Welcome back to For Amusement Only. After several month absence, this is Nick and David. Hey, we're back. And we've got a lot of news, actually. It says a lot, but is it really a lot? I guess we'll find out. First of all, I mentioned in the last episode the EM Repair Clinic. This is like a video chat that goes on with multiple parties all around the world, actually. And they just had the 10th one on September the 4th of 2020. Yay! Yeah. So congratulations to Mark and everybody on that team. That is really great. I hope to be able to participate again at some point in the future. I have been a little busy here recently, both with work and with something else that we're going to talk about. Also, I have tried to get him to record for the podcast many a time, but he said he needed to program. Yes. Which is also very important. But I have definitely let the podcast sit for a while while I've been working on other stuff. So we're sorry. I guess we should have started off with that, huh? Yeah. All right. So we're going to try to post more reliably. it's been several months many months since the last one and then many months before that since the one prior to that so um i have more regular schedule yeah what i've been doing is programming a whole bunch um but before we talk about programming i thought i'd talk about bingos on pinside bingos whoo i've been seeing more and more new folks uh get their first bingo and post with problems on Pinside. I think that's really cool. And I've been... What, the problems? Not the problems, but the fact that there's more and more new folks that are picking up games and trying to fix them. Obviously, that's pretty important for the longevity of the hobby. Congratulations to all of you who have purchased a bingo. Yes. And I've been chipping in with troubleshooting instructions when I can. there's obviously some great people that watch the forums and they answer questions and so forth phil bogema who's been on the show a couple times i believe and then phil hooper who runs bingo.cdyn.com those folks are on there and they're answering questions like crazy faster than I can, which is fantastic. And they are both a lot more thorough in their posting. So let's talk about some of the stuff that I've been working on. First of all, I wanted to talk about Quest for Glory. Yay! Quest for Glory, last time I talked, I think I was still in the middle of programming that. You were almost finished, I feel like. Yeah. But yes, he wasn't finished. Yeah. The last time that we talked about it. So now all of the artwork is finished. Every scene has been redrawn, the backgrounds, and I've programmed in each of the special characteristics of each scene, which allow, for example, for the character to move behind a portion of the background scenery. All of that's built in. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to see it yet because there's a problem. Yes, there's been a couple problems. The first problem is that your dad has been keeping Cosmic Kart Racing in the P3 for the past couple months. For something that we were going to talk about soon. Stay tuned. So without Lexi in there, I haven't been able to test some of the last changes that I made. And we just went to test them today before recording. and it didn't turn on the game doesn't launch anymore so i had uh one of the last changes that i made was to update the uh sdk to the latest version and that enables things like bluetooth headphone support and a couple other niceties and while it works in the simulator for some reason it doesn't on the actual machine um and i just haven't had a chance to debug that it we just found out that happened right before recording literally like a minute before so so i don't know what it looks like yet well let me just tell you because you know that beats playing it right i'm just kidding does it it's beautiful okay i mean i expected that yes um the background artist i think did a fantastic job and i used the same one for the entire game um so it's very consistent between scenes which i think was important i have also been through the entire game in the simulator with each of the character classes so i'm relatively assured that if you complete the game in the way that i anticipate you to complete it you won't run into any horrible game breaking bugs but you never know yes you never know and especially with pinball and bug testing you absolutely never know um i can't tell you the number of weird bugs that i found in the multi bingo or multi races as i was making them um that i never would have expected like interaction bugs where you know one switch moves and another switch moves and you have something triggering on that second switch but the first one sticks open or something and it triggers something else that cancels the other thing out it's very intense it is very intense so assume that quest for glory is going to play fantastically when i get it to launch but i haven't had a chance to actually troubleshoot that yet so let's talk about the thing that's kept me really super busy as far as hobby stuff and that is the his new debut day ranger in the ruins uh this is a new roguelike game for the p3 it uses the cosmic kart racing module that's what he was talking about earlier yep so uh this is a already developed playfield uh module and i've just written new software for it. This new software is a fully featured game. It has various goals and it has a couple different multi balls and one great gimmick I think and that is that there's internet connectivity. When a lot of people hear internet connectivity and pinball, well let me just ask you Ava, what's the first thing you think about when you think of internet connected