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Arcooda Video Pinball News

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·56m 16s·held·Feb 3, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Farsight's mobile Sorcerer has rendering issues; Arcooda Video Pinball announces proprietary hardware and licensed software partnerships.

Summary

BlahCade hosts discuss Sorcerer release for mobile platforms (with texture/rendering issues on iOS), praise Pinball Wicked's modern DX11 graphics engine as a model for scalable settings, and extensively cover Arcooda Video Pinball's new proprietary hardware strategy featuring licensed software integration (Pinball Arcade, Time Shock), touchscreen controls, digital plungers, programmable lighting/coils, and exclusive cabinet-mode customizations to prevent copying.

Key Claims

  • Farsight released Sorcerer for mobile with texture rendering issues on iOS (flat white metals instead of brushed textures, missing halftones in wizard beard)

    high confidence · Chris Friebus discussing Sorcerer release on iOS platform, observed visual quality degradation compared to PC version

  • Pinball Wicked on Steam uses Unreal Engine with granular DX11 graphics settings (shadows, particles, lighting, resolution scaling from low to epic) that can scale down to low-end hardware

    high confidence · Chris Friebus tested Pinball Wicked on laptop with integrated graphics; praised its scalable settings model

  • Arcooda Video Pinball has licensed Pinball Arcade from Farsight and Time Shock from its makers for their video cabinet platform

    high confidence · Chris Friebus discussing Arcooda's video announcement about software partnerships

  • Arcooda has developed new proprietary hardware with distributed boards (similar to Stern Spike) to prevent competitors from copying their design and unlicensed software use

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussing Arcooda's strategy against copycat machines and unlicensed software

  • Farsight is customizing Pinball Arcade tables exclusively for Arcooda cabinets with cabinet mode and integrated lighting/coil/shaker effects

    high confidence · Chris explaining Farsight's Arcooda-specific development and why Season 1/2 tables are being relighted

  • Arcooda cabinets support swappable controller panels (joystick/buttons for MAME games, flipper buttons for pinball) and vertical/horizontal screen orientations

    high confidence · Chris and Jared describing Arcooda cabinet flexibility for multiple game types

  • Arcooda's management board is plug-and-play and supports up to 20 components (LEDs, coils, shaker motors) without rewiring

    high confidence · Chris describing Arcooda's modular hardware architecture from their video

  • Twilight Zone on Steam has improved graphics with flipper shadowing and backbox reflections; PS4 version differs negatively

Notable Quotes

  • “here's a modern game just like any other modern game where all these settings are built right into the game itself...you could tune all of this stuff down and still be able to play the game”

    Chris Friebus @ ~44:30 — Chris uses Pinball Wicked as a model for how Farsight should approach DX11 scalability instead of maintaining separate DX9/DX11 code branches

  • “the software is being specifically written to integrate or interface with these other components that Arcuda has, the lighting, the coils, the shaker motors, all that. Custom boards, basically.”

    Chris Friebus @ ~70:00 — Explains Arcooda's anti-piracy strategy: exclusive software customization requires proprietary hardware that can't be easily copied

  • “They've been in communication for quite a while. and some of this stuff is going to trickle down to us. Why do you think that Pinball Arcades is going through the Season 1 and 2 tables and changing the lighting and making it look better?”

    Chris Friebus @ ~75:00 — Suggests Farsight's general pinball arcade improvements stem from Arcooda cabinet-specific development work

  • “It looks like they took a cue out of Stern in their spike.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~66:00 — Notes Arcooda's distributed board architecture mirrors Stern Spike's LAN-based component system

  • “Fair enough. They'll fix it, though. They'll fix it. They get around to it eventually.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~20:00 — Jared's pragmatic take on Farsight's texture quality issues in Sorcerer on iOS, expressing confidence in eventual fixes

  • “I was talking about the game Dragon's Lair, and instead I typed in Dragon Slayer. Which is the movie that I always get mad at when people call it Dragon Slayer.”

    Chris Friebus @ ~3:00 — Meta-commentary on Chris's article proofreading error, establishing his own history with the franchise

  • “you can put the thing on a 45 degree slope and it'll still play just as nature intended.”

    Chris Friebus — Humorous take on Arcooda's digital tilt eliminating playfield leveling requirements

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonFarsight StudioscompanyArcooda Video PinballcompanyThis Week in PinballorganizationZen StudioscompanySorcerergameTwilight Zonegame

Signals

  • ?

    product_concern: Farsight's Sorcerer release on iOS suffers from missing metal textures (appearing flat white instead of brushed), missing halftones in wizard beard artwork, and inconsistent metallic rendering across platforms (iOS worse than Android/Steam)

    high · Chris: 'on the ios platform everybody's saying it's the worst looking game they've seen in a very long time because well the metal textures don't look very metal' and 'the beard of the wizard...is all done with halftones, and Farsight didn't bother with any halftones'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Pinball Wicked demonstrates modern scalable DX11 graphics engine (Unreal) with built-in settings (shadows, particles, lighting, resolution scaling) that can degrade gracefully to low-end hardware; presented as model for how digital pinball platforms should handle hardware variation

    high · Chris: 'you could tune all of this stuff down and still be able to play the game' and tested on laptop with integrated graphics; options menu allows low-to-epic settings

  • ?

    business_signal: Arcooda Video Pinball announced licensed software partnerships with Farsight (Pinball Arcade) and Time Shock makers; Farsight is performing exclusive cabinet-mode customization for Arcooda platform

    high · Chris: 'they have come out with new proprietary hardware to try and eliminate the copycat nature' and 'Farsight is going through every single table...writing code specifically to work with Arcuda'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Arcooda developed proprietary distributed-board architecture (similar to Stern Spike) with plug-and-play management board supporting 20 components; strategy aims to prevent competitor copying and unlicensed software extraction by tying exclusive software to custom hardware

    high · Chris: 'they have come out with new proprietary hardware to try and eliminate the copycat nature...other competitors have copied certain components of theirs, and then they also have machines that have unlicensed software in theirs'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.169

