Direct response from Zolt to licensing exclusion question_
- [HIGH] Android and iOS ports are now developed in parallel; Android releases may come earlier due to shorter review times — _Direct response from Zolt to Baron Rubik's question about port development sequencing_
- [HIGH] Zen's physics engine was developed over many years by a dedicated physics specialist who has worked with the company for 10 years — _Direct response from Zolt to Silver Balls' question about physics improvements_
- [HIGH] Custom Zen red and blue flippers are already designed but not yet implemented; they will be released when EM tables are complete — _Direct response from Zolt to Igofirstindie's question about flipper customization_
- [HIGH] Transparent flippers will be implemented with the final EM table — _Direct response from Zolt to question about transparent flipper status_
- [HIGH] Tournament of the month had 38 players: 19 on PC, 8 on iOS, 6 on PS3, 3 on Android, 1 on Xbox One, 1 on Wii, 0 on PS4 — _Chris Frebus reporting tournament platform breakdown statistics_

### Notable Quotes

> "So the cliff notes for this are: you're going to die, go and play another machine."
> — **Chris Frebus**, ~30:00
> _Humorous critique of Big Shot EM table difficulty during Lost in the Zone segment; demonstrates the show's comedic approach to game analysis_

> "Our company has been in business for 15 years. Fix the bugs as soon as possible because customer feedback is important to us. So bug fixing is one of the main priorities."
> — **Zolt (Ask/Zen Studios)**, ~35:00
> _Explains Zen Pinball's rapid bug-fix turnaround philosophy and prioritization of community feedback_

> "The past was the golden age. Every arcade and pub had to carry pinball machines, mostly. The present day scene is lugubrious."
> — **Zolt**, ~45:00
> _Describes Hungary's regulatory shift away from arcade machines due to government taxation, illustrating global pinball location decline_

> "Well, Ask won't, but you will."
> — **Zolt**, ~90:00
> _Cryptic response suggesting community involvement in original table design; hints at user-created content possibilities_

> "Yes, the PC port is going to be under development soon, along with Mac and Linux ports. All these ports will support cabinet mode."
> — **Zolt**, ~70:00
> _Major platform announcement indicating Zen's expansion beyond mobile and official cabinet support, a key community request_

> "The physics engine has developed for many years and evolves continuously. The engine develops the best when the physics genius doesn't have any other urgent job."
> — **Zolt**, ~65:00
> _Reveals Zen's approach to continuous physics improvements and the role of specialized expertise in their development process_

> "Both Android and iOS ports are developed in parallel since the engine supports this possibility now."
> — **Zolt**, ~85:00
> _Indicates infrastructure improvement allowing simultaneous platform development, addressing long-standing community concerns about platform parity_

> "It depends on the future of Farsight Pinball. Hopefully that future is good, because I think a lot of people would want to see those other projects come to fruition."
> — **Zolt**, ~80:00
> _Hints at market dynamics between competing digital pinball platforms and their dependency on overall industry health_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Chris Frebus | person | Host of Blockade Pinball Podcast; goes by alias 'Shut Your Trap'; covers Big Shot EM in Lost in the Zone segment |
| Jared Mort | person | Co-host of Blockade Pinball Podcast; competed in tournament of the month (placed #8); plays Pinball Arcade on Android with Shield tablet |
| Bonzo | person | Guest co-host from Germany on this episode |
| Zolt | person | Lead developer/programmer at Ask (Zen Studios); joined company in 2000; works on physics and scripting; interviewed via audio Q&A (voice performed by Drexclown/Kai) |
| Ask (Zen Studios) | company | Developer of Zen Pinball app; 15 years in business; 10-person team based in Hungary; developing PC/Mac/Linux ports |
| Zen Pinball | product | Digital pinball app for mobile platforms; planning PC, Mac, Linux expansion with cabinet mode support |
| Pinball Arcade | product | Competing digital pinball platform by Farsight; referenced for licensing and table availability discussions |
| Big Shot | game | Gottlieb EM pinball machine from late 1970s; pool-themed; featured in Lost in the Zone segment; five-ball table with no multiball |
| Blockade Pinball Podcast | organization | Podcast host; runs monthly tournaments and 'table of the week' community events; forum-based community |
| Wizard Amusements | company | Custom shooter rod manufacturer; podcast sponsor; providing tournament prize; recently released Walking Dead custom heads |
| Switch 3 Flip | person | Winner of Blockade Podcast's April tournament of the month |
| PinballWiz45B | person | Placed #10 in tournament of the month; active community member asking tournament questions |
| Crepolo55012 | person | Won donated Addams Family table prize; son (Football Banana, age 7) also participated in tournament |
| Farsight Studios | company | Developer of Pinball Arcade; competing digital pinball platform; licensing model referenced in discussion of adult content and future manufacturer licenses |
| Laszlo Patrick | person | Referenced as owner of extensive Zen pinball machine collection; provided physical table access for Ask's scanning and measurement process |
| Williams | company | Classic pinball manufacturer; holds original licenses to Granada, Top Hand, and Tropical tables preventing Zen Pinball inclusion |
| Gottlieb | company | Classic pinball manufacturer; described as 'kings of pinball world in late 1970s'; created Big Shot and other EM tables |
| Twilight Zone | game | Zolt's favorite pinball table; mentioned as table he enjoys in Pinball Arcade |
| Black Knight | game | Zolt's favorite pinball table alongside Twilight Zone |
| Devil Riders | game | Zen Pinball table receiving asset rescanning; update planned in next release |
| Interflip | company | Pinball manufacturer; Dragon table requested for Zen Pinball but licensing not yet acquired |
| Taito | company | Pinball manufacturer; mentioned as licensing target for future digital pinball projects |
| Joe Cool | person | Donated Addams Family table as tournament prize |
| Drexclown (Kai) | person | Voice performer for Zolt character in interview segment; co-host/contributor to Blockade Podcast |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Digital Pinball Development (Zen Studios), Platform Expansion (PC, Mac, Linux), Licensing Constraints and IP Issues, EM Pinball Machine Analysis (Big Shot)
- **Secondary:** Community Tournament Results, Mobile vs Controller Input in Digital Pinball, Physics Engine Development
- **Mentioned:** Global Pinball Location Decline

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.72) — Episode maintains lighthearted, comedic tone throughout. Hosts are enthusiastic about community engagement and digital pinball development. Interview with Zolt is constructive and reveals positive momentum on development roadmap. Big Shot segment is playfully critical but not harsh. No significant controversies or negative developments discussed.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Ask (Zen Studios) maintains 15-year operational history with stable 10-person core team; hires contractors for special projects; Hungary-based with limited local pinball market (confidence: high) — Zolt: 'Our company has been in business for 15 years' and describes team as 'If we have a larger or special project, we hire some contributors'
- **[community_signal]** Blockade Podcast running structured community events (monthly tournaments, weekly table-of-the-week) with prizes from sponsors; 38-player tournament indicates active engagement (confidence: high) — Chris reports 38 players in tournament across multiple platforms; tournament winners receive custom avatars; Wizard Amusements providing prizes
- **[competitive_signal]** Zen positioning itself as physics-focused alternative to Farsight's Pinball Arcade; community interest in licensing additional manufacturers beyond Williams tables (confidence: medium) — Questions about Interflip and Taito licensing; Zolt acknowledges market dependency: 'It depends on the future of Farsight Pinball'
- **[design_philosophy]** Zen's approach to continuous physics engine development driven by dedicated specialist; iterative improvement philosophy tied to team capacity allocation (confidence: high) — Zolt: 'The physics engine has developed for many years and evolves continuously. The engine develops the best when the physics genius doesn't have any other urgent job'
- **[market_signal]** Cabinet mode support becoming significant competitive feature in digital pinball; community demand evident through multiple questions and interview responses (confidence: medium) — Multiple questions about landscape mode, cabinet support, and large screen compatibility; Zolt confirms feature 'will be supported with all current and future platforms'
- **[licensing_signal]** Specific pinball licenses blocked for Zen (Granada, Top Hand, Tropical) due to Williams ownership; licensing costs cited as barrier to console ports; Interflip Dragon not yet licensed (confidence: high) — Zolt confirms three tables 'will be missing from the collection due to licensing issues' and notes 'We could if they gave us the license' regarding Interflip
- **[product_concern]** Zen acknowledged long turnaround time on some requested features (red/blue flippers, transparent flippers); previously underestimated table completion timeline (confidence: medium) — Zolt: 'we didn't anticipate there would be so many tables. So those flippers are already done' but not released
- **[product_strategy]** Zen Pinball planning PC, Mac, and Linux ports with cabinet mode support; Android and iOS ports now developed in parallel (confidence: high) — Zolt directly states 'PC port is going to be under development soon, along with Mac and Linux ports. All these ports will support cabinet mode' and 'Both Android and iOS ports are developed in parallel'
- **[technology_signal]** Zen Pinball previously had broken BlueStacks/Andy Roy emulator support; engineering team committing to repairs (confidence: medium) — Zolt: 'They had been supported formally, but some of that support became broken. We will check and fix it as soon as we can'
- **[technology_signal]** Shift from sequential platform development (iOS first, then Android) to parallel development model; infrastructure improvements enabling simultaneous releases (confidence: high) — Zolt: 'Both Android and iOS ports are developed in parallel since the engine supports this possibility now'

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## Transcript

