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Rick and Morty Pinball Designer Scott Danesi / Prog Eric P Spooky Pinball VideoCast 2 (podcast #127}

Spooky Pinball·video·43m 5s·held·Oct 1, 2020
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Rick and Morty pinball designers detail development from 2017 greenlight through production.

Summary

Spooky Pinball podcast episode featuring designers Scott Danesi and programmer Eric Priepke discussing the complete development process of Rick and Morty pinball from conception through production. Covers design methodology (SolidWorks-based iterative approach), licensing/greenlight timing (2017), theme selection, code implementation challenges (particularly the innovative locking mechanism), playtesting, and satisfying design details. Shows deep collaboration between designer, programmer, and testing team with specific examples of mechanical innovations like the pop bumper placement and MagnaSave implementation.

Key Claims

  • Rick and Morty greenlight decision happened at Southern Pride Game Room Expo around 2017

    high confidence · Scott Danesi stated directly in podcast

  • Scott Danesi had already designed the horseshoe locking mechanism before greenlight, during TNA production

    high confidence · Scott Danesi: 'I had already been drawing like drawing mechanisms and things that I wanted I wanted to put in the machine'

  • Eric Priepke was specifically requested by Scott Danesi to program Rick and Morty after TNA, following Scott's preference not to program his own designs

    high confidence · Eric Priepke confirmed Scott said during TNA production he wanted Eric to program the next game

  • Spooky watched the entire Rick and Morty series together in a retreat to plan basic rule skeleton before full production

    high confidence · Eric Priepke: 'there had already been the retreat that you guys did where you watched the entire series together and took notes'

  • Scott Danesi uses a SolidWorks-based iterative design process: print blank playfield, draw on it, build 3D elements, print again, repeat

    high confidence · Scott Danesi detailed his design methodology at length in the podcast

  • The pop bumper was placed between the flippers instead of a sling, inspired by games like Andromeda, and was the second major element added after the horseshoe lock

    high confidence · Scott Danesi: 'The pop bumper. I bet you people could probably guess that.'

  • The Rick and Morty locking mechanism is physically complex: ball can move inside lock, 50% of movement is not on a switch, and both ends can open at any time

    high confidence · Eric Priepke described the lock as the biggest programming challenge

  • MagnaSave was added late in development as a negotiating tool for cost reduction but ended up staying in the final game because Charlie (likely Charlie Emery, CEO) loved it

    high confidence · Scott Danesi: 'Charlie came over realize there's a slice of pizza on your head... Charlie was playing the game, and he goes, we absolutely cannot remove the MagnaSave'

Notable Quotes

  • “I do everything in solidworks in 3d as you can probably tell I have control over over everything then you know it's not just like a 2d drawing, I can make flippers move or inserts move”

    Scott Danesi @ ~7:30 — Reveals core design methodology using 3D CAD for complete control and iteration

  • “I really wanted to put a pop bumper instead of a sling because it's something that's just so crazy. And if any of you played a game like Andromeda, that pop bumper being right there is really cool”

    Scott Danesi @ ~12:00 — Explains mechanical design choice and inspiration from classic game design

  • “Scott had been saying, even during the TMA production, if I design another game, I don't want to program it. I want you to program it.”

    Eric Priepke @ ~18:00 — Shows collaborative relationship and intentional division of labor between designer and programmer

  • “Somebody actually dug up a post I made on Pinside years before the project ever started in one of those. What theme would you like to see threads where I said, I'd really like to see Rick and Morty, but I don't think there's enough following for that.”

    Eric Priepke @ ~25:00 — Humorous irony of Eric wanting Rick and Morty before becoming programmer on it; shows how niche show was early on

  • “when I'm watching people play this thing and I'm watching the pop bumper make shots for people, that to me is the coolest thing”

    Scott Danesi @ ~55:00 — Indicates satisfaction with a key mechanical feature after code adjustments made it work properly

  • “Physical ball locks are just a headache no matter what. Now, imagine a physical ball lock where the ball can move around inside the lock. And for 50% of that moving around, it not on a switch. So you don't know if it there or not.”

    Eric Priepke @ ~90:00 — Technical explanation of the specific programming complexity of Rick and Morty's unique lock mechanism

  • “Charlie came over... he goes, we absolutely cannot remove the MagnaSave. It's so fun.”