0:00
this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade pinball podcast i am your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan hey there chris how are things going today? Things are looking rather bright. I don't know. I got no complaints.
0:32
Nothing, no complaints here either. Similar brightness is happening in Australia. So there you go. There you go. Yeah, no, it's funny because last week we were kind of stretching to make Pinball News for the podcast and this week we are overflowing with Pinball News.
0:52
So strap on, boys and girls. Yes. So rather than doing what we normally do, which is kind of warm up and fill up some time and then jump in, why don't we just jump straight in? We've essentially done that already. We had an off-air warm up. So we can go straight to the population. Pre-show meetings, do we?
1:15
No, we don't often. But yeah, I was a bit early today, so let's do it. So here's what we're going to feature first. If you have not already done so, I encourage you to go over to the website thisweekinpinball.com. Why am I sending you over there, oh, listeners of our podcast that features nothing but digital and that website, which is all about real pinball? Well, the site owner over there, Jeff, he had me write an article that detailed the history of digital pinball, if you will, or as he titled it, a beginner's guide to virtual pinball. and posted it up with some photos that I had attached also. Anyway, came out pretty well, and been getting some good response, even from Zen Studios, which says there's pretty much no need for any other digital pinball guide. This is it. Oh, wow. High accolades indeed. Well, I can see it here. I'm just having a look now to see what it looks like in big print. um yeah it's very shiny i'll have to link that one in the show notes for sure yeah unfortunately and you can all make a game out of this uh i caught two errors that i did not proofread well and and then somebody else caught a another error and brought it to my attention and i basically slapped my head because uh and i'll just point this one out to you i was talking about the game Dragon's Lair, and instead I typed in Dragon Slayer. Which is the movie that I always get mad at when people call it Dragon Slayer, and I'm like, no, it's Dragon Slayer. So somehow my brain did the mental fart, and I don't know, I might have to contact Jeff and be like, can you make this one correction in there for me, please?

high confidence · Chris and Jared comparing platform-specific rendering quality of Twilight Zone relight

  • Sorcerer on Farsight added baked-in dynamic GI lighting texture swaps on Android similar to High Speed (faking dynamic lighting without full DX11)

    high confidence · Jared explaining Sorcerer lighting animation technique

  • Chris wrote a 'beginner's guide to virtual pinball' article on thisweekinpinball.com that received praise from Zen Studios

    high confidence · Chris discussing his article publication and Zen Studios' positive response

    • @ ~52:00

  • “if somebody of a competitor wanted to try and, say, rip the software out of the Arcuda machine because there's going to be new exclusives...Some genius is going to sit there and go, oh, I'll just hack it out”

    Chris Friebus @ ~59:00 — Explains the motivation for Arcooda's proprietary hardware strategy against software piracy

    • Pinball Arcade
    game
    Time Shockgame
    Pinball Wickedgame
    BlahCade Pinball Podcastorganization
    Attack from Marsgame
    High Speedgame
    Cirqus Voltairegame
    Scottperson
    Jeffperson
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Williamscompany
    Ballycompany
  • ?

    product_strategy: Arcooda cabinets feature exclusive licensed software with full integration of custom hardware: touchscreen controls, digital plunger, digital tilt (no plumb bob), programmable LEDs, coils, shaker motors, and cabinet-mode features unavailable elsewhere

    high · Chris: 'the software is being specifically written to integrate or interface with these other components that Arcuda has, the lighting, the coils, the shaker motors' and 'in the case of TPA, we're talking about Farsight's been working on cabinet mode for Arcuda. That's the only place you're going to be able to get this look'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Farsight implemented baked-in dynamic GI lighting texture swaps on Sorcerer (Android) and High Speed (DX9) to fake dynamic lighting effects without full DX11 rendering pipeline; creates visual intensity during multiball/strobe sequences

    high · Jared: 'we actually see that effect now on the Sorcerer game on Android, and it looks really effective. So essentially it's faking dynamic lighting is what they've done. They just do a texture swap, and geez, it looks good.'

  • ?

    product_launch: Farsight released Sorcerer for mobile (iOS/Android) and completed Twilight Zone relit version on Steam and other platforms; both subject to platform-specific rendering quality variations

    high · Chris: 'this past week, Farsight released Sorcerer for the MLPid' and 'they had just put out the retuned and relit version of Twilight Zone'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community criticism of Farsight's iOS quality (Sorcerer textures); praise for Steam version quality; notable disparity noted in Twilight Zone PS4 vs Steam versions, indicating platform-specific optimization challenges

    high · Chris: 'on the ios platform everybody's saying it's the worst looking game they've seen in a very long time' but 'on Steam, the table looks really, really good'; and 'I need to make this clarification because apparently things are quite different on PS4 right now with Twilight Zone and not in the good way'

  • ?

    content_signal: Chris Freebus published beginner's guide to virtual pinball on This Week in Pinball website; received positive endorsement from Zen Studios; minor proofreading errors noted in Dragon's Lair/Slayer reference

    high · Chris: 'I encourage you to go over to the website thisweekinpinball.com...I had me write an article that detailed the history of digital pinball...and been getting some good response, even from Zen Studios'

  • ?

    product_concern: Twilight Zone flipper models on Android appear with unusual coloring (goldy tone instead of standard Bally Williams yellow), poor visibility on small screens, and loss of ball shine near flippers; mini flipper visibility issue on compact displays

    high · Jared: 'they've got this very strange color tone to them that's not the standard like Bally Williams yellow bats. It's sort of like a goldy color...it actually makes the flippers really hard to see in the top half of the play field. Like that mini flipper just disappears'

  • $

    market_signal: Arcooda cabinets support modular, swappable hardware: controller panels for pinball/MAME games, vertical/horizontal screen orientations, scalable component support (coils, LEDs, shakers) encouraging operator customization and multi-game venue utility

    high · Chris: 'you swap controllers into where the apron...it's this one big connector, I think. And it's a very, very quick swap out' and 'you can have your big sort of massive screen in the cabinet itself...you've basically got the flexibility'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Arcooda Video Pinball preparing to release video detailing new hardware, software partnerships, and cabinet features; video announcement imminent (expected within following week)

    high · Chris: 'they've got a video that they're getting ready to post. Hopefully this next week you'll be able to view it for yourself'

