it's time now for another pinball profile you can find everything and subscribe to the program on pinballprofile.com find out about past episodes check us out on facebook as well also go to twitter and instagram at pinball profile and you can email us pinballprofile at gmail.com It's a pleasure once again to be talking to the founder of Riot Pinball. You might have seen Legends of Valhalla recently on the Buffalo Pinball stream. Joining us now, Scott Gullix. Hey, Scott, how are you? I'm doing fantastic. How are you, Jeff? I'm fine. Thank you very much for asking. And we all got to see your baby. It was like a live birthing, if you will, on Buffalo Pinball. I can only imagine how nervous you were. Yeah. Yeah, it was really exciting to see the stream. It was really exciting to see the game play so well. We've had a handful of videos, smaller little clips that I've posted, I think, over the last couple months. But to see three hours of continuous streaming with just a couple of issues during the stream was really great. That game had ended up shipping out to, again, a close friend of mine, and he had mentioned he was going to do a stream right away. As a designer and builder, especially when this is just prototype and very early code and all that other stuff, you get a little nervous when you hear about a big, long live stream going on. But I honestly, I couldn't be more pleased with how well the game played and how fun the stream actually was to watch. And it's just going to be absolutely invaluable for Frank and I to go back and look through and really see where we can continue to make this game as good as we can. You, along with Frank Gelati, doing the software, amazing product. But let's go back to that first impression, because really, when you see the game, you're looking at the artwork, which is one of your specialties. It went back to you helping out with Domino's Pizza, the licensed spooky game. You did the artwork, the plastics, the play field, and I guess there were two translates for that as well. But what you've done here on Legends of Valhalla, holy cow, does that ever look good. Thank you very much. You know, it helps when you're doing artwork that you absolutely love. And, you know, I started this whole pinball career thing and actually more of a hobby with Wrath of Olympus and the Greek gods, all those things I love. But my roots are really in the Norse mythology. And to be able to draw all of that and bring it to life, just, you know, you put in that little extra effort when you really, really love it. And I just am really happy with the way things turned out. And I don't know, for me personally, I really like kind of darker art. And that Norse mythology, when you get into it, there's some really dark stuff in there with the monsters and the skulls and the axes and all of that really cool stuff that I just think translates super well into a pinball machine, especially for someone like me in that particular genre. And it is such a great history, too, and probably a reason why you have 16 modes, because there is so much in that Norse mythology. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things I really wanted to bring into Legends of Valhalla is a lot of different modes without getting necessarily oversaturated with them as well. A lot of the games I really love to play are mode-based games, where you've got, like, I'm going in and I've got a specific mode. Like, Lord of the Rings is one I particularly love because they implemented each one of those different modes so well. So we wanted to do something similar to that in Legends of Valhalla, but at the same time, I didn't want to just have all these different 60 modes available at once. So we've actually created this really cool tiered structure where at the start you get the first four modes that are kind of attributed to some of the lower-level Norse gods, so to speak, or some of the monsters. And as you play, you can collect weapons from making different combo shots, and those unlock subsequent higher tier modes. And those higher tier modes get more and more in-depth. They get more challenging, and they also relate to more of the history and myth of the Vikings with some of the deeper gods. For example, as you progress through the Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, and finally get up into the Tier 4, those last four groups of modes, That's when you're really battling the big gods like Thor and Baldur, etc. Unlocking these modes looks like so much fun, but I like how you actually start the mode. Yeah, so that's a great point, too. One of my biggest frustrations in some pinball machines is, you know, they only have maybe one shot or one mechanism to really start a mode. And for me, like, mode-based games, I think, are fun, and they should be easy to start. They might be difficult in order to qualify, but once you've gotten qualified, you should have a couple of options to really be able to go and start those modes. So in Legends of Alhalla, we've actually got three different shots, so to speak, where once your modes are lit, you can go to them. One of them is a nice little shot off to the right that you can end up going through, and it passes down into the shooter lane. And a second is behind the upper left flipper that feeds down into a subway and goes into an upkicker. And then the third way is to actually just shoot that