pinball? P3? Because that's the only one I know of. Yes, but that's excellent. But as far as what you would do with that internet connectivity, what would you do? I would play against other people. Okay so that is the stock answer is that there needs to be some kind of leaderboard Or competition Or competition And Cosmic Kart Racing actually is the first game that allows you to compete directly with other players across the world Yay! Which is really awesome. But Ranger in the Ruins, I wanted to create some kind of novel internet connectivity feature for pinball. And so what I ended up doing was making a series of web services. and if you have your p3 connected to the internet it will automatically save ghost data upon your death to a server that doesn't sound scary at all only scary ghost data um yeah not friendly ghost this ghost data contains uh the last item that you received so it uses this ghost data and brings the ghosts into other players games so when you start a game uh every so often you'll see certain targets lit up and if you hit them a ghost will appear a ghost is there and a scoop pops up and you have to hit the scoop and then you're able to retrieve the item from the dead player um that doesn't sound creepy again at all yeah not a bit um and once you do it's uh it's kind of set up like a endless runner in that your character is just always running yeah they never stopped the only time they stop is when they're getting an item yeah the only thing is you don't really i mean you control the character but you're not really the character if you know what i mean like your actions uh are increasing your score this is a score attack yeah it's not like you're in the character it's not like first person right yeah it's a 2d um third person game these ghosts present you one of 21 different items and these items all have different effects do you remember some of them yeah my favorite's the lighter because it makes a super cool light show yep if you get it but the ghost can also give you bad items that you don't want and they decrease your score one of them decreases your score yeah um by quite a bit yeah so uh there's a complimentary item that increases your score by the same amount. So depending on what other players are receiving, it's what you'll get. And I have the ability to go in and rebalance that at any time if I feel like it's getting out of whack. There are also various safeguards in the code that prevent you from, for example, getting the same item multiple times in a row. Oh, well, the only thing I liked is the energy drinks because it doubles all the scores on the board for 40 seconds. Yeah. It is. Do you like my song? I do. It's very nice. Speaking of music, I had talked about writing my own music and recording it for Ranger in the Ruins. If you've been following the project on the forums, I had talked about that, but I ended up putting that down because I haven't really played music or recorded it in like 20 years. He says it's not good, but it was good he just doesn't know it's good so he says no i'm gonna let someone else do the music yeah so i ended up licensing music uh from third parties instead um that said there are approximately eight or ten different tracks i can't remember exactly how many there are but there is an item that allows you to manipulate the music music really yeah so this game is modeled after rogue like games those are games which are patterned after the pc game rogue and the idea was that you were a single character you start you really have no idea what the heck you're doing the dungeons are randomly generated you're delving down into these dungeons to try to find a particular item and you only get one shot you only get one shot and when you die that's it now you could also find your previous runs corpse and then loot it and get all their items so this is very similar right because you're actually taking the items from the the other dead player by the way it's not gory at all no no it is not um this is actually a it's just gross the way that he's describing yeah i'm trying to pick the worst words possible to describe it so i'll be the least appealing game right uh so i played a lot of those types of games they're rogue nethack ang band uh there was one called what are these names omega i think anyway um there are tons of them that existed back in the 80s 70s and 80s yeah and uh you know even before my time as far as PCs go. I've always really enjoyed them, and I've also always really enjoyed EM games, obviously. I have a whole podcast about them. Which, if you're new here, this is the EM for amusement only pinball podcast. Yes, where we're talking about... Wait, did I leave out a word? I feel like I left out a word. Oh, well, there you go. We're talking about a decidedly non-EM topic right now, but the thing is I wanted to make a new game in the vein of EM games as well. So what I did was to make it so that each point value is very easy to understand immediately. So you start playing the game, all the point values are listed on the play field. You know exactly what it is. If you get an item that multiplies the value of any given shot on the play field, then that changes color and it's... The lights are pretty cool. It shows you the new point value and everything. Each, well, almost every time that you get a different type of item, the lights will change to a certain color. And every time a ghost appears, the lights change blue. Cyan. That's a type of blue, okay! there are a lot of inspirations from classic games and then also a lot of modern touches as well i did try to make it so that it was very classically inspired in a few different ways because this is a score attack