What's going on everybody? Welcome to the wrong freaking screen. We Let's try that again. Uh, welcome everybody. This is not really like an official episode of the Dirty Pool podcast, but uh something else that I thought might be a little neat to do. Uh we're doing kind of like a meet the team and uh as many of you may know Pinball Expo has ended. Uh 90% of the people that went to it are now sick and will be suffering for the next week. Uh somehow Joshua and I have dodged that bullet. Um so today's little episode is to say hello, to say thank you to everybody that went there. It was an overwhelming experience for me. This was not a position I was expecting to be in. all the people that came up to me that threw up love for the Great Pyramid. Just everybody was super positive and it just it couldn't have been a better experience meeting everybody. But today we're not only talking about Expo, we're here to talk about something else extremely important about our game, The Winchester. I'm joined by none other Joshua Joshua Clay, who you may know from plenty of other Stern titles, his illustration artwork and whatnot. You are responsible for the 3D modeling the Winchester house itself on the screen. Hello, Joshua.
Hello. Thanks for having me. So today's kind of like a hybrid episode. We're here to chitchat about Expo and our experience with it. Uh we're here to answer questions if you guys have guys and girls have any questions about uh the game itself, what we can answer in the capacity that we can. Um just in general like the team's hyped like this is uh universally uh not what we expected to have happen with the game. And I think I speak for everybody that we couldn't be happier about it. And uh it's important that everybody watching this uh know that we cannot wait to make this game the best it can possibly be and to continue this momentum to make a really special pinball machine. Um so yeah, without further ado, throw your questions and Josh, can you talk a little bit about what got you involved in the project and you know your your work? Let's talk about Winchester. Um yeah, I guess what got me involved in the project was I was working at I was working at Warner Brother games um on a Mortal Kombat title and they cut the they had cut the mobile games division which I was a senior user interface artist for that and I had talked to David before. Um so after I got laid off I was sort of um sort of took some time to decide what I wanted to do. I thought about trying to go back into um AAA video games, but I wasn't really happy. I was kind of burned out on that. So, I'd hit up David about um Barrels of Fun to kind of see where they were at with their games and to see what where they where at with the company and he invited me onto the team. I got working on Dune and did all the user interface stuff for Dune. And then as that was going, he was talking to me about Winchester. Um, so yeah, it just sort of naturally led from Dune into Winchester. Um, and I had a bigger role on Winchester because we needed we didn't have any license or assets really. So I needed to come up with a plan to create everything to tell the story that Carl had designed. Um,
let's touch base on that too cuz I think a lot of people had mentioned like man oh man like well you got such a small license you don't have to acquire all these licenser assets like what an easier pin to make. And I can't imagine the amount of eye rolling that occurred as soon as you heard that. And it's like instead of instead of crutching on like video assets that kind of like automatically fill a certain like role in the pin, now all of a sudden we're having to like make all of this stuff from scratch. I do find it hilarious. Somebody had said a rumor that the that we went in and scanned the whole house with LAR or something. No. No. There was a tour. There were tons of reference photos and then you modeled every room that is in the game. like all these real rooms that exist in the house are modeled by you. Uh and then with character animation by Julian, right? She She contributed on that.
Yep.
So you talk about a little bit
did that.
Can you can you give a little bit of the process of going from photos to 3D model?
Yeah, it was uh Yeah, you you know, even if you don't have license or assets, you pay for it. You know, you pay either way. And honestly, like we I mean, so many so many countless hours into modeling these rooms, you know, and it's not until you really start looking at the photos of the rooms that you realize just how detailed they are. Um, the amount of like amazing woodwork in every room, all of the super ornate objects and items, chandeliers, um, just woodwork in general, uh, doors, trim, there's just some incredible like aspects to each room. And because of the way that she built this house, you can't reuse every everything from one room to the next. It's like every room you're almost starting from scratch cuz she was constantly uh Sarah Winchester was constantly building onto this house and just in this weird hodgepodge sort of way like so yeah every single room was just a new adventure and it was just a new like
it was a new like
you can't cut corners with like pre-made assets cuz this house is so unique like I remember so like we had let's talk about the organ like this organ is amazing this they have this ornate organ in it. I'm so glad it got used as kind of like a front and center thing for the bonus screen. You see it in the background when uh when you finish a ball after you've been brutally destroyed by the left out lane and uh you've got this big big organ and there was no way to find an asset that was even close to it and you just dove in and was just like I'm going to make it.
Yeah. Yeah. cuz I a lot of times when you're working on a 3D project, you can there's like 3D asset websites where you can, you know, purchase items and download them to use them in scenes. Um, and I looked all over the internet to try and find something close to that um to that organ because, you know, it's a timesaver. You can spend you can spend 20 hours modeling something from scratch or more, hundreds 100 hours sometimes. Um, and then if but if you're able to find it on like a a store, you could save yourself 40 hours or something by modifying it.
But in this case, throw that time into something else in the room that's absolutely
exactly. But in this case, this this organ is just one of a kind, you know. So I just instead of continuing to to think about what am I going to do, what am I going to do, I just sat down and started working on it. Um, and it was a it was an awesome challenge, honestly. like there was just and when you start getting into it, you notice all of these extra little items that even looking at it, I was like, "Oh, this thing is crazy." And then once I start modeling it, I'm like, "Oh, man. This thing is there's so much more to it than I even realized from the first glance."
Uh there's so many great questions rolling in. I want to just again reiterate like this is a live thing. That's kind of how I do my podcast. So, if you have questions, throw them out and we will do our best to get to them. Uh certainly as many of the things that we can't answer we absolutely will and the things that we don't know we cannot answer. Remember my role is is sound and music and uh call out direction as well as just kind of being like a kind of media face for my portion of it just because I have this platform and Joshua obviously we talked about does all the 3D modeling. So try to keep the questions to that. If there's stuff outside of that we'll do our best. Um first off there's a few people in here that we spent a lot of time talking to. I want to send out a few shoutouts individually. Joshua and I were talking a little bit earlier. Pinballs, thank you so much for both being like just a amazing genuine advocate for the game. You had legitimate straight criticism about certain things and just a whole lot of love for everything. And uh your legitimate enthusiasm for pinball and for our game is like just thoroughly heartwarming and it was it was a pleasure to meet you in person and I cannot wait for you to get your game specifically and everybody's of course. But uh yeah, it was it was great talking to you. Um, Sanji, everyone that I actually met in person. It was it was really great. Uh, thank you to all the shout outs that are saying how great the pin is and that you're looking forward to it. Uh, we got YouTube going on right now too. Hopping hot. Uh, Cameron saying, "Congrats on the pin. The music is very unique." It definitely is. Uh, Sonic signature for the tour guide. What was your process in landing on the voice actor? Sure. So, the voice actor is a friend of mine. He's an actor in Los Angeles. He does uh audio books and some other stuff. And uh, we had a meeting. We talked about it. We needed to find somebody and there was a few people's names that we really wanted to. Some of them are not alive, which is hard to cast a voice actor who is not living. Um, and so we like wanted to have a tour guide that was very in theme with like the haunted mansion, Disney mansion or right is it haunted mansion? I forget what the exact name is. Um, but just somebody who had a lot of personality and we wanted every single person in the game to have a character, be a character, have a character, and really kind of like call out to the '9s. A lot of this game has a lot of references to the '90s. Something that I want to talk about with Joshua is you'll notice that a lot of the animation in the game is very very much an homage to the seventh guest. If you guys didn't pick up on that, that's that's a lot of what our reference was. How the cameras move between rooms with the whole room going dark as the door opens, traveling down the hallway. If you haven't played that game, it's a it's a CD CDROM title from the '90s and a game that I absolutely loved as a kid. Um, so yeah, like just just know that many of the decisions that went into this game were insanely thought out. they come from this insane document the Carl put together. It's not like we didn't ho the, you know, yolo this situation. It was here's our plan. Here's our direction. We're going to go with it whole hog. And uh hopefully people resonate with it. And I think a lot of people did. Um so yeah, hopefully that answers that question. Uh Splicky Lit is asking, "Are the rooms all pre-rendered video assets?" Take it away, Josh.
