Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Posterising in the H2H Lobby

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·49m 17s·analyzed·Jul 11, 2016
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Linked NBA Fastbreak mini-tournament sparks discussion of head-to-head potential for Pinball Arcade.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss their experience at a local pinball league featuring two linked NBA Fastbreak machines configured for a mini-tournament with modified flipper controls. They explore the linked gameplay mechanics, operator configuration options, and enthusiastically propose NBA Fastbreak as an ideal candidate for Pinball Arcade's emerging head-to-head feature, which they believe could work better than AG Soccer due to its simpler synchronization requirements.

Key Claims

  • NBA Fastbreak machines can be linked together with synchronized modes where both players contribute to lighting the same rules across both tables

    high confidence · Chris describes the linking mechanics where both tables sync modes, and if one player lights three letters and the other lights two, multiball starts for both

  • The operator can configure quarter length in NBA Fastbreak's operators menu, with 30 seconds potentially being the minimum

    medium confidence · Chris states: 'in the operators menu you get to set the length of each quarter' and suspects 30 seconds was the minimum used

  • Linked NBA Fastbreak offers unlimited balls until the match timer expires, rather than the traditional three-ball format

    high confidence · Jared confirms: 'you literally are competing with the other person your point total is going up on their scoreboard... unlimited balls'

  • Farsight's Pinball Arcade head-to-head feature is currently in very early alpha stages of development

    high confidence · Chris states: 'there's a head-to-head beta going on, very early stages of it. It's very much an alpha'

  • Major League Pinball has launched a private tournament on Pinball Arcade using Farsight's new tournament functionality without Farsight's direct involvement

    high confidence · Chris describes: 'They're basically doing a drawing for these things... it's completely using Farsight's Pinball Arcade tournament without Farsight having to do anything'

  • The Major League Pinball tournament has attracted over 280 entrants as of the podcast recording

    high confidence · Chris states: 'last I checked, there was over 280 entrants'

  • NBA Fastbreak and Joust are the only pinball machines that specifically require or benefit from head-to-head implementation

    medium confidence · Jared says: 'Joust... NBA. I don't think there's any other ones that will allow you to do it'

  • The new Pinball Arcade UI framework is designed as a foundation that can support future feature iterations and customization

Notable Quotes

  • “I don't care what's happening at home. I'm going to this. You guys just sort yourself out.”

    Chris Friebus @ early in episode — Demonstrates Chris's passion for NBA Fast Break and the linked experience, establishing the episode's core narrative

  • “They basically crippled the other flipper on you... it was nuts crazy”

    Chris Friebus @ mid-episode — Describes the challenging mini-tournament configuration where players controlled their partner's flipper instead of their own

  • “If there was ever a machine built for head-to-head, it's this one.”

    Chris Friebus @ latter half — Core thesis: NBA Fast Break is ideally suited for Pinball Arcade's head-to-head feature due to its synchronized mode structure

  • “You're not sending a whole other table. You're not sending telemetry and physics data and all that sort of stuff down the pipe, which would just be not possible.”

    Jared Morgan @ latter half — Technical explanation of why NBA Fast Break's simpler synchronization needs make it more viable than more complex games

  • “They've built the house, that's the hard part. Slapping on a new coat of paint, that's the easy part.”

    Jared Morgan @ latter third — Metaphorical explanation of the new UI's architecture—the underlying systems matter more than the visual presentation

  • “They've opened up the floodgates... potentially this will become something that we, the users, will be able to do ourselves, setting up our own little mini tournaments.”

