Welcome to the circus! You are listening to The Blockade Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frebus, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. Sitting across the desk from me is Jared Morgs. Hello there, everybody. How are you today? Now, of course, between, you know, I like to imagine that you're sitting across my desk, but in reality, there's, you know, 7,194 miles between us, and that's kind of, you know, an ocean. Minor details, whatever. I like to imagine that's where you're sitting just Ed Boon, we're looking eye to eye and just banging out the show well you know technically we could be doing that but we've got our video things turned off on Hangouts On Air because we don't want to suck up the broadband and make the audio quality crappy so that's why we turn it off but I can see a little blockade logo blinking away at me when you speak so it's pretty much like we're sitting across from each other anyhow, so whatever. Truth be told, though, I don't have a webcam. Ah, I see. This is it. I used to have a webcam and then I upgraded to Windows 8 and webcam not supported because it was old. So I didn't bother replacing one because I rarely use that thing to begin with. I didn't feel like dropping $60 on a webcam that was just going to sit there and make me think that somebody's watching me. Yeah, language. Exactly. Kind of creeps you out. I know that whenever my wife would use the computer, she would always turn it around. Yeah, that's right. Just to be sure, you know. So, yeah, none of that business here. But, yeah, I agree. It probably would suck up our bandwidth. Then the podcast would... would sound like that. Yeah, that's right. So Bonzo is not with us this week. We were recording much later in the day than we normally do because, well, Jared, you kind of got a new job, didn't you? Yeah, totally. I'm not at Red Hat anymore. I'm at a place called Ladbrokes, which if you are in the UK, you'll know what that is. But it's an online gambling company and I'm still doing technical writing. But yeah, it's a new job. I've been in it for about a month now. And yeah, so... So yeah, we want Jared to make a good impression with his new job and not be hunkered down in the break room doing a podcast first thing in the morning which Red Hat didn't seem to have a problem with. No, I just got in so early that seriously, no one was there until probably 7.30 in the morning so yeah it was all very clandestine at Red Hat but here I'm actually in this really epic media room that they do post production on the commercials and stuff so I'm just I'm in here at the moment is it like soundproof and everything? it totally is yeah it's fully soundproof yeah you should see the gear like it's pretty incredible I need egg crates on my walls egg crates yeah this place is pretty cool they got lots of gear in here but um yeah so anyhow that's where i'm sitting at the moment so yeah so like i said uh we're recording much later in the day than normal which means uh for bonzo it's like i don't know four in the morning or something some godly hour that there's no way he's gonna be uh be so uh um but this kind of goes into uh we're gonna let you our audience know uh that we have we have plans for the podcast here we do the blockade is doing things yeah that's right let's talk about the changes yes so uh one of the changes that uh those of you listening to this very podcast immediately are going to notice is why is it so short yeah because well you know we found that doing one and a half hour episodes you know it's okay if you were doing it um every month or so but doing it every month actually started to become a bit of a problem for us. Like, you know, stretching all the stuff we need to talk about in a month and a half was, you know, starting to get a bit tricky. And, you know, when we're talking about stuff like tournaments and tournament of the month, table of the week, it didn't really make it that timely, right? No, not timely at all. Yeah, so. With that in mind, we're experimenting. We're going to try something new, and hopefully you all are cool with it. Our shows are going to be much, much, much, much, much shorter. The flip side to that is, though, they're going to be much, much, much, much, much more frequently, like every week. Every week. Yeah, that's the plan. So each week we'll have a different theme. This week is sort of like the beta blah. We sort of named them tentatively beta blah, tech blah, tournament blah, and what was the other blah? Forum blah. Forum blah. That's right. So this week is beta blah because we've got a beta build floating around, which we'll talk about soon. But yeah, we're trying to sort of keep them on target and not ramble as much as we were in the past. Because, you know, we do listen to feedback and some people did suggest that, you know, we do get off track a bit. So I think having a focus each week will actually help us get back on track a bit and keep it on pinball a bit more, which is also feedback that we've got as well. So yeah, thanks for the feedback about that. We do listen. Well, Jared listens. me. I'm still going to talk movies and the