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Hey Dude, Let's Par Tee

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·50m 58s·analyzed·Feb 18, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Pinball Arcade bugs, bug reporting practices, and hands-on Pin Golf tournament experience at Netherworld.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss Pinball Arcade platform issues (crashes on Elvira and Haunted House, scoring display bugs), community bug reporting best practices, and technical debt accumulation in the engine. They then shift to covering a real-life Pin Golf tournament at Netherworld arcade featuring 18 holes across 9 machines, highlighting challenging goals on games like Stingray, The Walking Dead, and Demolition Man, and concluding with extensive praise for Jersey Jack's newly-arrived Dialed In machine.

Key Claims

  • Elvira and the Party Monsters crashes the entire game when pushing start in build 1.69.4 DX on Steam

    high confidence · Chris reports direct experience with the crash in this specific build

  • Haunted House also freezes and crashes on the same build when pushing start

    high confidence · Chris reports same experience as Elvira

  • Ghostbusters has severe stuttering frame rate issues in current build

    medium confidence · Community report Chris mentions but couldn't verify himself

  • Pinball Arcade engine is 10 years old and accumulating technical debt causing regressions

    high confidence · Jared explains technical debt dynamics and compares to company experience at LabRocks

  • Farsight needs to either pause monthly DLC cycle or dedicate engineering team to rewrite engine to address technical debt

    high confidence · Jared's technical analysis based on software engineering experience

  • Zen Studios has rebuilt their engine/platform three times to address technical debt

    medium confidence · Jared mentions as industry comparison but not deeply sourced

  • Dialed In is a Pat Lawlor design and just arrived at Netherworld this week

    high confidence · Jared's direct observation at the venue

  • Dialed In features extensive audio cues critical to gameplay success

    high confidence · Jared's direct play experience improved significantly when he plugged in headphones

Notable Quotes

  • “I've been playing this game since it was released. I've never had the game not be playable.”

    Chris @ early discussion — Establishes Chris's baseline experience with Pinball Arcade stability despite reported issues

  • “The problem is it comes down to the classic issue with software, and that is technical debt. They are probably harboring about 10 years of technical debt in their code base.”

    Jared @ mid-discussion — Technical explanation for why Pinball Arcade is experiencing cascading regressions

  • “You might get a customer's first dollars, but will you get their next dollars and their next dollars?”

    Chris @ business analysis section — Points out economic impact of early-season table bugs on long-term platform revenue

  • “There's a lot of audio clues given... My game improved vastly once I plugged in.”

    Jared @ Dialed In discussion — Highlights critical audio design element of Dialed In that venue didn't accommodate

  • “I can see why this is $14,000 worth. Like, this is worth every cent of that.”

    Jared @ Dialed In conclusion — Strong endorsement of Dialed In's value proposition despite initial skepticism about non-licensed theme

  • “This is the first non-licensed pin to come out, who knows how long, right?”

    Chris @ late discussion — Notes Dialed In's significance as a non-IP release in modern pinball market

Entities

Chris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonFarsight StudioscompanyPinball ArcadeproductZen StudioscompanyPinball FX3productNetherworldorganizationDialed IngameJersey Jack Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Farsight Studios maintains monthly DLC cycle despite needing engineering resources for engine rewrite; creates tension between revenue and platform stability

    medium · Jared notes company is on 'monthly cycle of DLCs' and can't dedicate team to technical debt reduction

  • ?

    community_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball posted rule tree diagram on Twitter for Dialed In; Jared engaged with suggestion for on-screen rule tree overlay with flipper hold activation

    high · Jared describes tweeting back with feature suggestion to JJP

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Bloodbath multiball on The Walking Dead noted as extremely difficult PIN Golf goal; everyone achieved par, none achieved birdie/eagle/hole-in-one

    high · Jared's direct observation: 'I think everyone was getting pars on that'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Dialed In features extensive audio cues critical to gameplay learning and success; venue setup at Netherworld compromised audio experience

    high · Jared reports game improvement 'vastly' when using headphones; notes inability to hear audio during Pin Golf hurt performance

  • ?

    event_signal: Pin Golf tournament format at Netherworld arcade; 18-hole course with 2 goals per machine, 9 machines total, entry $30 with tokens/pin/drink