    Chris Friebus @ final third — Recognition that the new tournament functionality could democratize tournament creation for the community

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared Morganperson[name withheld pending review]personNBA FastbreakgameJoustgame[name withheld pending review]gamePinball ArcadeproductFarsight Studioscompany

Signals

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: NBA Fast Break's linking feature allows synchronized mode progression across two tables, where both players' actions contribute to the same rule sets. This creates cooperative progression within a competitive score-based structure.

    high · Chris describes multiball lighting across both tables when combined lane shots are made, and modes that synchronize between machines

  • ?

    product_concern: The mini-tournament used heavy restrictions (linked flipper controls forcing partner coordination) that prevented players from experiencing NBA Fast Break in its standard form. Machines were turned off immediately after tournament, creating unmet player expectations.

    high · Chris: 'I didn't actually get to experience nba fast break the way that i really hoped to... they just turned the machines off so we didn't get to play it the rest of the night'

  • ?

    design_innovation: NBA Fast Break's operator menu allows configurable quarter lengths and implements unlimited-ball play until match timer expires, enabling flexible competitive formats suitable for various player skill levels and venue constraints.

    high · Operator can set quarter length; unlimited balls replace traditional three-ball format; scores sync across both tables via DMD display

  • ?

    technology_signal: Pinball Arcade's new UI framework enables third-party tournament organization (Major League Pinball) without developer involvement, demonstrating modular tournament infrastructure that could be extended to user-created tournaments.

    high · Major League Pinball set up private tournament with custom rules and prize structure using Farsight's tournament system; 280+ entrants achieved without official Farsight promotion

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.148

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. You are listening to The Blockade Podcast. I am your host, Chris Frevis, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. He is Jared Morgan. Hello.
0:45
I didn't know hello was in an Australian vocabulary. Yeah. Oh, good day, mate. How you doing? Staying the flame and crazy. It's a good day today. There we go. So let's talk about some interesting things that have been going on.
1:01
We're going to start off right with the money, right where we want to hit home. Just boom, big time, hitting it hard. So last weekend, I finally managed to drag my butt off to one of the pinball leagues that I've missed for like the past five months. Oh, yeah. Something a bit exciting, right? Yeah, but there was absolutely no way in hell I was going to miss this one because it was announced early that our hosts had not one, but two NBA fast breaks, and they were linked together.
1:34
Oh, yeah. Oh, hell yeah. I was like, I don't care what's happening at home. I'm going to this. You guys just sort yourself out. Well, you got to understand, too, this is one of my favorite machines. And when I say that, I haven't gotten, back in the day, I didn't have a lot of opportunity to even play it. But something about it just really grabs my attention. And then I used to play it in visual pinball. That's where I really fell in love with it, and I just had an endless blast with it. It's not a terribly difficult table. Once you get the combo shots down, like once you've figured out the flippers and hitting those ramps and hitting the loops, it becomes kind of an easy game, but then you're playing against the high score, basically.

medium confidence · Jared explains: 'they thought if they were doing it well... is to go, right, well, we want a framework that allows us to do whatever we need to on the front end based on user feedback'

Major League Pinball
organization
BlahCade Podcastorganization
Loot Crateproduct

community_signal: Chris and Jared actively encourage community members to provide early feedback on head-to-head matchmaking design, citing lessons learned from UI redesign that faced community criticism but limited implementation of suggestions.

high · Explicit call to action: 'voice your concerns for what you want head-to-head... specifically, what do you want your lobby experience to be like?'

  • ?

    product_strategy: NBA Fast Break is positioned as superior candidate for head-to-head implementation versus AG Soccer due to simpler synchronization requirements (score/mode state only vs. full physics/telemetry data), potentially enabling faster development and fewer bugs.

    medium · Chris: 'I think they would get NBA fast break working a lot quicker and with fewer bugs than what they want to do with AG Soccer'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: NBA Fast Break's linked gameplay with unlimited balls and synchronized modes benefits novice players by guaranteeing continuous play and exposing them to advanced rule modes without requiring solo execution.

    high · Jared: 'it would be perfect... you could automatically set what the length of your game is, unlimited balls... you're both going to be playing the same modes at the same time so it kind of really levels the playing field'

  • ?

    product_launch: Major League Pinball's successful private tournament launch demonstrates mature tournament platform capabilities: custom rule sets, multi-tier prize structures, automated entry, and strong initial adoption (280+ entrants).