upkicker directly, which is a much harder shot. And coincidentally, because of that, we've taken into account that there's different ways that you can make these different shots. They're worth different points. So if you go directly at it, it's worth X. If you do the sneak shot behind the upper flipper, it's worth 2X, etc. So we're really trying to take into account how players play and the people that are really looking at how can I maximize my score? How can we do that in a fun way that is still kind of intuitive, but still feels right? well with all those modes as you know and i'm sure frank knows as well the more modes you have the bigger the challenge it is to balance them i know you talked about a lower tier gods and whatnot and and those easier modes so that's fine that those aren't the big scoring as maybe some of the bigger modes but that is a real difficult thing when it comes to programming it is really difficult and i i don't think the current programmers get enough um praise for what they do because you know when you're out playing pinball and all of a sudden you look up and you got a score of 10 billion and your last ball was 1 million it can be kind of frustrating so it is a lot of work to go in and make sure that you've got the right risk reward the right payoff for the shot and that everything kind of flows together and works together across the whole spectrum of the code because you know whether you have just modes running or you've got multi balls or you've got other hurry ups skill shots i mean all those have to be balanced they all have to feel right And I think some of the games that have been made that really do a good job of that, you just feel it and you feel it in the score. And at the end of the day, sometimes you'll get a huge score, but it'll make sense. It's the games where you get a big, giant score that doesn't make sense that I think kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth. So, again, I mentioned earlier that stream. Going back and looking at the point values we have related to specific events and that is really going to be helpful for us to go in and do the best job we can to really balance this out and make sure that when the players are choosing what they want to go for, that it makes sense and that the points relate accordingly. This Week in Pinball had a nice interview with you earlier this week, and you can check that out on thisweekinpinball.com, but they captured a few interesting things on the play field. I mean, first of all, I like the upper left flipper shot into the Kraken magnet. That's a fun little feature. Yeah that worked out really well and it one of my favorite features in the game honestly because we got all the artwork tied up in there and we got the ship and it all actually works together really well So if you hit your upper flipper shot to the loop that literally loops around and underneath the ship, we've got switches in there, obviously. And we've got a magnet that's positioned perfectly, basically at the outlet of the inside and outside of that orbit. So depending on which way you enter that orbit, the ball's going to roll past the magnet. And Frank's done a great job of coding in a bunch of different random events that the magnet will do. And we have just seen some awesome, crazy stuff that that magnet can grab and do with the ball. I've seen it throw it up the middle ramp. I've seen it throw it up the right ramp. I've seen it loop back through that inside orbit. I've seen it throw it straight down the middle. I've seen it throw it all over the place. So it's really cool. The Kraken is literally coming up out of the water and grabbing your ball after you just shot it around the ship and is trying to wreak havoc. With all the flow that we've got in the game, I wanted to have a couple of mechanisms in there to create a little bit more chaos and randomness. And that magnet really does an awesome job. I have to tell you, what I like about that upper left flipper, and we're seeing that in more and more games, Legends of Valhalla, you see that in Jurassic Park. But when you have an upper flipper, you want it to do more than one thing. I love the game Spider-Man. The only problem with that upper right flipper is it only hits one thing. You know, at least on Star Trek, you can hit the light locks and also the warp ramp, but you need to be able to do more things, and that upper left flipper on Legends of Valhalla definitely does that. Yeah, absolutely. I thought long and hard about this design, and every mechanism I put in, I really wanted to make sure that it was being optimized as much as it could. So in Legends of Valhalla, that upper left flipper, it does feed another inner orbit loop that goes up underneath the ship. That same flipper can also hit the right ramp. And coincidentally, that flipper also is responsible for lighting your locks up into the ship, which with the other flippers is almost impossible unless you're doing a bank shot. So between the three stand-up targets, the right ramp and that inner loop, that upper left flipper definitely has a lot of activity. What I also like about upper flippers, and it is on Spider-Man, it is on obviously Star Trek 2 with the away team, and also with Legends on the left-hand side, is that is one of the ways to start the mode. And as you mentioned, I think it was two times mode multiplier, correct? Yeah, I