Yeah. Yeah, the rooms, well, they're pre-rendered with uh with PNG sequences overlaying certain areas. Um like if there's things we want to trigger to turn off and on that need to be interactable, then we render those separate things out with like alpha channel data around them and then overlay those um in that area so that they're interactable.
There you go. Um I'm getting some questions about when the games are coming. I understand you're super excited. You know, David said manufacturing is going to start in a couple of weeks and they're going to start shipping out units. That is literally all we know. So, trust me that barrels wants you to have your game and they're making it happen. So, that's all we could say to that. Uh Dan Ryan, it was great to meet you. Uh are do you think there's going to be more well-known IPs for manufacturers in the future? I don't know. I just I think this was a great experiment and I think a lot of things align to make this game a success. I don't think that means a IP that is not wellnown will always be a success, but I think that we will always aim to make the greatest possible pinball machine we can as a team at Barrels. I know that sounds like kind of a copout answer, but it's true. I don't care what the IP is. We're going to make a great game. Most of the team or Let me not say that. I didn't know what the Winchester was. Did you?
I did. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, yeah. I' I'd heard of it when I was a kid and stuff and then when I mentioned it to my wife, she was like super excited. Yeah.
Uh, Miss Led has a good question. He's like, "I really like all the instrument target sounds. I can't place what is going on with the bass and treble clefts. Anything you can talk about there?" So, all of the instrument targets are So, there's four or five. There's gong, drum, uh, bell, horn. Uh, I'm forgetting one, Josh. What am I forgetting?
Gong, drum, bell, horn. Man, I I modeled all those, too.
I know, right? Anyways, so but point is every single one of those is actually recorded. So Sydney played the drum. Uh Carl played trumpet on it. I demanded that he do it. Carl plays musical instruments. You'll notice that tambourine. Thank you. Of course. And I played the tambourine. I have it over there. Uh so everything that could be recorded legit is done legit. This game has almost no stock sound effects from [ __ ] dumb libraries. I just I don't roll like that. I like recording authentic fully from different sources. Um a neat little story. So like the turntable mech. The turntable when it goes click click and locks into place is actually an antique uh uh typewriter and it was recorded with a sanken co 100k microphone. It's a microphone that records up to 192 kHz and it allows you to record in ultrasonic land. It's used for recording bird calls and bugs and all this different [ __ ] And uh so when you record stuff that's like really tiny and clicky like that, you can pitch it down octave after octave after octave. So, all of the turntable clicky mechanics are actually the internal little uh spring mechanisms on this old typewriter pitched down like 10 octaves. And uh you know, it just gives it so much character and these are unique sounds that you just can't pull out of, you know, a library. So, uh hopefully that answers some of that. Um yeah, but but also let's let's get back. So, Joshua, we had to transition these elements from one element to another, right? And can you talk a little bit about like what it's like seaming elements together and making sure that like the elements are able to transition both between scenes to rooms and also between like the upper and lower display.
Yeah. I mean, I guess the hardest part with that kind of thing is like you never know what's going to happen during a person's game of, you know, during the person's game of pinball. like if they if they're going to be in that room for a decent amount of time, if they're going to terrain out of it fast, if they're going to if something else going to get called up on the screen. So, yeah, I mean, fading to black is a is a safe bet, honestly, because like we would, you know, it'd be nice to have some sort of interesting camera outro animation or something, but realistically, it's going to end up getting stomped on when while someone's playing the game. So, it's, you know, we kind of have to go for something safe.
It also fits with the haunted house theme, though. I mean, you're entering into a dark room and then the lights turn on. And it also is like kind of an homage to the whole like seventh guest thing cuz, you know, a lot of the same reason that they would have that render to a black room is because you can't render what is the next room without infinitely having multiple versions of it. It's just from a pipeline perspective, it doesn't work. So, it helped like kind of locked in on that style.
Yeah, 100%. Yep. Gecko says, he's like, "Regarding the voice acting, was he new to voice acting for pinball?" "Yes." "Did you lend him a pin or something?" "No, I had him come over to the studio. He's local in Los Angeles." And we talked about Attack from Mars. We talked about Medieval Madness. We talked about a lot of amazing '90s games that just have these like over-the-top callouts. Uh you know, we talked about a lot of people have been saying Vincent Proce. Like there was a number of characters and a number of real world actors that we wanted to like dial in the narrator to be this kind of like kooky off-the-wall like just like eccentric thing cuz you know some of the call outs are like goofy and some of them are like pretty intense when he's like screaming at you. Then there's some other modes later on that are coming up with the rooms that are going to be uh the intensity is definitely different because the the scenario in the room is scarier in general as opposed to just like walking around being a tour guide. Um, so yeah, in Indie Arcade Wave says, "Great game. I really enjoyed playing Expo. Dune was great, too." That's right, man. Dune is awesome. And I'm so glad so many people got to experience Dune in a like, I don't know, better setting. Like, people were coming. Like, the line for Dune was not as big as Winchester in the in the experience room, but the line for Dune was consistent the whole time. There were always people waiting to play both games, which was fantastic.
Um,
Josh, what what do you think? What was your favorite room to model? because I know that some of them have a lot more interesting or a lot more challenging architecture than others.
Yeah. I mean, I guess the one that stands out to me the most is the basement because there's just there's a lot of pipe work and these gauges and like man, I mean, I did my best. I looked up old boilers. I looked up the exact boiler that they have in that basement and I looked for every piece of reference I could find so I could get all the pipe work correct. like I got I got really nerdy with making sure that everything was like as on point as possible. Um yeah, I think that was my favorite cuz and it's spooky. There's a wheelbarrow ghost multiball happens down there too.
Um is absolutely my favorite too. That is such a good like I just that's Yeah, it is difficult to get into because you got to get those rollovers in order to uh to be able to spell uh open and then to be able to get it in there. I just
it's it's a high value high difficulty to unlock uh multiball and I love that. Love it.
Yep. And it's a lot of fun once you're in it too.
Totally. Um there's some older questions I missed. Jason says, "What primary application and tools are you using to make the animations and digital models?" Josh Um, honestly for this project I used mainly Blender. Um, Blender. I love Blender. Personally, I use a lot of Unreal 5 in uh Dune, but in this project it was Blender cuz there's a lot of great add-ons to help with my workflow. Um, the asset library. I set up this awesome asset library. So, every time I modeled like a new style of door or a new style of window or a new style of trim, I could build it into my asset library. So when I started a new room, I could I could look for any consistencies from stuff I've already done and drag them out into the world and sort of get get things blocked in to save myself some time.
Are you planning on renovating your home with some of this uh new architecture that you're now
compiling it? It gives me a better eye, honestly, cuz now I'm just like, hm, yeah, they really uh they really slacked off here.