    high · Tournament set 10 tables, 5-minute time limit, top 50 in laptop drawing, top 100 in translight drawing; entry streamlined via Twitter link

  • ?

    operational_signal: Local pinball leagues employ creative table restrictions (blind flipping, one-hand play, cross-handed, single-ball scoring, partner flipper control) to create unique competitive formats and extend engagement with existing machines.

    high · Detailed description of multiple mini-tournament formats used by Chris's league to modify standard gameplay

  • $

    market_signal: Major League Pinball's tournament offers attractive hardware prizes (MSI gaming laptop, signed Stern translites), indicating emerging commercial opportunity for tournament promotion and player acquisition in digital pinball space.

    medium · Prize structure includes premium hardware and branded merchandise; tournament drew 280+ participants; marketing achieved via Twitter and link-based registration

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community remains critical of Pinball Arcade's UI redesign despite two years since initial screenshots. Podcasters note community feedback was vocal but implementation appears minimal, suggesting implementation bottleneck or misalignment with developer priorities.

    medium · Jared: 'arguably, there doesn't appear to be a lot of change between then and now... your opinions are valued, but may not actually be taken any action with'

  • ?

    content_signal: Blockade Podcast hosts leverage platform to encourage community feedback on Pinball Arcade features and directly message pinball industry figures (Norman) to advocate for feature prioritization, demonstrating podcast influence in product direction.

    medium · Chris sent multiple messages to Norman (pinball buyer) encouraging NBA Fast Break head-to-head push; explicit calls to action for listeners to provide feature feedback on forums