game i wanted to make it so that you were in constant danger and also you're in a wasteland in a post-apocalypse constant danger wow dad so nice right so the cosmic card racing play field if you haven't played it is a really smooth shooting play field it's basically just a bunch of ramps and targets it's tons of flowing shots loops targets ramps and uh it is really fun to shoot Orbits everything That just nice and smooth Yeah So it's very fun to play, and I wanted to play something a little different with it. So with the score attack nature, there are certain shots which are worth more than others, but many of the shots have a similar value that are less dangerous. Yeah, I think it's like 10, 50s. There's 100? Yeah, so the scores actually change based on the number of balls that you have configured to play. And that's another touch. I released it as a one ball game. But, being him, he had to go the extra mile. And add a feature where you can add however many balls you want. Well, up to a certain point. You can play up to 10 balls per game if you want to. Which is a lot. But there is a catch to it. As you increase the number of balls, it changes the point values. Dun, dun, dun. So once you hit three, it divides the point values by 10. And if you do it up to five, it divides them by 10 again. So it's one point and then there's five points. So it starts off at 100 is the base. And then at three ball, it's 10 points is the base. And then at five ball, it's one point is the base. So it's... What about at 10 ball? Is it zero points? It's still at one. Oh. Yeah. 0.32 points. I wanted to bring back single digit scoring for these longer games. With five balls, it tends to work out where your scores mostly average out. Obviously, you can have a really high-scoring game with one ball, but you only have one shot. You know what's really weird? Is that when me and my dad, before we started this podcast, before we started recording, we went down into the garage and we played Ranger in the Ruins. So I played a couple times, and then I decided to play a two-player game. Somehow, I ended up losing the ball. Pretty quickly. So then I pretty much accidentally, kind of on purpose, put another player on. So I accidentally took my dad's play. But then I ended up losing pretty quickly on that one too. So then I said, hey, let's do it together. So I took one side and he took the other. And amazingly, we did so well on that. Really good that time. So the secret's teamwork. That is a secret. What's going to work? Teamwork. Cheesy dad jokes. Yay. Anyway. So Ranger in the Ruins is a bit of a throwback in those ways. It's not a traditional mode-based game. You know, there are no modes per se except for multiball modes. Oh, yeah. It is straightforward, I hope. Yeah, how would... The audio, as far as sound effects, is also a bit of a throwback. It sounds like an early Solid State game, but... Basically saying it's really good audio. But the way... it's bleepy and bloopy, but the... What is that for description? Yeah, bleepy and bloopy. But the way that I intended it to work was like a wood rail or other EM with bells where there's typically two different bell sounds and they can ring multiple times. Ding dong. Yeah, based on what you hit. Bleep bleep bloop bloop. Yeah, so it bleeps and bloops a certain number of times to indicate how many points you hit. Why did you have to use those? That's what it's... Describe it. That's a standard thing. Is it? Yeah. Are you sure? One of the other design goals for me was to make it so that the main character could be anybody that you want it to be. Yeah. You can make up backstory. Any gender, any race. Basically, all the person is, is they have two legs. They have a cloak over their face so you can't see their face. And they have two arms. That's it. That's all you get. That's pretty much it. The thought was that, you know, there are a lot of games where the protagonist is, by default, male. And I wanted to make something where that was not the case. Yeah. So hopefully I succeeded there. I guess we'll see. Ranger in the Ruins is a third-party game for the P3, and it's actually released on the Multimorphic Store. And if you're going to get it, you need the Cosmic Cart Race module to play. Correct. It is also $150. Also, it does not use the upper flipper, if you guys are wondering. So that's Ranger in the Ruins. there was a reveal stream with Buffalo Pinball. Yeah. And that went really well, I thought. Kevin did a great job showing off the game, and I was on there to talk a little bit about it. And then afterwards he answered some of you guys' questions. And then the next day there was a stream with Gamma Goat. He was one of the viewers of the Buffalo Pinball. And he picked it up during that stream. So that was really cool. And I've gotten some feedback on some things that people might like to change. And I'm taking that all under advisement. So if you guys have purchased it and would like to send my dad any suggestions. Things that you would like to see changed or options you would like. You can go send him a text. Yeah. Probably not a text, but, you know, an email. You get it. Whatever. And let me know, and I'll think about it for the next version. There's obviously no guarantee that I will make a version that contains the thing that you would like, but if you have suggestions, I'm happy to hear them. I will entertain any suggestion. So, with that said, I wanted to check in with you, Ava, about Heist. It's still the best game for the P3, besides your games. Of course. A little tear rolled down my cheek. So, Heist, you're still liking it a whole bunch? Yeah, it's the best. Okay. Besides, don't worry, I still like your