 Greetings, Earthling! The fate of the world is in your hands! Come here, tasty human! Destroy this sucker! You are listening right now to The Blockade Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frebus, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. With us today is Jared Mort. Hey, hey. And, all the way from Germany, the wonderful Bonzo. Guten Tag. Not so fast, human. It's, it's so big. Ooh la la. Oh, baby. Woo hoo. Ha ha ha ha. Alrighty. So, as you can tell, it's a much smaller podcast today. Sean is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very busy. And that's regardless of whether he wants to be with us or not. And I don't know where Jeff is off to these times. But I'm sure he's off doing wonderful things that we'll hear about next time. So, you people get the three of us, deal with it. But don't worry. It's going to be awesome. You're going to love it anyhow. Awesome. Absolutely incredible. Hey, I want to take care of a little bit of business because I forgot to last time, and that is I want to mention our good friends over at Wizard Amusements. Go visit them at wizardamusement.com. Go check out their custom shooter rods. We should be getting a new one as a prize to give away in one of our upcoming tournaments of the month. So if you haven't been playing in the tournament of the month, you might want to start doing that. I'm not sure exactly when we're going to be giving another one away. I've got to talk to Mike, our contact there, and figure that out. But regardless of if you're playing or not, go check out the site. Go check out the custom shooter rods. Go buy one, even if you don't own a pinball machine, because they just look damn cool. Oh, yeah, they really do. Have they released any? I don't know if they released any new ones to coincide with WrestleMania or anything, but it would be pretty cool if they did. he's usually pretty up on whatever the newest Stern is so we'll see soon enough I just checked the website today I didn't see anything new but there are some new things since the last time I went and checked I hadn't seen any of the Walking Dead heads that he did and they look pretty awesome they're good looking zombies that's sweet I'm sure he's got top men working on it right now i.e. him hey uh speaking of the tournament of the month and table of the week we've been having a good time with table of the week we just finished up with whitewater theater of magic black knight 2000 we're about to pick a new one which I don't know by the time this podcast comes out it'll be already passed so it doesn't matter I'm going to say it's NBA fast break so what do you think of that you're totally right a man can dream but I did want to mention for this past tournament of the month I want to mention who our winners were and we'll do the top 10 so rounding out our list number 10 it was PinballWiz45B number 9 was SuperDan number 8 our very own Jared Morgz Jared what the hell did you do right? Yay I don't know, turned up? I honestly don't know I really didn't go Oh, man, I need to play this. I've got ten minutes. Okay, here we go. No, I kind of did do that. I sort of went, oh, I'm going to play tournaments now. I actually didn't leave it until the last minute like I did last tournament, and I just went, right, okay, let's go and have some games. And for some reason, the pinball gods were smiling on me. I must have given the appropriate sacrifices of pinball repair tips to my tournament operator. He had them. It also helps because I see these things in the scoring that you scored a couple of plus one points for beating A-class players. Yeah, boom. That's it. That's it. That's what happens. Anyway, moving on. Number seven is Maggie. Number six, Captain Bizarre. Number five was Dark Matt. Number four was Dylan H. and then our top three who get the oh so wonderful avatar that they can use in whatever manner they choose number three was Jay Pelter number two was In Vitro and number one was Switch 3 Flip I don't know if I'm supposed to just say Switch Flip or how that is but it's spelled out Switch 3 Flip so there it is he's our winner for last month's tournament of the month our next tournament of the month shall be on April 25th. Sign-ups will be starting up on the 22nd. Just head over to the forum and you'll be able to get all the information of where those sign-ups are via the links or you can follow at Blockade on Twitter because it's always posted there and you can just click that link and it'll drop you right into the places there too. So congratulations to all of our winners there. A special mention also So the winner of the Adams Family table that was donated so generously by Joe Cool was won by Crepolo55012, and his son was also playing in the tournament. His son was seven years old, and that was Football Banana, which I just thought was an awesome kid name for a video game or for a username. I mean, it's just a total kid name, and it got me thinking, do you guys remember any of your, like, I don't know, clubhouse names that you might have had when you were a kid or anything. I know for a while I was known as Crayon. I don't know why. But... Crayon. Crayon. Yeah, that was the clubhouse name given to me by my brother. It's probably just him being mean or something. I don't know. That was when I was like six or something, you know. My son uses his username is Trashboi because he likes trashies, and he also likes the Raving Rabbids, and they were always going, so that became his, and it's just like, it's one of those things that just cracks me up when you hear what kids want to name themselves. It's like, okay. I don't know. Anyway, I thought Football Banana was a rather apropos good kid name. The one other thing I wanted to mention about the tournament was, we had 38 players, and I have a breakdown, if you people find this interesting, of what everybody played on. interestingly enough or not the largest group was the PC players we had 19 players playing on the PC wow yeah I think that's probably the true reason is indeed for the next highest which wasn't even close 8 players on IOS wow okay then we had 6 players on the PS3 we had three players on Android, one player on an Xbox One, one player on a Wii, which means there was not a single player on a PS4. There you go. So, yeah, interesting to see what that breakdown is. So that's, guys, why we asked that question. I think it's useful to see what everybody's playing on. I'll be very curious to see if once DX11 DX11 drops for the PC if that number goes up. And I don't know if it's also, it seems to be like the mobile people are always saying that it's so much easier on PC. You don't play at all on PC, do you, Jared? No, I'm totally Android. But you're a controller on Android, right? You don't use your thumbs to touch the screen, correct? I've got a Shield tablet and it has a pretty good controller that I can use to control. And I've got to say that the analog nudging on Android, at least on my particular device and controller combo, is pretty forgiving. I've got to really give the table a huge shove for it to actually register a tilt. Because it's analog nudging, I can be really subtle with the nudges, so the tilt register doesn't even go off. So I don't know whether it's an advantage or not. I've heard it's sort of similar on PC as well. I don't know the themes. yeah so I think it's if you're playing on a touch screen you are actually disadvantaged because the touch screen gives you a full tilt warning there's no subtlety about it the top tip get a controller plug one in if you're on IOS I don't know how that's going to work for you I think you've got access to arcade support definitely go down that path and get that and connect it it'll make a huge difference to the way you play and the control you have in the game That makes me wonder, though, is it that the game itself is more difficult on mobile, or is it just the input interface that's more difficult? Because I know for me, trying to do flippers with my thumbs, my reaction time is way slower than using my index finger. It's definitely the interface. I think they might actually make some concessions in mobile because of the fact you've got a touchscreen interface, and it is quite a bit harder to actually control using the touchscreen. So I think, I don't know, in some ways they might make it easier. I'm really not sure. I couldn't be 100% certain on it, but I know the tilt is, when you actually get into controller on Android, the tilt is really, really forgiving. That's the other thing with the tilt. I wonder if, maybe it's the controller I'm using. I know, we'll get into that later, because I have a controller rant, but we're going to save that for later. I've been having... 60 seconds of rage. It's going to be a little more, maybe 60 minutes of rage. Based on the amount of time I was on the phone with Logitech yesterday, yeah. Right, yeah. Well, moving right along. obviously Sean is not here today but that does not mean that we cannot do a Lost in the Zone so I'm going to do my best attempt to cover for Sean this week so roll the music do do do do do do do do do do do do do way way way way way no we save you for the end Jared, I guess you can jump the gun it's ok no I'm just doing the lead in music I can never get enough of Jared doing voices and theme songs. Because I'm so good at them, right? So good. Okay, well, let me get my best Sean frame of mind and we'll start here. This week's Lost in the Zone. We're going to be talking about Big Shot. Now, Big Shot is a table by Gottlieb who were the kings of the pinball world to the late 70s. It is an EM, which for those that don't know, stands for electromechanical. These tables are known for their three chimes. There's not a lot of bells and whistles on any of these. It's pretty much flippers and stand-up targets and maybe the occasional draw pull, but there's no subterranean tunnels going on. There's no toys. It is just pure and simple pinball. So let's get started with how you're going to approach this table. First, you're going to drop in your quarter. Electromechanicals are a little different with where the start button is because they're not lit up. You might have some problems finding it, but in the pinball arcade world, it still is the same way of pushing the button, and it starts right up. you're then going to plunge the ball I recommend a full plunge as there's no real advantage to doing a soft plunge the ball is going to bounce around drop down into an in lane one of three at the very top it's going to then be approaching your flippers on the left side of the table You have the balls number 1 through 7. Those are your solids. And on the right side, you've got balls 9 through 15. Those are your stripes. You have big shots is a pool-themed table. This would be not 9 ball, but 8 ball. So the rules would apply accordingly to that. Now, you're going to knock down the stand-up targets. Those are your 1 through 7 and 9 through 15, as mentioned. Each time you knock one down, it's going to light up the center image of the balls. And those are pretty much the shots that you take on this table. An approach you might want to think about, if you flail wildly, you're going to die. If you try to catch and shoot, you're going to die. if you try to nudge the ball you're going to tilt and die essentially this table is going to try and kill you every step of the way and therefore it is my recommendation