Yes. Yeah. The state fast food restaurant of San Antonio slash probably all of Texas, the Whataburger. So you got to be careful with that. Again, remain disciplined. Moderation is the key. tell carl d'angelo that that jerk on ie pinball put up a uh he put up a poll what's better what a burger or in and out and i'm like steven get online quick vote see that's the thing it's it's weird it's like the waterberg to me the water burger special burgers are better than in and out but then like in and out covers that whole middle and then at the bottom like the water burger regular burgers so it's like a split it's not it's not complete domination for me it's more like if you drew the curve at the beginning the low end would be like the water burger regular ones and then at the far high end would be the water burger special burgers and all in the middle would be all the in and out stuff so it's uh it's not domination it's more like a high and low versus a middle to me okay five guys for me just saying true okay respect the five guys i'm gonna have to go to i'm gonna have to go to water burger in a minute And one thing, though, I was wondering whether Whataburger was open during this weather event. I noticed when I took a little walk out around my neighborhood, the Taco Bell was open. Subway wasn't. Their power was out. The Taco Bell found a way to get their power on. And guess what? The cars were in the highway, almost blocking traffic, trying to get to the Taco Bell. So something happened there where they were able to keep their power on. I don't know. Well, according to Google Maps, Whataburger in San Antonio is open right now. time it is oh i'm aware and you're doing a podcast big mistake steven first big mistake you should be there right now i might be there after this is over i don't know decisions will have to be made i'm telling you okay so i've been noticing on fun with bonus on not only the social media but also your website and all these good things we're seeing a lot more story modes and the things that you've been doing at deep root mainly for the first game that's going to be coming out in Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland. And it looks pretty amazing. I love the comic book art. I think Quinn is just brilliant. And obviously everybody we're seeing as the staff is kind of becoming more and more known. A lot of attention to Raza. And I'm excited. I've got my order. And I also got the letter explaining, you know, like most people and actually most pinball companies, there are going to be delays. I've got you on the phone right now. We're here on the podcast. Is there anything you can tell us? Any kind of progress? Maybe you can say things. maybe you can't say things but i thought i would ask um you can ask but i don't know so you know my my title is rules designer not whatever that is on that note so you know i i know i know what obama is by osmosis you know just by common sense so that's kind of where where i am as far as this i you know when i read it you know i know what ul is because i look on the back of electronics and I know that that thing helps me not get electrocuted when it's on a product. And that's as far as I know. So as far as that, I release stuff on my site because it's what I'm involved in. It's the reason why I stopped doing the site every day is because I wanted to change it over. And so I noticed that I was slacking off on that. And I said, well, I've got to do what I said I wanted to do is the reason why I had to stop the streak. So let me do what I wanted to do and start posting stuff on Raza on the site. So that's kind of what's going to happen is I wanted to make it sort of a repository for the rules as the games come out. So it's sort of a perspective of already have the rules written. And then as if I came in and looked at myself again from outside and now trying to describe this simpler to another person so that someone else can come on and go to the site later and search for it and get all the information on it in one shot. So that's where you see it separated into sections like that. So describe and it's not over. I still have to do, I mean, I could actually, I mean, we're on the phone. So I have a post scheduled for tomorrow. I mean, is it okay to say the day we're recording? We record on Saturday, yes. Okay. So I have a post, like, tomorrow scheduled about the Snack Shop Targets. So I can actually release that now, and you can look at it if you want. So you can see the next description that describes what those Snack Shop Targets do and how you get a play field X. It's up to you if you want to do it. But so, yeah, you know what? I'm going to do that now. I'm going to change it because it was scheduled for 8 a.m. tomorrow. And now it is going to be. There are two fun with bonus groups. Which one do we look at? Once the page, the page is just is an automatic mirror of the website. And so that's how that works. And then the group is stuff that I find when I really want to post stuff really quickly. So I'll go to the group first and then it'll probably go to the page later. OK, so that's kind of how that works. Yeah, it's funny. I kind of noticed a bit of a pattern in that one of them, and again, I don't know which one, is it's almost like just an instant you're sharing something, whereas... That's the group, yeah. Yeah, and so the other page is when you've actually consumed something. So if you've listened to a podcast, that's when