    • 3:13
    Oh, yeah. Uh... But anyway, I just want to make sure that people check that out and cruise over to that site and see what's what.
    3:29
    In other news, this past week, Farsight released Sorcerer for the MLPid. and it's it's kind of interesting because on the ios platform everybody's saying it's the worst looking game they've seen in a very long time because well the metal textures don't look very metal normally there's kind of brush strokes on it and stuff, and instead it's looking kind of like flat white.
    4:06
    Oh, yeah, they did raise that in the very last beta on Android, but I guess they might have released it as it is. They might have just not put those textures in. The other issue and where it's most noticeable is in the beard of the wizard.
    4:25
    If you see the actual table, it's all done with halftones, and Farsight didn't bother with any halftones. It's just plain white with outline details, you might say. So it doesn't look as it should have.
    4:41
    And to me, that's a pretty small quibble, but I get why people quibble all the same. It's kind of like what happened when they were transferring DVD movies over to Blu-ray, but they didn't want to do a complete re-scan of the movie. So they did what's called DNR, which is digital noise reduction. And it basically made everything flat and shiny and took away all the film grain. Because that's what they were trying to do was the film grain. But then it wound up taking away grain from clothing.
    5:16
    So everything just looked smooth. Yeah. And that meant it smoothed out people's, actors' wrinkles on their faces and things on their clothes. So it made everything kind of have this weird shimmer, you might say. And they real quickly stopped using it. I mean, I think it was only in use for about a year before they either figured out what they're doing with it or how to change the algorithm for what it would fix and stuff like that. But to me, that's almost the same thing that Farsight did here where it was, you know, hey, do we want to spend extra pixels on halftone dots or do we just scrub it and do this? Now, over on the PC end of things, I think the game looks fantastic.
    6:02
    So you've got all the textures and everything on yours? Well, I don't have the halftones. No, those are still missing. And I will say that the metal down in the in-lane, out-lane is very white. It does not look metal. It looks white to me. But elsewhere, the ramp looks metal. And not only does the ramp look metal, but the plastics that are up there, also for the stand-up targets, they are reflecting the back box. Oh, really? I don't know that I've seen that before. That's pretty glossy as well. It's very glossy.
    6:38
    It kind of adds a little neat light show action. That would be pretty cool. I'm looking at it on Android. I'm just watching the table fly over at the moment. And is it on Steam where the return lanes are? Do you have some sort of solid plastic over the metal guides? Well, that's what I'm saying. I don't see the metal guides at all. It looks like it's solid, like a solid white piece. Oh, because on Android, I can see, because of the perspective only, I can see a very thin suggestion that there's a plastic over the top there.
    7:16
    And you wouldn't even really know if you're looking top down, because it just looks like the plastic's white. The middle is white on that area. And it shouldn't because it's also the same thing if you go up to the upper right hand where the multi-ball gets stored. There looks like what is a white piece, like a roofing covering, you might say, over the lane. That's metal also. That should be metal. It's not white. And it's simply that I don't know what Fireside did with their metal textures on those, but they did something. They didn't apply it or something. I don't know. It looks odd. because in this year of table, yeah. On mine.
    7:59
    Oh, okay. So that's on iOS, is it? Yeah, this is on iOS. For those of you not watching the video, we're showing each other's cameras on our phone.
    8:07
    Yeah. At the moment, I can see. So the things that are missing on Android at the moment, the roof over the lock area is gone on Android. Okay. It left the building sort of halfway through the beta test cycle and hasn't returned.
    8:27
    And, yeah, the metallic textures, some of them look kind of okay. But there's also the ones down the return lanes that clearly are white. In fact, a lot of, yeah, like even the spinner metal looks white. And that's basically what the complaint is that people are having on iOS that I was seeing. where they were like, it doesn't look that good of a table. But here's the thing, folks. Fair enough. They'll fix it, though. They'll fix it. They get around to it eventually. This is obviously they want to get it released. This got released on the very last day of the month, which is a little bit later than the cycle normally. Yeah, so I'm sure it'll get fixed. So what I wanted to point out, though, was, like I said, on Steam, the table looks really, really good, nice and shiny.
    9:15
    The bold brightness for once is how I like it. where I can read all the inserts and it looks good in a darkened thing.
    9:25
    So then I got wind that they had just put out the retuned and relit version of Twilight Zone. So I checked that out and sure enough it's got the same kind of picking up the back box reflections that the original version has. So Twilight Zone looks pretty dang phenomenal also. The only issue that I have with Twilight Zone is that the balls have kind of lost all their shine.
    9:56
    It's pretty much like they are on Android. Down near the flipper, the chrome ball will look almost kind of that pewter lead kind of look. Once it gets up into the upper area of the playfield, it kind of gets its shine back. So I don't know if it's trying to read the lighting or something like that, but it was kind of odd, and I checked it out on other tables, and other tables still have the normal shine. So I don't know what it is about Twilight Zone that the balls lost their shine.
    10:23
    And I tried different types of balls also just to see if it was the same way that it was. Look, on Android, I always feel the ball's actually quite matte.
    10:33
    And it doesn't, of course, naturally because we don't have reflections on Android, it does always look dull and lifeless. But I haven't really noticed it. I think what you're seeing is what we're used to. on Android and iOS. Well, in DX9, you had the choice of being able to apply Shiny Ball or none. Shiny Ball obviously adds a little bit of,
    10:58