to just not play this table as it sucks yeah those outlands do tend to be a little bit hungry on being shot short I mean that Chris I mean, that's short. Yes, yes. Get it right there, Conor boy. So, approaches that I like to take, I like to just aim for anything that's standing up. And once you knock down all the stand-ups, a special is lit. You can try and go for that, though it's probably going to drain the ball. And if you get the ball in the center of the table, there is a spot marked by an 8-ball. There's a little divot. If you get the ball in that divot, it opens the gate on the right outline. So if the ball goes that way, it'll just go right back into your plunger, which then again, you can do your full-strength plunge or your softer plunge. but I think we've already covered that in depth. The only other thing to note about this table is it is a five-ball table, and there is no multiball. It's just those five balls. Your first three balls, you get an end-of-the-ball bonus, and those are only with a 1,000-point multiplier, basically. which you will. On ball four, you'll get 2,000 points, and on ball three, there's 3,000 points. This is a game that, once you get to the fifth ball, that's where all the points are, so you may as well just drain your first four balls and go to the fifth ball. And, uh... Yeah. It's a boring table, to be sure. Of the three chimes, my favorite chime is the one that goes ding! As opposed to the one that goes ding! And I really don't like the one that goes ding! Yeah, that one's not good at all. So ding is my favorite chime, and I encourage everybody to listen for that one and think of me when it does. Any questions about Big Shot? Don't you think it's... useful to get the middle lane after plunging? So don't do the full plunge? Well, yeah, that's one approach that you can take to this table. But you're probably going to die because of it. So the cleft notes for this are, you're going to die, go and play another machine. Yes. More or less. unless that other machine happens to be Central Park in which case I suggest you just continue playing Big Shot and if the other machine is going nuts no no I think oh yes the big nuts yes that's what I want to play the big nuts a mix of pool and nuts whacking your nuts with a cue stick you probably have a better time doing that on your own without playing either Big Shot, Central Park or Going Nuts that is my recommendation this has been Lost in the Zone maybe Jared can take us out because I've got nothing else to say about this Jared what might you want to do I'm not good at asking this question. Chris? Yeah, thank you, Sean. That was wonderful. Jared, why don't you take us out? Have you done a robot voice yet, Jared? No, but I can do robot voices. It's one of my main tasks. I would like to do a robot voice closing the door, but try not to make it sound like the robot voice that is closing the door in Twilight Zone. So make it maybe like an R2-D2 kind of robot. I don't know. C-3PO. The Lost in Space robot. I don't know. Okay, I'll go with that. Danger, Will Robinson. Don't judge the robot. I could do it. It's too funny. I'm done. All right. Crap. That was a five-minute loss in the zone. We're used to 45 minutes. Now what do we do, guys? Well, we've got that little interview that I did. Holy cow! We can do that. That's right. Why don't we? So, yes, Jared reached out to Zolt, who is of Ask Homework, the maker of the Zachariah tables. Yeah. I collected a whole stack of questions asked by the Ask Her Work sub-forum people. Thank you very much for asking a whole bunch of very interesting questions. So what we're going to do is, because Zolt can actually do an audio interview due to some language barriers, what we're going to do is have Drexclown or our friend Kai, as he's well known, to do the voice of Zolt. and we're going to go through the questions. What's going to happen is we'll put the transcript up in the forum a bit later after the podcast goes live. So if you want to have a look back through the questions and you don't want to listen to us reading them, you can just have a look at the transcript and you'll get the info. Why would nobody want to listen to us? I don't get that. That makes no sense. Our golden voices, bankable golden voices. Weird fetish. We're pretending to be in a Nagarian, no? It's okay, Bob. Most Americans wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway. That's true. No, we don't need to do any accents. I think the international flavor of a German accent is perfectly fine. It's good. So let's kick it off. So we'll start with a couple of general questions. And the first question that Snorzel asked on the forum was, how do you fix bugs so fast? He asked, folks have been amazed at just how fast you guys push out fixes to bugs. How do you manage such a quick turnaround? Well, our company has been in business for 15 years. Fix the bugs as soon as possible because customer feedback is important to us. So bug fixing is one of the main priorities. That's really good. So another question that was asked by Silver Balls was, how many people work at Ask and what's the breakdown of staff? For example, how many developers, art staff, and that sort of thing. Our team has 10 co-workers in the office. If we have a larger or special project, we hire some contributors to be able to finish those tasks in time. The constant members are four graphics artists, 2D and 3D, four programmers, an assistant, and the CEO. Ah, right. Okay. Well, that's really good. Well, that gives us a bit of an overview of Zachariah to start with. Let's move on to some of the, I guess, more general questions for you. Some people want to get to know you a bit better. So the first question we have is about Hungary's pinball scene. Snozzle and 74-89, both these users want to know what the real pinball scene is like in Hungary, both the past scene and the present scene. The past was the golden age. Every arcade and pub had to carry up pinball machines, mostly. the present day scene is lugubrious. There are no pinball machines on location at all because the government made extra taxes for arcade machines which is why arcades and pubs removed them Ah okay That a shame It a little bit like that down here in Australia too You don really see that many games on location anymore so it's starting to improve a bit. But yeah, that's a bummer that you can't actually run arcade machines in pubs anymore. So the next question, this one again from 74-89, when did you join Ask and what was the first game you worked on for the company? I joined the company in 2000. and the first project was eGames Pinball. eGames Pinball. Okay. That's very interesting. All right. Well, that's good. That gets us off to a good start as well, knowing a bit about you. So let's get on to some of the nuts and bolts now. Let's have a look at some questions about tables. A lot of the members here are actually really quite passionate about the product, and they really want to know some of the details about tables and whether there's some possibilities for little extras. So let's get into those. First one is from Igofirstindie, and he asks, is it possible to rescan the Devil Riders table assets? That has already happened, and the next update will include it. Aha, awesome. And SMBHacks, or I call that SambaHacks because I'm a Linux geek, what is the table creation process like? It seems like some of the tables recreated in the app are not always readily available. So how does that affect the creation process? Special thanks goes to one of our compatriots, Laszlo Patrick, who has almost every Zakaria pinball machine produced. We have managed to look over all those tables very closely, have taken very detailed pictures, made measurements, and recorded the original sounds. Then the 3D guys make the objects, the 2D guys draw the playfield, cover, and text. The programmers, which I'm one of them, writes the scripts, assembles all elements, and implements them into the app. If the table is not available in physical form because it is so rare, we use any available videos and pictures on the Internet or through connections from Pinball Arcade fan members. Ah, right. Okay. Very good. Well, that's a good start for questions about tables. Let's jump over to questions about licenses now. This is the really tricky part that sometimes people don't like to answer when they're developers because licenses are hard. So let's go to a question from Sickboy and Snozzle, in part, about known exclusions from the collection. They ask, are there any specific tables that will absolutely not be considered for implementation in Sakurai Pinball due to licensing or technical issues, for example? Granada, Top Hand, and Tropical will be missing from the collection due to licensing issues. If our information is correct, these tables were developed by Williams originally and Zakaria copied them. So the original license belongs to Williams. That's why they will not be included by Zakaria Pinball now. We will see later. Okay. Now the next question from Xtalk is sort of riffing off something that Farsight was talking about and keeps on alluding to in part. It's the After Dark series. So he asked, Farsight hinted that for them to include some of the more adult tables in TPA, they would need to create a separate app that they referred to as After Dark to get around licensing issues. Would us consider making a collection of tables that have more adult themes separately? Well, has the carrier ever made a pinball table with adult theme? I don't think so. So there's no need for that. Yeah, I guess you're probably right there. Okay. Okay, so that's a good start, again, on the licensing issues. Now, I think a lot of people seeing how good it is, how good Zachariah is on Android and iOS are really interested about the other platforms you might be planning in the future. So let's go to a question from Sickboy about PC port. He asks, are there any plans for Zachariah Pinball to come to PC? If not, is there anything the community could do to make it happen? for example, Kickstarter or other crowdfunding pushes? Yes, the PC port is going to be under development soon, along with Mac and Linux ports. All these ports will support cabinet mode. Oh, that's awesome. I know heaps of people ask me about cabinet support, both for Android and all the other platforms as well, because the simulation is just so accurate and so, well, amazing on mobile platforms. I think there's a couple of other questions here that some people are asking specifically about that. So let's continue on to a question from SickBoy about BlueStacks or Andy Roy's support. Is there any chance that Zachariah Pinball could be made to work with applications like Andy Roy or BlueStacks again? Of course. They had been supported formally, but some of that support became broken. We will check and fix it as soon as we can. Awesome. That'll make SickBoy happy. and on large screen support, and this is sort of, again, riffing off cabinet mode. So Silverball asks, to allow people to build mini Zachariah pinball cabs hosting your application, your game engine would need to