    • 2:25
    And you're trying to get to the championship game. That's the wizard. And in order to do that, you've got to pump through, I think, about six, four, well, maybe it's four, I won't say six, though, different matchups to other teams to get to the championship game. So it's one of those tables where you play, that round ends, and you start back off at zero with your score. And so it's this constant chugging along, chugging along, and going back and going back. And it's a load of fun. So anyway, back in the arcade days, I never even knew it could be linked together. I didn't discover that until many years later. So obviously hearing this, that it was going to be linked, I was like, I've got to be there because I just don't know that I'm ever going to get that opportunity again. It's incredibly imperative that I go to this. Yeah. And play this right now.
    3:23
    So unfortunately, the bad news is in our league, we like to do these, they call them mini tournaments. so a table will be picked and they'll do something odd to the table put some kind of a restriction on the table encouraging an exceedingly short game basically and that's what will be the basis of the tournament so sometimes we've had like a piece of cardboard placed on top of the glass so you can't see the flipper so blind flipping other times it's been play with only one hand other times it's play with your hands crossed. Other times it's been you have a single ball and try and get the highest score you can with a single ball. Any number of things. So with NBA Fast Break, what they did was it's linked. You're playing with a partner. And I didn't understand that aspect because I was like, wait, wouldn't this person be your competition for scoring against? But no, it turns out it's your partner. And we had a two-minute game, so each quarter lasted 30 seconds, plus there was a halftime, which is when you shoot the backboard shot and get some quick points.
    4:41
    And at the end of the two minutes, that's it. They would add the total of both of your scores, and that gave you a team total, and whoever had the highest team total won the mini-tournament. So the reason why it was a team aspect, they also rewired the flippers. Oh, they rewired them. It actually wasn't necessarily rewire. I'm sure there was some way of, through the menu, being able to plug this up. Anyway, they had it so that you controlled the other player's left flipper. Right. So you had to be in communication.
    5:16
    You had to be watching both tables at the same time. Really? And you'd have to... Hard. Right? It's insanely hard. Because you're sitting there going, flip, flip, you know, and... So everyone would have just been shouting out, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. Pretty much. And what ends up happening is you find yourself watching the other person's machine, and you're not paying any attention to your machine.
    5:44
    And many ways, one of the methods was, okay, catch the ball on your right flipper so you don't have to worry about the right flipper. And then all you have to do is worry about the other person's left flipper. But you're still now only playing the table with one flipper. flipper it's like they basically crippled the other flipper on you yeah it's it was it was nuts crazy uh scores were not very high except for one team who like i don't know they must have linked themselves together because they got a really good score they wound up scoring a total of 102 points really whereas everybody else was lucky if they got 45 to 50 points and most of those points that people got was during halftime when you were just flipping the uh the the backboard shot over and over again again yeah yeah right um so yeah so that was the bad part was i didn't actually get to experience nba fast break the way that i really hoped to not only that but after the mini tournament because they would have had to reconfigure the whole thing they uh just turned the machines off so we didn't get to play it the rest of the night um so it was like this this jewel dangling in front of me going, don't you want to play me? And I was like, yes I do! I so desperately want to play you. Oh, just huge desperation. Not only that, but then I find out that the owner of it, he had a third machine. He'd bought three of them.
    7:07
    He's like, he must really love this game, right? Well, you know what I'm wondering is if it's so that he can have these two permanently linked together and set in link mode and then the other one just on its own and not having to worry about it. So how does it work when you start a game? Does it actually try and, like, a little bit like Daytona USA did, it's waiting for challenges and then waits for people to step up to the other game and press start? Yes. So basically the one player would plop in their quarter or push start game, and the other machine has 30 seconds to push start and be linked. All right. Okay. Yeah. Oh, cool. That's cool. Yeah. So when I got home, I wound up looking up about the linking because I was really curious about, game length and everything else like that. So it turns out that in the operators menu you get to set the length of each quarter. Oh. Right. I don't know what the maximum length is per quarter you can set it as, but I have a feeling that the 30 second quarters was the minimum that you could do. If you're wondering what all this noise is, I've got a trash truck outside.
    8:17
    Ah, okay. It's quite lovely. they're really like taking up the trash if we're not careful they'll take our podcast too so basically the operator would be able to determine ahead of time how long these link matches are going to be so once you get the game playing the beautiful thing is you're not limited to three balls it's continue playing until the match is over oh yeah that is very cool so you literally are competing with the other person your point total is going up on their scoreboard their point total is going up on your scoreboard really fast so it's actually unlimited balls like if you drain you just get another one popped out in the quarter that's awesome see that's really good from like a novice perspective like they just come up and just start playing the game with a friend, and they go, this is awesome! I actually get to have guaranteed play. And I know that there's some Sega pins that actually had guaranteed play time as an option.