    or needs a little bit of extra oomph from your computer to do it well. But that was at least an option. So it's almost like on Android, they just never put in that option, if you will. No. Well, no, because they don't have the rendering pipeline to do it. Right. So the, what was the other thing? I was thinking it's something to do with Sorcerer, and it was to do, that's right, bait in lighting. So we've actually got swappable bait in lighting on the table now. So when the GI and everything pulses like you would normally see in DX11, we actually see that effect now on the Sorcerer game on Android, and it looks really effective. So essentially it's faking dynamic lighting is what they've done. They just do a texture swap, and geez, it looks good. And we pointed this out before. They first started doing that, at least in DX9, with the release of high speed. And I think it's a great way of faking dynamic lighting. It just gives you that little extra, you know, so I would hope that one table they would go and revisit this on is, well, two tables could do it, but the main one is Attack from Mars. because in DX9 lighting, that table loses so much, and especially when you do strobe multiball and you're like, why is it screaming strobe multiball? There's nothing going on. There's no strobe. There's no strobe or whatever. So it would be great if they went in and put in that baked-in fake GI lighting for that. Circus Voltaire could certainly use that kind of thing for when it does the neon. No, yeah, neon multiball. Neon multiball. yeah that thing looks amazing with that neon tube just flashing away yeah yeah um yeah that would be pretty sweet um so yeah it's it's actually makes the game it's a from a gameplay perspective it's actually quite fun i actually quite like uh sorcerer i i love hearing that era of sound effects i could i could take or leave the drop target noise like i can take a leave it black knight because it's annoying as anything but at least you don't have four sets of drop targets trying to compete against each other in in this game um so i can deal with it but yeah the shots are fun that uh yeah it's a fun game to shoot um so i'm glad it's in there and it looks like it looks like they've done some upscaling um of the graphics to it because i think there was some people were suggesting that um uh that it was just basically a direct grip out of the old games. Yeah, I think they used that as their base and then did their normal touch-ups on top of that. Oh, yeah. Well, they look great. To me, it doesn't look any different to the other games of the season as far as quality goes. And I guess playfield scan goes. I wouldn't even know about the white beard unless someone told me. So to me it looks crisp It looks good Yeah a good addition to the game I think it great I should point out also with Twilight Zone if you just look at the flippers, even the flippers have some interesting shadowing going on on them.
    14:16
    They're stepping up their game on a lot of the... doing a lot of little fine touches that really sell the illusion. The illusion, as opposed Like I said, I pointed out when we had the 2AM pack with Wildcard, where I said the flipper looked completely flat and boring.
    14:37
    So it's one of those things where I don't know why sometimes it gets done, sometimes it doesn't get done. Hopefully it'll get kind of brought up to speed, but I think certainly look at what they did with Twilight Zone on Steam.
    14:49
    I need to make this clarification because apparently things are quite different on PS4 right now with Twilight Zone and not in the good way. so on steam how twilight zone looks right now uh the the shadowing that the flippers have i'd love to see that on all the tables and in terms of sorcerer with its insert lights and how bright they are and how they read i wish that that could be applied to every other table that's been put out there so those of you at farsight that listen to our podcast those are my baselines you now have a new base on the sorcerer baseline is what you need to apply to all other tables in terms of the insert lights yes yeah i noticed that um i went and just randomly selected twilight zone the other day on android and there's something that really jumps out at me when you were talking about flippers it's the flipper models they've used on twilight zone on android they look really weird they've got this very strange color tone to them that's not the standard like Bally Williams yellow bats. It's sort of like a goldy color. Yeah. And they have this really weird sort of almost like skin on top of them that just, it doesn't look normal.
    16:02
    So they need to change the models out of those because it actually makes the flippers really hard to see in the top half of the play field. Like that mini flipper just disappears because it's not a very bright yellow. And I was actually going, I'm having a real lot of trouble trying to work out what that flipper is so I can actually flip it.
    16:21
    Yeah, I don't know. It just seems, I just noticed it the other day. I think it's been like that always, but just the other day I was going, no, it's really hard to see. I have a lot of trouble seeing that on small screens. So I was playing that on my Pixel XL2 and normally I would play it on the Shield tablet, but yeah, on the small phones, it actually makes a difference.
    16:43
    One other bit of business that I want to get to before we get into our main topic. that is one of our listeners and players in the weekly Zen tournament went ahead and couldn't believe that I hadn't played Wicked Pinball yet or Pinball Wicked I always write that the wrong way Pinball Wicked on Steam which for those of you that don't know that's the pirate themed pinball game that came out and it uses the Unreal Engine for all of its graphics.
    17:20
    So anyway, he went ahead and gifted me that. So thank you, Scott. I much appreciate it. And I threw it up on my machine, and man, that thing has the potential to be incredibly good-looking. The problem is my machine can't make it look that good.
    17:39
    But the reason why I'm kind of bringing this up is apparently I rankled a few people the other week when I was saying about, hey, why not just ditch DX9 entirely and do all of the graphic settings in DX11 and make them so you can dumb down? Well, here we have a case of a game that is fully using DX11. I don't know if they're using DX12. I don't know what Unreal Engine uses. But Unreal Engine is used for your top-of-the-line first-person shooters. is used all over the place. But obviously, it has the ability to do incredibly detailed graphics. And sure enough, you go into the Options menu, and there it is. You can set up what your screen resolution is, what the percentage of resolution it scales in, whether it's one-to-one or even less or even twice as much. You can double the resolution, basically.
    18:37
    Under your graphic settings, you have the ability to control showers. showers um interesting um you can home automation in your pinball machine right shadows was the word that i was trying to get out you can control your shadows you can control particle effects you can control lighting effects you can control whether uh there is sun reflecting or shadowing the table. You can change... I mean, and you can put everything from low all the way up to epic.
    19:18
    Epic level. I don't know what kind of machine you're going to need and what kind of graphics card you're going to need and what kind of CPU you need on epic, but I guarantee you that the way things look at where I have it set at, which is like on low and mediums, it still looks phenomenal. I mean, the ball looks really good, The flippers look good. The lighting, everything on this table looks really, really good.
    19:43
    And so this is what I'm talking about. I've looked at the screenshot that you put into your article on This Week in Pinball. I reckon that that is epic settings in that screenshot. Quite possibly. It looks pretty insane. Gee, there's even fog and ships going in the background. Oh, yeah. The cannon fires then poof, there's smoke. The whole table looks like it's sitting in water, and the water is reflecting and rippling.
    20:11
    There's just a massive amount of wacky effects going on. But my point is that you could tune all of this stuff down and still be able to play the game. My true test was I threw it up on my laptop, which has no video card whatsoever. It just uses the motherboard graphic card, basically. And unfortunately, yes, I could make the game playable, but I had the resolution scaled down to the point that it was.
    20:47
    Well, yeah, I mean, except for I had it blown up to fill my screen. So that meant it was just nothing but blobbies.
    20:55