    high · Jared provides detailed account of participation and format

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.153

0:00
this is a blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host shut your trap aka chris freemus joining me as always halfway across the world jerry morgan how's it going i'm doing really good today thank you very much it's really good all right are we channeling out in a um dr dude just there i think we were i don't know that i have ever needed to channel uh dr dude but okay achievement unlocked achievement were we in the mix master there um hey folks uh welcome to the podcast uh thank you once again for joining us each week as we do when we get to it on a weekly basis, which is most of the time. So we appreciate it.
1:01
We do try and keep it regular as such. So, since last week, not much has gone on. Not much digital has gone on at all, really.
1:13
It's been a quiet... It's one of those sort of periods that come before the storm, I think, because... Right, because dropping it on 12, basically when this podcast drops, so will the new Jurassic Park tables for Xen. So look forward to us talking about that next week. Then we'll have something to talk about for sure. And also by that time, and actually I haven't checked this week because it seemed early and I hadn't seen anything in the forum mentioning it, but Bonsai Run will probably be in beta by that point too.
1:45
Yeah, you might be able to see that. Yeah. So, yeah, we're in that lull of when there's not much. Which, what does that mean? That means... We phone it in like a telecom worker. No, that's not what it means. I go searching through the Pinball Arcade fans forum and see what's bugging people, if anything. And it turns out I stumbled across one this week. Oh, did you? Well... As we go through phases in the Pinball Arcade fans' threads, basically you'll get periods of time where people are really happy with Farsight, and then those times will dissipate because it becomes a, well, hey, what have you done for me lately? And if Farsight hasn't done anything for them lately, then the claws come out and people start groaning and moaning.
Pat Lawlorperson
Zachperson
E.T.game
Moon Knightgame
Twilight Zonegame
The Walking Deadgame
Demolition Mangame
Stingraygame

leak_detection: Dialed In unboxed at Netherworld this week; immediately placed into Pin Golf tournament as brand-new machine

high · Jared notes: 'it had only been unboxed this week. And it's like, Oh, yeah, now it's in pin golf'

  • ?

    announcement: Jurassic Park tables for Zen Pinball dropping on the 12th when episode airs; Bonsai Run expected in beta around same time

    high · Chris mentions as confirmed upcoming content in intro section

  • ?

    product_strategy: Dialed In is first major non-licensed pinball release in unknown time period; positioned as significant market experiment for Jersey Jack

    high · Chris notes: 'this is the first non-licensed pin to come out, who knows how long'; Jared explicitly endorses value proposition

  • ?

    product_concern: Pinball Arcade build 1.69.4 DX crashes entire game on Elvira and Haunted House when pushing start; Ghostbusters has severe stuttering

    high · Chris reports direct reproduction of crashes; community reports additional frame rate issues

  • ?

    technology_signal: Pinball Arcade engine is 10 years old with significant accumulated technical debt causing regressions across unrelated tables

    high · Jared provides technical analysis explaining how adding new content breaks existing tables; compares to similar issues at his employer LabRocks