Man, this trim is cheap. We should get some Winchester trim in here.
Yeah. Uh, Slinger says, "It feels like Dune stock will be up since Expo exposed many new players to the game." Yeah, I'm really glad a lot of people got to play Dune in the in the condition that Dune is in right now. The new alt backlass is amazing. Shout out to Johnny Crap. That I cannot wait to get that all backlash. That thing is amazing. amazing. I love it. I love it so much. Um, Tilted Spider, what's going on, man? Also, of course, Wolfman, what's going on? Uh, he said they heard the call outs. They're intense. Haven't played Winchester Mystery House. Well, you got to. Uh, they look like great great games. Hype is real. Congrats. Well, play it before you say they're great games. I think they are. What do you think, Josh?
Same. Yeah, honestly, cuz we've been we've been sharing videos back and forth, you know, in the chat, so I thought I understood the game, but then once like my wife and I played it at Expo, I think four times, stood in line for it. Um, and it it's so much better in person. It's so much more fun to play than I realized it would be. I mean, I know I'm a little bit biased cuz I worked on it, but just honestly like I worked
I mean, we're both
Yeah, I worked on a ton of games at Stern also and like we would go to the we would go to the launch parties and my wife and I play pinball together. Um, and I've never seen her this excited about a game before either, honestly. I think when you play a lot of pinball, when you look at a playfield, you can kind of envision like a lot of us that have played a lot of pinball can imagine what it's like to play a game. And I think that's where a lot of the faith for this particular title, like obviously having Carl involved was a huge, you know, push for it. Having it be a surprise was a huge help. But when it really comes down to it, you look at the playfield, you imagine yourself playing this game, you see what the ball paths are going to be, you imagine what the rules are going to be. One of my favorite videos, like of course all of us are like watching the at least I am. I don't I guess I can't speak for everybody, but I've been watching and looking about what people are saying about the game because we care about it and we want to see what the feedback is. And feedback that is provided in a really honest and like legitimate way is listen to. Like your comments are heard, right? Y
but when you play a lot of pinball and you see a layout, you can imagine yourself playing it. So the excitement around the game is real because you know to a certain degree when a game I think is going to flip really well versus one that just isn't. And uh no matter what you feel about the IPs, Dune and Winchester flip really well.
They're fun games.
Um
100%.
Hey, Eric's here. Yeah, EPG is here. Uh I'm going to have Eric on as well as a guest to talk about the code. I'm sure that's going to be a fun episode. Uh but you know, everybody say hi to Eric. Also, thank you for the new follow. We'll get you a bath later. Uh what's the next game? LOL. That's funny. It's a Raven remake. We're finally going into some of the older games and we're going to start remaking some classics like uh Raven and uh Hard Bodies um and uh Lady Luck. Those are the next three games coming out of Barrels of Fun. You can quote me on that. Um if they're going to be a TPF, I I don't know. I'm assuming they would be, but that's a question for uh David and the and the other team members that that make those decisions. Um anyways, uh Cameron asked an interesting question. And I don't know whether this is directed at me or you. Josh, why don't you take this one? He's like, "Was there something that wasn't clicking for either of you that you can that you then figured out? Like what was the biggest challenge?"
Um, I think I honestly think for me was it wasn't clicking to me that the rooms would the rooms would be um interrupted so much. I mean, from my standpoint, I'm trying to interpret the rules in a way that are fun on the screen. Um, and I also I do the UI also, so I have to balance those elements together. And I had was sort of interpreting the rules in a way that like once you got into the into a room, you were you stayed there for quite a while. Um, and that just it's not that the interpretation changing is bad. It's just it's made me look at everything a little differently. So, it it has given me some things that I need to change a little bit and sort of finagle. I think Carl Carl changed up kind of like two mechanics I think that people are normally used to working a certain way in pinball and and kind of flipping them on their head. Uh actually before I go there, I should let you know Serge called me uh to talk specifically about how much he loved that the user interface provided both a clear image of the information you needed without it being complex and also when certain other elements like came on that were more important, the stuff that was there was still relevant. Like he was praising the UI in terms of giving you the player the feedback that they needed uh without, you know, overloading with unnecessary information or just having it be confusing. and and I hope that when you play the game, he specifically called out the uh 2x uh playfield multiplier, which is one of the things that I wanted to talk about with with Carl's rule set change. So, you know, if you haven't played the game, and I understand that it is probably going to be very difficult, I hope that arcades have one near you if you are a person who's interested in trying to find the game and play it. So, the two things that I think are really different that Carl put in the game, I'm trying to angle my fingers here. Uh so one is like when you when you start the game like when you when you begin the travel process of going to a room like you're building a jackpot value kind of for that room immediately and uh it's really fun like you you start off with that kind of dopamine rush of building that riskreward the moment you plunge the ball and um you know whether people were aware of that rule we tried to explain it to them in the beginning you know as soon as you hit a room you start traveling there and as soon as you start traveling there everything gets lit white and anything you hit that's white is now building your jackpot or mode value for the room. So every shot you hit in that mode room is going to give you that amount of points and it's super fun. Um, and so that's like that's an aggressive different take on the opening moment of a game, which is normally saved for multiballs or wizard modes, I would say. Right. Like would you would you agree, Josh?
Yeah, I I wasn't quite sure how that was going to work. I was so focused on the rooms. I wasn't I wasn't paying a lot of attention to travel. We actually got to the travel like hallway artwork and stuff a little later, but then I was like, "Oh yeah, this is great." Yeah, it's definitely interesting cuz you get that chance to build those points while going to the next room before you get there, which is definitely really cool. Yeah.
Sure. Yeah. And then the second thing is the is the multiplier. So people are so used to a playfield multiplier just like blowing your points up and you just hit a bunch of stuff and and you get a lot of points. But, you know, the the demon that Carl is, you know, he set it up so that you can get this two or 3x multiplier running and all of those points kind of go into this like floating pool and if you don't make this last shot once the hurry up starts for that, you don't get them.
So, like the the element of riskreward is is pretty enormous in the game. Um, back back to Cameron's question, I mean, I would say, you know, the thing I wouldn't say that wasn't clicking, but the biggest challenge for me was that I came into the game with a very clear but very like extremely different approach that I wanted to do for the music and the sound design. Like the the music I was like, it should be a score. It should be pretty in when you're traveling the house. And then when you get into rooms, it can be like ethereal. And then when you get into wizard modes and when you get into multiballs, it can be a little more intense. And uh that's not how pinball normally works uh at all. And then, you know, the whole sound design where I'm just like, I'm gonna use this old chipset because I love '90s games. And I think people are tired of hearing like stock sound effects, you know, and then took the time to like dig into how, you know, a four voice operator could really be used and be authentically similar to how it was used in the '90s. So, like, you know, there the people who don't get the sound of music, I'm sorry. Like, so much love and so much [ __ ] effort went into the concept behind that. And it wasn't just like a happy accident. We'll see how this stuff slaps together. like this was planned from the get-go and I knew it was a risk and I think it paid off. A lot of people really love it and to those I I super appreciate it. To the ones that don't, I you know, I'm sorry, but it's it's really the vision we had for the game and I couldn't be happier with it and uh I urge you to give it a chance. If you're seeing it on a video and you're like, "Ah, this doesn't make any sense." You got to play it because every sound effect in there is keyed. It's on the same tonic or relative chord. So, you are also the instrument as you play the game. you had mentioned the treble and bass targets. Like those tones are the 135 chords or I'm sorry the 135 tones of many of the relative chords in the game. So just as the ball's bouncing around like you're you're creating you're adding to the music that is already playing and it's really fun. Um so yeah, that's my that's my spiel on that. That was what I would say was the most challenging thing. Uh I realized that my screen got scrolled down and I'm missing stuff. Um Brad's here everybody. Brad Albbright did the artwork for the playfield. Uh, how would you? So, let's talk about that, Josh. The one thing I really do love about our game is that the there's synergy between the animation style and the playfield style. Something that I've been very critical on the channel about. I don't like when the display is disconnected from what's going on. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, honestly, how we worked. Um, like we had started the display elements before Brad joined the team. um which uh you know I was a little worried about at first um because that's not traditionally how I worked on pinball machines previously. But I actually it actually ended up working out really well because Brad and I were able to bounce ideas back and forth and like I was able to give him models of the rooms. He was able to send me what he was thinking about for like the spirit board and the plan chat so I could utilize that in our in our 3D scenes. Um, we were able to make changes. I'm still making some changes to the ghosts and stuff to try to match his style a little closer. Um, yeah, there's I mean there's still a lot of back and forth going on. We we're by no means done with this game. We're We're you know, we're all extremely passionate about what we're working on. We're and we're still trying to make it even better. I mean,
yeah,
I know that I know the game sold out or whatever, but it doesn't
honestly it doesn't exactly it doesn't matter to any of us because like I'm still trying to make this thing freaking amazing. Like I I want this thing to be beautiful.