    You know, you wouldn't be able to read a single word on the table, but it was still playable. So that's kind of what I was talking about that I wish Farsight would do, though, in terms of why not have, in the DX11 version of the game, the ability to turn off enough things to make it run at DX9 levels.
    21:17
    And then it's all in one program. Then it's all in one program. and all your bug squashing, all the issues that you have in programming, they're all contained within the same entity rather than having two different things that have had two different, completely different development trees happening. So to clarify, you're not saying that you should discontinue DX9 support altogether? No. You're saying that you should enable DX9 comparative features in DX11? Exactly.
    21:48
    Right. and providing that people can actually install DX11 on their particular hardware, then that's fine to do that. Now, I just wonder if some people, what is the system limitation for DX11? What's the minimum? Look, if you're still running Windows 98, I'm not talking to you. Oh, Windows 98 is the minimum. No, no, no. It's above there. I think Windows 7 was when they started doing DX11. And a lot of people are running Windows 7, and Windows 8 and most, I mean, and any new machine you buy today is Windows 10. Windows is really pushing for people to get on Windows 10 because they've pretty much stopped developing for the other, putting in security updates or anything else like that. Because with Windows 10, it constantly, there is not going to be a Windows 11, Windows 12. They're just going to continually upgrade. Yeah, it's always going to be upgraded.
    22:43
    It's going to be Service Pack 15. Essentially, essentially. so even on my laptop which is I think it's a probably a three or four year old laptop I'm running Windows 10 on that right so it's one of those Windows operating systems that will scale back down to lower end systems quite heavily right because I know that Windows 10 also in Windows mobile and tablet as well so I'm pretty sure it's basically the one version of Windows now that's on every Microsoft product right so again step into the current times folks I'm sure your machine yeah and it's not like and I'm not saying that all of a sudden DX9 completely disappears off the face of the map either right yeah so you can save up if you need to and get another computer uh or get the bits you need to upgrade your computer it's kind of like it's kind of like with pinball effects 3 um it didn't wipe pinball effects 2 off my computer you just can no longer purchase pinball effects 2 from steam so it goes into it goes into sunset mode exactly essentially it's gone so anyway I just kind of wanted to bring that up as an example of here's a modern game just like any other modern game where all these settings are built right into the game itself I didn't have to do it in a separate setup interface like Farsight has it was all within the game I could see it instantaneous as I'm hitting the sliders from medium to low or whatever I can see in the background the graphics automatically changing on some of these. It just makes it so much quicker for you to be able to fine-tune the game to be able to run on your system that you have.
    24:48
    Once again, thank you, Scott. I appreciate it for the gifting of this because I'm happily now testing it out and maybe next week I'll be able to talk more about the game itself. That sounds good.
    25:01
    Okay. Let's move into the meaty chunk of things. something that we have not talked about in some time because there has not been news about it in some time, but hey folks, do you remember Arcuda Video Pinball? That would be a company that is making their video cabinets and who has partnered, or I should say licensed with Farsight to put out Pinball Arcade on this thing.
    25:29
    In addition to that, also the findmakers of Time Shock have licensed their game to Arcuda Video Pinball.
    25:39
    So what has Arcuda been working on? Well, they've got a video that they're getting ready to post. Hopefully this next week you'll be able to view it for yourself, but for those of you that don't feel like viewing the video or can't find the video, hey, we'll talk about the video. Yeah, that's right.
    25:56
    So right off the bat, you basically have two different products. We'll be talking mainly about the PC version, which is what's in the full-size cabinets, but they also made quick mention of what they're calling their Android version. Now, that doesn't mean that it's not Arcuda for an Android system that you have. It is, yeah, the bar top games. Yeah, bar tops. Like the Mega Touch games that you used to see in pubs and clubs. Precisely. So they kind of showed a little picture of that. It's got a joystick on it, eight buttons, so basically it can handle both and I didn't see the side so I don't know if it can handle flipper buttons I imagine it's got buttons on the side yeah definitely but what this is is not only will you be able to play pinball on it but you'll be able to play a host of other video game on it so it's an all-in-one unit more or less which to be fair the same thing can be said of their full-size cabinet in terms of you will be able to play MAME video games on it, on the flat screen portion, so the play field, basically. And what they have you do is you swap controllers into where the apron on your pinball machine is. That's where all of a sudden you swap in, and now you have joystick and button configurations, and apparently it's a really quick and easy swap. You just put the panel in, and it's this one big connector, I think. And it's a very, very quick swap out. So it'll make it really cool for those of you that do have the money and the space for a cabinet game that you'll be able to play video games as well as pinball and not just, you know, not have to have a separate cabinet for your video games. it's kind of neat too because the way that when we had a look at the cabinet um in the very first like about a year and a half ago now i think um the the way that you can use the the back box screen and the play field like vertical screen uh is really really effective for vertical shoot them ups like raiden and all those other sort of games require a vertical um orientation now i even seem to remember they were playing some sort of driving game I think it was like Forza or something like that on Steam on the vertical cabinet screen And it actually looked pretty good. It scaled perfectly well on it. So, yeah, you've basically got the flexibility of going for a traditional landscape screen on the back box, which is kind of the perfect height if you're standing at the pinball machine to play. or you can have your big sort of massive screen in the cabinet itself to play on. So, yeah, you're pretty small of a choice, really.
    28:40
    So they were saying in the video that basically in the time they've put out their prototype machine and had it gone to shows and everything, that other competitors have copied certain components of theirs, and then they also have machines that have unlicensed software in theirs. And so that's one of the things that Arcuda is really trying to take back, if you will. Yeah, put a stop to. So they have come out with new proprietary hardware to try and eliminate the copycat nature. And there's a good reason for that, and we'll get to that in a second. but it's also that they're really going after having licensed software support. Yeah. So they're really looking at partnering with software companies so they can add in the Acruda capabilities. So it really is a seamless experience when you're using their product. So what does it mean to be licensing in with this? Well, so if you take into, and they mentioned this in the video with Pimble Arcade and with Time Shock, that is full touchscreen integration. And that's so you can either use flipper buttons or you can put your hands up on the play field itself and do just like you would on your tablet. Android tablet, yeah. Exactly. So touchscreen there, full digital plunger. Now, I don't know if that means it's, again, touchscreen digital plunger, which you can see in the video, or if it's digital, i.e. the physical plunger that you pull is doing nothing but digital inputs. Yeah, you can buy them. That's what I imagine it is. Yeah, I've seen those digital plungers for pin cabs, and they're pretty hardcore.