    • 2:40
    And this has been going on since the dawn of the game, basically, it seems. Yeah, well since people like Hayfansform was set up at least Right, and what winds up happening is you'll get some people that will get more and more perturbed because their particular issue isn't getting addressed and what I've noticed is it becomes speaking in generalities at which point it's now just white noise and I get frustrated with the white noise and so this week's white noise was people once again claiming, and this is if you wanted to follow along at all, it's in the Table Pack number 72 speculation thread. For those of you that don't go to, first, the Pinball Arcade Fans website,
    3:25
    as soon as the newest table is announced, they start speculating what the next table is going to be. It becomes this kind of fun guessing game. It's also where the wish list of, well, hey, here's what we're hoping drops and stuff like that.
    3:39
    I don't know how it got into this, but I think it also becomes a hey, so what new bugs are going to be introduced to the game and which table is not going to be playable this month and that stuff because legitimately those things get introduced each release. Even unintentionally because the platform is becoming complex now. It's a 10-year-old engine, and it's starting to probably reveal certain parts of it that need to probably have a bit of extra work done to it. Right. So something that gets me kind of riled up is when people do just go, oh, the game's terrible and it's unplayable.
    4:21
    Care to be more specific? Right? Because you just sound like you're groaning and moaning and it's about what? And I've seen this the game is unplayable thing pop up time and time again. And I'm like, I've been playing this game since it was released. I've never had the game not be playable. I have had tables crash on me the majority of the time that's always been during beta or in the case of say a Ripley's where you went beyond the scoring that you should have gone beyond and now it's having trouble keeping track of balls or whatever. Yeah, what's going on and so then the table kind of frees up and I've had that issue before. But I've never had the game be just borked, not work. Cannot load it, sort of broken. Yeah, yeah.
    5:13
    I've detailed the problems that I had with, obviously, with Ghostbusters, and it became apparent that it's an issue with my machine. It wasn't an issue with the game itself, other than not being efficiently written so that it would work on my machine, but that's a whole other, like you said, 10-year-old engine.
    5:32
    So, anyway, I piped up and said, can we please stop with the rhetoric of something being unplayable? and well they bit back and they said ah but it is if you try to and so I promised that I'd bring it up in the podcast just to try and get the ears of Farsight get their attention and maybe highlight this but this particular build which is 1.69.4 in DX on Steam Elvira and the Party Monsters You push start, the game freezes and crashes. You play Haunted House and push start, game freezes and crashes.
    6:16
    And then, you know, so when I say crashes, it's not the table just crashing. It's the whole game crashing. You got to exit out and restart the game.
    6:23
    And then apparently, and this is one I can't check myself, but it says that Ghostbusters has become terrible with its stuttering frame rate. now this was on top of they're also complaining about how say on Roadshow there's a horizontal line across the table where basically they were stitching the playfield together you might say that's the kind of thing that some people will say oh it's unplayable because there's a pixel line going across so that's what I was making sure of so fine that's still there but obviously the game is very much playable And I relate to things like that, like if an insert light isn't working or there's a graphical glitch, well, you're playing on a crappy machine out in the wild. You found a table, and unfortunately, somebody didn't upkeep it, and the paint is worn off, and certain flippers don't work or whatever. But anyway. Yeah, exactly. Just move on to the next machine. that's essentially it's like saying you know oh this one table's broken so therefore the entire arcade is stuffed right we'll close the entire arcade because this game is not working well really right or or because it's got a graphical glitch well again you know i can still play the game but obviously if it is indeed as i i booted it up myself to try and sure enough yes elviren party monsters it crashed the whole game yeah that's like so yeah those are the kind of things is that, folks, you need to do exactly this. Yes, list what version of the game you're playing. List what system you're playing it on, because there's problems that people have on PS4 that nobody else has. There's problems that people have on iOS that nobody else has. Yes. So you need to delineate what platform you're playing it on, what version of the game you're trying to play it on, and then, yes, please be as specific as possible in regards to what is happening, so that other users can try it themselves and maybe get back and say, well, I'm not having a problem. You're having a problem. So then it becomes, is it a global problem or is it a you and your machine problem? And if it's a global problem, then obviously we can raise the flags, alert Farsight to it. You should be doing the same. You email Farsight. I believe it's service at Farsightstudios.com. I think it's support at Farsightstudios. Excuse me, support, yes. so yeah support at farsightstudios.com log your ticket of what's going on this is how we get things fixed not by just going off on the rails and saying everything's borked but by being very particular about what it is that is the issue so that they know to laser focus in on it so one of the things also that I noticed when I loaded up or when I was getting ready to load Elvira up and under the high scores so the start menu shows and then it shows what the highest score is or whatever on the table I don't even think it's trillion what's the next number after trillion a bajillion it's some absurdly many many many many zeroed number that come on Farsight please for the love of God I mean this is painfully obvious Can we fix the scores?
    9:48
    And who knows? Maybe that's part of what's barking it. I don't know. Maybe. I think we should have the same, similar sort of hashtag that Stern has for where's the code. We should have a fix the scores hashtag. Oh, dear. The thing is with bug reporting, and you really have summarized it pretty well, but if you don't know how to actually, if you're new to software and you want to actually do be a constructive community member and actually really help out then you can go on and and search on the internet for how to write a bug report and you'll get a lot of different good ways of doing it and don't do it in a speculation thread and expect it to be answered go and do it in the platform specific thread that you are playing and then raise your bug in there in a clear thread so that you can get the attention it deserves and definitely follow up with support at farsight.com.