believe so. And again, we want to do something fun with that flipper. We had it sticking off to the side a little bit, and I thought, you know, why don't we create a behind-the-back pass-through on that? And we kind of tied that even more into the Norse mythology as well. thought, well, why not drop it down in a subway and put a buck? So that shot is actually, the ball theoretically is going into hell, so to speak. Talk about Thor's hammer. Yeah, yeah. So what's a Viking game without Thor's hammer, right? Exactly. I kept thinking, you know, where can we put something cool with Thor's hammer where it's just not some static toy sitting on the playfield? And, you know, these games have this giant backboard in the back, and usually they just put a couple of lights on them or they'll pass through, you know, Iron Maiden did a phenomenal job of having something really cool with the backboard. But, you know, for many years, they just haven't been utilized that well. So we had this nice spot up in the upper left. And I thought, hey, you know, I actually just mounted a whole flipper mech up on that and hand designed Thor's hammer and then put a post through it. And now we've got this awesome interactive toy where if you make a skill shot, the lights go off and Thor's hammer comes down and pretends to smack the ball. We've got rules set up where as the ball passes around the orbits and it triggers the switches, we've got an up post back there as well that's going to stop the ball. But the hope is that as that ball hits that post, the hammer's coming down at the exact same time. So it looks like the hammer's smashing the ball, even though it's actually not touching it. Still looks cool, though. Yeah, thanks. I just thought it would be a neat way to bring in that mythology and have a fairly inexpensive mechanism. Otherwise, we would just have some artwork and some lights up there, and instead we've got a cool little toy. I was watching the stream on an iPad, so not exactly the biggest resolution or screen size you could possibly have. But even on that small screen, what I did notice was, wow, I really like this light show. Thanks. Yeah, I'm sure Frank is going to be listening. So Frank does a great job, and he's been putting so many thousands of hours into this project, and he really loves lights. He really loves lights. When we did Wrath of Olympus, it was my first build. I went through. We just had basic LED lights and everything, and he went back after the fact and figured out how to put serial RGB into all of the GI because he just loves light shows. and when we moved into Legends of Valhalla we made a conscious decision to have RGB lights for every single light in the game and he's really gone in and added some cool effects and some of the things you'll see as the game progresses like we have a special crack and hurry up mode and he does this really cool sweeping blues, greens and whites like the ocean cascading across the playfield. Nice. He's really paying attention to that and trying to bring those light shows in because, you know, the light shows and audios, I think, almost make a game as much as the rules and the shots. So you're watching the stream. I know you're nervous watching it thinking, oh boy, what could possibly happen? But you're also going to get great feedback from that too. What was some of the feedback you got from watching the stream? So I think first, what's really refreshing is, you know, people like the layout. They like the shots. They like the kinetic energy of it. And to me, that was kind of most important to get right the first time because, you know, with six prototypes out there, it's pretty hard to go back in and change anything. You know, you can do a software update pretty easy, but to move a ball guide or replace ramps, et cetera, it's a lot more expensive and a lot more of a pain. So it was really refreshing to hear that feedback that people like the shots, they like the flow, they like the layout. It was definitely nice to hear that. Some of the other feedback we got is, you know, looking at it, I think we can do a little bit better job with adding some more audio cues, some audio call-outs, cleaning up some of the audio. We've got some lighting that we can improve on, as well as little bits of software additions here and there to help assist with, I think, users understanding what to shoot for and when. There's just a lot of other little things, like we see a few bugs here and there where modes weren't necessarily starting when they needed to or trying to get the ship to be a little bit easier to hit. I think one of the big things that I took away, I think at the end of the stream, you could see those guys were dead set on trying to get that ship multiball. And it's challenging. It's really challenging. And the rule set we had at that stream was pretty simple in that all they had to do was hit that last target. And when I say the last target, there's three stand-up targets on the right-hand side that that upper left flipper has to hit. And to start, we have the first two already qualified. But the angle for that flipper to hit that last target is so tight. It's just super hard. So seeing these four guys try to hammer that out for an hour kind of told us, okay you know we got this awesome mech We put a lot of money and a lot of time into it We definitely need to be allowing