    30:26
    Because they're also putting in, they're eliminating the plumb bob for leveling and for tilts and putting in a digital tilt, which allows you to set if it's a light tilt or a much more aggressive tilt. And because of that, you also don't have to now worry about leveling your playfield. Because it doesn't need to be, of course, because it's digital. Exactly. You can put the thing on a 45 degree slope and it'll still play just as nature intended. They're also having coils, programmable LED and shaker support. So this is what I'm talking about by having licensed software. They're actually having the software be custom written for Arcuda to integrate with all of these digital features. So therefore, if somebody of a competitor wanted to try and, say, rip the software out of the Arcuda machine because there's going to be new exclusives, like in the case of TPA, we're talking about Farsight's been working on cabinet mode for Arcuda. That's the only place you're going to be able to get this look.
    31:38
    So some genius is going to sit there and go, oh, I'll just hack it out of the Arcuda cabinet somehow. post it, and then people can play it and put it in their own machine. But the software is being specifically written to integrate or interface with these other components that Arcuda has, the lighting, the coils, the shaker motors, all that. Custom boards, basically. Right. So they'll have their own chip that will be sending out a certain signal that, you know, will require you to have this custom software. Exactly. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of.
    32:10
    I'm sorry, what? The only way you're going to be able to get one of these custom boards is, well, to buy the cabinet. Right, right. It kind of reminds me of just like seeing the pictures that they were showing. It was like, hey, it looks like they took a cue out of Stern in their spike.
    32:25
    Oh, yeah, it's definitely distributed boards. That makes sense because, you know, they're using a computer inside anyhow. So using like essentially a LAN-based or like network-based board system makes a lot of sense. So, yeah, it's a good move. So they have also, they have like a management board that is now plug and play and allows up to 20 components to be connected to it.
    32:48
    So this means it's, you know, oh, you bought the shaker motor? Boom, plug it in. It now works. Job's done. Yeah. Job's done. No rewiring. You got some extra coils now all of a sudden installed? Boom, plop them in. You want some trick LED lighting? And they show it in the video. They got LED lighting built right into the cabinet on the exterior of the cabinet. Oh, that's good. Jeez, that would look so nice in a big room, in your games room. Man, you see people doing that on their own cabinets. They put strip lighting underneath the cabinet bottom. It really does look good. So, yeah, this looks really slick. And it's so tightly integrated into the game that I'm pretty sure that they'd be able to trigger lighting effects based on action in the game. Right.
    33:32
    And then I also mentioned specifically that each game is being customized exclusively for Rakuta. So that means Farsight is going through every single table that they've put out, writing code specifically to work with Arcuda. Now, you might sit there and go, oh, great, way to go, Farsight, yet another platform to try and work on.
    33:57
    Let me point out, Farsight's been doing this with Arcuda for some time now. They've been in communication for quite a while. and some of this stuff is going to trickle down to us. Why do you think that Pinball Arcades is going through the Season 1 and 2 tables and changing the lighting and making it look better? Hmm.
    34:19
    I wonder where that business driver is coming from. Some of this stuff, although you're not going to get cabinet mode, fine. Some of this other stuff is going to trickle over into the game itself. So there are things that are being done exclusively for Rakuta and there's other things that it's like hey, while we're at it, it's going to go on. We'll also put these changes into regular TPA. Exactly. So, that's all cool. Other news they were talking about was that new for 2017 with the, well, 2017's over, but Rakuta have been making steel cabinets. Hmm, yeah. And, which me and Jared were talking about, Boy, that's going to be heavy to ship, I would think. But then they also said in the United States, there's going to be, as they call it, timber cabinets. Wood.
    35:12
    Timber. That'll be being made here in the U.S. and distributed that way. So we don't know, though, are there going to be steel cabinets available in the U.S.? Is the wood ones only for the U.S. and not for anywhere else in the world? I don't know. Maybe that's also a price point. Maybe the wood will wind up being cheaper than the steel. but steel is going to be a massive tank that is indestructible. Yeah, this thing, I don't know.
    35:38
    They will be good for arcade use because they're going to be robust as anything. Oh, yeah. But, yeah, jeez, I wouldn't like to be getting one off the back of your truck.
    35:48
    Pick up trying to get it into a location or, you know, your house. That would need a number of blokes with a big slab of beer afterwards to pay them back for the backache they're just getting, moving this thing around. you kind of think about it that there is no wood i mean it's not like we're talking about wood playfield we're talking about a tv screen and so having a metal cabinet supporting the tv screen you basically made this thing uh almost an indoor outdoor compatible if you will uh that it's going to be able to handle the abuse of a bar where beers are going to get spilled um and therefore you're not going to be dealing with warping or chipping or anything of that nature. Yeah. The only risk you'll have is people putting a beer glass through the actual screen. Right. Which would be not ideal, but, you know.
    36:44
    In the video as well, that's the thing that's going to be interesting. These things are going to be out on location, so you can actually try them. And that might only be in Australia at the moment. So if that's a thing, then be rest assured that I will be going to take one for the team for that.
    36:59
    Yeah, me and Jared are both hounding Arcuda with, so how exactly are we going to get our hands on these so we can talk about them? Yeah.
    37:10
    Dropping lots of subtle hints, basically. Even to the point of going, so Jared's the one in Australia, Chris is the one in Southern California. Yeah, that's right. you know uh i would be more than happy to test it out in my garage for a month and that'd be a testing center um they're in um i think uh akuta are actually based in uh the state of new south wales here in australia i'm pretty sure and being me being in queensland that's basically the next state over from new south wales so okay if if necessary um i could probably go and arrange some sort of road trip down to New South Wales to pick up one of these beasts and get it back up here at very little expense to Akuta.
    37:59