other crap that I like to talk about. But you know what? You won't have to suffer as long because if I'm able to dish it out on a weekly basis, I won't have it all pent up to the point where I'm just like, I need to talk about this for 45 minutes straight. That's right. This is like a nice bleed valve that we can look forward to each week. We don't feel the pressure of just dumping everything that was on our mind over the course of a month. There also might be certain times where just like last month's podcast, where it was myself and Bonzo only, there's probably going to be more of those instances so that we can get Bonzo in here at a godly hour, but Jared's then going to be just waking up. So there are going to be other times where we'll get all three of us. You know, we're going to try and work it and flex it. For those that are wondering why I'm only saying Jared and Bonzo though, it does mean that scheduling was also kind of a bear for us. And that was part of the original plan of why we were only going once a month because it's a lot to make everybody say, hey, can we sit down for an hour and a half and do this? So Jeff and Sean have kind of not necessarily skirted off to different pastures or anything, but and they're more than welcome to come back whenever they feel like popping in, but we felt that they weren't, well, they themselves had mentioned that there's no way they could keep up with this pace of a weekly show. Yeah, that's right. You know, we realize people have a life. So too bad, folks. You're stuck with us. That's right. And, you know, we'll try and keep it fresh, but, you know, again, feed us back information. If you're not finding it's working for you or, you know, tell us but also if you're going to tell us offer us suggestions about how we can improve and just say no this sucks and leave it at that that's not gonna we're gonna keep on doing what we're doing if you're gonna tell us that like you gotta throw us a bone if something's not working out right so yeah um we're we're making changes for you our friendly listeners now one other change is going to be happening in that respect uh and we're going to be doing a slow migration of this the very nature. When the podcast was initially set up, we had the eight people and everybody was taking different roles of what they were going to do within the podcast. The end result of that is myself Jared and Bonzo we have no access to the podcast data We don have control over the iTunes where it lives So we're creating a new home for the podcast, a new ShoutEngine account. We're also going to be creating a new iTunes account, where previously the name of the podcast had been the Pinball Blockade Podcast. Now it's just going to be Blockade Podcast. We're going to give you probably about a month of transition period to subscribe to the new versions before we just stop uploading to the old versions. That's right. So it's kind of... I was just going to say, Chris, as of right now, you can actually go and point your podcast podcatchers, as I like to call them. I think that's actually a thing. Point your podcatchers to ShoutEngine. It's still on ShoutEngine, so we're using the same provider, but it's just now called BlackHate Podcast. And I've migrated all of the old episodes, including all the metadata over from the iTunes, old iTunes page. So all the episodes are there, and we'll just start adding new episodes there. I think probably, yeah, we'll still keep the old one out until, sorry, all went open until we sorted out the iTunes stuff because as we all know, as Pimple IK uses, there is a submission process regarding iTunes. So we have to do a bit of administrative stuff with regard to that. But yeah. You know what this feels like? It feels like when you finally moved out of your parents' house, right? But you're still getting mail sent to your parents' house. And you're still at the old address. And so now you're slowly getting the new stuff in, but you also didn't want to completely cut off the old source, you know, because you're afraid you're going to miss something. That's what I feel like. We're moving. We've boxed things up. We've hired the van. Yep. Let's just hope that the van doesn't get sent to Albuquerque and not to our new address in just a couple of blocks over, which is essentially what we've done with Shoutcast. shoutcast. I'm sure it'll be fine. Everyone, our listeners are pretty intelligent. I'm sure they'll be able to find us where we go. So yeah, no dramas, I don't think. But yeah, we won't cut the idea. Hi to Heretic. If he's still listening, I don't even know. Just as a shoutout to Heretic, he's still running the IRC room and there's very few people in there these days and I think he's getting ronery. so please if you want to like go and chat with him in the IRC room he I'm sure he'd be open to like having a chat um so you go over and um it's on Freenode there's a thread in I think it's general it's stickied um so just go in there and and say g'day drop in and uh just be just be nice and say hello uh but yeah I don't really drop in there that much where you probably will be insulted. So, final ways