    10:53
    That's it, really. Here's another issue saying it's on black hole and that when starting multi-ball, the airlock remains closed so balls drain from lower playfield instead of entering main playfield. and then it says the physics are broken too, drop targets shoot the ball harder than any pop bumper if a ball touches them and flippers have crazy power too that's been like that ever since the game was released that's now a feature of the table pop bumper drop targets are a feature of the table it's been a bug that long now that I think the season one collision or not, season one tuning on all the targets and everything as to complete your stuff. You'll see any table in season one that hasn't been redone, and they all behave that way. It's just ridiculous. See, this is one of those things too where it's like, I rarely touch Black Hole. I never touch Haunted House. No. I don't usually play Elvira and the Party Monsters. If I'm going to play Elvira, I typically play Scared Stiff. So we're verging on coming close to 100 tables. It is impossible. to go through every table every month in beta to figure out what is working and what isn't. And not only that, it's not just a matter of loading up the table and seeing if it loads, but doing specifically like with Black Hole. Well, if I never got multiball going on Black Hole, I would never know if there was an issue. And then on top of that, I better know all the rules of Black Hole to know what the proper behavior is.
    12:29
    So this is where the game has become so massive. We are definitely entirely dependent, and I'm saying we in the universal we, not we as in me and Jared work for Fireside because we don But it needs the community attention That the only way that these things are going to be caught, because can you imagine if you were in QA and had to put in a true game, basically, so activate all the modes on a table before being able to move on to the next table, and doing that for every single game before the game was actually officially released. No. Well, you wouldn't release games. That's the thing.
    13:14
    They just wouldn't go out. So there's zero chance that you could actually do that because it's not something you can even script on a table or automate or continuous integration tests or anything. It is behavioral testing and observational testing, which is where we come in as players. We know, not just Pinball OK fans, but in general, the people who play the platform. We know how the games should play, and really, it's up to us to actually help Farsight tame the beast, really. And to be fair, this is obviously an issue with Farsight software. I mean, releasing a game shouldn't break previous games. That just shouldn't happen. And I don't have an excuse, an answer, or a reason for any of that. It is kind of ridiculous, and it obviously makes quality control that much more difficult when you don't have a game stable enough, I guess. I don't even know where you would start with that. I'm not a programmer, so I just know what makes sense.
    14:29
    Usually, if you fix something or add something, it shouldn't break other things that you haven't touched. The problem is it comes down to the classic issue with software, and that is technical debt. They are probably harboring about 10 years of technical debt in their code base, and it's now really starting to make progressively releasing a stable platform with minimal regressions a challenge. So whenever any company gets to that point, they need to make a decision. How do we burn it down? We're doing it at the moment at LabRocks, where I work. Like we've got the same problem with our code base and we slowly breaking down what they call the monolith into microservices and breaking down the product that way. But it's hard work. And that's the problem. Like they are on the monthly cycle of DLCs and they don't have the time to dedicate an engineering team to go back through and rewrite their engine. Yeah. Which is essentially what they need to do. It's one of those things that cost too much. And at the point at which it gets that bad, what's going to happen is it's going to prevent them from releasing.
    15:43
    But, again, that's not something that we can control. That's something that we can know about. And when things like this happen, that's what we have to attribute it to. And, look, I wouldn't like to be, I don't know who it would be at Farsight. probably not Norman, but the person in charge of development overarchingly. Yeah. Like that is a very big elephant to chew, basically.
    16:14
    Well, and we always point back to it. Zen has obviously chewed this element three times now. They have, but the thing is they've done it three times. Right. And they would have actually detected, oh, yeah, okay, we're starting to get to the point now where we're uncomfortable. with the amount of technical debt flowing around our platform. Let's spend three months, six months, arbitrary in time here, whatever it took them to do it, and get rid of the debt. So we're actually down to a level of debt that we can feel comfortable about in our sleep.
    16:47
    So, look, software is hard. So we need to, I guess, cut them a bit of slack because what we're saying here about technical debt, what I'm saying here about technical debt and suspected things with the code base, it's probably one of the many things that the studio is trying to have to deal with at the moment.
    17:09
    So it is one factor in running a software business. But it depends. It can be a big factor or it can be a smaller factor depending on how you manage it. So fingers crossed that after the release of Bonsai Run that we do indeed get a gap month.
    17:28
    And, you know, maybe, hey, if I always say if, and I think everybody has said this too, but Farsight, if you need to take longer, take longer. We'll wait. So long as there is actual improvement happening to the game, nobody's going to complain that, oh, we didn't get a game this month.
    17:45
    Well, look, we may not complain, but their bank balance will. Their bank balance will. That's true. That's a problem. but you also have to then weigh the bank balance of, is this affecting your customers in terms of, and I always say this with the first impression, you might get a customer's first dollars, but will you get their next dollars and their next dollars or what keeps you really alive, especially when you've got this many seasons of tables out. So if they only buy one season as a test to go, well, we'll see. And then they go, Oh my God, two of the tables don't work, you know, cause they buy for that. Yeah. Two of the tables don't work, and there's this weird scoring thing going on, and the leaderboards aren't working. Well, why would I want to buy the rest of the seasons? Yeah, that's a valid point to make.
    18:32