To the handful of comments of people saying, "Oh, the game sold out. They have no reason to work on it." What the [ __ ] are you talking about? Like
I was at the convention. Yeah,
I was at the convention like making notes. Yeah, there were. Okay, so on that note, let's talk about that. So, uh, misled has a a comment that will lead into that. He's like, "Do you know, did any of the music compositions come from my back pocket theme or did I write them all after knowing the theme?" All of the music is written from scratch for the game. All of it. Uh, in fact, we got a comment. People were saying that they really loved the trailer music. That was a track that I had written a while ago. It is my music. People have loved it so much that we are working right now to try to put it in the game. People were like, "The trailer music should be in the game." Okay, we're gonna try to do that. So, you know, uh you're that's what I'm saying. Like, your comments are heard, but you know, all of the music is original. I wrote it all. And it all started when I heard the theme. I sat down on my piano, you know, uh Carl sent me a bunch of uh soundtracks from The Seventh Guest. And I was like, are you kidding? I love the Seventh Guest. Like, I know this. And we were talking about how we wanted every song to have kind of an earworm, like something in it that like you would walk away and maybe you'd start humming the music. And I sat down and I played the theme for the Winchester that I thought fit. I was like, "This is kind of spooky. This is kind of moody." I sent it to Carl and he was like, "Roll with it. This is great." So, hey, Carrie Hardy's here. Awesome, dude. I'm so glad. It was a There was a lot of like kind of what I would call A tier, S tier uh pin influencer people. And uh you know, I've been watching their content, but like I've never actually met them in person. And every absolutely every single person was amazing, super nice, very genuine, very honest with their critical feedback, very honest with their praise. And uh Carrie Hardy, absolutely no other. What an amazing dude. Uh you know, I want to shout out Retro Ralph, Jamie Bersel, of course, Rachel Kale from Electric Bat. I can't believe it when I say it, but Canada was super nice and I really enjoyed I played a piano duet with him for like 30 minutes. It was pretty awesome. I don't know if anybody saw that on Instagram, but uh you know I everybody showed their best face at Pinball Expo and uh as my first experience it [ __ ] it was it was awesome. Um Joshua, if you're seeing some of these comments, help me out here, man. There's so many [ __ ] people talking about it. I'm drowning. Answer some [ __ ] Uh
yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm trying. I'm trying.
Pinball says the art's phenomenal. I guess that's for both you and Brad.
Yeah, he was a great guy. I got to talk to him a bit. Uh Jason says, "The trailer music's great. We'll be happy to get in the game." Like I said, that's going to happen. Uh Bronson says, "Please keep the audio trend with barrels coming." Uh yeah. I mean, if they keep asking me to work on games, I'm going to do it. Is there any Theamin music in store? Uh I hadn't thought about that. Do you want Theamin music in it? We got a few more rooms that haven't been touched yet. I There's a lot of wizard mode music and stuff that's ready to go. I can't wait for you guys to hear that. Um, but uh, you know, there was an organ. There's an organ. So, I made a very big organ track. That'll be a nice little teaser for for some of the upcoming music in the game. Uh, Brad also is mentioning Robert Blakeman. Robert Blakeman is a Yeah, Robert Blakeman did an amazing treatment for the logo. Uh Robert Blakeman does a lot of graphic design on the train on the team and uh yeah, he looked he looked tired setting up the booth doing every everybody put 10 10 times the effort to try to make sure that this uh whole expo experience like really popped.
Yep.
I'm excited about the the remaining rooms that we have. We have a lot of good modes coming up.
Yeah. And each room has its own unique kind of like thing going on. So,
yep.
Yeah. Carrie, I'll give you a dubstep room. That's a great idea.
That's my best dubstep. Uh Jason says, "In an early podcast, you mentioned the use of Yamaha audio chip." Yeah, that's Yamaha 2156. I think it's the four four operator voice. I I misqued it in my video. Uh but yeah, for someone not very familiar with older games, what impact does that have on the audio? Well, it's just a very The Yamaha 2156 chip is almost the same chip that's in the Sega Genesis. So, if you're familiar with that Sega Genesis like like kind of like very raw digital sound, uh I think the most iconic game that uses it in its most raw form is is the is BSD, Bram Stoker's Dracula. If you've ever played Bram Stoker's Dracula, that is pretty much an authentic wall-to-wall Yamaha chipset experience. Like, every sound in that is is done with that that chip. Um, and we really hybridized it. I was originally leaning in very heavy with the Yamaha chip and uh it's good, but you know, I wanted to make sure that some of the sounds could help flex some of the Foley work that that I wanted to do on the game as well. So, um all right. Anyways, I'm sorry. This is like we're kind of doing a 50/50 here with the with our expo and the audio and Josh work. Um so, we talked about you had to dive into modeling all of these rooms, right? What was it like with combining the workflow of putting the characters in the game, too? because we have these ghosts in the game, right? So, like how do you have them interact with the background that's pre-rendered, you know? Let's Let's talk about that. Hit me.
Um, yeah. Well, I first want to mention that you you were great to work with because I mean the audio comes in last. So, like I like I was feeding you stuff at the last minute and you were just killing it. So, I just wanted to throw that out there. Yeah. I did that key sound like about 20 minutes before I got on the Uber to go to my flight. It was funny. We were like, we were like, "Wait, when you hit the button, there's no key sound." And we were just like,
"Oh shit." And like, you know, expo is 24 hours away. And I was just like, "It needs to be something really cool." So, you know, I jangled the keys, hit the synths, boom, bam, boom, there you go.
Yeah. Yeah. We event we originally didn't have anything for that. Um, I broke the UI apart even more so that we could do some key animation for that. Um, so that was Yeah, that was that was nice. Trent I think Trent did the light show for that and then I gave Eric like a example of an animation but I think it they made it even cooler than what I gave him. But um, but yeah, getting getting the spirits worked into the rooms.