Entities

Scott DanesipersonEric PriepkepersonBugpersonDavid Van Esperson[name withheld pending review]personCharlie EmerypersonRick and Mortygame

Signals

  • ?

    design_innovation: Rick and Morty features a unique horseshoe locking mechanism that allows ball movement within the lock with 50% of movement untracked by switches and both ends capable of opening independently. This represents significant innovation in lock design.

    high · Scott Danesi prioritized locking mechanism design early; Eric Priepke identified it as biggest programming challenge due to complexity

  • ?

    design_innovation: Pop bumper placed between flippers instead of traditional sling position, inspired by classic game Andromeda. Provides unusual action and gameplay.

    high · Scott Danesi: 'I really wanted to put a pop bumper instead of a sling because it's something that's just so crazy'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Designer Scott Danesi employs iterative SolidWorks-based approach: create blank field, hand-draw mockups on printed layouts, build 3D elements incrementally, print and redraw. Discards all intermediate drawings.

    high · Scott Danesi detailed full methodology with specific examples of layering flippers, locks, pop bumpers in sequence

  • ?

    product_strategy: MagnaSave was intentionally added late as a negotiating tool for cost reduction but was retained after executive playtesting showed player value.

    high · Scott Danesi: 'i actually threw in something in the game that we could remove as like a as a thing to give me leverage when the negotiations happened'

  • ?

    design_innovation: MagnaSave uses bouncing/pulsing effect rather than holding the ball, making it a skill-based tool rather than guaranteed save. Scott believes this hasn't been done this way since Black Knight.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.129

0:00
Greetings spooky pinball podcast listeners and welcome to episode 127 of the spooky pinball podcast. I am your host Bug and today as you can see if you're watching we are doing a little bit different format again for like the third time in a row. And I'm joined here with three other guests on zoom right now, because we're all miles and miles apart from each other. So I'm joined here with in my top left corner, Mr. David Vaness. And in my bottom left corner, I got Mr. Scott Denise, the designer of Rick and Morty.
0:50
And in my bottom right corner, I got Mr. Eric. Eric! Close enough. So this month, we're trying something a little different. David's in Texas at the moment, so doing the full studio setup just wasn't going to work out. And we decided to do a Zoom meeting between the four of us. And what we're going to talk about is we're going to talk about the entire process of Rick and Morty from start to finish, pretty much. So napkin drawing to where we are today on the line, quite a ways deep into production now. So we're just going to roll with it. We'll do all one long take here. We'll take breaks for EM Dungeon and Danny Peck's segment and the Pinball Life giveaway and whatnot. But yeah, we're just going to go with it now. So from the top here, Mr. Scott Denisey. Hello.
1:46
You did TNA. Everybody knows this. You did TNA. I did. After TNA was a big success, a lot of the questions were, when's Scott doing the next game? So how long would you say after Total Nuclear, did you know you were doing the next spooky game? Because you had ideas during Total Nuclear for the next game, but how long would you say till you knew, yeah, I'm doing another spooky pinball game? Well, so we basically knew at like Southern Pride Game Room Expo, I think it was 2017 maybe. we knew we were going to go ahead and just start you know green lighting the the project and and getting rolling with it but at that point in time I had already been drawing like drawing mechanisms and things that I wanted I wanted to put in the machine so for instance the big thing is that new locking mechanism that's in Rick and Morty that one I had drawn out and tried to figure out you know how I can potentially get it to work but that was actually the first piece besides the flippers that went into the solidworks drawing because I don't know if a lot of you guys know or not I talked about this a little bit in the past but I do everything in solidworks in 3d as you can probably tell I have control over over everything then you know it's not just like a 2d drawing, I can make flippers move or inserts move where the elbow inserts don't move. But you know, you know where I'm getting at. But so I, the first thing I did was put the flippers down. And then what I did was I aligned that locking mechanism in the middle and started going from there and then building outward from that. You know, it just, you know, just kind of got crazy after that. But yeah, we knew pretty early on that it was a go and that Rick and Morty was like one of the top contenders at that point. But yeah. So you literally in your SolidWorks program have a blank play field layout, right? I do. I start from scratch every time. You've got the idea in your mind and you go to your program and you literally would just draw down essentially the horseshoe lock from start to finish. Yeah. So what really works for me and how I go about doing is I do have a blank play field and I put in something like, you know, just basic stuff like flippers and some other like little things here and there, maybe lane guides or something. And what I'll do is instead of trying to prototype things in 3D because it's not very quick to prototype things in, I will actually just print that out. so I have a blank play field with flippers in the place where I want them and print it start drawing on it some more when I find something I like then I'll take that drawing and then start building that in 3d and then I'll print it again with the 3d stuff that I already did and I'll draw on it again and I'll just keep iterating and doing that unfortunately I throw all that stuff away I probably should have kept those now that I said that I probably shouldn't even omitted that but yeah what was the second thing you threw onto the game after the horseshoe The pop bumper. I bet you people could probably guess that. I really wanted to put a pop bumper instead of a sling because it's something that's just so crazy. And if any of you played a game like Andromeda, that pop bumper being right there is really cool and it has a lot of different action that you don't normally see. yeah there's a number of old games some of them are crazy enough that the pop is like in between the flippers and you have tiny flippers and whatnot and we weren't that cruel but we could have been this game is cruel enough as it is exactly exactly so eric uh for a long time david uh phasma was always our programmer and then when rick and morty came along we essentially allowed Scott to assemble a whole new team of people to work on this game. So how early on in the process did you know you were going to be a part of this process?