it gets shared. You got it. That's amazing that you understood that. Yeah, because I've only said that, I think, someone once that when they noticed that, Like, for example, I'm not posting as many podcasts as I used to. You son of a bitch. I haven't been able to listen to them. How dare you. Right? So that's kind of the rule. That was always when I knew you'd listen to Head to Head because as soon as that post comes up, I go, he knows. Right. So it's like that's what happens. I haven't been able to listen to that content as much. So even though it will go on the Facebook group because I saw it, it won't go on the .com because I haven't actually consumed the content myself. So that's like the little mini rule, the little like, I guess, yeah, you figured it out. This little mini rule that I have for myself that if I don't consume it personally, it doesn't go on the dot com. OK, so what if you hear it and you've already posted it on the group and it sucks? Do you go back and delete it? No, no, no. All right. We're still good, Marty. You know, it's pinball related. So, yeah, I heard it is pinball related. And so it goes up there. There it is. Okay, so now if you look on there now, it'll say we have the Dizzy Doozy and Super Doozy, and then we have the Snack Shop Targets. So that's the latest one. The page or the group? Not the page. The dot com. Yeah, that's where the posts go up first. And it'll get mirrored to the page probably in the next few minutes. Then it goes to the dot com first. This is the snack? Yeah, the Snack Shop Targets. Yep. Okay. So we're seeing for this for the first time. Oh, I already love it, Marty. The Playfield Multipliers. Mmm. And so these, you know, I know that playfield multipliers are, you know, some are sometimes they're controversial. Some people love, some people hate. I love them if they're earned. So there's ways to earn them. And you'll read about that there. You'll see the the multiplier targets that you remember from Houston, Jeff, that you were able to hit by hitting shots off the ramp. Like if you would miss the ramp and if it wouldn't make it, you would deflect it and it would go off the playfield X targets. And then you'd activate it and then you just start destroying the game. Well, now since the ramp's so easy, I have to find another way for people to get those targets activated. So that has been remedied. So that had to become an update in the rules because of the fact that the difficulty of the ramp is so low now. I mean, you can basically combo it now. I've got to ask Marty about something. You, when you play a game, don't read rules first. So I don't even know if you're reading this right now. You just like to get a feel for the game, feel for the shots. Correct. And you like to actually go through all the different modes, too. and we've talked about it before with that Guardians example, you know, when people were telling you, do this, do this, and you're like, no, I want to do this because I want to do this and I want to try everything. So will you read this kind of stuff? No. Before or after? And once you do read it, let's say after you played the game, are play field multipliers something that you're like, okay, I got to go for that. It's the only way to kind of achieve such and such. Okay. So the answer is no, I probably won't because you're absolutely right. when I play a game, I don't want to know the rules because I want to know how I want to play the game, how I want to enjoy the game, as opposed to somebody telling me how I should be enjoying the game to get a high score. Because a high score is a nice byproduct, but if I'm having fun, I will therefore be playing the game better, I will therefore be keeping the ball alive more, and hopefully I will do some right things and get a high score as a result. The second part to that is about playfield multipliers. I like playfield multipliers. I don't like shot multipliers. So this sounds like it's going to be good for me. Very good. This is feedback I like. More than like. I love this feedback. This is good. So one thing I wanted to address to you, Marty, is that in you just playing the game and not knowing how to get the playfield multipliers that won't matter because you'll get them anyway yep that's good i like that you will get them because you know there are other ways to get them other than just the target they're easy slash hard to get then the way they are situated if you've seen the playfield the three six and nine targets that snack shop is not directly hittable by a flipper it's not a direct shot it's like a deflection yep okay off of ned off of ned or i've seen a couple of players at work purposely deflected off the right rubber of the atomic shop i looked at him i said that is smart i'll say okay that was a smart shot dangerous as heck but that was pretty smart with which flipper the right flipper the right flipper off of the right rubber of the of the atomic shop You know what that reminds me of? That reminds me of when I watch people on the left flipper of The Walking Dead hit the Well Walker into Riot. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep. Geometry. And I was like, wait a minute. That was awesome. I got to try it. And of course, it's dangerous because if you do it wrong, it's, hello, stay down the middle. Stay down the middle. But it's, I mean, but yes. So the way it's written is that, yeah, you can, you'll hit those targets and if you hit them enough you'll get a play flex and you have it for a limited amount of time so once you have it you gotta get stuff done so it's not like you you have to get some stuff done hopefully you have something lined up or it's sort of like this i wanted to sort of write it so that you make big plays so like domino boom i got it you know i set this up and then i here's this multiplier and boom this shot but if i miss it i missed it it's gone so big comeback plays and things like that are possible. One thing that I make sure and try to do is when I'm playing multiple player games against myself is I put up a big score and then see, okay, how can I come back from this? Can I come back from this 150,000 point lead, which doesn't seem like a lot, but in Raza, it's a lot. Okay. How do I come back from 150,000 points down? Can I still do it and then figure out a way to do it? And sometimes it involves a play feel like sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it involves the modes and other things which i'll get into in other sections of the rule some of it's already written but about modes and and uh bonus collects which i had to have because it's in the name of my site so i had to do a bonus thing for my first rule set it would have been almost illegal or immoral if i didn't so there is a way to collect your bonus and that bonus can be multiplied so you know just a lot of the things about this game is that it's simple complicated you know it's like very simple on the surface but then like right below the surface is this layer of meta sitting there that you might not care about at all until you see it and it's like oh wait a minute can i do this yeah i'll allow it yeah you can do that oh can i do that too yeah i'll allow it you can do that too just don't die don't remember not to drain because you're going to lose it all if you don't do it so this rule that you've implemented now has that always been in in the plan you're just revealing it now or is this something that's happened later in your code development cycle no this has been in it okay this particular one yeah this particular one has been in it so i've been gauging you know balance and things like that based off of this thing so there are other ways to light this too so it's not just bashing on the targets like if you see at the bottom you'll see i there's another way to do it that i tease out and so if you know where those come from then you know where they'll come from. But they'll be revealed in a later quick shot along with all the other ones. So there's a way to just go straight to the 9X, but it's going to cost you. It's going to cost you. The reason why I was asking that is because I'm kind of curious to know the development cycle that you have for code, whether from the outset when you go, right, you've got Retro Atomic Zombie at Adventureland, you're doing the rules. What's your first approach? Do you think, how am I going to tell the story? How am I going to do rules framework? or are you thinking scoring opportunities? Well, if I can imagine, like, once I get, like, for Raza, I mean, I saw the play field for a while, so I'm looking at it, and I'm like, okay, what does this play field give me? It gives me a lot of fun things. How can I exploit this play field in a way that follows the designer's intentions and then also makes it fun for me when I'm stepping up to play it all the time, but then also let's not make it so complicated that it's esoteric And then can I do a Bally Williams plus a little more? Like, can I do that with this? How can I best? And then I start going into, OK, straight up points. OK, how many points is this slingshot? Like, you know, down to the bare minimum, I got to, of course, map it out. So like, yes, a slingshot is Raza is one point for a while. And then it can be more for some reason. And then it just becomes me answering the question. And then what? And then what happens? Do you ever reverse engineer any kind of games that are pre-existing right now, whether it's from another company, and see kind of where they broke down the code? I mean, well, not the code themselves, but maybe just like what I, because of course I can't see the code. Sorry, I meant the rules. The rules, yeah, okay, yeah, the rules themselves, yeah. I mean, because one thing about what I'm what I talk about is that I'm going to put out the obvious, like looking at Raza. Right. When I saw it, I'm like, OK, this game is you can call it the child of Tales of the Arabian Nights and the sibling of World Cup soccer. So I'm like, well, OK, if you're going to give me World Cup soccer on steroids, I'm going to give you World Cup soccer on steroids. Let's see what we can do here. And then so let's start with that as a baseline. And then how can we make this a lot different using that base, keeping that familiarity, keeping that Valley Williams type familiarity from a previous J-pop game? In this case, World Cup. How can I make that even more awesome? At least in my perspective, I hope it is. I'm biased, of course. So there's my baseline. So, OK, there's my elevator pitch. World Cup soccer on steroids. OK, so now how can I continue to make this work and then add some special things in and then use the pin bar and add, you know, we have in the shopping mechanic and then how does that affect it? And all of a sudden becomes a drastically different game. So it's not like I'm worried about repeating things or being too barring from too many