be able to render the pinball app sideways because many of the large screen Android devices now force a fake portrait in landscape mode. Is this technically feasible and is this something you would consider to promote the game amongst enthusiasts? That feature will be supported with all current and future platforms when the PC builds begin, including iOS and Android. Ah, awesome. I thought that might have only been something that would have been offered on PC because it was sort of more tailored to sort of cabinet builds. But having it on iOS and Android, that'll make a lot of people happy. So that's really great to hear. All right, we might have a change of pace now. I'll go back up to some of the more general questions for Zachariah. and we'll take a look at online multiplayer. So Switch3Flip asks, are there any plans for online multiplayer games? Yes, there are. But we want to finish our main goal first, to make all the Zekaria pinball tables. The game will feature cross-multiplayer and this will not be an ordinary come-and-play thing. We want to offer a new multiplayer pinball experience to our customers and invent a multiplayer feature that is loved by them. Oh, yeah, right. That sounds really good. It's one thing I miss about digital pinball. You can't say, hey, you want a challenge? So that's really cool. All right. So one of the other questions relates to physics, and Silver Balls asked, many were surprised with the physics improvements. You mentioned that Ask hired someone with physics knowledge. What's the person's background, and did they have any previous experience working with pinball physics or ball simulation physics? Yes, indeed. We have a physics genius who studied it for many years. He has worked with us for 10 years now. The physics engine has developed for many years and evolves continuously. The engine develops the best when the physics genius doesn't have any other urgent job. Yeah, that makes sense. Things always seem to move a bit quicker when you've got no other urgent jobs breathing down your neck. Okay, so I've got some more questions, some general questions for you now. Let's have a look at a very important question, which is, what's your favorite beer or other alcoholic beverage? Our favorite beer is all beer. There's a brewery not too far from the office which sells the best draft beer. That would be, hopefully that doesn't affect productivity, I'm sure it wouldn't, only on Fridays. So what about some of your favorite tables in TPA? Xtalk's interested in knowing what your most or least favorite games are in Farsight's product. Well, favorite tables are Twilight Zone and Black Knight. Yeah, okay, interesting. So continuing on with this, what about some likes about TPA? Xtalk's also interested in knowing what things you like about TPA. playing the game just brings back old memories when I played those old tables in arcades. Yeah, that makes sense. A bit like that for me, actually. Now, this could be a bit of a tricky question, but I'll ask anyhow. Do you have any constructive criticism about TPA? For this question, I'd say that it's easy to find a failure in a finished work. Yeah, that's a very conservative way of answering. I like that. All right. So that's pretty good. Let's go down and have a chat about some more table issues. Let's go and have a chat about the Zacharia red and blue flippers that you were discussing. Argo First Indy says, any chance of getting the Zacharia blue and red flippers? These would be a great option for customizable flippers. Yes, here's a short story about this. The request has been asked a long time ago by some customers, and those flipper beds were made that time. They were not implemented because we decided they were going to be released when all the tables were done, but we didn't anticipate there would be so many tables. So those flippers are already done, and since there are not too many upcoming tables, they will be implemented as soon as all EM tables are done. Okay, that's great. And on the subject of flippers, how about transparent flippers? Any status on those? they will also be implemented with the last table Nigel will be really happy to hear that so thanks for that okay we've got one more question in the table group so let's just launch right into it and this one's from 74-89 he asks do you think ask will make any original table designs in the future well ask won't but you will oh okay that sounds a little bit Interesting. Maybe we could talk about that a little bit later. Very cool. Okay, let us go and have a chat a little bit more now about licenses. Let's have a talk about... We've talked about the After Dark stuff and the known exclusions. Let's have a look at some of the other manufacturer licenses, such as Interflip. PinballWiz45V asks, can you produce Interflip games, specifically Dragon? we could if they gave us the license yeah of course hopefully they will because those interflip games look pretty cool so on the subject of licenses what about some other licenses Snozzle, Knight, Flipperbump I think probably pretty much everyone in the Ask forum is interested to know are you going to target any other licenses from other manufacturers for example Taito which seems to be really popular It depends on the future of the carrier pinball. Hopefully that future is good, because I think a lot of people would want to see those other projects come to fruition. Excellent. Well, we've only got one more question for platforms, so let's have a chat about that one. This is actually quite a relevant one for me too, because I'm playing on Android. So Baron Rubik asks, if future pinball apps were developed, Would an Android port be scheduled earlier in the cycle, now that the process is known, or would iOS be developed first and then the proven app ported to Android later, like Zachariah was? Both Android and iOS ports are developed in parallel since the engine supports this possibility now. The only reason why the Android port would be released earlier is that the review time is shorter than the one on iOS. That means the other ports could get bug-free updates. that's interesting I hadn't noticed that actually with the last couple of tables and updates you've pushed out it seems that in a way the tables have turned to Android now as the early bug identifies whereas iOS have been carrying that torch pretty much for the last year and a bit which is why we're seeing such great quality in the Android product now because of all the hard work the iOS team and Ask have done so it's probably about time that Android gave back anyhow. There is actually one more question about platforms that I've neglected to ask. There's a lot of people have asked about PC but Dave950Lamb asked, what are your plans for releasing on consoles? We would like to release the carrier pinball on consoles but this needs more financial investment. I have heard in the past that actually obtaining licenses to publish on mobile platforms is really, really expensive. So I understand where you're coming from there. Right, well, we've got... That pretty much wraps up all of the platform questions and also the licences questions, and we're also done with the questions about tables now. So the only other ones that we have left really relate to the general questions about Zacharia and just a couple more general questions for you, Zolt. So let's have a look now at the question asked by Silver Balls. He's been asking a lot of questions in this interview, and thank you very much for those questions, Silver Balls, and everyone who's asked questions to date. So Silver Ball asks, you have a powerful game engine supporting multiple platforms, great lighting, which must be the envy of your competitors. How did this engine evolve, and how did you manage to get such great effects in real time? Was there any pre-rendering done on the tables? Well, originally this engine started as a family image viewer and evolved into this. This merit belongs to the boss's son. We are very proud of our engine. It supports multiple platforms, so developing a port is a bit easier because only one set of source code has to be updated and works the same way on every platform. Also some programming skills are needed to screw out all the power resources of mobile devices in favor of the right running speed. The engine supports real-time lighting effects for more than four years, but mobile devices could not handle it until now. Wow, so you've been able to do this lighting for four years now, and only now the technical advances in mobile have led you to do it. That's pretty amazing. Okay, that's kind of mind-blowing. Let's go on to something a little bit less mind-blowing. Silver Balls asks, the background noise in the game sounds like quite a lively pub, and I can hear English-sounding voices saying, look at that, where was this recorded? Yes, the ambient sounds were recorded in a pub here 10 years ago, if I remember right. 10 years ago, there you go. Alright, Snorzel has to ask, can you give us any hints on the next project after Zacharia? We don't have any plans for our next project at the moment because we are concentrating totally on development of the carrier pinball. This app is honed constantly and evolves continuously. We plan it as a long-term project with regular updates and new features. One of these features is already under development, which is a secret editor that will shake up the pinball market, hopefully. Ah, so this is what you were alluding to before about saying we will be making new tables. That's really, really exciting stuff. I know that in TPA a lot of members have been asking for a table building style thing for a while, but it's just not really in Farsight's mission to offer this, I don't think. So perhaps Zacharia will be the company that fills that gap in the market. That's very cool. All right. So the next question is about leaderboards. And Jeff Strong asks, at the moment, all scores are grouped together with no indication about the customizations made. For example, tweaks to physics, the table rake or the lean on the table, ball weight, et cetera. What are your plans for leaderboard expansion? Will there be three-ball, five-ball arcade simulation? How's that going to work? Well, the plan is to make separate high scores for all current and future configurations because this will be needed for some upcoming features. Ah, interesting. Very interesting. Cool. All right. Let's have a chat now about promoting Ask and promoting Zacharia Pinball. Silver Balls asks, have you considered promoting the game at pinball shows to get more exposure? And if so, would you consider building a small virtual pin cabinet to draw people in using one of the Android All-in-One PCs with a 24-inch screen, for example? Yes, we have considered visiting pinball shows. And no, we haven't built a virtual cabinet yet. But we will build a cabinet here to support this feature. and then everyone will be able to build their own end user app with it. That's great. And I'd imagine that if you build the cabinet there, there'll be a consistent way of interacting with it. So based on your design, people