  • The Rick and Morty MagnaSave implementation differs from traditional saves—it has a bouncing effect rather than holding the ball, making it a tool rather than guaranteed save

    high confidence · Scott Danesi contrasted it with past implementations, citing Black Knight as potentially the last similar design

  • The game is deliberately difficult and the challenge was balancing story pacing with player frustration in code design

    high confidence · Scott Danesi: 'it's a very hard game though and I think that's one of the one of the things that's probably makes Eric's job a little bit tough too'

    • Scott Danesi @ ~75:00 — Shows business decision-making and executive input on mechanical features, and MagnaSave's importance to final product

  • “i actually threw in something in the game that we could remove as like a as a thing to give me leverage when the negotiations happened where we needed to remove money out of the game and that was the magna save”

    Scott Danesi @ ~74:00 — Reveals designer strategy in cost negotiations; shows MagnaSave was initially a negotiating position, not guaranteed inclusion

  • “the most rewarding thing for me is making sure that the key shots in the game flow nicely and helping other people to adjust them so they do”

    Bug (Host/Playtester) @ ~62:00 — Shows testing-phase satisfaction and knowledge transfer; playtest team building at production facility

  • “i like that a lot it's unconventional... when you can do things like oh you shouldn't do that because traditionally you shouldn't do it and you do it and it's successful”

    Bug @ ~68:00 — Highlights design philosophy valuing emergent, unconventional play strategies within rule structure

    • Total Nuclear Annihilation
    game
    Spooky Pinballcompany
    Pinball Lifecompany
    Southern Pride Game Room Expoevent
    Andromedagame
    Black Knightgame
    IFPAorganization
    Pinsideorganization

    high · Scott Danesi contrasts innovative bouncing MagnaSave with traditional ball-holding implementations

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Game is deliberately difficult; design team balanced story pacing against player frustration. Playtester training reveals shot consistency and flipper control are critical.

    high · Scott Danesi noted game is 'very hard'; Bug described training others on shot feeds and flipper technique

  • ?

    design_innovation: Dimension-based rule variation system allows rule changes, playfield feature deactivation/reorientation, and scoring multipliers. Over 100 dimension concepts were developed and filtered down.

    high · Scott Danesi and Eric Priepke discussed dimension brainstorming and how dimensions change fundamental game behavior

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Scott Danesi deliberately requested Eric Priepke as programmer, declining to program his own design. Shows structured designer/programmer division of labor at Spooky.

    high · Eric Priepke: 'Scott had been saying, even during the TMA production, if I design another game, I don't want to program it'

  • ?

    product_launch: Rick and Morty is in active production and playtesting phase at time of podcast (likely mid-2020 based on context). Prototype exists at Pinball Life; multiple production units being tested.

    high · Podcast discusses active playtesting, code adjustments, prototype at Pinball Life, and training new testers

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Spooky has developed internal playtesting capability and training processes for production workers at manufacturing facility. Bug's role shows formalized quality control and playtest standardization.

    medium · Bug describes training new employees on playtest procedures and shot consistency in the shop

  • ?

    community_signal: Rick and Morty show grew from niche (Season 1-early 2) to mainstream hit (mid-Season 2 onwards). Eric Priepke's old forum post showed doubt about sufficient following pre-popularity surge.

    high · Multiple speakers confirmed show grew from niche to massive following; Eric's old Pinside post predicted insufficient audience

  • ?

    content_signal: Spooky Pinball podcast format includes live playtesting demos, designer interviews, and integration of adjacent businesses (Pinball Life merchandise giveaways, venue fundraisers).

    high · Episode structure shows podcast segments, product giveaways, community fundraising integration