things that makes it similar, because I mean, one thing with the different designers, I can't be samey. You know, it's kind of impossible. so even if i wanted to i really couldn't but you know in rosa's case using that framework and then going forward with that and say okay now that i have this let's map the entire thing out like a master's thesis like a doctoral thesis of how i want the game to work out and then it becomes all right here's how the perfect player plays it okay now what happens when it's not the perfect player what does the player do now when this happens can the player come back from this how balance is this how does the point scale up can i use a point scale as a baseline and then go back from that so it doesn't get all crazy remembering with raza i only have a limited number of digits but we don't have to worry about turning over the game doesn't matter it keeps counting but i want to be reasonable this is not like a this is not a billionaire game it's not even a tens of millionaire game it's a hundred thousand air game really a game of a hundred thousand is significant on this. So having that difference, I'm like, okay, now go. And then it just becomes a lot of me thinking and overthinking and overthinking some more and 2.30 in the morning and overthinking. And is this balanced? And then checking the logic. Did I break the logic with this rule? Did this new rule break something before? If I broke it, I got to go back and fix it. Sometimes I'll go and reread a rule set that I have and I'll be reading it and say, man i hope you covered for yourself there and i read it okay i did thank you okay all right things like that and then it becomes okay a slingshot is one point and then a spinner is three points and then like that you know it starts to get up to that point a mode is this this is how i want the most to progress hopefully you know put put in a different idea how can i put in this different idea and then keep everything balanced enough until we get to a mode where i don't want it to be balanced So that's part of the balancing act with this game is because I wanted this game to be sort of like a big play games. Like I did this and I did this and I did this and I have this set up for a game breaker shot and I made it. Yes. And then when I do it, then gameplay Steve is like, yeah, that was awesome. And then rules maker Steve taps gameplay Steve on the shoulder and says, hey, was that balanced? And then we have a debate. We meaning me and me have a debate and saying, OK, is that good? you know game players say shut up shut up that was good that was awesome right was it fun good okay good big check marks taken off there but is it exploitable is it balanced you know so depending on who wins then we move on to the next the next test of the next rule and so I do have to have a split personality on this stuff this is this is so much you have to have in your head just for this game I'm making an assumption that Razz is not the only game that you would be working on Oh no Right now When you said there so much that I have to have in my head for this game it makes this game seem very complicated But it isn And I mean that one of the things that I that I kind of fear i guess fear is a strong word but say i fear that this game is going to be seen as me being simple and also nuts you know it's like you know it's a very simple game but it's also very not so that's what i'm hoping i'm hoping that the simplicity will get people in and to do the easy thing until they get to the part where they look right below the surface and they get to the scoring part and it's like oh oh, I could have done this. It's like, yeah, you could have done this. Did you try it? No, try it next time. It's easy to get to. Just try it next time. It's like, oh, I could have done this and this. Yeah, but did you shoot the ramp first? Oh, crap, I forgot to shoot the ramp. Right, you could have doubled that. Oh, okay. You know, things like that, that are all, I guess, what's the phrase, close to the start button? Yep. You know, it's all on the surface. It's not a deep game. It's a wide game. That's what I kind of see. I don't know if that's really true, but it's wide. With this game and with the next games that are coming out, how much time is going to be spent on the actual pin bar? You mean as far as like interaction and graphics and all that lot? You mean as far as animations and things? Yeah. Like quick decisions. Oh, you mean the player? Oh, the player themselves? Oh, not really. Like Raza, as far as the shot mechanic is a thing, but it's not like a quick decision there. like i'm giving you enough time to look at it and say hmm because i want that moment where the player has a certain number of tickets and then they have like three or four choices and they're like they step back and go wait a minute now i got you that's the one word i want when you step back and you look at it because i've seen it happen when people are playing and they go oh i could do this or this meanwhile the time clock's ticking get ticking down and that's when i know i got you that's what i'm looking for that strategy a little mini strategy session in your head where it's like what if i do this and this now some people just don't care and they'll just buy everything that you can afford that's fine you know but that's the kind of thing i'm looking for so not all games will have that level of interactivity some will have more some