I essentially had a layout. I laid out cameras for every room and we had ideas of where we wanted the ghosts and I worked with Julian Brown who is a animator who she's actually a in AAA video games. She worked with my wife is the art director for AAA video games and there was a layoff at her company. So I was able to snag Julian to work on our project. Um so I would just talk it over with Julian, send her my scene with the camera setup. We'd kind of work with Carl to talk about what we wanted the ghost to be doing. Um what what the ghost would be doing when they entered the ghost box, what was the sort of win loss condition of the mode. Um and then Julian would block out the animations, send them to Carl and myself, and we would sort of discuss them as a as a team. Um and then she would either make some little tweaks or she would take them to final. And then yeah, I I had made this like ghost shader to try to I mean, obviously they're ghosts, so we needed to go some sort of ghost shader, but it also saved us some time um doing materials and UVs on every single character cuz there's
Yeah. You don't have to model or texture clothing and stuff like that if they're all kind of like a inverted fall-off effect on the ghost.
Yeah. Yep. Yep. And there's like 14 ghosts or something like that. So
that's a lot of ghosts. Very
Yeah. Plus malicious spirits. Um, so it's a lot of work there. So she's handling all of that while I'm doing the UI and all the rooms and modeling. And
this warms my heart. Car's a Sega fanboy. Dude, Genesis does what Nintend don't. You know what I'm saying?
I'm the same, man. I love Sega. I'm I'm a big Sega fan.
Cammy, it's good to see you. I actually love watching Macau's stream. I know who you're talking about. Uh, and uh I didn't know that he did he recently do that. That seems like a game he would have like jumped on like a while ago. Uh Bonson says, "I hope the Peppers ghost screen can add still images for the rest of the front of the building." Yeah, the Peppers Ghost is something that I think Eric has said that we were planning on using a lot more. I mean, we're we have the opportunity with the second playfield or second display in the game and just why would we why would we not want to? It's just it's it's there to display stuff currently like it really does uh accent jackpots and it does and the mystery and some other things. Um, but I believe using it in in a more uh extreme capacity is for sure happening.
Yeah.
Hey, Pin Mon, what's going on?
Shout out to Pin Mon. Uh, I'm sure you know who Pin Mon is. Uh, but are you representing different camera types? Oh my god, it's Flow Girl.
Hi, Josh.
Oh man, she's killing my camera.
Good to see you.
Here, let's go back to here.
Good to see you, too.
Um,
it was nice meeting you at Expo.
Are you representing different camera types to amp up the drama? No. As far as I know, the the experience of the uh of the going through the house isn't done in like a contemporary ghost hunter style. It's more of just a traditional taking the tour and experiencing ghosts. There are plenty of the rooms have weird things going on with them. Uh the basement is a good example of that. I also think that the uh uh what is it? The witch's cap has some interesting stuff. So, there are definitely the rooms are going to have themed interesting things going on with them. very much like if you've played the the basement, you'll you'll know what I'm talking about. Um, but I don't believe any of that involves camera uh filters and stuff like that. Um, I reloaded. What's going on, man? Same. I can't wait to show you guys more of the Winchester. Uh, Jason, back to your earlier question talking about differences between the audio samples. I I could probably put together a more comprehensive uh thing on that if people have an interest in that. Um, it is a lot of work to kind of scope some of that together and I'd have to make sure that it's okay to dump all these assets online. We have a small package. We sent Carrie a nice little care package of music and sound which he used amazing in his video that he put together. One thing I want to shout out Carrie specifically, he put a whole video about the background of the Winchester House. Nobody else did any coverage about what the Winchester House is. That's [ __ ] awesome. What an what an incredibly creative approach to uh making content that actually like covers more than just the game. And uh dude, shout out to you. I think that's so goddamn cool. And uh yeah, thank you. Um, Joe, nice meeting you. Uh, Pinball says, "Probably not in my lane, but will there be a man mechanic to hide from the spirits?" Um, I thought this was going to be a graphics question. I was going to throw it at you, Joe or Joshua. Uh, but the, uh, there's going to be ghosts that roam around the house if you fail modes. That's been talked about. Um, but other than that,
yeah. Um guys, give Joshua some questions because this is he's taken the time out of his day to answer questions about the graphics and uh so much work went into the overlays for this. Let's talk about uh the floating mechanics that are in it. We're talking about the 13ths, the keys. When we to when you came up with how to make sure that those elements were both present but not invasive in the screens, what was what was the logic behind that?
You mean like the for the 13 mo modes or whatever, the five?
Sure. And when you do the room presentations, like the background of the room like blurs out, you know, I mean like and the typography for it is like really awesome. Like I love how you know the the both the room name exists because we're being uh you know honorable to the house or whatever, but then also every room has a mode name as well. Like I think it says like uh the twin dining rooms flicker and flame, right? So that's both the name of the room and the mode name. So uh just to try to create a really a mood and environment for it. So yeah, can you talk about that? Yeah, there's actually uh Eric does um Eric and I actually work a lot together on that kind of stuff. He has the ability to um blur the room, so I'll give him a mockup and be like, "This is the kind of thing I would like to do so that the text isn't overwhelmed by the busyiness of the room." Um I was actually influenced by uh by a video game called uh uh Man, I just had it. Uh now now I'm going to lose it. I'm curious, man. You got to tell me.
Yeah, it's a game about building rooms or discovering rooms. It has like a it's like a pun for a name. Not architect, but uh blueprints. blueprints. Yeah. So, when we were when we started this game, and this happens a lot, like I'll be when I'm working on a game or something, I'll be thinking about like how to how to do a certain mode or how something's going to work. And then like my wife plays a lot of games. So I was watching her play this blueprints game. It's like blue prints but it's also
real funny real funny dad joke there.
Yeah. So there's like some mechanics in that room.
There's some mechanics in that game with like cuz there's I don't know if anybody
uh witnessed these but there's momentos in the game
that if you successfully beat a room and help one of the spirits out, you get a momento. And the momentos have special um things that help you in the game or special, you know, score multipliers or add a ball kind of thing like um but they're items that were unique to the house. So I had I had designed the layout for those and like it was sort of a taking a break from modeling rooms and I need I wanted to do the UI more stuff with the UI. So, I had sort of was inspired by blueprints. I had saved some images on my mural board, which is all like inspiration for the game.
And all those items are in they're they're like perks in the game. I don't know. I don't I don't I'm not sure if that's connected. Again, that's not our department, but uh I know there's a ton of call outs for them. And uh yeah, hopefully you'll enjoy that. Also, uh David, I know you're in here. I can see you. I want everybody in here right now to give out a huge thank you to David the Barrels of Fun CEO. He's hiding in here spying on us, probably worried and making sure that everything goes off great in here. But, uh, I think that I say this from the bottom of my heart, David really let every single goddamn team member in here do what they wanted to do and trusted them with as little micromanagement as possible and made the this wonderful game happen. And uh I don't, you know, however you feel about people, you should [ __ ] give him a thank you because this is this great great game that I think people are really going to feel connected to and get blown away by when they actually get to play it. For the ones that can, again, I'm so sorry that if you didn't get one, like it's just we didn't know this was going to be huge. Uh but it's a special game and uh yeah, give toss a coin to your Witcher, man. David deserves it.
Yeah, he's awesome to work with. He's he would call me while I'm making dinner with like an idea or something and he's a foodie like me. So, we would just talk about food and then he then we would talk about the game and stuff. Really great guy to work work with work with and work for. Yeah,
totally 100%. Um, everybody's saying thank you to David now. It's getting flooded in here. Although he's probably got it muted right now. He's not going to hear any of this. Oh well.