    • 5:54
    Well, Scott had been saying, even during the TMA production, if I design another game, I don't want to program it. I want you to program it. And it was always sort of a, yeah, sure, Scott, we'll do that someday and didn't really take it seriously. And then it was after the license was locked down and after I think even the Whitewood was done and there had already been the retreat that you guys did where you watched the entire series together and took notes and stuff and like fleshed out the basic skeleton for what the rules were going to be as far as the dimensions and the magazines all that happened before he even offered it to me and then it was hey I really actually want you to do this and by the way it's Rick and Morty and And then it was, there was no stopping me from doing whatever it took to get into the crew working on it then. Because by that point, you thought it was still just a haunted house party, right? Yeah, well, I don't really know what, I don't even know if I had a fake name by that point. But, yeah, he didn't really talk too much about it other than he had the Whitewood, I think, already at Pinball Life flipping before he told me that, what the theme was. yeah i think that was i think that was it i knew and i knew like deep down that if i told you what the theme was i could i could get you on board so i kind of yeah i mean i probably would have been on board anyway but it was definitely a big sweetener to the deal i think you had a when you told them what title it was yeah that's perfect come on if it was it was if it was little My Little Pony, Eric, you would have been on it, right? Maybe.
    7:39
    Somebody actually dug up a post I made on Pinside years before the project ever started in one of those. What theme would you like to see threads where I said, I'd really like to see Rick and Morty, but I don't think there's enough following for that. And it was like two years before this. There's at least 750 of them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, early on in that show, it didn't catch on necessarily right away. it was probably late second season early third season when the show really started to catch on and hit it big it was yeah and i think it was during the second season i made that post well okay it's very niche for a while there and then yeah it just took off people realize they finally got their hands on it bug when did you start watching rick and morty did you see it from the beginning or did you what what season did you where did you pick up where did you first coming to Rick and Morty? So I got into it about halfway through season two. I had a family trip down to Kentucky for the 4th of July. And one of my co-workers, AJ, who a lot of people know AJ, he was telling me, hey, you have like a nine hour drive, don't you? And I was like, yeah. And it's with my mom and sister. So like dad wasn't even going to be there. So I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do to kill nine hours. And he was like, Oh, you should check out this show, Rick and Morty. It'll be right up your alley and I think you'll really enjoy it. And I was like, okay, uh, sure. I mean, I'm not going to say no, I have nine hours to kill. So, uh, downloaded a whole bunch of episodes on the Kindle. Uh, I bought the first season on Amazon. It was like $10 and I was like, okay, yeah, it's worth it. So I bought the first season on the Kindle and I just sprawled out in the back seat and I started watching and, uh, it was about the first or second episode deep where I just started hysterically laughing in the back seat of the car and mom was just leaning back like what are you doing like what are you watching and I was like I'm not gonna repeat what they're saying to you but it's really funny so I got into it big time right around then I marathoned the whole first season on that road trip and when I got back I was like dad you really need to watch this I think you'll find it hilarious and he did we watched the whole first season again and then we got season two and it was yeah it that's about the time when we started getting into it into it I was probably uh I'm gonna say a freshman or a sophomore I think sophomore I was it was like in the summer before I was a sophomore in high school and uh I'm graduated from high school now and building them full time so what about you how long it takes what was that scott when did you get into it when did you discover rick and morty so i started watching it in the first season about halfway through the first season i forgot which friend told me to watch it but there were multiple people uh coming to me and saying scott you got to see this this is exactly the kind of show that you would love you know because i'm i was a huge south park fan and uh they're like you got to just watch this thing like just give it a chance do this and it was like after after like three people tell you that you kind of like okay okay okay you know I gonna go check it out So I started watching it then and then just couldn stop after that Like it just such a well show It so great But yeah I kept with it. So I had, I had my phone, I was actually watching it on my phone. Like, you know, when I go to bed on Sundays, so it's like,
    11:05
    Eric, what about you, mate? I was watching it from the first episode aired. what i was on board i watched it before and then what about you david when did you start getting into it i it was definitely in season two so um i heard it from a few friends and then obviously it peaked up on the spooky you know like what could we get with spooky um so i went back and uh picking up from episode one i will say a couple of episodes like i'm i like i like it but i'm not sure what to make of it yet and then like you get to some of those episodes you know with snowball and stuff and you're like not snowball uh brain freeze i got snowball from simpsons
    11:56