will have less i mean raza also has the magna save which is just a quick button press so that's not even i guess that sort of counts right it's easy it's really right from your thumb on your right hand just hit it boom done And it operates like, you know, you can tap it to fling it like Jungle Lord, like the old style ones. Or was it Solar Fire? I think, you know, you can fling it and it flings out or you can hold it to grab it. But you have an energy meter. So you if you use it all, it's gone. You can get it back. But, you know, there are other games that will have that sort of button on the right where your right thumb would be to have that sort of interactivity there. and also an additional activity with the pin bar itself. Of course, with the standard ones, with the shot log and the settings, those are standard things. And the what's next that you might have seen, like, this is what's next. I have no idea what to do. Here's what's next. Just shoot this thing. Okay. So the finite number of Raza games have been sold and the finite number of how many are going to be made. So I assume a lot of your time is working on games 2, 3, 4, 5 right now, which we've seen the titles on the Deep Root website. I'm not sure if we know what the actual next game is going to be or when it's going to be. Has that been announced? I believe Food Truck has been announced. I think Robert officially announced that. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he said Food Truck was next. Yeah, I think that makes the most sense for him to announce that, I guess. It's Barry's game. So I'm very privileged to be working on Barry's game. I mean, I just thought that my very first game of pinball was, I'm highly confident it was Space Shuttle. It was either Space Shuttle or Space Station. And I think it was Space Shuttle in the way the lights are, the way you look at the lights and play field, the way my little six, seven-year-old self, Herb, while I was playing it, remembers that. So, and just to think that, you know, I'm going to be working with Barry on his game. That's kind of a moment that sometimes I'll be working there and I'll be in a meeting and there's Barry there and we're talking about Food Truck and I'm like, really? This is happening. And so I got to have a space shuttle in the game somewhere. So we're going to figure that out. I don't know. I just had a chance. Can I talk about Food Truck then? Because when it was announced, it sort of really had mixed, I guess, impressions from people. People going, Food Truck, I don't quite get it. But then other people saying, well, hang on, don't forget Diner. Diner was sort of that sort of food-based as well. My question to you, whether you can answer it or not, is what about Food Truck in your mind is going to make it really exciting for us? quick fast man we want a burger served on the side yes burgers will be served and you will be serving them that is correct people will be asking for burgers with toppings and you better be serving them quickly or else they will not give you good ratings then that will affect your score and quick quick quick like a bunny get that multi-ball started get those orders done defeat the roach the roach is the designated bad guy in the game so you have to beat him as well so it will be exciting because it's supposed to be quick you got to serve those orders or they will it will affect your performance but now for the people who will not care about scores it's fine because you're just trying to serve food still so it's still the same concept the faster you serve the food the better you will score so um hold the ball at your peril i guess i mean there'll be coverage for stuck balls of course i mean you know stuck balls stop timers you know that's that's like one of the things you think of when i'm first looking at okay what do i have to worry about okay what i have to worry about in a game that operates quick like this well what happens when the ball gets stuck okay cover that okay we got to make sure we put in the timer stop it stuff okay but then how does that affect everything does that affect the timer well you know but now i'm getting into meta stuff which you're not asking about but now we're getting into it's a me being overthinking about this stuff i'm sorry but that's kind of one of the things that goes into it but yeah it's quick serving food serve the customers get the high ratings you know and then start the multi balls stack the multi balls defeat the roach you know destroy him make him make him suffer for talking crap about your food truck and hopefully it will be uh fun and exciting and give you that one more game sort of feel that uh some games have some of my favorite games where it's like yes the gameplay loop itself is kind of simple but then it's like okay i gotta do it again because i can do it just a little bit better so steven we've seen a lot of the feedback since september when all these titles were announced you came on with quinn and robert on pinball profile and robert was on with Pinball News and Pinball Magazine, and there was the Deep Dive as well in TWIP. What has the feedback been like for you? I know you like constructive criticism, and I'm sure Robert does as well. Can you tell us, you know, what kind of discussions have happened at Deep Root from when you've heard back from possible pinball consumers? Wish we could have seen more gameplay, right? I would have liked to have given them that.