to contact us and get a hold of us. We are on Twitter. I know many of you don't like Twitter, but too bad. This is one of the better ways of knowing what's going on, because we keep up to date on that. You can contact myself at ShutYourTraps. You can contact Jared at JaredMorgz, but if you just want show information about Blockade and what the Blockade is doing, by all means, follow at Blockade. We update about tournaments, we update about when podcasts are dropping. It's very, very specific with the Blockade Twitter account as opposed to if you follow Jared or myself where we just, you know, drop whatever the heck we want to talk about. Yeah, exactly. So this is the podcast that we talk about a beta, and because of that, we have a special tune just to announce it. Oh, that was special. Awesome. And you can blame Chris for making that. Yes, my musical skills are being put to the test there as I found use for my old Guitar Hero drum kit, and I just held my microphone really close to one of the pads and banged away a drum beat. I was having fun on Audacity, just trying to make something sound musical. Serious? That's how you did it? I was wondering if you used software or something like that. No, it was just... Oh, no, no software. I was a pure analog, baby. I tried to pluck something out on my guitar that I don't know how to play because guitar hero. And I couldn't plink something out. So for now, it was just percussion. What the heck? Animal. Exactly. So, yeah, the latest beta has dropped in the Pinball Arcade, and that is for F-14 Tomcat. That's right. Get General Yegov. Get him. Yes. It's actually pretty good. that I'm noticing yeah I mean one of the things I was going to say that I'm noticing right away with probably the last three betas that have dropped from Farsight is by the time they like betas start off in with Apple for iOS I'm not a part of that beta then they drop for PC and I believe Android does it drop for Android at the same time as PC Jared? That's a very good question It was released on Friday last week. Okay, that's about when we got it too. But what I'm noticing is they're pretty polished. There's like next to nothing for us to harp about. Like when I first started doing the betas, it was just like, oh, here's the beta. Oh my gosh, look at that. And there's this laundry list of please fix that, please do this, please do that. and these last three that have come down which was safe cracker and um uh getaway and now f14 i i load them up and i'm like well there's next to nothing for me to comment on it's kind of depressing but also good because yeah they're honing their process obviously um i know you wouldn't be able to see it but for the pc uh we don't get dx11 lighting right off the bat that's usually the last thing that gets put in. So all we can do is test the table itself as if it was in DX9, which is all fine and dandy, but for me, it's one of those things where I hone into the visual stuff. I don't know the tables well enough, hardly at all usually from real-world experience, to be able to go, hey, this dinger didn't go off when it should, or this light was not flashing properly. But visually, I can tell with the lighting if if they're nailing the experience or not. I can't do that in DX nine. I can do it with the dynamic lighting though of DX 11 where the, there's been a couple of times where all of a sudden we get into the DX 11 build and I'll be like, okay, all the lamps are blown out. I can't read a single thing that's on them. You guys got to tone them down, you know, make it look a little more realistic on that front. So it makes me worried though, that I don't have the DX 11 build until, I mean, it's probably going to maybe come in on Wednesday. and then they'll do their live Twitch session on Thursday. So it's like, oh, man, there's going to be no time for me to say, you know, raise the flags. Yeah, I know. I think they are. I did see in the Pimple Arcade fans forum, which is what I'll mention here because it's technically public, that they're actually looking to release on September 18 on Android, I think. So that's probably when we're going to see some streaming and some cool stuff coming in, and we'll probably get to see the DX11 stuff come through there for a PC. Yeah, on Android, it's kind of the same too. Like when you're beta testing, they give you the initial build, and it has actually been, like increasingly over the last three titles, there has really been an increase in quality. So top work, guys, on getting the quality up for beta releases. It actually makes a lot more sense to do that and release a beta that's actually pretty much solid because you're not going to get the noise from the beta testers about all the things that you kind of know are broken anyhow, but you kind of had to release. So from a management and like a beta testing management perspective, like the guys like Robert Polarana and Scott Humble and all the guys who are actually involved in the beta side of things it easier for them because they not going to get so much churn So the things that But on the other hand it becomes if you don't get enough time to beta test