    the dog episode oh eric snuffles snuffles there you go and it's just like episodes like that that like I well they just can't you know it speaks on a level of like intelligence and just far thinking of like wow there's some deep I mean as much as it's comedy but there's really intelligent humor in this you know I mean there's just straight up humor that humor and it's just like what but um yeah I was second in the second season then obviously when we became interested it then went further into it so no i wouldn't miss it for the world i'm sorry no it's all good keep going i knew i was hooked on it when i think it's like five or six episodes deep and it's the episode where they replace themselves in a different dimension because they cronenberg the whole world and it was the darkest but funniest ending to a tv show episode i'd ever seen and that was completely in like oh i gotta see what else is gonna happen in this show because that's so messed up but so clever and well written too at the same time well that was the first episode that was actually really real consequences to their actions like from that point everyone's life completely shifted you know that's a cartoon so we don't need to go into that this could get really dark really fast so so obviously we really all enjoyed the the the series um eric let's talk about you know creating the adventures and stuff and like i know you know the fun part is when we get to be creative and just like what if what if let's do this but the programming side of it can you take us through some of like um this is the most amazing thing and like this is this sucks and i just want to quit well i i've never gotten to the this sucks and i want to quit part but the the thing that's the most challenging especially with trying to tell the adventures stories is coming up with a way we can kind of have the player take part in it with what's on the play field and be able to construct it and show it to the player given the assets that we have from the show and what tweaks we can or can't make and things that you know limitations that we have to work within because we decided to for the most part do the display as video from the show that kind of locks us into certain things like you know like with some other games you don't necessarily see the exact representation of the source material right on the screen because we're doing that we everything has to look as good as that or at least look like it blends in with that. So the tricky bit that I spend most of my time trying to figure out how we're going to work around is when we're drafting out, let's do this new adventure. The number one thing I'm concerned with is how are we going to present it on the screen, because that's where most of our limitations are. And then after that, we start to figure out, okay, what would make the rules for this make sense, so that it integrates well with what the player is doing to what the story is without going too detailed into all the little steps because it would just be tedious yeah no and that part dimension well and that's what's important right like the immersion of the player and it's like we want to make sure that the the person that's playing it because it's obviously from the perception that everyone is morty right so we want to make sure when you're playing it you're feeling like you're a part of that adventure you're you're interacting with that um and that's the you know that's the tedious bit that uh you know eric and me i'm surprised he doesn't want to kill me yet but you know it's just going back and forth figuring out what's the best representation and what's the simplest way can we portray that to the player right like how can we make them feel like they're a part of that and um there's i mean there's tons of stuff that go back and forth that some of you you guys will never see but it's just part of that natural progression of how do we communicate and how do we get that experience in a pinball format which is like I don't know why we do it we're on our fifth game and it's just like we seem to keep managing to do it so let's just keep at it right and Eric's in an interesting position where he has to logistically think about all the crazy ideas we throw at him for dimensions too like because i remember when we first got this there was there had to have been a hundred different dimension ideas that everybody had and it was like oh we gotta write this down we gotta write that one down and of course like not everything sticks that you want to stick but i like to think that the dimensions in the game are very very unique uh each of their own from the wilhelm scream dimension which is just for laughs or a fart dimension for laughs so dimensions where things are literally deactivated like the flipper or the the pop bumper or flippers might be a different orientated differently and i think that's one of the stronger points in the game in general is the fact that we can literally change everything about the game just by getting into a different dimension and play testing on the line and you're trying to hit the right orbit and you go into a dimension and all of a sudden that flipper blocks the shot every time you do it it's really hard to play test that game actually go to scott what is some of maybe uh little things that you're proud of like we've got you've got the finished game you obviously you're playing it um what are there little are there little things that amuse you that like people wouldn't see typically like are there little things that make you smile that go oh man that's just you know that was satisfying you know just any little details that you can think of about the game that you know I can't believe we did that or something like that. Yeah, I mean, for me, honestly, when I'm watching people play this thing and I'm watching the pop bumper make shots for people, that to me is the coolest thing. And that was something at first that we were playing with the pop bumper strength. Eric, do you remember that right away at first? We were like, oh, we just overlooked it or something in some version of the code. And it was like, I don't know, there's a few weeks when we were play testing it and the pop bumper was just like very weak and it wasn't making shots and all of a sudden we were like oh we just need to change this one thing because we forgot about it and the pop bumper just like came alive and was just getting crazy but uh that to me is the number one thing that's just the the best little thing that that game does um i'm really happy with how the lock mechanism turned out as well um when you get uh when you get that game like completely nice and level it really like the one I've got at pinball life we've got a prototype there I've got that thing just it's perfectly level and that thing shoots every time all the way through there at a million miles an hour it's really fun you know it's a very hard game though and I think that's one of the things that's probably makes Eric's job a little bit tough too because you have to tell the story quickly and also make sure that the the player doesn't feel frustrated by it you know as well but yeah there's all sorts of other little things in here too i mean just having to do with the geometry um every little thing on this play field has been looked at for hours like whether it's a post or you know the width of an entry for a ramp or something or the width of anything or the the outward angle of the horseshoe or the outward angle of the scoop there's like there's so much stuff and it just it's uh it's so rewarding to see this thing you know all together and people enjoying it it's crazy okay bug what about you since you are playtesting the the doozy out of this game what are some of the small things