    9:28
    But not like this. This is very different. This is like almost playing a full game, but with guaranteed play. Well, it gets even better. Oh, really? Okay, so, not only do you get unlimited balls, but you're both synced into whatever modes start. So, for instance, on the play field, under each lane, there is a letter. It spells out shoot. Okay? Yep. If you light up all five lanes, that is what enables multiball to start.
    10:02
    Okay? Why? Well, both tables are linked to each other. So, if the player on the left, you know, shoots three of the letters, and the player on the right shoots the other two letters, multiball starts for both players. Oh. Cool. So, again, what you're saying with it being great for a novice is that the novice would get a tour of all the modes if the other player is really good and is able to just rip through them all.
    10:30
    Cool. That's awesome. And that goes for every single mode that's on the table. That's very cool. Very cool.
    10:42
    Yeah. I've never been able to play one linked before, even when it was brand new but we had the distributor he had a in australia had a whole stack of arcades right and he well that this distributor was like well you know we'll get actually a wall of pinball machines they had like eight or nine back in the 90s when it was really busy and i had they had an nba fast break but they only ever had one of them they should have linked them back then really it's like it would have been awesome you can only link two together or is that the is it just uh head to head only which is pretty good because But as long as you're able to try and implement.
    11:18
    Yeah. Well, you would never have four players on it anyway. I mean... No, it'd be like one. Like a, you know, it's a one-on-one sort of shootout sort of thing.
    11:29
    Yeah. Although it would be fascinating if you could link four tables together, and then two of the people are on the same team, the other two are on their same team, and then that way those two are doing their own modes, you might say, so that as a team you're creating your own modes and the other two would be creating their own modes. Then you could attack the scorers in a different fashion. That would be fascinating if it was an option, but it's not.
    11:55
    Yeah, well, two is better than none. That's right. Exactly, right? It would have been really hard to try and synchronize everything going on four tables. You'd really go there with a mate. You wouldn't go there with a team. Well, can you imagine what arcade is going to soak up that much real estate with four of those machines No way Even if they actually constructed them head like back that still a lot of floor space to take it with a machine And a machine with arguably a pretty specific demographic that it's targeting. Like, not everyone likes basketball. So, yeah, it's a bit of a risk, isn't it? So, obviously, they would have gone, yeah, two is enough, I think. Well, even any of the racing games where you can have four players linked together, usually you don't see that. Usually you only see two linked together because only places like Dave and Buster's or whatever are going to be able to handle having this bank of race cars.
    12:53
    Yeah, that's right. Still cool. Very cool. I'd love to see if they can do this in Pimble Arcade, right?
    13:04
    Well, that's what got me really... I was getting ready to send messages out to Norman. Actually, I did send him a message. um heaps of messages they'd hear about this game because you love it well because norman norman is a fan of nba fast break um so if norman is a fan if norman is a champion of a table um then he's he's got a lot of sway because he's also the pinball buyer um so it was like let me give you some more encouragement to really try and force this issue into getting this happening. Right now, and I'm not going to talk about ... Right now, there's a head-to-head beta going on, very early stages of it. It's very much an alpha, isn't it? It's what? It's very much an alpha. Yeah. I mean, they're just getting the workings going. So there's no ... I'm not going to give you any kind of a rundown on it because it just plain wouldn't be fair. such in its infancy, it's ridiculous.
    14:12
    But one of the things that's been talked about is that eventually Farsight wants to be able to have split screen so you can see the other person's gameplay happening. And that obviously is going to take, I don't know, it's going to push some processing power, no doubt. At the very least you're going to have some lag going on. It's going to be pretty much for everyone in the US who's on Fiverr, yep, you can totally do head-to-head. Everywhere else, no. Unless they have a whole stack of local servers set up. And even then, it's going to be so hard to orchestrate that type of data going everywhere. The other problem is, and who knows how Farsight is planning on implementing this, but what happens if the novice player gets paired up with one of the eight-hour players?
    15:04
    So the novice player just ripped through their three balls on a high score head-to-head match, right? And now what? He's got to sit through the other person just going and going and going and going? It had to be capped like 10 minutes or 20 minutes or something like that, right? Right. Yeah, totally.
    15:27