can consistently implement controls and buttons and stuff. So that would make a lot more sense to actually have you guys do it first. Very cool. So pinball construction. so I think this has kind of been answered by a question before, but I'll ask it anyhow on behalf of the loafer. Have you guys considered selling your app as a pinball construction set? You have struck a good balance between features and performance, and I would love to see this tool in the hands of the creative community. No, we haven't done that, but instead we thought to implement an editor into the app, but this idea is in a very early stage, and I'll be able to tell you more as soon as it is really worked out. Ah, great. All right. So, it's probably worth asking, have the Zachariah brothers played this game at all? I know iGoFirstIndy is very interested in this answer. What do they think of it? Well, as far as I know, they are 100% satisfied with the app and are praising it a lot, especially Mauro Zachariah. the three Zakaria brothers became a legend in the pinball profession and that's why we try to do everything that makes Zakaria pinball more popular and appreciated worldwide Wonderful that's good so here's a bit of a I guess it's not really off topic but it's certainly not pinball related Zakaria have actually produced some video games arcade games and Igofirstindie wants to know if there might be any chance that us could reproduce the Zachariah arcade games in the future. Yes, there is a chance that would make the Zachariah legacy complete, but we would like to finish the pinball series first. Understandably. Okay, well the good news is that that's actually all of the main questions, the general questions. We've only got a couple more before the interview is ended, and these ones relate to some general questions for you, Zolt. We'll round those off with the last two. 74-89 wanted to ask some different questions to a lot of the other questions that were being proposed in the questions thread. He wanted to know whether you're a self-taught artist or did you study somewhere? When did you start doing art and has it always been in the digital form? Most members of the team didn't learn that profession in the school. Rather, they were addicted to their passion. We were a team in the demo scene at the time and won some competitions. And for the record, I'm not actually part of the art department. I'm primarily responsible for scripts, secondly for sounds, quality control, and public relations. Aha, and that's why you hang out in the forum so much. That would explain it. Okay, the last question again is asked by 74-89, and he says, what's your favorite pinball artist? Well, I can't pick a favourite one because the art of pinball machines from the 70s, 80s and 90s is an art form of itself. Yeah, that's quite true. That's some pretty amazing talent back then, creating art for pinball machines. And, yeah, I kind of struggle to find a favourite artist as well. Some of the older designs just really are quite beautiful. Well, that is the end of the interview. Thank you very much for participating in the forums, and thank you again very much for being so engaged in the forums. It really is a breath of fresh air to actually have developers that both listen very closely to requests and features and then manage to implement them just so quickly into the app. So it's just wonderful. Thank you very much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Ladies and gentlemen, your future Oscar nominee there, Blonzo. Wow. Yes. Spectacular. That's good. Thanks for doing the talk. Hey, I have a quick question just listening to that whole interview there. Am I mistaken? For some reason I thought Zachariah was Italian. Is it Hungarian or where does it originate from? It is actually Italian. The three brothers are Italian, yeah. They started back in the 70s, I think, and they built up quite a reputation as Italian manufacturers. I think the tables, from what Zolt tells me, were incredibly popular in Europe, and we even got some down here in Australia because I know a couple of collectors down here that actually have a few tables here. I can't say I'm a fan of the actual builds of the tables, I've played on a few. There's something about the plastics. It has that... I doubt you have pick and save or big lots in Australia, but it's just this very thin, cheap, plastic look, and yet they're not... They are constructed well. I mean, when you put your hands on one of their tables, they're built like tanks. I mean, they are very well-built, strong machines, but they got some of the craziest art it just bonkers on some of them Yeah I tend to agree I actually read another article an interview that somebody published an interview with the Zachariah Brothers. And I think, if memory serves me correctly, there's actually a 12-color art package on those tables. 12-color. Wow. That's insane. and they're all hand-drawn. The artist who was just apparently the artist that was involved with doing the art for the tables, he would just spend about two months on doing the art package alone for the tables in the backbox. And he'd often work late nights and just crazy hours to get them through. So one guy doing the art for all those tables, pretty amazing. And I will say, even if I'm not a fan of what that art looks like, I'd still take it over Photoshopped heads on a Stern machine any day. Oh, yeah, totally, yeah. It kind of, it's what gives those machines of that era the charm they have. You can just see the craftsmanship and the attention to detail that they've gone to when designing playfields and designing the art, and it sort of, it really does set them apart from an art perspective of tables from today. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I'm kind of impressed also with the fact that one guy has this entire collection that they're basically going and getting all the pictures and scans and everything from. It's kind of an interesting way to do it, isn't it? Because what they're essentially doing is kind of outsourcing the expense of owning the tables. It's a little bit similar to, I guess, what Farsight did when they were doing the Pinball Hall of Fame. They went over to the Pinball Hall of Fame. Yeah, and they actually did a very similar thing to what Ask is doing, I guess. The bigger issue, though, is that Ask at least has quick access to these tables. I mean, it sounds like the guy is relatively close to them, as opposed to the pinball hall thing in another state. Nevada, yeah. Yeah, you can't just, you know, hey, I've got a question about this pinball and drive down the street. It's a trek. Yeah, exactly. for you American everywhere in Hungary is close to everywhere else in Hungary so it sounds a little bit like a we have the Australian Capital Territory here and the joke locally is that everything is 20 minutes away in the Australian Capital Territory and you have to go through about 20 roundabouts to get to anywhere in the Australian Capital Territory I'm sure the guys on the Pinheads Pinball Podcast will be nodding their heads smiling at that because they're based down there. I also think I like that they just have a physics genius. No name, just that's physics genius. That's right. Yeah. He can stay around as far as I can see. It's pretty amazing what they've been able to achieve. This is not the physics dunce. I I also, I had to just laugh at the comment of, please tell us what you think about the pinball arcade. It was like, that was the most diplomatic answer I think I've ever heard. I totally agree. It's like, yeah, it was basically like a, I prefer not to comment, but I'll give you something anyhow. That being said, really, Black Knight is one of their favorite tables? You're kidding me. I know. Maybe it's their favorite table in real life, and it gives them nostalgia about. Yeah, but as far as being in TPA, it's a terrible, horrible mess. It's a hot mess. Maybe Twilight Zone is their favorite table to play and Black Knight is their favorite table to have a look at and smile. And go, oh, look where we are, graphically compared to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, guys, we're doing okay. We haven't slumped this low yet. Okay. Man, they really do need to go over some of those old tables, TPA and Spruce Yeah It's getting pretty bad there Jared, I'm afraid you missed a joke opportunity, you were saying that whatever answer was going to make Sick Boy very happy, no it'd be make Sick Boy very healthy Right Yeah, this is what I get from muting my microphone, I was just like oh, where's the unmute? Also, you know, when they talk, they're mentioning, obviously, it sounds like they're coming up with a pinball construction set. TPA has, or Bobby specifically has mentioned that they want to do a pinball construction set. And it made me just think, man, I think we need LittleBigPlanet to do a pinball construction set. because the things that the LittleBigPlanet community has done with that game, like the tools that that game has given them and what people are able to run and do is mind-boggling. I think that if they did that with a physics engine with pinball, it would be fantastic. The only problem is their physics would probably be like the physics they have in the game, which is extraordinarily floaty, so it may not be all that fun. but just one of those things like man, construction sets, this goes back to like Excitebike Wasn't there a very very very old pinball construction set for home computers in the 80s? I think there was, yeah like on Amiga or something like that? I think it was apart from David's Midnight Magic on the C64 it might have been the first video pinball game I ever played but it's quite a long time ago I just think about well it wasn't in Little Big Planet it was in their offshoot the karting game the way you could do tracks you could just drive your car and up down bank it and the road just became that way and I was like you could do the exact same thing with ramps you just steer your pinball where you want it to go and it would create the ramp and you could tell it make it a plastic make it a habitrail make it out of steel whatever it's just like, these guys, if they are thinking of doing these pinball construction sets, that they make some of these things intuitive so that we could really let our imaginations go hog wild. So we can make Monty Python, not Monty Python, Python Anghelo's pinball circus. But in the end. Because that's going to be really easy to do with what is essentially, because all the Zechariah tables are scripted. so imagine how to script that that would be hard right you know what reminds me there was one of the first games I ever got on on my old Macintosh back in 1991 it was this game it was called Omega I think it was it was a tank game so you create a tank and then you had to pitch it against some other tank but the entire thing was writing code that's all the game was was you writing code for this tank so it was nothing but if then statements and my buddy recommended it to me. He was like, oh, it's this fantastic game. And I got the game. I'm like, you've got to be