it, then what's the point of having the beta test? Well, yeah, that's right. Fortunately, the iOS guys have had it for a while and they've been able to knock out a lot of the stuff that is of issue. Well, essentially, iOS is the alpha test and a lot of the bugs get recorded in the Farsight bug tracker during that phase. And what happens is when they deliver the beta build for Android, they actually put the known bugs up. I actually noticed one bug that was cited in there, which those people who watch Todd Tucky and TNT Amusements will note that F14 often doesn't have the flashes working over the three bank targets, just that you feed from the upper left and upper right flippers. There's a reason behind that. There was actually a service bulletin released from Williams that actually asked operators to completely remove the light sockets from those flasher bulbs. Because what was happening is as the stand-up targets deformed with the balls slamming up against them. Because the point from where the flipper is to the point where the stand-up targets are would be probably about 30 centimetres or 30 or 40 centimetres. And they're strong flippers, those ones. So they tend to have the problem with the stand-up targets were deforming all the time. And what happened is that stand-up targets were actually grounding out on the flasher bulb sockets in the back. And this was causing fuses to trip at a minimum. And in really bad cases, it was actually causing damage to integrated circuits on the main board, like they were blowing chips. And that's not good. So, yeah, Williams subsequently issued a service bulletin, and regrettably, Farsight has to actually produce the table without those flashes. Why? I know. It's a bummer, but they've had direction from Roger Sharp or the licensing people. They can't put those two flasher barrels in. So, bummer, dude. But that's fair enough. I guess it was initially released with it, and then they had to take them out for a service bulletin. And so that was the last known state of the table from a licensing perspective. I mean, I'm not a licensing expert, so I'm speaking from the top of my head here, but that's what they've had to do. They've confirmed that. So, yeah, it's a bit stink. It comes back down to, I mean, I understand why they have to and stuff, but it's such a shame. It's digital. you know this is the perfect opportunity to put the table out the way it was originally designed not the way that uh had to go out for operators you know you know it's it's one of those things hope someday they're able to to to drop that stuff back in i mean i really do hope that they're able to i think a lot of the um the operators what they did is they actually uh because of their there was like holes in the playfield where you actually pull the wires up through for those flash revolves a lot of operators actually converted those barrel flashes to um the bayonet style um under the playfield flashes that just protruded yeah through the top so just a glass bit protruded through the top a lot of operators made that modification but that wasn't a sanctioned mod so they they kind of just yeah took them out and that was it which is a bummer but anyhow so you got a chance to play the game I mean obviously if it came out Friday we're recording this you know three four days later depending on what side of the future you're on you on the far future me in the present I myself unfortunately I I have not yet purchased the season it's not for lack of wanting to purchase the season it's more of the funds have not been there for me to just splurge on purchasing this season. So I'm only able to play up to the score limit. What's the score limit? Because I don't see it. I don't know. Basically, every single time I wind up getting multiball, the whole table goes, thank you, would you like to buy the table? Oh man, I don't get even... I think it's less than a million. Oh, right. Okay, that's not very much. So I bought the season pass because I always do buy the season pass. even though you know I will eventually probably within two months maybe something unless you know hey Farsight season pass you want to give me? alright hey Farsight I want to refund my season pass season pass out to Chris Frevis totally if you want to refund my Google Play purchase I wouldn't mind the pro version yeah for testing purposes you know for testing purposes yes so anyway I foresee I mean if anything by Christmas I will have it because it'll be my Christmas present or one of them but I'm working on you know you scrounge a little you save a little and there you go but so like I said I haven't really been able to play it I have noticed that it is just as fast as I would have expected on the subject of fast games There have been feedback that they should increase the kick-out strength from the... I don't think they're sources. They're actually a different mechanism. But the kick-out strength that feeds the loops by about 20% or 30% because it's a bit soft. And those things should, like, rocket out of there. Yeah, that's true. And they'll just, like, blink your eyes and you'll miss it, sort of rocket out. So, yeah, I