    But with this, I thought, oh, this would be perfect because you could automatically set what the length of your game is, unlimited balls you're playing for a high score that isn't ridiculous you know to try and uh match the other person with his basketball scores um you're both going to be playing the same modes at the same time so it kind of really levels the playing field um you know because the other person could be doing all the you know the really skilled player could be doing all the work and the unskilled player like we said great for a novice right could be sitting there kicking back but the best part is is that you don't need to see the other person's table because all the inserts are going to light up on your table when they hit any of these lanes and then on top of that all you care about is what is their score and that's automatically displayed on the dmd it has nothing to do with anything else that farsight is implementing to show their score it automatically shows up on your dmd and even if there is a one second lag between the two you know for an information exchange, that's not lagging your ball, it's just lagging the score. So, again, who cares? Yeah, because that is the biggest challenge, like actually getting, you know, similar to World of Warcraft type of thing where you see your toon just walking around and it's actually synchronized with everything else going on in the universe. That takes a lot of orchestration to get right. But you're right, if it's just synchronizing the game state between tables, then that's actually pretty, like, that's feasible. to do that. Yeah, because all you're sending is a data pack, an update of what's going on. You're not sending a whole other table. You're not sending telemetry and physics data and all that sort of stuff down the pipe, which would just be not possible.
    17:10
    Exactly. So it totally got me excited because I was just like, oh my god, if there was ever a machine built for head-to-head, it's this one. I mean, I know that we all pretty much know that AG soccer is going to be, that's what head-to-head is being developed for, so you can play against another person right there. But how many other tables are there that implement, that specifically require head-to-head? Joust. That's it. Yeah, joust and NBA. I don't think there's any other ones that will allow you to do it. Right, right. So I just really hope that if they get this, you know, the head-to-head working, even if they don't get the head-to-head working, I think they would get NBA fast break working a lot quicker and with fewer bugs than what they want to do with AG soccer. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, exactly.
    18:04
    Very interesting. But then that got me. Yeah, that got me thinking about matchmaking and getting into head-to-heads and what I'm hoping the approach that Farsight winds up taking with the head-to-head.
    18:19
    My fear is that they are modeling this off of a first-person shooter where basically you're selecting the mode that you want to play in and then it's just matchmaking you up and you play.
    18:39
    But that's fine and dandy when you're all playing the exact same game. In this instance, though, you're going to have 60-plus machines to choose from. 60 rooms or 60 arenas that you're trying to get a match play in. Yeah, that's going to be interesting.
    18:56
    So I would hope that they model their head-to-head more off of what, say, Rock Band or Guitar Hero did.
    19:04
    Because what they didn't do was, pick your song, now let's see if anybody else wants to play with you. yeah it's a match first then agree on the song then play the song exactly exactly yep i agree that's a much better approach the other thing that i really hope is and and this used to drive me nuts in uh both again rock band and guitar hero so you go into matchmaking and it's searching for a match searching for a match and you're just like oh my god is there anybody out there and maybe you'd get one person to match up with but like in the case of rock band you're like okay great that's another you know i want a band i didn't want just another guitarist to play you all want to play cooperatively and so then you're like well we gotta wait for you know a drummer to appear and sit there and wait and see i mean you sit there for five minutes and then you deal with people go i'm sick of waiting and then they drop out and then like two seconds later all of a sudden you get the drummer and you're like no we have the person you know you think there'd be more drummers and guitarists hanging around.
    20:08
    Yeah, but you've got to be able to set up the drums, right? It takes a lot of space. And then the singers, which take no space at all, there's just a lot of people that plain don't want to sing. The funny thing is that we would never hear their singing. No, it's only them. It's only them, thank God, because some of these people, you'd be frightened. But anyway, so that was the part that kind of sucked, though, was sitting there waiting and wondering how many people are... Is it even worth waiting for, you know what I mean? So what I would hope with Pinball Arcade is, hey, while you're in the matchmaking, how about letting us play a table in the meantime? Ah, like while you wait. Yeah, while you wait, go ahead and play whatever pin you want to play, and as soon as your match made, boom, it yanks you out of the table. It's none of this, but no, I just want to finish. No, too bad. That wasn't the point. The point is... Hey, your match is here. Would you like to go from the bar to the table and start dinner? Right, right. just go and step away from going nuts and go and actually have your match now people will be running away so anyway that's what my hopes are for what they go with for head to head I mean here's just some of the things what I would encourage our listeners that gripe to no end about the new UI which by the way is why we're going to be able to have head-to-head, just saying, voice your concerns for what you want head-to-head. Well, to an extent, what you want the actual head-to-head match to be, but specifically, what do you want your lobby experience to be like? What do you want it to be like from the moment you click head-to-head for how you get matched up? What kind of game modes do you hope that they would offer in terms of, is it just going to be high score? Is there going to be speed runs? Is there going to be goals? I don't know what Farsight is able to implement because most of this has to be ROM-based. They can't just create their own games.