people the ability to use that mech a little easier so frank being frank just hammered out an update i think like the next day after that code where you know we made an adjustment to that where now if you hit any of those three targets you'll light the first light which is light and ship locks then when you hit any of those three targets again then you'll light ship and then when you hit any of those three targets again, you'll light locks, and now you can go in and actually lock a ball in the ship and build towards your war at sea multiball. And from the other owners of these prototype games, they've said that that change has been huge. So it's one of those, you get a game home, and Frank's had his game for months now, and he's got that shot dialed in where he can get his ship multiball all the time. But for new people stepping up that haven't put the time in and don't quite have the practice yet. We definitely wanted something that was a little more user-friendly for people that are just stepping up. We're seeing that more and more. Give somebody something early, whether it's a lower value multiball, just something that shows a little more excitement than just straight one ball play. So I think that's a great update that you've done. I noticed how amazing the flow was of the game. Those ramp shots were like butter. Same with the orbit, same with the going around the ship. I was very impressed with that. There was a stuck ball on the stream, if I recall, and I wasn't sure if there was a ball search or not. I know it's early. We're talking prototypes and stuff. What did you get from that? We got a lot from it, actually, and what I originally thought the stuck ball happened to actually not even be remotely hit, but to provide a little more background on that, it sounded like the stuck ball actually got stuck in a whole different part of the ship. I was wondering about that ship because it's such a unique toy and shape. I was wondering, are the balls going to get stuck on the shields or something like that? Explain what happened. Sure. So what I think happened is the ball actually went underneath. We've got a ball guide on top of that ramp to keep air balls from happening. And inside, there's just a little trough that feeds the balls into three switches, and then there's a post that releases them. And in that one particular shot, the ball happened to jump an inside rail and got stuck in a different part of the ship. So as I mentioned before, Frank's been playing his game for months. I probably put 2,000 games on mine, and I've never, ever seen that. You know, those one in a million just happen in pinball. Just like a hollow part inside the ship? Yeah. Okay. Yep, there's just a hollow cavity there. So the nice thing is, you know, again, that's why we build prototypes. So we saw it happen. There's an easy fix for it. So we'll be, I think Adam's actually just putting a little bit of foam in that area to block it so the ball can't physically go in that section anymore. But it's good feedback because now we know if we're going to update games later that we need to do a little bit of an addition there. But tied into that, it was actually a good discussion for me and Frank. You know, like, okay, we need to really make sure we've got a robust mechanical design as well as a robust software design. So, again, Frank being the rock star he is, went in this last weekend and added another set of code to the game where right now the default is were enabling physical ball locks up in that ship. But as many of us know, physical ball locks can be really challenging from an operator perspective. Making sure the switches are always tuned in and working just right and the code's got to be just perfect to be able to understand which locks are locked for who and when, especially across a multiplayer game. You've got like four guys going. So Frank went in and he's added an option to basically disable physical ball locks. Good idea. Yeah, thanks. It just seemed like a no-brainer, really. We should have an option where an operator can go disable physical ball locks, and from the end user, they're really not going to see any difference other than instead of having two balls locked in the ship, they're going to have one that will be stopped by the post, and then it will be released. And we still have this really cool War at Sea multiball where you end up getting all your balls locked in the ship, where it releases the balls and it comes out of the ship. And then that magnet, which is right below the ship, grabs the balls and holds on to them. So for the people that want to be able to tune their game and have that full experience, they can. But for others that want to disable it, they'll still be able to lock the ball up in the ship and the one ball will get released and it'll be held by that magnet right below the ship regardless. So it's nice to have these options just to improve robustness and improve reliability and just hopefully have games that can constantly be played. I think disabling that physical ball lock is brilliant. You know, in League, when we play Deadpool, which is obviously a well-produced game, we disable it as well, too, because things can happen on that katana ramp and with the sword and whatnot. So I think it's a wise decision for sure. Thanks. Yeah, it's interesting because everybody loves physical ball locks, but a lot of