that you really like about this title and it amuses you oh right now one of my favorite things to do is, so I just learned how to start playtesting probably about four or five months ago now. I have a horrible time keeping track of times anymore. But so in that time, I learned how to playtest. And I already obviously was, I could play the game pretty decently, but I didn't know how to actually work on the game and fix the game in certain situations. And I've hit a point on the line lately, where I've got a very comfortable understanding of how the game should feel. and I enjoy that at the end of the week I have a handful of people at work that will say hey can you come flip this game and tell me if there's anything I should adjust and I go over and I can like sit them down and be like okay here's what you should look for you should always be able to backhand this right ramp just like this and they're like oh okay and I can show them like this is how your subway exit off the left ramp needs to feed most of the time here's how your habit trail entry should feed. So right now the most rewarding thing for me is making sure that the key shots in the game flow nicely and helping other people to adjust them so they do because it's really cool to see everybody in the shop as you train them grow into actually being able to play a pretty decent game just because they working on it all the time So in the last month here I trained a couple new guys on playtesting And it really cool to see how quickly people can understand the game just in a short amount of time of working with them one and getting them to understand what makes the shots feel good how you need to adjust your flippers and all that and so I find that very rewarding is actually just helping people to understand certain things in it so that every once in a while I can get that in orbit like six times and that feels great all right eric over to you mate as far as satisfying bits of the game you mean yeah absolutely um well i'm kind of surprised scott didn't mention the virtual orbit because he always talks about that one where the the far right automatically hits your left in lane like yeah i do love that but and probably physically my favorite part of is the same thing Scott said, having a ball hit the top of the pop bumper and then just happen to go into a lock for you or go around the loop back and set up an upper flipper shot. It's just that's as simple as it is. It's a really, really cool thing to happen during the game. And then the other thing I guess that when you're playing that, you know, that happens that really kind of feels really good is when you get the dimension that lines up really well with whatever adventure you're doing like if you get the new one that multiplies the scoring on the right half of the play field while you're doing blood dome and all of a sudden those shots are worth a mint that's you know it sucks eric when you get uh the tna dimension and you get parts of the pancreas right you're getting that big zero nothing yeah time to change dimensions before you try and make any shots yeah so uh so for me uh what i actually enjoy the most is going into like pickle uh pickle rick that is actually different than shooting the scoop i always enjoy that it calls out to you to go to the garage but what i actually like is trapping the ball and just backhanding the pop to count up to you know to uh kill the the rats and it's like oh you shouldn't do that but it's actually you can keep it under control really really well like everyone goes oh no that pop bumper is gonna kill the ball you know you can trap up i mean it gets a little bit dicey but you literally just trap up and you backhand that pop bumper and it works every time you know but if you try to do it while it's wild it sucks but you know but apart from that like everyone goes oh you just can't do that so no you just trap up just backhand it like you do you know like a post pass you know and that's probably what i you know one of the things i like is like when you can do things like oh you shouldn't do that because traditionally you shouldn't do it and you do it and it's successful so i just like that mode because a it's different from all the other adventures um and then like who seriously goes like yeah you gotta shoot the pop bumper to advance on purpose i like that i like that a lot it's unconventional so uh real quick here on the audio side for the podcast this is where we're going to go into our other segments the EM dungeon and dangerous Danny Peck's segment and on our way back from there real quick I want to talk about a go fund me for save cabin fever it is a pinball beer in vinyl shop there's a go fund me they're having a hard time with the pandemic currently and staying open so if you get the chance go over to the safe cabin fever on go fund me there they have a goal of $10,000 and they're already at $7,000 so make sure you go check that out and kick over a few bucks so that a cool location stays live that'd be really cool and okay yeah we are back so uh real quick while I have a fine fine pinball life employee with me let's do a quick pinball life giveaway all right So this month, and I can show it because I'm on camera, we are giving away a, oh no. Oh, it's blown out. I can't show it. Okay, well that's a shooter rod. It's a bally pointed shooter rod from Pinball Life. Brought to you by Terry, Margaret, Scott Denisey, and all the other amazing people over at Pinball Life. if you want to go to their website at pinballlife.com you can get this bally pointed shooter rod for $9.95 this is the nickel plated shooter rod used in early bally games it does not fit the stern shooter housings so you you're using this for your older restorations but uh if you are looking to win the bally pointed shooter rod you're going to email bug at spookypinball.com and your question is what's the question Scott?
    26:29