kidding. This is not a game. It's homework. I'm actually going to develop the game. I'm going to play it. Essentially. And it was one of those things where you then run the program and say your tank is moving. You're like, yeah, I got my tank. I should move forward. And then you come to a river. And you're like, turn, turn. I put the sensors on you to turn. And you just go into the river and sink. And you're like, ah. I've got to go back and recode now and then you've got to go back through the code and figure out where you went wrong and which if-then statement wasn't correct and oh gosh hated that game welcome to software development yeah fantastic welcome to software development, there's the door yeah exactly wow, yeah, unfun games yeah one of the other things that was mentioned in that and I think this kind of can lead us to a conversation that's going on right now on the forums they mentioned that they've had the tech for the game for the past four years they've just held on to it because it hasn't been able to be put into any of the mobile devices until now the flip side is you have Farsight not letting their game advance because they're trying to appease people that are still on a second-generation iPad or even a first-generation iPad and people that are still rocking Windows XP, which Microsoft isn't even supporting anymore and is officially cut off. Yeah, I know. It's ridiculous. So there's the thread... What's the thread title? I think it's something like, it's not you, it's me, we're breaking up. it's not you it's me it's not me it's you yeah and although there's a fair share of vitriol in there there's also quite a few truth bombs in there also heaps of truth bombs oh heaps and the most recent had to do exactly with this tech where somebody you know after it was mentioned what hey we want to keep the largest user base possible somebody then went and dragged up yeah well here's the user base of Android and iOS. And you're literally trying to, you're holding hostage 90% of users for the 10% that won't advance. Yeah. And it kind of, to me, made me think about just in general, you know, for a long time we've been kind of preaching, hey, fix the game, make the game strong because your core fans, the ones that are willing to drop the money for entire seasons, not just on one platform but maybe multiple platforms, these are the very people that are also going, you know what, you're not listening, you're not doing bug reports or getting onto bugs fast enough. I'm done with you. I'm moving on. And hey, look at this. There's a new pinball game made by Ask Homework that's rocking it out the house is listening to customer feedback and getting to it. It's not just a matter of listening to the feedback, but actually then acting on the feedback, and they're doing it in a quick manner. It's very quick. It staggers me how fast these guys are actually turning over bugs. It boggles my mind compared to the pace of TPA. And it seems like there's... It's like, well, we're going to... We're happy to just churn out a game every month and appease the person that might buy the table one month and might not buy the next two tables because they're not thrilled with the title. And so you're appealing to the very casual gamer and losing out on a ton of revenue from your most loyal players. And I think that was what I found interesting just with the little tournament that we ran, just like I said, with 19 PC users. I think that shows where you can go, where your market is that it's not all about the casual gamer and you've got to think long term as opposed to short term and it seems like people ask is thinking long term yep they are, they've got the engine that allows them to develop easily cross platform and I'm not suggesting that Farsight doesn't actually have that now, they actually do have a from what I understand, one platform they develop on and then port to the different other platforms. But the real concern for me is, and I've said this as the way they can easily work around this, they use season passes as a way of setting expectations for device support. And they go, right, so season five, we're dropping support for Android 3 and under, for example, and we're pushing in graphical features that may cause performance issues on slower or older devices, but you can turn them off if you want. Or you can just turn it off. Yeah, exactly. Which is exactly what Zachariah do with their engine. You turn off practically everything if you want, and it will probably run on a really bad Android device three years ago, like a Desire or something like that. But you won't get any shininess, but you'll be able to play it. Well, that's the case with a lot of PC games, even. I mean, you can turn those things to the lowest of settings and still play them on a junky PC. It's just going to look like crap, and it's going to not have a good draw rate, and it'll be playable, but you're not going to turn any heads with it. That's right. On the flip side with the PC, they'll put out a game that virtually no one's computer can run. And then what do you got? You got the guys that are going, oh, my God, I've got to get the newest video card. that cost $1,500. Yeah, totally. And they'll go and do it. I think you'll need two of those then. Yeah, you'll need two of those. $1,000 just for two video cards. Right. And it's basically because those are the people that want to have the bragging rights that they can do it. Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, Farsight needs to do some thinking. And I've seen some of the responses from Farsight employees in the thread, and I think this thread, it shouldn't have been a wake-up call to them, but I think it probably has been a bit of a wake-up call to them. They really need to work out what they're going to do because mobile... What about mobile? Well, I was going to say mobile, maybe not according to the tournament that we're running, but mobile has been cited in the past as a top revenue stream for them. And you're seeing stuff like Ask is putting out, and yes, admittedly, Ask don't have the overhead of wrong emulation and they're not trying to, you know, do all the stuff that Farsight has regarding, you know, overheads on the processor or as they tell us that that's the issue. But, you know, you have to wonder that if they're able to pump out graphics like this, why can't Farsight at least give us, you know, dark mode or something on Android to make it look like a bit more realistic and some shadows or something. I mean, one of the members was talking about, hey, why don't you just bake in shadows, like shadows from ramps and rails? We saw them on games like, I think it was Tales of the Arabian Nights or one of those ones, might have been Ripley's, with that wire rail that goes over the playfield. You can actually see a shadow in that. And it just makes it look not flat. It makes it look 3D as at the moment, like you look at the cyclone build and the transparencies on the ramps are okay, but it's kind of just a bit lifeless. It doesn't have any of that sort of depth of field to it. It's strange to say that. Here's an interesting thing about that, because I'm in the DX11 beta, and where I think some issues are coming is with those original tables that had the baked-in shadows and everything. is now conflicting with the real-time lighting. Ah, right. So they're actually relying on the real-time lighting engine to manage that now and not... Exactly, because your newer tables are looking better. They don't have so much of that issue. So I do think that this thread is helping in that respect because we have been... Poor Mike Reitmeyer. We've been hammering him. He's getting slammed. Oh, my God. we are hammering him and I mean we're not being mean about it necessarily because we know it's the art department yes the far side bottleneck that is the art department but we're we've been asking making requests and pushing him to do some things that Mike has fortunately been receptive to and it's I think, although it's delaying when DX11 is going to get released, I think the end result is that people are going to be much happier. I personally believe it's going to look better than what the PS4 and Xbox builds are, because that's what we basically started with. So that was the baseline for the PC. I mean, it wasn't quite there. It was... I think where we're at right now, two or three weeks later into the beta, I think that is where we're at. It's kind of at that baseline. But we've really been highlighting different things, and we've been pulling up photos of real tables in similar lighting conditions and saying, hey, look at this, look at this, look at how this looks. Why isn't this flashing? Why is this this way? And definitely to Mike's credit, he's been, you know what? Okay, I'm going to try and do that. I'm going to try and do that. and so I think that this DX11 build has certainly been pushing them and hopefully opening eyes this thread has been doing that and who knows maybe we'll see something coming out of that but I just noticed that Zen just announced their marble Avengers Age of Ultron table and one of the things they announced with it was difficulty settings Hey, look at that. Look at that. So even Zen is starting to drop these kinds of things in. It's like, hey, Farsight, I know that you were first. Actually, you weren't first on the block. Zen was first on the block. But you came on. You basically became the top dog. But if you want to remain the leader, you've got to lead. You can't fall behind. and if you do fall behind then it's your job to at least keep pace so hopefully hey you know competition is a good thing and I'm really hoping that it manifests itself and that we do benefit from it yeah that being said my god a six person team ask yeah that's one heck of a six person team well it's just about physics genius genius enough said Rob hey I wanted to add something else about the whole you know that in relation to that thread I kept on the forum pointed out in the android thread that Farsight announced on Facebook they were releasing a scared stiff standalone app and they wanted to target fans of Cassandra and hopefully get more exposure to the game through that channel. The thing that kind of, number one, it wasn't run through any beta channels. This was just magically released. We didn't see it through a beta channel in the Google Plus community. Oh, so it's actually out now? Oh, it's out, yeah. It's out. And it's, I'll use one word, disappointing. It's disappointing because no bugs or anything were resolved in the table. No art pass was done on the table to paint it in the best light for fans of Elvira and fans of Cassandra. So we basically just got a recycled Scare Stiff table build from the Mothership app, dragon-forced into this mobile offering with the Farsight menu style, and it could have been so much better. They could have used this as an opportunity to address some pretty interesting bugs on this table. For example, the crate multiball bug where you can shoot two balls into the crate and they just jiggle and knock around and give you multiple jackpots