people don't understand how challenging they are. And one of the things I was talking with Frank about is it's not a surprise to me that you saw Stern kind of navigate away from physical bottle locks many years ago because of the reliability and the robustness. And then you kind of seen them move a little bit of that more into the premium and LE versions, which I think are used more at home. So there's definitely, like you said, a history of commercially available pins that kind of show that physical bottle locks are definitely a challenge. When you first came on Pinball Profile March of 2019, and you can check that out on pinballprofile.com, I didn't realize how big a production this was going to be. Honestly, I thought, okay, it's another homebrew, which is very, very exciting. I'd like to see this. But you've done one before with Wooly or Wrath of Olympus. I didn't realize you were going to make six playfields and maybe more. And the great thing about this is, you know, we saw Adam Gasek streaming on Buffalo Pinball, but you've got Brad Baker of VP Cabs. He's going to put one of these on location at his arcade in Hamilton, Ohio. We'll all get to play this game. Yeah, yeah, that's the plan. I'm pretty excited about that. I know Brad is too. Brad's just an outstanding guy, and he's been helping out from the very beginning on this. When I first started the next build, Frank and I had talked about it for years, and we had done a whole bunch of prelim work, and we kind of shelved it for a little bit, and then all of a sudden we both kind of, it was kind of weird at the same time, I was like, you know, I think we need to build this. So I said, all right, we'll start building it. And then I networked with Brad Baker because he had helped me with my dead man's hand, little tabletop pinball machine. And he's an outstanding guy, and he's got great resources. And he really did a good job helping me with getting those early whitewoods made. And he also made my cabinets for these prototypes. And part of this process, and Frank and I are putting our time in. Brad's done a great job putting his time in. So we're going to send him a game. And his plan is to route it. So we're going to get a lot of good feedback there to see how well it can actually hold up to heavy abuse long term. You had asked another question, too, about, or maybe it wasn't a question, but more of a statement, that you didn't realize how big this was. And I didn't really know that we were going to get this big either. When I started Rath Olympus, we had just done a couple games right away, one for me and one for Frank. We brought those to a few shows, and we got a lot of excitement. And it wasn't until after that that I decided to build four more. and Fall Hollow was a little different in that working with Frank, we both knew we wanted a game and then working with Brad we knew he was going to want a game as well And I started doing the development and the game was just shooting so well It just felt like one of these you know I feeling confident enough with my layout that I think we can build a handful of these games And to my point earlier about software, being able to update on the fly, we can do that. And knowing that we've got good bones, I think I felt like we were in a good spot. So when I got the playfields made, it just kind of made sense to make a few more than just three. And for these guys that are helping me out when they're printing playfields playfields or CNCing them and the plastics. I mean, they were more than willing to just make two or three for us, but I didn't really want them spending that much time and that much energy and all the setup just for a couple. So it was really great that they could actually make half a dozen for us and be able to get this ball rolling a little faster and now to have all these games out there to get that feedback before we really do anything mainstream. With doing whether it's one game, or in this case, six, that's a lot of money out and not a lot of money in. I know you would love to get this in full production. And we've seen other games. Oh, I don't know. Archer was kind of a resume piece for Keith Elwin to get into Stern. Would you like to see this game as is produced by another company, big or small, or be hired by a company as a designer? That's a great question. Obviously, I would love to see this game get produced as is by a big manufacturer. I personally, I've been working with a neighbor resource to get these six prototypes made. Two of the guys actually came over for a week and built their games with me. So I could kind of see that process as well. But yeah, it's going to be really hard for me to ever think about actually manufacturing these on my own. So my best chance at success is to have one of the current manufacturers or possibly, you know, Brad Baker's even thought about maybe trying to manufacture these with his VP cabs business. So if we could get these off the ground and running, I think it would be great. The biggest issue I run into right now is for us small guys, and I think Spooky may have run into this a little bit early too, is our bill of materials are so high and it's so expensive to make these when you're not getting thousands, if not tens of thousands of parts, that the costs become a little prohibitive. And if the pinball market's interested in spending a premium for that, then