    How many times has the flipper gone around on the background behind me? Oh impossible impossible no the question is since there's a Dusk Till Dawn poster back there send us in who's the director of the film Dusk Till Dawn and who did he co-write it with which is another really popular director so email bug at spookypinball.com the director and co-writer for Dusk Till Dawn and you will get your chance to win a Bally shooter rod you can even go deeper on that question who was the actual story by all three of those things give me a full book about Dusk Till Dawn alright so the next question is Scott if you were to design Dusk Till Dawn pinball what would that look like you want to say you want to know what it would look like it would look like you guys uh beating me up because i'd not seen that movie what all right you're coming up like i'm coming up to benton the next week you're coming up uh over a weekend and we're gonna have a movie night all right wow you are invited down no last time scott was over we watched total recall and yeah that was a great man what a great movie that is that would make a great scott denisi game too it would the 4k version is just being uh it's coming out they just announced the 4k yeah we watched the original straight up vhs uh was it on vhs no i think they had it on dvd ah okay i wish it was on vhs none of this has anything to do with pinball unless uh you're talking about the game that didn't get made total recall yeah but uh going forward here uh scott is there anything in the game you really wish you could have had in there now that you're looking at the done product are you pretty satisfied with all that is there now so this game actually and and charlie's done this to me twice now where he is not making me remove things that i you know that you know that we think you know maybe we should remove it for just cost so it's really it's super interesting and i've mentioned this before but i actually threw in something in the game that we could remove as like a as a thing to give me leverage when the negotiations happened where we needed to remove money out of the game and that was the magna save so i put the magna save in later on after the whitewood was assembled and everything and i actually chiseled it out of the bottom of the whitewood that eric has if eric goes and looks at the bottom of his play field i chiseled it out by hand and uh and put that in there and you know i had charlie come over and play it you know i was talking about all the different things on it and i talked about the magna save and i'm like oh well you know if it gets too expensive oh sorry guys angry they uh they must hear they must hear something i don't know um but charlie came over realize there's a slice of pizza on your head i know they're hungry my bad Hey, guys, chill.
    29:42
    Yeah, they're fine. So, but Charlie was playing the game, and he goes, we absolutely cannot remove the MagnaSave. It's so fun. And I was like, you know, I actually agree. And it was, it's such a neat implementation of MagnaSave that it just needed to be done again. It hadn't been done, I think, in this kind of way for a very long time. um i can't really remember if it was done past black knight the original the same way that i did it um i don't think so as far as i know all the magna saves hold on to the ball they don't have that loose uh bouncing effect like this one does i'm not a real big fan of the magna saves that just grab the ball and then just like save it for you i mean it's like you know there's a it's been done a lot you know it's not that it's bad but it's just been done a lot but this is a more of a tool than it is a you know a guaranteed save you know so you can kind of play with it and pulse it and like learn how to actually use it but that was the that was the thing that I expected not to make it to the uh to the final version but it made it so there really isn't anything else I mean we did want to add some inserts but it was kind of too late in the process but uh you know it turned out real nice yeah the MagnaSafe has become somewhat of a crutch for me and dad because now every time we play any other game ever we start slapping the side gun oh snap it's not there yeah and the button is like right there too where like the shadow had it and where um like black knight had it just it's real nice and easy to to get to so eric uh what were probably the biggest challenges still going forward now for you end this game because programming is very the more i talk to fosmo about programming the more way over my head yeah the biggest headache is easily the new lock mechanism um a physical pinball lock in any pinball machine if you ask people who program pinball they're going to gripe about it because it's if switches fail it's a problem and making sure you know where the ball is. Physical ball locks are just a headache no matter what. Now, imagine a physical ball lock where the ball can move around inside the lock. And for 50% of that moving around, it not on a switch So you don know if it there or not And both ends of that lock can open at any time Yeah that was quite the pain in the neck But the other stuff that difficult is all the stacking to it But because the basic framework of the rules was decided at that original get-together where everybody watched all the episodes, I knew to expect basically all of these things, the mega seeds and the dimensions and stuff, So that the very first thing I started doing when I started writing code for it was writing an underlying series of handlers that could do all of these things like replacing rules for physical parts of the game or completely changing the way the lights work. You know, stuff that like before I even wrote any adventures or anything else, I was planning for all of these interchangeable bits. so it didn't turn out to be as hard necessarily as uh it could have been if especially if i would have heard about these ideas later but uh that doesn't happen now does it when you get in a dimension and you've got an adventure going and you're in both multi balls at once that stuff gets a little crazy yeah well and that's uh the the programmers always kind of get the short end of the stick when it comes to these things because designers when a designer comes up with an idea and they can get the actual physical mech to somehow work, by that point they say, I don't know, the programmer will figure it out. From there, it's almost just not taken into consideration after a certain point. Yeah, sorry, Eric.
    33:52
    But it happens. They always figure it out. It did. I mean, he did. It works great. There's a long-range opto in front of there for you, you know. Yeah. but then you get Carl and his, his divot in the back is a little bit too deep. So when he hits a ball from one side to the other, it sometimes rolls across the top very slowly. And then all of a sudden, Oh, where'd the ball go? I can't wait forever. Yeah.
    34:21
    But Hey, I'll just lock three balls in there. It'll be great. Easy. It can act four balls. I just put four in there. It's a secret. It's a secret. Uh, the secret code, the secret sauce, right? How about Optos in there? We could be fitting more. We definitely could. Yeah, we needed Optos all the way through. All the way around.
    34:43