think they might be doing some tuning to that. Not sure. I do know that they run into the issue of the collision detection. if the ball goes too fast. Yeah, like we saw on the getaway. Balls. Right. Yeah, like we saw on the getaway, some supercharger ramp. That's running like it's pretty much... Well, they definitely nailed the speed that the ball comes out of the kick-out. On the left side, it comes down. It blazes. So I think that when everybody finally gets their hands on this thing, if you're saying 18th, I'll go with the 18th, everybody's going to be pleasantly happy that F14 seems to be there. It seems like a fun game to play. I've never played the live version, but it is fun. It's a fun game. I think they've done a good job. So... What table are they going to release next month? That's a good question. No, we don't. I don't even have a guess. Is it the Halloween table next? We'll have to wait for the speculation engine to gear up and see what they come up with or the newsletter. It would be the Halloween table next though, wouldn't it? It has to be, wouldn't it? I guess, yeah. I would say, because it's going to be in October, really. So there you go. Set your speculations to whatever the Halloween tables currently could be. Based off of our interview with Bobby, though, you probably want to eliminate anything that is Warner Brothers or Fox. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, which those of you who are savvy, pretty much that narrows it down to a very select few that it might probably be. Yeah, exactly right. Those who know their licenses will know probably what the table is. Yeah. Hey, let's talk about Table of the Week. Yeah, let's do that. What is the Table of the Week, Chris? Okay. Table of the week this week that we were playing is Gottlieb's lights action camera. Camera action. It would be much better if it was lights and camera action. Camera action. Yeah. First off, because this is the business I work in, right? That's not what they say. It's more like roll sound, sound speed, camera, marker, action. All right. It takes a little longer to go through, but yeah. It would be boring in a pinball. Sorry, even more boring than what it is actually in the pinball at the moment. So as long as we've had this table in the pinball arcade, I've next to never played it. Which is the whole point of Table of the Week, which is run through, play every single table and give it a solid chance to grow on you to make you love it And I played this thing one day and I hate it It I don know I got to say that the upper play field is so packed that there's not really much area for the ball to be able to be shot into. And the shot selection, I don't know, there's just, To me, there doesn't seem much to do. And then, on top of that, it's the hideous, horrible artwork. It's terrible. Terrible. And I looked it up, and I was like, there's got to be a story behind this. So, sure enough, there's a story behind it. First off, this was supposed to be a card table. A card playing table. Which would explain why there's the poker stuff up at the top. That was a holdover from the previously intended design. Right. they then decided for some inexplicable reason to name their characters off of the names of the cards. So you have Ace, the hero, and Queen, the bad guy, or something like that. I don't know. I can't really tell you what the good guys, bad guys, and everything story about the table is because nowhere on the table does it tell you the story of what you're supposed to be doing. You had to look it up and find out from Gottlieb developers what the story is. so apparently they're making an action movie during the summer uh or a summer blockbuster is what they're going to be doing and there's five scenes although i don't see how stunt sequence is a scene or i don't know i don't know it's it's pretty terrible all the way around but then with the artwork they had one guy that was doing the art in kind of a mad magazine style right yeah but But then the higher-ups didn't think his ladies were sexy enough, so they hired another guy to come in, and that's why all the females on the table look like they're Nagel paintings and doesn't fit in at all with the rest of everything. The one that cracks me up, though, is dead center right above the flipper. You've got this director who just, again, looks like the Mad Magazine art style, And right next to him is some blondie who inexplicably has the name Janine written across her back. And you're like, well, who's Janine? I don't know. I mean, it's clear as a bell. And the part that cracks me up is Janine's got her head twisted around like somebody broke her neck because there's no way you can suddenly turn your neck that far around. And then – Janine is part of the exorcist, maybe. She's an extra. Exactly. And then because, you know, ooh, hot chicks, but she's got her back to you, right? but they drew her having big boobs. It looks like they're under her armpit. It's like, if she turned around, she'd be the most deformed-looking woman you've ever seen. And I know it's stupid artwork and it has nothing to do with the gameplay, but again, because