    Where is your ingress point into the platform? And if it's an early season, then chances are you're going to have a very different opinion of the platform than if you go and buy season eight.
    18:46
    And unfortunately, there's a lot of really, really good tables in that first couple of seasons. Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me? They're the gold star tables. The top tens. And really, they're the ones that if you're going, they're the ones that will bring people in. The ones that they're now playing in the arcades going, geez, I remember when I used to play these at home and then they go and find it with these names mentioned in the description. They go, yeah, sharp attachment money. I'm spending, what, 20 bucks on this where I can play 20 credits on one of these games. that have been up in no time. You know? Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, it's tough, right? So, anyway, that's that little bit of griping, knowledge drop, I don't know, what have you. But I said I would do it, and so, therefore, I did it, folks. One of those. Hopefully something will be done because of it. Yeah, hopefully. Well, chances are they probably will take a look at the table packs anyhow. I think if everyone here opened up a support ticket with support at farsight.com or wherever the address is, that would get their attention. But I dare say they probably already know about it anyhow.
    19:59
    But that still shouldn't – if you really like those two tables and you're having trouble playing them, that's a really good motivation to send them an email. It doesn't take long. So get on and do it. Yep. It would be even better if they had a way of doing it in-app. so if you know send us a support message or something like that in app that will be right up right now because then people wouldn't have to like hunt around for the support email um or like you could do things in apps now like you can have intercom and all these really amazing services that allow you to interact with your clients and you know it would be very interesting to like as a product manager that's what i'd be looking at doing working out some feedback mechanism in the game that you could use. So, yeah.
    20:43
    Anyhow. Moving on. We played E.T. in survival mode in the Zen Pinball FX3 tournament this week. And I, after having spent time with E.T., I can say I don't like E.T.
    21:02
    Okay. I played it just to kind of get first impressions and it didn't really do anything for me. But then once you're in, you know, playing it for a week and trying to do things, you start to, you know, okay, maybe I should look at the rules, maybe I should do this. I don't like the flow of the game. I don't like the shots that you have to make. Everything about it just to me is a struggle. And in survival mode especially, points do not come easy.
    21:33
    And so you're up against the clock. as well as trying to make enough shots in time to score the points you need. There's no easy points on that table.
    21:47
    So, yeah, don't care for it. Yeah, that won't be coming on the rotation list anytime soon. Not particularly, no. I think I've had my fill, and that's going to be the end of it for me on that one.
    22:01
    Fair enough. So what's the next one you're going to do? you know i'm i'm really debating i've talked about doing this deep dive into a table uh where we play it in all the modes and what would be something that would be deep dive worthy and i keep on coming back to moon knight because it's just such a bizarre table and i remember a long time ago i tried to learn it and once i started getting the hang of it i thought oh hey this is pretty cool but that was when I was playing on the PS3 and since then I've barely touched it and when I loaded it up recently in Steam I just went, what the hell is going on with this table again? I just had no clue what was going on. It's bizarre, right? But I don't know if it's a good table to pick either in terms of not a lot of people are going to own it.
    22:55
    Oh, really? You think it's not very popular? Well, the table pack that it came with I believe it's Moon Knight and Ghost Rider and Blade and maybe Wolverine. I can't remember if those are the four tables that were in that pack. But it's one of those packs that's just kind of like, and it's earlier Zen.
    23:20
    So you've got a bit wonky. Well, the physics, but also just the rules and the placement of flippers. Everything's just kind of off. weird. Yeah. So I don't know, but I keep on coming back to thinking about, but I think this is the table to do it on. I don't know. We'll... Just do it. Yeah, just do it. Make it Moon Knight. Is there any way you're going to be able to find out whether people have it or not, or if they are interested? And it's a pretty cheap experiment. Let's be serious. So, Sam, if you suddenly see an uptick in purchases on whatever pack has Moon Knight in it, you can said my cut over here i'll take my taste um yeah and uh beyond that that's about all the digi pinball that i've messed around with well i actually have some real pinball news to talk about so the the first bit is yesterday zach and i went to netherworld and we participated in a, I guess you could call it a tournament. It was pin golf. Oh, okay. It was real-life pin golf. And the format was really good. Of course, it was a full course of pin golf, so it was 18 holes.
    24:41
    So that meant nine pinball machines were in the mix with two goals per machine. And the way you had to do it was you had to do the goals in order, and you had to do them in a separate game. So, for example, if you on Twilight Zone managed to start multiple end score, 150 million, you had to do those two things separately on two games.
    25:10
    Well, that's the way to get quarter drops. Well, it's okay because part of your entry fee was that you got 18 tokens. Oh, okay. So you got basically a bag of tokens. You got this pretty cool little pin, which for those of you who have been following me on Twitter you will have seen already but I will hold it up to the screen now if you would like to see It basically the monster playing golf with a pinball machine This is my list of very full card of all my little pins and medallions I got from Netherworld. So I'm starting to get a bit of a collection.
    25:48
    So you've got that. You've got your scorecard. You got the 18 tokens and you got a drink. So that was about 30 bucks.
    26:02
    So that's not bad because, you know, $18. So a dollar a game, basically. So 18 tokens and the rest is just like you get one of those pins, which, you know, they're not cheap. They're really good quality. So it was pretty fair, the entry price. and um so unfortunately um we had a bit of a rough a rough course um we had a lot of fours so how it works is if you get um the goal on the first ball um you get a hole in one and then subsequently each ball gets you a lower ranking so you get a hole in one a um eagle a birdie and then a um bogey um i think that's how golf works i don't really know well it'll be par oh yeah that's right you get par so um so that was fun the goals some of them were devilish we have this uh older stern electronics pinball machine called stingray and the goal one of the goals and that was to get all five drop targets down in one ball um the problem is that the drop targets reset when the ball drains and the other problem is the drop targets are right near the out lane. So you can imagine what a brain monster that thing is when you're trying to shoot the drop targets. And the Walking Dead goals were really, really tough as well. Sorry, my CGM is going off.