    My biggest struggle with the game as a whole is when you get it all put together at work, you run through all your tests, you get all your plastics on, your ramps, your ship, your house, and then you say, son of a gun, I forgot to put the ball in the flubel crank. then you have to take everything back we found ways to cheat around it but it hurts every time no but uh as far as the line goes lately i would say things have been i'm gonna regret saying this smoother sailing than they have been in uh what seems like a very long time uh we've been upping production quite a bit at the shop lately we've taken on a lot of new people and uh we're we're really upping the numbers that we can get out in a week right now and it feels very good to be doing that and it's really nice to see that this build is going pretty smoothly i'd like to say there are days where it's it's hard but that's pinball in general all right well david anything you you got for the most challenging No, I just try and keep getting Eric exactly what he wants, which I fail and somehow make up for it sometimes. I'm not sure. I'm waiting for me to meet Eric in person again and see what he's got to say to me in person. But, you know, I mean, as I said, I just keep giving, try to give them everything they want and hopefully that's, you know, making everything go the way it needs to go and if it doesn't go that way we'll find a way around it simple as that there's no wrong answer we'll just got to find a different solution for it so yeah that's my life the two-word summary of the problems that david has are looping backgrounds because some guy likes to pick out shots in the show and go oh well could you make this one loop i know it's like an interior of a school and it zooms in over the course of what's going on and it's not really a loop but you could loop that right yeah why not right like and uh you know i mean guess i guess that would be probably the most satisfying is people go are we just pulling clips from the show and it's not the case like yeah there are clips in the show but there's a lot of hand animation and stuff that goes into it. The plumbus animation. Yeah, I have to say that one of my favorite things in the whole game is the tilt animation, which is, other than the little plumbus itself, everything around it is 100% Dave. Yeah, yeah. Again, it's just like, sometimes everything lines up perfectly and, you know, it's just, you know, if you don't notice, if you're not, like my thing is, as long as they're not complaining about the display, I've done my job. That's all that matters. As long as they're happy and not complaining about it, you know, it's great. And it's no different than being a video editor. If no one sees the edit, I've done my job. If you see my edit, I'm screwed, you know, because you shouldn't see what I do. So, you know, as long as people are enjoying it and there's, you know, there's stuff I see that I know I can improve on and so forth. But again, you know, it's one of those knee jerk things like oh man like he's just pulling clips I was like do you not know how many times I had to modify and change and recreate that I mean I guess one of the good ones Eric is parts of the pancreas making oh yeah and shot like you know it's like literally taking the helicopters and reanimating them and moving them around I don't think at that point I think Eric was like oh he won't be able to do that and it's like hey what do you think of this clip he's like really yeah I I had I had pointed to that part of the show is that is there enough in here we could could cut together to make a loop and you came out with probably 200% longer than I thought you were going to I just one of those happy accidents that just actually worked perfectly there's lots of other ones it's like it's taking me a long time to get through but you know as I said just keep sending it to me and I'll see what I can do so far I think we've done a good job at it and Eric that's that's all down to you making it work seamlessly together because the choreography between the code the physical layer of the game and display and the music makes it so cohesive and I think you know not to toot Spooky's horn but I think we have one of the best combined packages in pinball today I think it's the most cohesive packaging in the industry you know and i think it's mainly because we all love what we do you know and i don't i wouldn't change this team out for the world you know so good job guys wait i have an animation for this uh and david you know what i actually discovered today even um that i am really good at animation making um i just discovered like actually like two hours ago i discovered i'm really good at it so if you ever you know need something like uh i want to go on vacation how about you can do the next one bud it's all you bud now we'll send you my resume it starts now you and me working together man like one more person would be amazing we need to get subliminal taco into rick and morty Subliminal taco, yes.
    40:24
    Absolutely. Awesome. Well, I'm not going to take up too much more of your guys' time. I just want to say thank you guys for coming on and talking about the game a little bit more. Scott, I know we've had you on to talk about this game prior, but it's good to catch up because that was about a year ago now, and a lot has changed in that year. It has, big time. Yeah, it's been a long time.
    40:48
    It wasn't a year ago, but getting close. And who knows? It's getting, yeah. What day is it? We're almost, this will be October when it airs. So almost a year ago. Rick and Morty has been in production for almost a year. And I remember when it was still just called Haunted House Party.
    41:06
    All right. So if you found the Spooky Pinball Podcast on Zoom, iTunes, Stitcher Radio, or any other podcast hosting directory, be sure to like and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. email me bug at spooky pinball calm for your pinball life giveaway Scott are you still live streaming oh where's your voice my voice went away you hear me yes I am have not for a while but you know what the weather is gonna be starting to get real junky around here so I'm gonna start doing that a little more and doing some random stuff but you know sometimes it doesn't even have to do with pinball so yeah where can people find your uh your twitch chat then um you can go to twitch.tv slash scott denisi and that'll bring you right to my stuff there and scott you need to do more djing because my boy is really like nearly every morning he's like can you put some dj music on put some techno on day of dad okay oh you're probably just rolling your eyes and like no it's actually i'm introducing him into like sorry bug i know you want to end the thing it's like but yeah i'm introducing you into like you know eurotechno and stuff like that and he's like oh wow this is amazing sorry maybe i should just send him some stuff oh dude you just take out your tna cassette taping oh man he's just like what did scott reached out to you yet does he know what type of deck i should get dad come on dad tell me that's awesome for me it was the first one i found at a garage sale and it works perfectly so all right uh thank you everybody for coming on and we will see you in the next one. Bye!