it's front and center right there at your flippers, that's all I think about. I'm like, oh my God, she's got a tumor. It's growing out of her armpit. that's pretty terrible right it is it's pretty terrible but uh uh and the other thing is is that uh when i play table of the week my first thing is i want to knock out all the wizard goals that's i can't even concentrate on getting a high score or any i mean if i get a high score by accident okay but i i pick my goals that i want to attack and i attack those and i try and knock them out and then be done with it, right? So all of the wizard goals were fairly easy. The only problem was one of them was you had to get four of a kind, and it's a purely random, there's no skill involved. It's just hit the cards as many times and hope that at some point you get four of a kind. So I wound up doing that. The one that's killing me, though, is there is a set of drop targets on the right side, and when you knock all those down, you get a letter in the word Blockbuster. And that's called the Blockbuster special when you collect all the letters. Well, what that means is you have to knock those targets down 11 times in the game. That sounds like a modern stand. I'm like, are you kidding me? Sounds like a modern stand. Shoot the ramp 15 times to get the loot. Well, the thing is, it's aiming for those... You wind up getting that side-to-side bounce that once have been sending your ball in the out lane so i i'm i'm i'm i've gotten to oh that's as far as i've gotten i've gotten to oh i'm like are you kidding me i've got to get ockbuster still or lockbuster now yeah whatever cockbuster what um yeah so yeah i'm just i hate wizard goals like that where it's just like everything else is super easy except for that one thing that's just going to haunt you. And the thing that's going to haunt me is now I have to... Get all the tokens. Yeah. You know, Safecracker's wizard goal is like, get all the tokens, which are completely random. So... That's a long-term goal. See, and to me, that's not a wizard. A wizard is showing your skill as opposed to just random luck or whatever. I don't know. Anyway, I hate this table. That's right. That's what I'm saying. I hate this table. I hate this table. I had a good time with Dracula last week. And I haven't played Dracula at all. But this is just... I'm still waiting for somebody to throw a Gottlieb in front of me that will make me change my tune about them. And I'm not talking about an EM Gottlieb. I'm talking about... People are like, Hey, less camera action. That's going to be a good table. And I play them like, Nope. So everybody was asking for, you know, what is it, Bonebusters or Rescue 911. I'm sorry, I'm hating them already, and I've never even played them because they're Gottlieb. And there's nothing that Gottlieb has put out that I've been impressed with. Yeah, that's pretty much how I'd wrap it up as well. Yeah, they're okay. But if you don't have any other pinball to play, yeah, they're okay. But otherwise, you'd play anything apart from them. To me, Gottlieb is the pizza hut of pizza. I love pizza. And it can be the crappy frozen kind that you throw in your oven or something really good and yummy. And then you throw a pizza hut in front of me, and I'll be like, ooh, yeah, pizza. Wait, I don't like pizza hut. Do I? That's okay. Have a bite. And I'll have like two bites, and my stomach's just going, really? You don't even plan on eating the rest of this piece, do you? Because I'm going to hurt you. so they'll be like no no no I can't stomach it I can eat this entire piece and then oh god it hurts so bad that's what godly pinball is to me bad pizza oh god it hurts so bad godly marketing line with that I guess we should probably wrap it up we should oh my god we're done already what the hell yeah we are done wow okay well if you say so I'm not satisfied Jared you want another slice of pizza don't John Youssi yeah I guess I want another table of the week and not this one so I guess I guess sure enough we'll wrap it up this time and hey I hope everybody hope you can like the shorter version of the of the blockade podcast and if you don't well we're going to experiment with it for a little while so too bad yeah and also somebody needs a room here as well so i better rack off there you go all right well thank you everybody again for listening to the blockade podcast i've been your host shut your trap that has been jared morgues and we will see you all again next time it has indeed all right see you later wizard amusement.com the west coast leader in classic pinball makers of custom pinball shooter rods to buyer specifications swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table installs in less than five minutes with no custom tools even if you don't own a table looks great as a pinball memento to admire prices start at 39 but mention blockade podcast and receive 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization remember to leave a review on itunes or any podcasting channel blockade is distributed through we can't improve unless you tell us how until next time remember Hey, it's only pinball.