Yeah, David spent like I mean he stood in the booth for I mean him and Carl I we can't we can't also not thank Carl. I mean, Carl like took the time to put together this enormous document and just again trusted everybody to do what they wanted to even when some of the things that we wanted to were like, "Are you sure that's going to work?" And we were just like, "Yeah, it's cool. Let us do it." Like, uh, and yeah, and this like reflects, you know, David's already put a game out or two. Like, imagine Carl, like this is his first game. Carl is incredibly well respected in the in the community. If you don't know who Carl is, he's I pinball. Carl D'Python Anghelo is a a legend for putting together both the software that runs most tournaments, like big tournaments, as well as also streaming most tournaments. He's responsible for working with Jim Bito at Indisk and Pinball at the beach or not pinball at the beach. I'm sorry. Pinball the lab. Um, and but just a bunch of other things. Carl's wonderful guy. I'm privileged to call him a friend of mine and uh yeah, imagine the pressure on him. Oh boy,
he was great. That document that he's put together, man. Amazing. It's like a bible to to always fall back to. What are we What are we supposed to do with this mode? Check Carl's document.
Yep. It's like a reference. Uh Carrie, thank you. Joshua, we got a question for you. Finally, is there a personal favorite addition you have added to the game so far?
Um, honestly, I love Match. Match was just a great, it kind of came together. We knew we were going to do something with the plane chat and the spirit board. Um, but we had sort of saved that for farther down the line and I loved it. I saw a lot of people at Expo taking pictures and videos of it. So, a lot of people love that.
Can you describe the experience of what the match sequence is just for people that have not seen or experienced it? Yeah, it's like you're coming into the Venetian dining room. The camera kind of pans down on the the table. It's like a a malicious spirit sitting at the table because you didn't rescue the spirit. Um, and then it shows the spirit board and the the plan check go spells out match mat c. And then it sort of shakes in place and snaps down to the match number.
And the playfield lighting has like a spotlight that moves in sequence with the uh planchet, which is neat. And man, there's all these cool sound effects that sync up so perfectly with it, too. And then when it's
beautiful,
and then when it slams down to the planchet, you know, the board matches what number you have or yes or no and also lights the planchet with the appropriate color. And these huge angelic voices either like give you the sad chord or the happy chord depending on whether you get uh you know a yes or a no.
And the a plays along too.
So Pin Monk asked a really really great question. I talked to Brad about this specifically because I didn't know at Expo and came back and told a bunch of people this is let's let's rest let's put this rumor to rest. Uh I believe that uh Brad is in here too. He can contribute to this. So the rumor is the W on the planchet is a secret homage to Lime F sheets uh because it looks like an L, an F, and an S kind of smashed together into this W. I'm sad to report that it is absolutely a coincidence. Brad said that he did not intend for that to be the case. uh that his his widow reached out to him and he was like, "I'm sorry, it's not." Um, but of course, like what an amazing individual, what a legend in the pinball world. If we had planned to do that, that would have been amazing. But everyone on the team obviously respects what Lyman has brought to code in pinball. And uh, you know, it is just it's it's not true. It's not a it's not a true rumor. I'm sorry, but that would have been cool. Happy accident. There you go. Yeah, Brad.
Yeah. Uh, was there any inspiration taken from Fasmophobia? I don't know what that is. Uh,
I don't either.
Yeah. Uh, are all the apron letters and numbers LED? Uh, I believe all of the the lower numbers are all the yes and no, the planchet, and uh, I forget if the alphabetical stuff on the left is. I I'm not I'm not entirely sure. Uh, but most of it a lot of it is because we we use the numbers like for countdowns and all sorts of other cool stuff. Tickle saying, "Have you been to the actual Winchester house?" Damn it, woman. You know I have not.
Um either
Yeah.
want to go.
Would definitely want to go. Hey everybody, it's Flow Girl. Um
will will machine number 13 go to the Winchester House? I don't know. There is a I believe is there I don't know. There might I think that Winchester House is getting one, but uh that's again not our department.
Yeah. Yep.
Um
for their store or whatever. fire off some more questions for Josh. If there's anything, Josh, if there's something you want to say, let it rip. Um, but what are we We're pushing almost an hour now. Unless there's anybody
I feel like I've been to the Winchester mansion because I have spent so much time modeling those rooms.
What's your favorite room in the mansion or house?
Mine?
Yeah. Like if you needed to set up a tent and just like chill for like a couple of days, like let's pretend it's the zombie apocalypse. Okay, that's assuming you didn't use food
and you just wanted to like chill. Like what room would you chill in?
Um I mean the basement's pretty scary. So maybe not there.
Um
probably warm though.
Yeah, maybe the Venetian dining room cuz it's it's kind of creepy. I mean there there was like there is like lore that the the lights flicker and they've had electricians look at the lights. Um, but they there's no reason that they should flicker, but they they do, and that's like a creepy thing. Um, but it wouldn't deter me from camping out there.
Uh,
that would deter me.
Here we go. Dustin, that's awesome that you asked for number 13. Shout out. Great meeting you, dude also as well. And the whole like Illuminati uh cult of pinball crew, thank you for taking the time to hang out with me. I'm sorry I didn't have a whole lot of time to play. Um, Adam asks, "Question for Josh and the team. Is there any storm, lightning, thunder sounds, art, and effects in the game? That's a huge yes. Uh the the shooter groove as soon as you hit the start button, dumps a ball in there, and the the music that is playing has thunder and lightning in the background of it the whole time. And there's some other rooms that I've put uh thunder and lightning in as the like uh music builds for it. And I believe Brad put thunder and lightning in the back glass itself, too, right? I mean, there's rain and [ __ ] There's probably some rooms that I will add it to that have more windows and out outdoor views. I'm working on a few right now.
Yeah, Brad, you're here. I know there's thunder and lightning in it. I just want him to say it. Brad, is there thunder and lightning in the artwork that you made? Uh Carrie's got another question for you. Joshua, tell us some things that are coming to the game that haven't been implemented yet. J Carrie, you know, we can't really do that. That's cute. There's a bunch of cool rooms coming, right?
Yeah, there's rooms that you can read on the playfield. Yeah, there you go. And there's going to be wizard modes, too, in a pinball game. Who' have thought? Wow.
Uh, Pin Mon says his aunt took photos in the Winchester Mystery House when he was a kid, and in one empty room when the photo was developed, there was a man with a weird looking face in the mirror. That's crazy. That's probably Henry. Henry is the like
malicious spirit that all of the ghosts are afraid of in the house. Um, that's crazy. If that's true. Wow, man. That's
Is that who's on the front of the game?
That is creepy.
Uh, no, actually, who is the spirit on the back glass, Brad? Is that supposed to be Sarah Winchester or is that uh one of the other
Sarah Winchester?
Oh, that makes sense.
As far as I know, it's Sarah, but we had talked about that.
Uh, I always enjoy audio cues or changes that let you know a change in the status of the game. So yes, there are all of the songs are broken down into layers and we are interested. I'm curious to play with that uh by having you know like maybe when you hit a jackpot shot it suddenly makes the music more intense adds a new layer to it. We have we have I've worked with Eric to make that technology in the game. So it that has the possibility of occurring and uh yeah I don't I don't see why that couldn't happen if it fits and it makes the game better. I I have we have thought into the future to make that happen. And I wanted to give that ability to GDAU, which is the platform we're using. And uh it's in there. So, we can do that. Volume boost in some uh volume boost in some modes. Yes, Joe. I've requested that. Uh I'm working with Eric to hopefully have uh multiballs and wizard modes give a little nudge to the overall volume to help give more of a dynamic experience to the to the sound. Uh all right, enough of these hypothetical questions. We're here to answer questions about Josh and the actual graphics assets. As much as I would love, you can email David with all that [ __ ] if you want to find out what's coming in the game. He'll answer those questions.