    27:29
    The Walking Dead goals were brutal. You had to, one of them was start a multi-kill mode, which I don't even know how to do.
    27:38
    And the other one was start bloodbath multiple. Now, bloodbath multiple is really hard to start because on the left-hand side of The Walking Dead, you've got three drop targets, and the value that you select on the drop target cycles each time. So what you have to do is not only do you have to get the drop targets down and aim carefully, but you have to get it when the light that you want to actually achieve is lit. So it's so hard. It's such a – no one – I think everyone was getting par 4s on that. Yeah. Um, so yeah, that was really, really brutal. Um, but there was some other fun challenges. Like, uh, I think on Demolition Man, you had to start Ak-Mag and capture Simon in the same ball. So basically that's two shots up to the crane and select those two modes. And the other one on that one was start multi-ball, um, in one ball. And of course there's a bit of a trick with that where you can lock freeze on that game, uh, and then use the light lock, um, crane award to actually start multi-ball automatically. So that's a quick way of doing that one. So it was really fun. It actually took Zach and I a fair while to be able to do it. So, yeah, it was a four-hour duration, and there were lots and lots of people there, which is pretty typical on the weekend of Netherworld because it's a popular place.
    29:00
    And one of the biggest draw cards, of course, was the fact they had dialed in on the floor. Oh, dialed in. Oh, geez. What a good game. You've played this before, right? I played it, yeah, when I was up in Portland. Oh, there's something about that game. Man, it's just, it's a narrow body, but it feels like a wide. Like there's so much going on in it. Well, do you get what I say with, the other two Jersey Jack tables that I've played were being Lord of the Rings and, or excuse me, The Hobbit and Wizard of Oz. I felt that the wide body is hard to design for, and wide bodies never play fast, or they don't feel like they play fast. They're very slow tables, and I just don't care for either of those two offerings that they did. Dialed in, it's a Pat Lawler, and you can tell it's a Pat Lawler. Oh, can you ever? But there's a bazillion things going on that also just, and they just recently, Jersey Jack did, they posted on Twitter, what they call their rule tree for dialed in. Rule tree. And so it was a diagram of, you know, go here, start this. If you start this, then from here you can get this. You know, and it broke it down. And I tweeted back. I said, hey, here's an idea. How about if you hold the right flipper, that pops up on the screen with grayed out where you currently are in the progress of doing this? Because when you see the tree, it's not incredibly complex, but in order to complete one branch, there might be eight things that you have to do. so there's a lot of steps to get through certain areas but it's not like it's this massively convoluted, it's not ACDC so it's definitely a game though that you gotta be able to hear the audio on. And I couldn't because number one I had Zach there and number two like it was just, it was nuts I want to go there like some weekday at 12 o'clock with my headphones and just dial in to that mobile machine. Because there's a lot of audio clues given. Oh, is there? Oh, a ton. Okay. My game improved vastly once I plugged in.
    31:35
    Okay. I'll have to talk to Netherworld about making sure the volume, just the ambient volume is up loud enough on that game in that case because it's pretty rough that it was actually in pin golf because this would be pretty much the first time anyone had seen the game because it had only been unboxed this week. And it's like, oh, yeah, now it's in pin golf. It pretty much reminds me of The Wizard, you know, the movie The Wizard, where they had to play that sight unseen game that no one's ever really played before. It's like, come on, guys. Like the goal was complete a mode and get a SIM card. How do you even do that? Right. I don't even know how to start a mode, let alone complete one. Exactly. It's like, how do we even get that? And then the other one was start a multi-ball, which seemed – I managed to light lock at some point, but shooting up that ramp, I just was having a lot of trouble getting it up that side ramp to actually lock the balls. And I was going, oh, wow, this is like a punishment. But it was a really fun punishment. I actually started – on one of the games, it wasn't a score-based challenge, of course, so I just went, well, I'm going to do the classic thing you do and pinball and just shoot the flashing things. Right. Because that's generally a good strategy to do. And by shooting the flashing things, I got 130,000 on it. So that seems fine. Which is, I was going to say, and, you know, this is Jersey Jack pin scoring, so 130,000 is pretty dang good. It's nothing to be sneezed at. When your average score of playing and not knowing what you're doing on that table. Exactly. 25, 30,000. It's pretty normal. Yeah. So I was happy with that performance. Did the machine take snapshots of you while you were playing? No, I didn't enter selfie mode. Oh, you didn't get selfie mode? No, no, I didn't get selfie mode. I was totally unprepared for selfie mode, so I didn't know to pose for the camera. Well, I may have got selfie mode, but I couldn't hear a thing. So I wouldn't have known that selfie mode was even going because it was that loud in there. Gotcha.
    33:37
    But it was, man, that game, just everything about it flows well. I could see why it won that many awards this year because from a game that when it was announced, everyone's going, Oh, it's a mobile phone game. What's going on guys. So when you actually play it and stand in front of it and interact with you, go, I can see why this is $14,000 worth. Like this is worth every cent of that. Um, so, well, this is, this is the, it's that grand experiment of, this is the first non-licensed, uh,
    34:11
    pin. to come out who knows how long right yeah and there was that big question of well is anybody gonna latch on to it but damn if they didn't nail the art and style that draws you in when you're standing there over the table it draws you in and then once you start playing it you start recognizing little little lullerisms there's there's mob and uh you know his secret hideaway and, you know, boy, this sure does seem like a, well, is that a whirlwind coming through here? Yeah. It's got so many homages to the other pinball machines he's done. I love it. It's basically a pinball geek's wet dream, basically, this game.