    But, you know, we'll see what they can do there. It might be that they put it out in location close to here and that'll be just as good because I'll be able to go and check it out. So anyway, that's everything that's in that video. Obviously, once we're allowed to link the video, we will post that and let you guys take a look at it. we also got exposed to another video that we're not allowed to talk about suffice it to say me and Jared's jaws have collectively hit the floor yeah boy when you guys see this thing far out it kills us that we cannot talk about it because it is so cool it's incredible it is incredible but just one of those things that knowing if you're pre-ordering an Arcuda machine that you might have a little extra to look forward to when this particular thing gets announced.
    38:50
    Yeah. The third thing that they allowed us, they have a sister company, Highway Games. Now, this is not to be confused with Highway Pinball. Highway in Wales. This is the actual way you would spell a highway. H-I-G-H-W-A-Y.
    39:08
    They are... So this is Arcus' sister company. HomePin, I believe it's who developed this game, but it's Thunderbirds. And they showed a video that we were able to watch of this. And it's kind of funny. Here we are talking about a company that's doing all this digital pinball and doing all this digital cabinetry and everything. And then you get this Thunderbird game, and it's like, holy crap, is that straight from the 90s? I mean, it really looks like a System 11. It totally does. Well, I wouldn't even see System 11 because it's DMD. So what do they call that game? What was that called when Williams went DMD? Did they just call it DMD or was there another system?
    39:51
    Yeah, I can't remember. I don't know, but basically it looks very much like what you would expect from Adam's family. Or if Funhaus had a DMD, it would fit right side by side with it. That's exactly what Mike was going for from Home Pin. I remember him talking to the guys on Head to Head Pinball when they had him on the show, and he was saying, yeah, the aesthetic we're looking at here is definitely a System 11 sort of early 90s pinball here, and so much so that you don't even have a USB update facility. It's basically send the board back down to the distributor and get it updated. And he said, look, I'm not interested in having USB updates for people because I've seen it with Stern and people balk them all the time and it's an absolute problem. So it really is in every respect using similar technology and practices of the 1990s as well.
    40:55
    I think it's just personal preference for Mike because he knows the industry quite well. He knows that most people know how to do a software update but the people that he's potentially targeting don't with this product. So it's good I guess good market research on his part for going no we're doing it the old way because it actually is really reliable so yeah it'll be once you guys are able to see this video again this one was not for release nor do they know when it's going to be available for release video wise because they've got to coordinate with HomePin it contains some very like the imagery in it is very detailed so So naturally the licensor must approve the video before it's released. So, yeah. But that being said, looking good. So it's funny. We go from having no news from Arcuda to all of a sudden having a ton of news and all of this looking really, really nice. Yeah. Seems that they've just been doing what most pinball, like what some pinball machine companies don't do. And they actually just been working their butts off to the point that they actually got something that useful to communicate back to the community again and something that actually more feature complete than a lot of other pinball companies out there So that's the right way to go when you're trying to release a physical product, I think. Yep.
    42:30
    Okay, that was a lot of pinball, Jared. That's a lot of pinball for sure. A lot of pinball. that's good because you know we are the blockade pinball podcast the definitive podcast for all digital your digital pinball needs that's right hey if you have not checked out our website come check out the new look of it you need to go over to blockadepinball.com slash episodes that'll put you on the home page from there you can navigate to where you need to navigate what you will notice is not just our podcast being dropped. You'll notice articles being posted, and I've started to flood it with movie reviews, and you'll have to forgive me. I'm still trying to find my way around how I actually want to do a movie review because I don't want to do the typical what you would normally get review. I'm not trying to sell you on, oh, but it's got this actor and this actor, and those are boring to write. So I'm still trying to figure out my voice on this, but if you've read the latest one that I posted, which was on the movie The Post, you'll kind of get more of where I'm coming from on these. And you're going to be getting a lot of these because since I have this movie pass, I'm going to do a lot of movies.
    43:48
    I'm going to try and write something about everything that I see. That's good. And I need to pull my finger out and actually start doing the Pinball and Google Play reviews. I've been playing this one game called Pinball Planet, and it definitely needs a pinball and Google Play review.
    44:07
    It really does. It's using Unity, but not like Black Flag is pinball. Right. So basically we want you to be visiting our site and knowing that there is more to it than just the podcast. That's why we have this whole new redesign.
    44:27
    And within it, you're able to comment. I think you can comment. I know for sure you can. Absolutely, you can comment. It's pretty – so if you do want to go to the trouble of creating a Medium account, and that's dead easy because you can sign up with Facebook or Twitter as your authentication in. Once you're in there, you can actually give applause, and it sounds like – it's a bit like the Facebook like. You can give applause to the article, and you can also highlight certain sections of the article as well and then respond in line to those. So the way you can actually interact with the articles and interact with us on Medium.com is far better than the old site was. So we really encourage you to do it. Like, if you do one thing this week, sign up to Medium just for us and give it a go. Because Medium itself has got some pretty cool stuff on it. And once you start using it, you'll discover that.
    45:21
    And we've said it before. We do try to interact with everybody, and we appreciate it if you try and interact with us. that is why we are available on twitter at blockade for the main show at shut your traps for myself and at jared morgues for jared the that's why we always announce our email which is blah blockade at gmail.com if you drop us an email we try and respond i can't say that we'll necessarily get on it fast but we'll try and get uh get a response out to you uh before the end of before the next show goes up, basically. So, yeah. No later than a week is LA for email responses.
    46:03
    And then this is just another way that you can interact with it and comment. Jared always posts the podcast over on pinballarcadefans.com, and some people interact with us over there. So, again, we try and have various means of being able to communicate with you guys and hopefully it's content that you're enjoying. It seems like you are, but we'd love to give you more content that you enjoy.
    46:30
    Anything that clues us into this stuff is beneficial. Yeah, for sure. You know what we did not talk about, Jared? What's that? We can go ahead and cap it with this. We know what Farsight's next table is. The newsletter came out. Oh, yes. the hint, although I'm not up on my Lion King.