we might be able to make it happen. Otherwise, I think it's really going to come down to trying to find and leverage some other company that really can make hundreds of these and utilize their volumes to make them worthwhile. As far as I think the Keith Elwin story, I just love that story because I shot Archer. I thought it was brilliant. He just did a fantastic job. And it was honestly really cool to see Stern bring him in and take that design and take it to the next level. And it may have been probably frustrating for him a little bit to have to take his baby and reskin it with Iron Maiden. But he did a fantastic job, and it doesn't feel like a reskin to me. So in the frame of Legends of Alhalla, if something like that happened, I think it would be fantastic. My only little caveat to that is this is my baby, and it's also Frank Gelati's baby as well. He's been putting, like I said, thousands of hours into this. And for a mechanical changeover, you know, I would still get the benefit. But for him, with all the time and energy and love that he's put into the software side, it may not be quite as awesome for him, so to speak. But, you know, who knows? We'll see what happens. We'll see. I put it in the TWIP interview that if anybody is interested in trying to manufacture these for me, feel free to reach out to me. My email is scott at riotpinball.com. I'd be more than happy to talk through whatever ideas people have. As far as, yeah, full-time designer job, that might be really cool, too. We'll just have to see, you know, what the cards hold. What's the next update for Legends of Valhalla? Next update? Well, I need to finish this number six prototype, and then I'm actually building. I still don't have a game for myself yet, so. Wow. Yeah. Well, I had the Whitewoods that I just played and beat on and tried to do the best I could to figure out the issues early. And then I've been so busy rolling these other games out. And I wanted to get Frank his game right away because he just works so much faster when he's got something in his possession. It also tells a story about how good Frank is at his job. You know, he did a year's worth of coding remotely on a game that he couldn't even see. And it was kind of fun because we had the Internet enabled where we'd have our iPad going. and he could go through the video and he could hook his keyboard up and he could flip the flippers with his keyboard. So he could kind of play the first prototype from a thousand miles away just using his keyboard, which was kind of exciting. But yeah, so our next steps are, I need to finish this build. I need to build one for myself. And then I really need to play it and see where Frank's at with the latest code and put in my due diligence on where I think we need to add some video and audio enhancements and look for bugs and all that stuff. It's a labor of love for you, for Frank. So many hours, thousands and thousands of hours, and I know there's some other people you'd probably like to thank as well. Yes, absolutely. Again, I want to really thank Frank Gilotti. He's, again, been putting so many hours into this. Yourself for the audio. Chuck Michael, he's an awesome guy. Been adding a lot of really great audio clips for us and sound effects. Again, all the people in the development channel that Frank's been working with. Jimmy, he's been doing a great job in developing a stable operating system that we can make the game feel like a real game by turning on and off and not having any of those computer issues that a lot of the other homebrew-type games have seen. Brad Baker, again, he's just been fantastic in helping along. Terry from Pinball Life for all of the awesome homebrew parts that they have. and I'd also really like to thank Gerry Stellenberg. His P-Rock system is just so rock solid and robust. It just makes me as a mechanical engineer feel that much better putting it in my system knowing that it's easy to troubleshoot, it's easy to work with and it just really seems to work well in pinball machines. The fact that Spooky Pinball's had them in a couple of production games now and American Pinball's been using them, it just gives me the confidence that this system can hold up long term to real commercial products. And I'd also really like to thank my family because, you know, they've been putting up with me. And you think about six pinball machines and they're not that big. But when you've got parts for six pinball machines, they literally occupy a whole house. So having to have that inventory around and manage it and make sure that, you know, I've got everything I need to actually complete six builds ends up taking a lot of space. And it takes a lot of time. And it was all time. Obviously, I wasn't able to spend with them either. So their patience has definitely been something I've really appreciated. Well, we appreciate everything you and Frank and everyone else have done so far with Legends of Valhalla, and we wish you the absolute best success for Riot Pinball. Thanks very much, Scott. Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate your time, and I hope you have a great day. This has been your Pinball Profile. You can find everything and subscribe to the program on pinballprofile.com. Check us out on Facebook. We're also on Twitter and Instagram at pinballprofile. Email us pinballprofile at gmail.com. I'm Jeff Teolas. Thank you.