over and over again until they eject. That's a massive exploit. That's why somebody has got a score of 17 million up there. One of the things that they've offered you in this app, which I will say for the record is pretty cool, is a two-minute game mode where you've got two minutes to get the biggest score possible on the game. And I have to admit, it changes the way you play this game. So basically, what it does is it says, right. So what you do is you should create moldable, wait for the bug to manifest and leave it there until the timer runs out. That's pretty much how you do the score at the moment on that table. And you know we're seeing stuff like the flasher bowls still clipping through the cabinet and there's something about the season I think that was, was that a season two table or season one? Season two. Season two. Yeah I want to say season two. Yeah I think it was two. So we're seeing the same sort of we're seeing the usual problems with the insert lighting on season two tables where when they blink they look really they just look really strange like the the the insert lights have this sort of a weird sort of negative positive thing going on when you blink at least in mobile it just looks really bad so again you know it's it's just it's the same of the things that are going on in that thread, I've said for a while now, I've been pretty vocal about it, that Farsight need to stop doing side projects and focus on the mothership. And from what I understand, that might be happening with the difficulty level tables. I think they might be getting a few cycles to go and fix bugs when they go through the tables and apply difficulty settings to them But it again disappointing Farsight that you have to have the impetus of that going back through and adding difficulty, to go through and address long-standing bugs that have been around since Season 2 in games. It shouldn't be like that. You should be doing bugs like, I don't know, let's use an arbitrary figure of let's spend a week on one table each DLC cycle and squash one bug, even if it's one bug that's one less bug in the product. I don't understand it. Well, the long standing bugs too, that's the other thing. It's not like... Yeah, I mean, I identified that crate bug during the mobile beta back when it was being tested and it's still in the product. Which makes you wonder then what is the point of the beta? Yeah. I don't know. Back then it was a bit different. I know that now the Android dev, Scott Humble, is really good. He's managed to put some stuff into the product that we've been waiting for for a while, like Google Play Games support, and he's done what he can, going back through all the tables, doing fixes that he can with the resource assets that are available for mobile, like some ramps that were opaque. Depending on the way they were actually put into the game, he's been able to turn on transparency on them. And we've got transparent ramps like No Good Gophers, for example. Now, the reason No Good Gophers, the ramps were all opaque because of performance issues back when the table was released. So it's gone, you know what, let's turn it on and see what happens. And sure enough, the mobile device has been able to do it, no worries at all. So what we would have thought, because, you know, technology has advanced in two years. so you know this is what I feel like a broken record honestly with Farsight and the feedback I'm giving him and it kind of just feels like it's falling on deaf ears but hopefully this thread will make things change we can only hope yes we can only hope let's flip that record then and go into something else you're really sad now you're really sad Well, let's make you happy. Jared, I've noticed something on your Twitter feed, which if you'd like to follow Jared, that's at Jared Morgs. Jared posts Yelp reviews. Yeah, I do. So are you an official Yelp reviewer? How does that go? Or do you just – can anybody Yelp review? What do you get out of it? Why do you like doing it? Explain this to me. My head kind of is fuzzy about it. Yes, so Yelp is a crowdsourced review site. A little bit, I think like if you're familiar with TripAdvisor, it's like the restaurant version of TripAdvisor. So anyone can join Yelp and anyone can write reviews for Yelp. And it's all about your experience when you go to a restaurant or use someone like, for example, a plumber to do some fixing. It's your way of providing feedback to them if you don't feel comfortable talking to, say, the waitstaff or talking to the owner directly. Some people are uncomfortable doing that. It's also a way for businesses to start up, I guess, an online profile of their business and get, I guess, through meritocracy, better custom through reviews and also address any feedback. So it's a continuous loop sort of thing as well with Yelp. I've been... I started only using Yelp last year, and it was sort of brought on by the fact when I went over to San Francisco, which happens to be the one-year anniversary today. Ta-da! Yeah, yeah, I wish I was there now. It's awesome. Maybe a little bit dry at the moment, of course, but that's another story. yeah all of California is pretty much dry yeah that's right we are officially running out of water according to NASA there is no water, you cannot have a drink better drink beer shower in beer you know yeah that's right so I used Yelp to sort of do some reviews over there because Yelp is really popular in the US and I think it was actually founded in Sisserman Valley. Probably. Yeah, so I started using it over there. I know that Free Gold Watch has a Yelp status over there. They have, like, stickers over there you can put in your business if you're a Yelp partner, which is pretty cool. It doesn't cost anything for businesses to actually, like, join Yelp. They can actually... The thing is that I could make a business listing for someone that has opened up a shop and then they can actually take ownership of it and start managing it. So it's, I guess, just another way businesses can get feedback about what they're doing. And, you know, it is a crowdsourced review system, so you do get some jerks on there writing reviews that really don't add that much value. But I'm what they call a Yelp elite. Oh, wow. what that means is essentially I write a lot of reviews whenever I can and the reviews I write are good quality I always take heaps of photos because you can upload photos through the app as well there's apps for iOS and Android there's a really good web interface as well if you prefer to use a computer and you can upload photos about meals so yes I'm one of those guys who actually takes a photo first before sticking my fork in the food I was just going to ask you that. Are you that guy? Yeah, I'm one of those guys, I'll admit. Wait, wait, I can't taste this yet. I've got to snap the sizzle of my fajitas. Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, I like to do it because, number one, it's a way, because I'm a writer. Yeah, it's a way to practice that. Well, it's a way to sort of write non-technical stuff as well. I do blogging as well. like I write blog posts, but this is a way to break the constraints of being a technical writer and also writing stuff that's a little bit more amusing, perhaps. Like the last one I reviewed was a cafe called Sugar Deli, which we went to when we went to the beach yesterday. And we stopped there for coffee. And this particular place, I commented that to ask $3 for a baby Chino is a little bit crazy. and I happened to have taken a photo of my daughter who was pulling this classic, classic face and looking at the baby Chino on the table. I used that as the caption photo for it. So if you want to have a look, if anyone's listening and they want to see what I'm talking about, search for Sugar Deli and Scarborough in Australia and you'll see my review there if you want. Or just go to Jared's Twitter feed and it's right there in his Yelp reviews. And look at the spam. Just look at the Twitter spam that I'm punching at. And that's selectable as well. You don't have to broadcast to Twitter if you don't want to. You can actually turn it on and off per post you do. So don't feel that Yelp will spam everyone to their thingy lists and stuff. Yeah, so I'm a Yelp elite. That just means I get invited to cool events and stuff like that, and I get to know the community manager who's in Brisbane, and she's really cool. Her name's Lani, Lani P. and we often catch up for coffee or something every month when I'm in the office. We've got a lunch planned for this month where we catch up and meet other Yelp elite people. It's just good. It's just a way of meeting new people, really. It's essentially kind of like a social network, kind of like a business review tool. You can also check in as well. So if you check into a business and they're actively using Yelp, they can offer you special deals when you check in. so you might get like a two for one coffee or something if you check in and it's a little bit like what's the other one that allows you to be mayor of a place or it gives you status if you check in there a lot you can sort of become like the duke of sugar deli for example it's just meant to be fun basically and I enjoy it it's fun to use Yelp and it's fun to write reviews and contribute your thoughts about the cafe and help other people work out whether it's the right place for them to go. I wouldn't really recommend Sugar Deli for kids. I don't really think that it's quite right for kids. It's more for maybe a date night. It's really good for date nights because we've had dinner there. It's yum. But, yeah, for kids maybe not so much. It's okay, Jared. I don't think most of us are going to be heading to Brisbane and going to Sugar Deli anytime soon. Probably not. Probably not. If you are in the area, it's not. I don't know about you, but I think this explains a lot about Jared. I think we've got a much deeper insight into his psyche now. On the subject of Yelp, if you want to see a counter argument to Yelp, just have a look at, go on YouTube, search for John Ellerich, and search for, let's be honest, Yelp. you'll see a bit of a contrasting discussion about Yelp from John Ellery, he's a funny dude so I hinted at my controller woes and I'll just briefly go into what I've been dealing with, I personally cannot stand using an Xbox 360 controller I'm firmly in the PlayStation DualShock camp how I hold the controller, it just feels more comfortable and especially for pinball, I use the shoulder buttons, not the triggers. And the way I hold the 360 controller makes me want to, almost forces me to use the triggers, so I'm just not a fan of that. So when I shifted to gaming on the PC, that was the only controller that I had for the PC, and I was like, oh, this just, you know, it was all right for games until I started playing pinball, and then that was right out. So I went to my go-to peripheral company, which is Logitech. I've been very happy with their products in the past. I've used their products in the past, and so I wanted to use their controller. The unfortunate aspect is that I wanted to use