    46:55
    Apparently it was a picture of a hyena and a picture of a stick figure running, and I guess the hyena's name in Lion King is Bonsai. Hmm! Could it be? Bonsai run? I think it could be. I think it could be! Actually, no, for a fact it is.
    47:14
    That's Ross. So, what I wanted to say was, I know that a few podcasts back, I had said that there was no way, no how that Banzai Run was going to come anytime soon. And I was wrong.
    47:30
    Sometimes my sources internally aren't exactly giving me everything. They let our speculation speculate in wonky ways. But what I heard is this is indeed kicking their butts. They've had to have their Steve Elenoff who does all the emulation. He's had to write some new emulation specifically for this because there is a physical component to the machine when it kicks up to the upper playfield or the vertical playfield. That if for some reason that fails and the ball drops down or the ball doesn't go through a certain switch, they're basically safeguards built into the table to detect the ball. Right. And that means that certain states of the machine are always left on and other states are turned off.
    48:29
    And Farsight didn't have that written in to their System 11 emulation. System add-on. Exactly. System add-on. So basically they've had to figure out how to make this function so that there's no downtime switching between upper and regular playfield, depending on what the ball does. Wow, that's really tough. Yeah, so I'll be very curious to see how successful they are with this. I mean, I really hope that they're successful with this. Bonsai Run is certainly a table that everybody has been clamoring for. Oh, it's the obvious inclusion into the Pimbala Cave from a historical perspective as well, because it is one of a kind. Right. So I'm really glad that they're getting this one in, because it's really... If they were to stop the season, stop the game now, they could say, yes, we have historically significant games in there now, enough of them to actually go, yeah, this is a fair enough collection. And I've said that beyond this table...
    49:36
    The only other two tables that I want that would make me be like, okay, I can be done with this. You can, you can quit now. I'll be happy. Is if roller games and NBA fast break two tables, I know pretty much are not going to heaven.
    49:50
    NBA fast break might, but it might, but it'd be heavily fested. Well, that's just it. The licensing on both of these,
    49:58
    one, you're dealing with the NBA and the other, it's trying to find the actual people that have the license.
    50:03
    Yeah. Which I mean, that they probably wouldn't anymore. They wouldn't actually have a league to stand on probably because their deal with the NBA is over. So it would be a bit of a weird one.
    50:17
    Well, with the NBA, yeah. I mean, the NBA, it's about getting a hold of the NBA Players Association and dealing with that. It's basically something that Farsight has said would, A, be exceedingly expensive and, B, a massive headache. because in the very far past of Farsight, when they were doing sports games, they were dealing with players associations for, I know, with Major League Baseball and with NFL. I don't know if they had anything with NBA, but I remember a long time ago being told, yes, they had the agreements, but no, they were not easy to honor, I would say. Yeah, it's tricky business dealing with that. So now you're dealing with retired players.
    51:03
    It would be really, really nuts tricky to try and deal with. But you're right. The inclusion of Banzai Run, that is historically a valid table to have in this collection. It's such a rare table to find in the wild. There's only one place, I think, in Australia that has one of these in a publicly accessible location. That's only recent. Yeah. So I still haven't been there yet, but it will be interesting for me once it goes out on Pinball Arcade for me to go to this place and compare the two. well and i've said that the although i know that i had played pinball prior to it my first real recollection of going specifically to play pinball was when i was a junior in high school going down to balboa pier which is a beach down by newport beach in southern california i had the balboa fun zone and within there i specifically remember seeing bontai run haunted house and comet and those are pretty much the first three pinballs that I can name that I've played. So that's how significant that Banzai Run is, at least in terms of me. I since have played it and believe me, nostalgia was kinder than actually playing it again, but that doesn't decrease the validity of having it in the game. I've never played it, so I'm fresh. I'm fresh meat. It's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to it.
    52:34
    Okay. I know I said this was the last bit. I got one last final nugget. For those of you on Steam, have you gone through the ball selection of custom balls?
    52:55
    If you have, you've noticed there's a few extra new balls that have been included. And Jared, I'd like to hear your speculation about this. One of the balls looks like a melon. Yes. One of the balls clearly has a Mustang on it. Yes. One of the balls has the latest iteration, the movie version of the Star Trek cast on it. Right. So the Christopher Pine version. What do you think that means? This is in Pinball Arcade, folks. they all sound like stern tables Chris kind of does doesn't it because I'm looking at my Android app now and I can see a watermelon in mine and I can see if I can actually scroll them which I can't because the back button isn't working so I have to go all the way through I will go all the way through for the purposes of this little segment and I definitely did see a watermelon there which for the record has actually been in there for a while.
    54:06
    The watermelon, yeah, I remember seeing that in there for a fair while. And then the glow balls come through. So then after the glow balls, I see what looks like the Masters of Time, a couple of, yeah, Doctor Who stuff. Yeah, it's a Mustang ball, a Ghostbusters ball.
    54:24
    If that is a Star Trek ball, I guess it is. but you can't really tell because it's very... I don't have any of those on my iPhone. I only have them on Steam. No, I remember playing with the... I think the watermelon ball is something I've been playing with for a while. No, this is a completely different looking watermelon ball.
    54:48
    Anyway, something for those on Steam to look at and draw your own conclusions with. It's kind of one of those things, somebody pointed it out on the Pimble Arcade fans, and I immediately popped in. I was like, ooh, what is this, and why is it?
    55:08
    Because I don't think you can actually select the balls on the same Pimble Arcade app. Basically, whatever the ball is is the ball you get. So, yeah, maybe it's just the stern ball packs that you can get. I don't know. It's interesting, though. I don't know. Let the rampant speculation begin, folks. All right. With that, we're going to conclude.
    55:32
    Thank you all for listening. God knows what we'll talk about next week, but I have an idea. All right. Until then, bye-bye. See you next time.
    55:43
    WizardAmusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter modes. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization.
    55:56
    don't forget to leave a review on itunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that blockade is delivered to we can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening and play some in ball