    34:57
    It's fantastic. So I had a thought, and this, again, goes back to me trolling the threads, seeing what was new, but there was an idea of, hey, how about this next season is nothing but System 11 tables. for Pimble Arcade since none of them are licensed, or I shouldn't say none of them, most of them. I think there's only two that carry any sort of a license. Roller Games being one. Roller Games being one, and I forget what the other one was. But very loose light licensing.
    35:25
    But beyond that, there's still like 11 other tables that can be done. And so what I said was System 11 machines to me are the equivalent of when you're at the end of say like when the PlayStation 3 was the end of its cycle,
    35:41
    you got some phenomenal AAA titles that seemed like they were squeezing out every last bit of juice that that system could handle.
    35:53
    And so you got this phenomenal play, phenomenal looks, everything was just clicking on all cylinders. And then the PS4 comes out and the first titles that come out for it, they might have some new shiny bells and whistles that weren't being able to, you wouldn't have been able to play on the PS3. But beyond that, the gameplay itself, the rule sets, are almost a step backwards.
    36:16
    You've been given too much, and they don't know what to do with it, and so they've lost their focus, and it just kind of goes, rah, scattershot. So I kind of felt that that was the way when your first DMD games came out, that there was nothing innovative going on immediately, because they were so focused on the DMD that they forgot to focus on the actual play field and flipping. And then eventually, you know, things got a lot better.
    36:41
    And then obviously Williams goes away and Stern comes in and tries. But there was some, you know, it was that that's where you all of a sudden, oh, gee, look, it's the slot machine LED lights again, you know, on a play field. and you're really trying to force something and it took a little while before Stern finally got up and got their feet underneath them and started producing much, much, much better tables. And I feel that we're at the same cycle now with them going to these screens instead of the DMV, where they're putting all their focus on the screen and there's been a sacrifice in the gameplay to go along with it. And I'm wondering when exactly are returning that corner. Because I feel that dialed in was a turn of the corner for JGP. I'll be really curious to see their Pirates of the Caribbean table and how that is. But unfortunately, we're back to a wide body with that, I believe. Yeah. Well, they need a wide body for that. That's basically like five people pursuing the one that came. So yeah, they need a wide body. Yeah, I don't know that you need the wide body or not. I think it's special circumstances. But if they want to do nothing but wide bodies, fine. Have at it. Maybe at some point they'll figure out how to make him a little more fun.
    38:06
    But I wondering with Stern I feel that they going And I mainly say this based off of playing Guardians and playing Star Wars where so much of it was about selecting your modes and your characters up on the screen rather than concentrating on what's actually going on on the table itself. It's really interesting because at Netherworld, they've got Daldin right next to Star Wars, and it honestly just makes Star Wars look like something from the 90s. I can't say anything else about it I'm sorry not Star Wars, Batman 66 it's just like are these from the same decade it's unbelievable even from the same half decade they just don't look anything alike so well you gotta remember Batman 66 is just basically a reskin of Dark Knight Dark Knight. With the LED or with the monitor thrown on top.
    39:12
    Yeah. And it absolutely screams that when you put it up next to something that actually is more accomplished.
    39:19
    So, yeah. I mean, to Stern's credit, the rule set and how that game plays is far better than when Netherworld first got that table. It was basically just a horrible thing to play. But it's actually quite enjoyable now. that being said though within the first five minutes of me playing it had more stuff going on than that thing had in the first nine months ago. And maybe you want to play it again Oh yeah If it wasn't a pin golf machine yesterday I'd just be sitting on it all day and basically then I would just pay back it into that machine for the first couple of weeks because that's where it'll be going so yeah I'll be going back there for sure when I'm in the office next week so there's that and then a bit of a project update if you'll indulge me so at the point now where I verithaned a playfield once and I think we covered last episode that I realized that it was actually an oil-based verithane so what I decided to do I've been doing a lot of research on paints and how you can actually use different types of paints together. And the evidence I've seen to date suggests that providing you let your paint cure for long enough, you can use anything over anything and providing you actually provide a surface to key into. So the key with paint is if you try and, like, for example, lay down an oil-based coat and then quickly thereafter lay down a water-based coat, they're going to react. The reason is they skin over and they basically build up.
    41:14
    The gases can't escape, so they bubble and all that sort of stuff. But if you let them cure for long enough and you treat the surface well, you can get away with it. So I think what I'm going to do, it's been sitting there now for a week.
    41:29
    I think it's good. Yeah. And most of the smell, like you can still, if you put your nose right up to the play field and you smell it, yes, you can still smell the fact that it's got some painty smell to it. But, like, if you walk into the room, you don't get that odour that you get with oil-based paint. You don't get the volatile organic compound, the VOC smell that you get. so I think now is the time for me to actually get that with a bit of sandpaper sand it down with probably 1200 grit sandpaper and see where I'm at and I think I don't I actually was speaking to someone at um netherworld yesterday who was telling me about that that stingray that was on the floor there has a fair bit of playfield wear so the owner will be taking it away and getting it clear coded and he was saying that he was actually thinking of getting the playfield touched up as well but he said to do that would actually be prohibitively expensive through this guy who does it because like you've got to like freak well you know you've got to frisk it everything off and yeah it takes a lot of hours to do it right and he just doesn't know he doesn't have the time to do that nor the expertise and the guy was saying look unless you are very very good at playful touch-up and unless you have a pinball playfield that is low enough in graphical complexity that you can mask it off like we're talking EMs in that era of game that were very sort of clear in the way they actually structure their playfields it's going to be very hard for you to get a good result on the playfield so it might just be better to lock it in and leave it at that and I went I think I'm almost leaning towards that with Star Race. There's a few areas now that have a bit of rub off on them.