a wired controller. I didn't want to deal with the wireless and potential lag or battery dying on me and stuff in the middle of a pinball game. And the wired controller that they have, which is an F310, it doesn't have any rumble, and I'm a big fan of rumble. The wireless controller, which is the F710, does have the rumble, but obviously you're wireless. They used to make one called the 510, which was rumble and wired, but for some unknown reason, they don't make that one anymore. So I was like, okay, fine, I'll buy the wireless, whatever. So I buy it. It comes with this little nano-receiver plug that goes into the USB port. Plug it in. Controller worked. Played with it for about a month and a half. All of a sudden, one day, controller's not working. and it's giving me a blinking light and showing that it's not connecting to the receiver. So I figured, oh, maybe that was the battery light indicator. So I changed the batteries. Still no luck. I go on to Logitech's forum, help forum. It turns out that a bunch of people have this issue, and it's all people that are on Windows 8. I'm like, oh, great. And then to further compound that, there are no drivers for this controller, so it's not like you can download the latest driver or anything. So I contacted Logitech, and they said, oh, you've got a bad receiver. We're going to send you a new receiver. I was like, okay, well, hey, you know, thank you, customer support or whatever. So in the meantime, I plugged back in my 360 controller, and I just had my other controller on my desktop. Well, like about four days later, all of a sudden, the controller started vibrating. You know, when playing the game, it was obviously receiving the same signal as my 360. I thought, oh, that's weird. and I look and sure enough it's connecting to the receiver again. I'm like, oh, okay, great. So I play with it. In the meantime, I get the new receiver sent to me. I don't bother swapping it out though because I'm like, ah, now I'm using it as a backup and this controller is working. So two days ago, I go to use the controller and it's not working. It's giving me the blinking light. I'm like, ah, what the hell happened? And I literally changed nothing on my computer. I haven't moved where the receiver is plugged into. I haven't downloaded anything new. Nothing has changed. So I'm thinking, oh, maybe it is the battery. So I change the battery. No, it still doesn't work. I'm like, okay, here we go again. So I call up Logitech. And the poor bastard that was trying to help me, he's so in over his head, you could tell. I'm sitting there going, unplug the thing. Plug it back in. Check this. Check that. I'm like, it's not receiving. It's not receiving. He's like, do you have another computer? and I'm like, yeah, I've got another computer that my son has. It's Windows XP. Speaking of XP. And so go plug the controller over there. Boom, instant connection. So obviously it's not a problem with the controller talking to the receiver. It's a problem with the operating system. And the guy can't figure out, neither can I for the life of me, why it's not connecting other than he goes, oh, there must be a compatibility issue with Windows 8. I'm like, yeah, I know this because I've gone on your forum and that's what everybody's screaming about and been apparently screaming about this for the past year. Jeez. Yeah. Yeah. And not, yeah. So, again, and that's what everybody, it was very reminiscent of the TPA forums in terms of how many people have to complain about something before you fix it. And again, I'm rather shocked because usually Logitech is really good about this kind of stuff. so I'm back to having the controller sitting on my desktop waiting and my 360 controller plugged in and hoping that it's just going to magically heal itself meanwhile the customer support was like we're going to close your case because the receiver worked I'm like no no no no no we proved the controller works but we did not prove that anything works in conjunction with working on a Windows 8 machine and then I threw in at the very end I'm like But if you happen to have a wired 510 lying around the offices, you can just send that to me and I'll swap it out. Totally, yeah. Yeah, it's so annoying. And the problem is that there's not really any other DualShock-like controllers on the market with brands that I would trust for the PC. Now, of course, while I was in the chat forum one time, Jay Pelter and Heretic both started yelling at me about just hook up a freaking PS3 controller. I was like, how do you do that? They're like, it's Google. It's your friend. So I typed it in and found the thing. I haven't plugged it in to actually test it out. I'm like, that's my last resort. Hey, that's my controller for the PS3 that I don't play that much anymore because I've been playing on the PC. That's what I said. The point of this is things should work the way they should work, Dan. So, anyway. Make working. Make worky things. Exactly. So I'll have to update you guys on that. Something else to update you guys on is our next, when we run the next Table of the Month tournament, as I said, on the 25th, one of our forum members, his name is Ksenia, which me and my American lingo looking at his name, I was saying it Zanija because it's X-A-N-I-J-A. but I confirmed it with him that it's Ksenia anyway I don't know Bonzo he's German also so maybe that's a thing for you guys anyway I pronounce it Ksenia simply you pronounce it the way he pronounce it and me and my American lingo it's no it's a hard J damn it and the X's are spelled or sound like a Z so Zanija anyway he has stepped up to the plate to help me in entering data at the end of these tournaments because it was taking me three plus hours to crunch all the numbers because I was doing it all by hand which is not fun and he has come up with a spreadsheet for me that I just tested out the newest version of it today and it is awesome Jared you have access to it check it out it's brilliant alright I'll check it out which should make me being able to post tournament results probably in less than an hour, maybe even a half an hour after the tournament ends. That's a big improvement. Huge improvement. Not only that, but it takes out the mass amounts of user error that I was incurring. Because some of those tables, when they're in the billions for scores, and the Google Forms that you guys are entering the data into doesn't include commas, so it just becomes this long string of numbers that inevitably I'm going to type in wrong. And then on top of that, me trying to figure out the scoring, because that's the other thing he programmed into this, it's going to figure out scoring, who ranks higher than who, based on certain parameters and everything. It's, like I said, going to make my life way easier. So I just wanted to say that tournament results should come in much, much quicker. Also, last month like I said Joe Cool provided us a download of TAF if anybody wants to donate a digital download of any kind if you have some humble bundle games that you already owned and now you have an extra copy, a key for that if you want to go through just donate a Fireside game because you feel like being nice that way if there's anything of that nature that you want to donate that we can give away as a prize do not hesitate to contact us you can contact as we've been saying Jared at JaredMorgz on Twitter me at ShutYourTraps Bonzo is at DrexClown on Twitter or you can email us at blahblahblockade at gmail.com and those are basically all the ways you can get in contact with us in general but don't forget we've also got of course the master blockade Twitter account as well that you can oh yeah the master blockade yes at blockade hello how could I forget that one many many things Jared thanks for reaching out to Zolt and getting those responses Zolt thank you so much for giving us those responses and the as I said the Oscar winning performance that is Bonzo reading Zolt brilliant love it one extra thing about that interview Zolt wanted to make sure that I mentioned that he's so appreciative of the Pimple Arcade fans forum and the feedback that we all give him to improve the product. He said it makes just a massive difference to quality with the app and their ability to find things out quickly. Because, you know, as we know now, they're a pretty small team. So having us looking over the tables of a fine-tooth comb really makes a big difference to them, and they really appreciate it. So thanks, everybody, for being awesome. And the other thing, too, is I said that, hey, So how about throwing a few DLC codes our way for the tournament, you know? And he'd seriously love to, but the way that the app licensing works, they don't actually have any promo code system in implementing the app. So he has to unfortunately say no to that. He would have loved to support Blycade, but he just can't because of the way the licensing system works in the app. So thanks very much for considering it, Zolt, but we understand that at the moment you can't do it. Maybe in the future, who knows? We tried. And for the next tournament, I think I'm... Overall, I'm eighth at the moment, so I have some extra points to give away to people who are in my groups. Anybody that plays against Bond will be getting a free point. I will say that I'm going to also try and start the tournament a little bit earlier for our European players. Even if it's by only two hours, I'll make sure that I turn on the scoring as soon as I wake up so that you guys can get those in early without having to stay up late at night or anything like that. That would be awesome. Yes, instead of the 10 a.m. start time, I'm definitely by 8 a.m. and maybe by 7 a.m. I'll have it up and running. Do your conversions based on my west coast. So there. It's really a shame we can't, like, there's not a way we can make the form live sort of delayed and have it turn on at a particular date and time. I don't think Google Forms actually allows us to do that. That'd be a really cool feature. It'd be pretty interesting if you could. A little self-timer. But, hey, we'll try and figure those things out as we go. I do want to thank everybody that has been playing in the tournament. It's been a lot of fun. And for contributing to Table of the Week, we've got many, many, many, many, many, many weeks to go. So it'll be all good. and fortunately we will actually have to play Big Shot during one of those weeks. Or Big Nuts. The Big Nuts. I want Big Nuts. Maybe we'll do one week where it's going nuts, Big Shot and Central Park, and then nobody will play that entire week. Yay, I'll get first. What's wrong with Big Shot? I don't know. Maybe people will appreciate it after that loss in the zone. Maybe. I know Sean won't. Hey, I think we've had enough fun for the day. So thank you to Jared Morgz for coming in and to Bonzo for playing with us. Thank you, everybody, that has been contributing to this podcast and making it what it is. I've been your host, Shut Your Traps. We shall see you next time.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 6d886d93-ce6c-4e47-b39e-7cf8a2436520*