aces. The only problem with Heist is that I have been monopolizing the P3 with my development stuff Yeah so I can play it now Yeah But now that I finished it you be able to Every time after he finishes a game he still does something to it So I still can't play for like the next six months. So it won't be that long. See, you admit it. But Ranger in the Ruins also is on the Pinside database. If you have purchased the game, or even if you haven't, and you would like to review it, that would really help out. So if you'd like to encourage more indie pinball development, I would suggest, if you wouldn't mind... Please let him have a little break, though, please. No breaks. To hop on and write a little review. It takes 25 reviews to be considered for Pinside's Top 100. and I feel a little weird about writing one myself. I could write one for you. You could, but you're also very close. So anyway, I would love it if the game showed up there. That's a little personal goal. So Ava, tell me what you like about Ranger in the Ruins. I like the... I'm just going to drag it out for suspense. I don't know. I really do like the music, though. Yeah. So while my dad was on the live stream with Kevin, yes, from Buffalo, me and my friend were watching the live stream. And anyways, so me and my friend were texting back and forth about the live stream. And he said that one of his favorite things was the music. Oh, yeah? Uh-huh. What do you like? I still think your own music would have been better. Fine. Well, there's always a chance at an update. Dun, dun, dun! Yep. But I need time. That's the thing. Lots of time. Lots of time. And I haven't had any. Up a jillion years. So, question. What do you like about the actual gameplay, though? I like that the ghost gives you items. And it's not like the ghost doesn't appear very often. It appears like every minute, 45 seconds or so. It's between, well, do you want me to tell you? It's a bit of a mystery. That's part of the game, too, is that there's some mystery involved. There's some mystery? But I will tell you, it's much faster than what you're thinking. Huh. Well, just know it's faster than 45 seconds. There you go. it's um so yeah they appear quite often and together me and my dad are like best unstoppable not really weird we're not that good fantastic i think we got double digit scoring by the end of it no i'm just kidding we did we did pretty good we got into the thousands which we both died before uh like 500 the first times that's great it was very uh disheartening um so i've played probably thousands of games during the development of it versions of it not just versions but you know different games because i would always play four player games by myself while i was debugging different things and all kinds of stuff sounds nice yeah just an extra long chance to redeem yourself there are a couple things that i've seen uh streamers hit which i would address with an update but there are no functional problems that i've seen um which is great yes and that was something which i very carefully tested um over thousands of hours it really was quite a long time this is something that i did instead of sleeping which uh this is why he needs a break but yeah that's that's exactly why i need a break at any rate so that he can actually sleep at night instead of playing pinball and video games be another game that i'm working on wait unannounced you didn't tell me i know it's unannounced well now i know it's announced now i haven't i haven't told you anything about it you just said that it was coming out it'll eventually come down so i'm starting work on it um so we'll see but at any rate support third-party indie pinball and uh buy this module we're gonna post again don't wait forever bye if you're interested in developing a third-party game for the p3 or a third-party module multimorphic i can vouch is behind you every step of the way they're fantastic to work with and their sdk the latest version is available for free to anybody to download and this includes a sample application that's already flipping. So the only thing that you need to do is to bring your own content and then write your own program, of course, to interact with it. And if you have your own upper playfield module, then you would need to write your own module driver. That's the software that runs the upper playfield module. But otherwise, it's all there, ready for you to interact with, and I would say it is a great way to do homebrew because everything's there already. You cut out so much of the very difficult and costly parts of building your own pinball machine by using the SDK that Multimorphics provided. So give it a shot, and I can't wait to see what other folks come up with. Meanwhile, I'll be continuing to make new experiences. Thanks very much for listening. My name again is Nicholas Baldridge, and this is Ava! This has been For Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. If you would like to get in touch, you can reach me at ForAmusementOnlyPodcast at gmail.com. You can listen to us on iTunes, Stitcher, PocketCast, VRSS, on Facebook, on Twitter, at Bingo Podcast. you can follow me on instagram also at bingo podcast or you can listen to us on our website which is for amusement only bingo pinball podcast no for amusement only it's for amusement only dot libsyn.com oh close enough it'll be in the show notes uh and you found this already so i guess you probably found it all right thanks very much for listening and we'll talk to you next time and thank you to everybody who's already purchased a copy of ranger in the ruins it really means a lot to me yes thank you for all your support guys yes all right talk to you later goodbye