Here we go. Misled says, "Any UI challenges that are unique to Pinball that you haven't run across in your other work."
It's a good one. I like that question.
Yeah, I wanted to I mean, with this game, I wanted to break the mold of of UI. I like, you know, at Stern also, I always did the low lower scores. Um, this I I think the hard part is I whenever I go play pinball, I always watch people play pinball because I like to see what people are looking for on the screen and where they look. So instead of I wanted to in this game, I wanted to keep your your score of when you're playing in the lower right no matter what. So when you're up to play, your score is always in the lower right. So you're not like, "Oh, I'm player three. I got to look over here. I'm player two on this game. I got to look over here. Like I wanted it so I had have that like cascading system. I wanted it to be, you know, at every time that you're looking to the to the lower right, that's where your score is because when people are playing pinball, they don't have a lot of time to look up. So that's all my decisions are are really based around how much time you have to look up. Um, and trying to keep that the priority is that amount of time.
And on top of that, like we're using the whole game. Like a lot of games only have one point of of feedback for the player and it's the upper screen, right? And if you have to look at the upper screen, you're not looking at the playfield and you're not looking at the flippers. And like one thing I really love about Barl's designs is the second screen and then add that with the whole like apron as a third level of feedback for the game. Like we really tried to make sure that you could look at different stages of the game while you're playing to experience and get feedback of it. And I think that's important especially for people who don't know what's going on in the game. like any bit of information you can give the player to help them figure out how to play the game better is is important. Um, Pin, what's the frequency of the cabinet woofer? I believe it's 40 to 200 or 40 to 400. I'd have to double check the specs on that, but the it's an 8 in woofer, I believe, in the in the cabinet, it it goes pretty low. And also like all the sound effects, I should note like the uh anything that was deliberately supposed to come out of the uh headbox, I've shelved off stuff below like 200 hertz to make sure that it just doesn't cloud this frequency in the actual woofer. So, not only is this is the mix of the game just ducking and side chaining each other, not only are they on different buses, not only is everything compressed and EQed to make sure that there's as little crossover as possible, you know, we've tried to make sure that both the panning is there and the frequency ranges are like really scooped so that nothing steps on each other and you get kind of like the best experience possible. So, no, I didn't. I think that the so uh you're you're fighting against the inside of the cabinet uh with back pressure when you're when you're inside of an enclosed box like that. So I don't think that 20 hertz would come out really that cleanly. I think you're just going to end up vibrating the cabinet for the most part. Plus the uh shaker motor kind of puts out more of like that 5 to 15 hertz because of when it's doing its thing. Uh what do you think about the apron becoming the new DMD and returning to the static or just uh big media on the back glass? Says Armistad. What do you think about that, Josh?
I mean, it's an interesting idea. I think the the LCD on the back is is a lot of the times for other players and for like when you're not playing. Um, it's entertainment for like it's also a good way to know like how well somebody's doing like and like without like being in their face looking at their score. It's a nice way to like, oh, that's the Venetian dining room. I know they at least have 20 million at this point or whatever. You know, you begin to know that. Like I like to put like what ball you're on. I like to keep that front and center too because you know like especially like this weekend we were waiting in line to play Winchester for so long. I like to know like okay they're on ball three. It's almost my turn. You know
I can't stand like it is difficult on a lot of Jersey Jack games to know what ball you're on. That's one thing that I'm not quite It's just a different format for telling it. I I love that they've leaned into it and they think that that's the way to provide that. But for me like it's just I want immediate feedback. like what freaking ball am I on if I'm going up there in a tournament or something?
Um,
same.
So, yeah, I mean, I think that I think that the apron is an underused thing and I think that we're starting to pave the way for new ideas on how to bring people into games and use that extra real estate in a different way. Um, Big Boy says, "Is it like a jump scare?" I'm not sure what you mean. There is glass shattering on one of the modes in the um I think it's twin dining room where there's the other guy on the other side and then uh also like the basement's got a few jump scares when you've got to like fight off the spirits as they come at you.
Oh, yeah. Um,
honestly, the tilt's a jump scare for me.
There you go. Jason's got a question. He says, "Any special design considerations for the art to get the Pepper's ghost effect to work?" Well,
yeah, it needs to be high contrast. Um, yeah, that's also one of the things that we had to keep in mind when I made the um the ghost shader was keeping not not keep, you know, make sure it's not too busy. Make sure we can see a nice, you know, like a high level of contrast. Making sure the lines of the ghost garment and stuff are are simplified a little bit more, I guess, just so that, you know, the more det more detail is great, but then it's it becomes more muddy, you know. Um, yeah. I mean, I guess higher contrast um is is a bigger thing. Not trying to show everything. We definitely went through a number of iterations to try to make sure that the assets that are coming out of there. You can't just treat it like a regular LCD screen. It just doesn't work like that. The reflection absorbs some of the of the brightness and and assets did need to be tweaked for that. Uh Carrie's out of here. Carrie, thank you for taking the time on your lunch break to hang out with us, my dude. I really appreciate your coverage of the game and uh yeah, you're rad. Have a good day.
Bye, Carrie.
Bye, Carrie. Everybody say bye, Carrie. Uh Mark says he's really impressed with the team's attention to detail. Everyone's so passionate about this title, dude. Yes. 100%. Not only because for me it was my first title, but just in general, like my god, dude. Like this game is a unique thing. And whether you think it's just cuz it has low numbers or what, like it's not. It's just a really strange historical moment in pinball in my opinion. And uh you know, I think a lot of people are are seeing that now. Um Dustin agrees that the apron has wasted space for years with instruction cards. Yeah, again, we're going to have that tutorial at some point. Matt says, "Congrats." Thank you. Ian's here. You idiot. Bonebusters is the greatest game ever made. How dare you soil my stream with your anti-bone busters conspiracy [ __ ] You son of a [ __ ] This is such a great like Chicago beef that's like starting with team Bone Busters verse not. Josh, are you team Bone Busters?
Chicago beef.
Of course.
Did you hear that, Ian?
I'm sorry, Ian. I had fun playing.
I mean, I think you have to be at this point. chat sound off. Who's team Bone Busters and who's not? Can we get a roll call of who's like
peoplean?
What do I like about it?
Awesome.
Uh that's a that's a really legit the scoring on it is garbage. Uh I love the ridiculous uh theme. I love that there's a skeleton butt on it. There's a rollerblading skeleton that's got a booty. You know, Joe from from Pin Butts and uh and uh Pinball Degenerates, shout out to Joe, uh you know, pointed that out. Like I just How can I not support a game that's got a skeleton booty on it? Like come on. Right. Stand up. Look at that skull topper, man. Oh my god. Eric is not Team Bone Busters. Jamie Burchil's here. Jamie, you jerk. You photobombed us with your flip around camera thing. I love it. Thank you so much for jumping in, man. It was really awesome meeting you. Sid said particularly. She was just like, "Oh my god, Jamie is like such a genuine dude. I love him so much. You really are like Yeah. Teddy bear.
Teddy bear
in the best way.