    43:24
    I'm almost going, do I go to the trouble of doing it? Because if I do it wrong, it's going to look rubbish.
    43:33
    And even if I do it right, there's probably going to be a color mismatch. Because really the only way you're going to get the right color is to mix the colors yourself. And that's not something I'm really great at. so what I think I can achieve though is redoing the white and underneath all the inserts I think that's something that's within my wheelhouse to be able to achieve sure um so I'll give that a go because that's that's pretty that's just one solid color and I think that'll be fine I'll do that um and maybe um in the areas where the black has rubbed off a bit I might look at doing the black because, again, solid colour. But if there's any art rub off where there's, like, patterns or stuff like that, it's like, no, I'm not going there. I just don't feel comfortable doing it. And I'm going to be doing it with Verithane and I'm not going to be doing it with Tupac. So I think it's to the point now where I'm comfortable with the level of restoration I'm wanting to do on it because I don't want to be that guy that then, you know, sells this table or gets rid of it down the track and goes, and then the next owner goes, oh, I'd like to restore this playfield. He goes, what has this guy done to this thing? What horrors has he done to this playfield? I'm now going to have to try and work around. You know, with my firepower, I mean, that's obviously right where I was for a long time with, you know, what do I do? Do I ruin it if I do this? But everybody on pin side was just like, well, why don't you just buy the CPR playfield? because the CPR playfield costs more than what I paid for the pin itself.
    45:12
    But that also made me realize that anybody that wants a restored firepower is going to go that route. They're not going to. They're just going to do it. Yeah, they're not going to repaint or do anything of this. So it is entirely me doing what I'm comfortable with. And so I am just kind of using this as a project,
    45:33
    see what I'm capable of. And I pretty much already know what I'm capable of. So whenever I buy a future pinball machine, it's going to be in a lot better shape. What? Yeah. Exactly right. So yeah, totally. And I think that's, that's the same for me too. I know now what I'm comfortable doing. I'm totally fine with getting all the, you know, the Mylar and adhesive off. But yes, when we're looking at, when we're looking at doing a full playfield restoration,
    46:00
    I'm cutting, I'm drawing the line on the sand where I just, I just re-verithane to get that surface back on again yeah most likely just leave it there and that's fine by me yep hey folks we're going to get to wrapping it up which you know us that means talking for a little bit more but still we're going to get the business out of the way which is hey have you dropped us an email anytime soon we know you haven't because we haven't gotten any If you want to, go ahead and do it. It's blahblahblockade at gmail.com.
    46:37
    And by doing that, you can point us in the direction of whatever you would like us to discuss in future podcasts. We can answer questions or address comments, whatever.
    46:48
    Make sure you follow the show on Twitter, at Blockade. there you will get updates and whatever likes we do, links to other tweets that we care about for the week. You can also follow us individually. I am at ShutYourTrap. He is at Jared Morgs. Excuse me, Jared Morgs. And then of course there is the newly refreshed website which is blockadepinball.com slash episodes. If you would go over there, you'll notice that I continue to drop movie reviews, and I have just dropped my movie review of Black Panther, so it is there for you all to check out. Sure, I'll have to go ahead and check that out. Yeah, you know, I made a point with that particular review that it doesn't matter what anybody says, you're going to either go see it because you want to see it, or you have no interest in Marvel movies, therefore you're not going to go see it. But it does come about. I had just reviewed Maze Runner or The Death Cure and just shat all over it. Yeah, you saved me a lot of time. Yes, and some of the very reasons that I dislike that are the very reasons why I like Black Panther. The main thing is it is a completely self-contained movie. It is not dependent on you having seen any of the other Marvel movies.
    48:19
    I love those because I I'm well and truly bankrupt from that perspective. Yeah, and anything that was from a previous Marvel movie, they do enough of an update to get you up to speed so that you're familiar with who the characters are and why they're in the situation they are. And it's not until if you stick around all the way past the very end credits to the final 90 seconds of screen time before you get up and out of your seat, that's the only time where there's a direct reference to any of the other Marvel movies where you'd go huh? if you didn't know who the character is that they're referring to so that's what I say it's a completely self-contained movie that can live and die entirely on its own and I really appreciated that aspect of it so why don't you go head over to our site there and read up on that I will, I've actually been finding your reviews very interesting. So I would recommend if you haven't been checking out Chris's reviews on the site, go and check them out because they might end up saving you a whole lot of waste of time with movies that you might not have seen yet. And yeah, that you really shouldn't be investing anything in whatsoever.
    49:42
    So yes, I appreciate it. I'm finally caught up, for the most part, on the backlog of movies, and so now I'll be current with whatever's coming out. I'll be going and seeing because I've kind of gotten everything else out of the way. So, yeah, that's that.
    50:00
    All right. Do we have any other business to cover? I don't think so. I think we're all done for the week. Well, how about that? All right, folks. We'll be back next week. Obviously, again, we'll be talking about the Jurassic Park tables on Pinball FX3 and hopefully we'll have something to mention about Banzai Run. So until then, thanks for listening. See you later. All right, bye-bye.
    50:25
    WizardAmusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter modes. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com, sales, restoration, customization.
    50:41
    Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that Blockade is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.