Jamie's like the pinball teddy bear. And for sure in the best way.
Big boy likes Bone Busters. Ian's waiting for real answers. Okay. Well, while you're typing up real answers about why you do or do not like Bone Busters. Um, yeah. Joshua, let's let's start it off with like what is what is your favorite memory about doing art on this? And uh and anything else that you would just like to talk about? I just, you know, that whole world is such a mystery to me. You worked so hard making all these rooms come to life. The flickering lights was a nice addition that that happened kind of towards the end of it. Um, same as you had said, you were a pleasure to work with, sending me video files when I needed them to make sure that I had what I needed to to put put sound design to the video assets. Like it really was just such an enjoyable experience uh as a first pin for me.
Yeah, I again I loved working with you as well. Um, I think the uh I think the the mo the memory that stands out the most, we we originally thought we had 3D scans of this house and then it didn't it didn't happen. So then it was like, well, I got to start making these rooms. So I think the
time to make the donuts.
Yeah, it was like I mean it was a bittersweet moment because I'm like, well um it's going to happen. And I was a little scared that we were we weren't going to make the de deadline at first. But uh you know David was really great at keeping keeping my attitude and you know positive because you know he I would be like oh man I I feel like I'm doing not good on this and he's like no these are great. You know
they did a good job of having us focus on the things that needed to get done for expo as opposed to wasting time on stuff that would have been I don't know cool to have but not relevant.
Yeah. And I think that hopefully people agree that the first impression of the game has been pretty unanimously positive. Like we we worked hard to give a a polished piece of pinball like you know experience and you know there's a lot of game there. This whole 25% thing that got I don't know blown out of proportion is is silly. Like anybody that's actually played the game is like there's a lot of content in the game. It's It's a complete experience right now. It's just got a few more rooms and some wizard modes. I didn't see people get to half of the rooms honestly. Like I I would have liked to see more of it personally see people play more. I watched a lot.
Um and yeah, we're we're all still working on it and we're you know I know me myself, I'm refining a lot of stuff. We're making things better. We realize that people see the hallway a lot so we have ideas to make that cooler and add some more variety to it. We have more ghosts to add where, you know, there's it's I mean it's it's going to be awesome when it's done. I mean, it's it's awesome already, but
it's awesome now, but there's just like there's room to make it more awesome, and we're we're going to fill that room up, man. Like, abs. Yeah. Like, I have there's so much more fun music and cool [ __ ] that I want to put in the game. And, you know, Yeah. It's just I can't wait. I can't wait for people to get their games. I can't wait for people to start streaming them. Uh, you know, on on Tilt in in LA is going to have one in a couple weeks or so, I imagine. I think that there's going to be one. Shane gets every goddamn new game, so why would this be any different? Um,
Josh, I have to ask you,
what's behind you?
It's a chair. He's sitting in a chair. Oh.
Ow.
Oh, I got like a
I got like a mural I did on the wall.
That's amazing.
It's a bird.
Cool.
That's really cool.
Is it the Winchester bird?
No, I actually I'm a painter and stuff, too. So, I paint and I used to tattoo and all kinds of stuff.
Oh, that's rad. Uh Matt's asking a question about the score balancing. Yeah, I I think it's in a pretty awesome place right now. I mean like you can you can play a game and get a couple hundred thousand points or you can play a game and get a couple hundred million. Um I watched uh Zmac and uh Bagwell and Bagwell play and they you know they didn't blow it up but they were just fooling around and put up like 180 200 mil on it. Uh it certainly was the highest score I think that the game in the uh what do you call it the like experience room uh received. Um, but watching them play the game, I got some video footage of it was awesome. Like, I mean, you got these two pinball legends playing this game that we've been slaving on for [ __ ] you know, forever. It was just really, it was just like a whole moment, man. I really I really dug that. Um, Miss Diggle says that your chair is awesome. This is really relevant.
Very relevant.
Uh, okay. Armstat asked this twice. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. So, this is a question that I think we can explore a little deeper with Eric and also with Brad later. He's asking about what color space everything is done in. And I mean, the graphics are all RGB for the display, right? I believe the printing was done in CMYK and then uh Eric uses RGBW for the playfield lighting. and he I'm sure Eric is here to talk more about this, but essentially whatever color you're trying to display, it tries to use the minimum amount of color LEDs and then the maximum amount of the W LED, which is the white, in order to achieve that color accurately and without using the most power on the lighting system. Um, which is neat. I think that's cool. Um, make make people put their lip service to skin. What does that even mean? Nudge magazine says he's absolutely going to get a Winchester lip tat.
Don't know what that means. Terrified. Terrified against that.
It's like Can you give me tattoo?
I've done a few. I don't recommend it.
Ian, is that going to be like a like a planchet under there? Would it just say Winchester? Like what are you going to get?
Give me the Yeah, the planchet.
Okay, great. Great idea, Sid. Better simmer that sass, sir.
Um, Miss Diggle wants tattoos from you, Josh, apparently.
Yeah. I I mean, not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty good at them.
Awesome. I need some more. So, maybe we should talk. We'll get some Team Winchester tattoos.
Yeah.
Yeah. There we go.
Okay. Um,
last chance. A little over an hour. I want to thank you so much, Josh, for taking the time for this. Uh, you've adjusted your camera. I can't go full screen now, you big jerk. Uh,
oh, sorry. Did I?
No, it's okay. We're keeping it full screen. Uh, for the rest of the broadcast, thank you everybody who showed up. Uh, to the all the people that have just poured so much support to us in this game and what we're trying to do, uh, a heartfelt thank you. I really mean it. This has been a journey. Uh, Josh, is there anything you want to say to the people?
Um, yeah. I say I'm uh I appreciate everyone that picked up a game. If you get a chance to play it, play it. It definitely kept me coming back. It's one of those that you just want to play it. For me, I just want to play it one more time because I want to try and hit that shot. I want to try and hit that shot. I want to try and do this, do that. Um, yeah. And thanks for taking the time to ask questions and it was great working with you, Jeff.
Thank you, man. Same to you. Uh, also to the people who waited like over an hour in the line to play the game at some points. I know that what a confidence to like spend your time at Expo. I mean, an hour is a huge amount of commitment when there's so much stuff to see at Expo. Like, I mean, the homebrew stuff was amazing. There's There's a lot to see. So, to the people that were committed to play the game, I know that pin pinballs played like was in line like seven or eight times. I think he must have spent at least 15 hours in line and playing the game. Uh, which is incredible. Absolutely support. That's in just awesome. Uh, Long Island Pinball Society is probably the tallest person I've ever met. It was really nice meeting you, my dude. Uh, you're a giant in the best way possible. Uh, thank you so much uh for your appreciation of the game. Um, all right. That's it. You know what we do, man? We go we go raid somebody now. We find somebody who's got not a lot of viewers and we're going to drop a bunch of pinball lovers on them. Uh, in the arcade wave, also meeting you. To anybody that I didn't mention, I'm so sorry. It's just been overwhelming. It was truly truly great meeting you and I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and our game. Without further ado, uh, I will hopefully be doing one of these a week with different team members. Uh, I think next week we're going to have Eric on if he's still uh not camera shy and uh he can talk about his adventures in coding uh which might be interesting to some people. Um yeah, otherwise keep your eye on Barrels of Funs, you know, media, social stuff, websites for information about your game, um updates that are coming out and all that other good stuff. I'll praise the great pyramid. Josh, throw it. You at home.