    22:11
    So that's why I say my concern is I want to go into the lobby. I would love to know if there are people – how many people are currently playing a table and how many are waiting to play. I would love it if they showed the grid of all the tables, maybe show what tables are being played the most, who there's the most players in. That would be interesting to see.
    22:38
    But like I said, my main concern would be show that I'm in the room, match me up to somebody, then let me pick what kind of game mode I want to play, and then let us both be able to pick the table that we want to play with.
    22:53
    I think that's definitely the order that they need to be looking at. I think it'd be really good, I don't know if there's already threads started up for the potential, probably not because nobody really knows until probably now that they were doing it.
    23:03
    It would be really interesting to collect, this is a big thing, collect user feedback now, like you say, because they can go down this path and they start developing something that us, the end user, just does not want. Well, because right now they are doing a database of what are the wants and concerns. of the beta players.
    23:26
    So, you know, get in there on a thread, create a thread, create a head-to-head thread if you're passionate about it. I don't need to because I'm already in the beta thread so I can put my passions right there in the private beta thread and get my voice heard. But you people that aren't in the beta,
    23:41
    if you're passionate about this, start up a thread, suggestions for a head-to-head matchmaking, and go from there. Get your voice in now. Otherwise, you might suffer the fate that you're currently griping about with the UI, where you're like, this isn't what I wanted?
    23:59
    Yeah. I mean, to an extent, that UI, people were pretty vocal when they saw the first screenshots a couple of years ago come out. And arguably, there doesn't appear to be a lot of change between then and now. So, yeah, certainly have your say, but your opinions are valued, but may not actually be taken any action with. But here's what I will say about the UI. They've built the house, that's the hard part. Slapping on a new coat of paint, that's the easy part. So make sure the house is structurally sound first That exactly right Theming and it all probably what we seeing on the front end at the moment in Android and Steam is a type of frame that they can use to represent the underlying back end or foundations of the system I'd imagine that when they were developing this, they thought if they were doing it well, which I'm sure they probably would have been, is to go, right, well, we want a framework that allows us to do whatever we need to on the front end based on user feedback. And then from there, we can iterate, work out what works, what doesn't. And as long as we've got a good, solid foundation, we can then tweak how the display happens and, yeah, go from there. So, yeah, I think you're right. We've got to speak up. Yeah, speak up. We've just got to tell them, and we've got to tell them in many different ways so they really understand it's not just a select few that's telling this. It's actually the majority of people.
    25:34
    And you've got to remember that people like hate fans, and those sort of mediums are like the 2% of the fan base. So while we're a very vocal minority, a lot of the time the people who tend to frequent other social media networks like Facebook and stuff like that, they paint a very different picture because they're not maybe as passionate about the platform as the Timberlake Cave fans folks are. So it's a bit of a strange balance there as far as like where the ranking comes from. Is it the vocal majority or the vocal minority that should actually get the pixel? Exactly.
    26:17
    I'm going to talk about an advantage that has just cropped up because of the very new UI. But first, a word from a new sponsor. Oh, yeah, that's right. So I've been having a look around. A couple of my friends when I was working at Red Hat were really into getting this thing called Loot Crate. Have you heard of Loot Crate before? I have not. So Loot Crate is a service. It's like a subscription service for stuff. and what you get is every month you get this nice little box of goodies delivered to you oh and your package yeah it's so it's like this little box of joy that turns up on your doorstep every month and you never know really what's going to be in it now you can sort of get an idea um of what's going to be in it because there's um there's sort of different crates so you can get the standard loot crate which was the first one they um they sort of set up and this one for this month it's got Star Trek, Marvel, Batman and AVP stuff in it. So in this particular case, the crate's worth 50 bucks but you're paying $29.95 a month plus shipping. So you get a bit of a discount on all the cool stuff. But then you've got different sort of, I guess genres of crates. So you've got a loot anime crate, you've got a gaming crate with all sort of cool gaming stuff in it.
    27:31
    Then you've got like a loot pets crate, which is sort of just a little bit lighter sort of stuff like this is the wwf um one with super mario and batman a few sort of lighter so it's customized to your tastes yeah so you can you can select whichever thing that you like and they they're not all 29 some are like 11.99 a month but um you can go hardcore and get like this custom crate with all this cool star wars stuff for 130 bucks plus shipping that's just a one-off thing yeah so how does this affect our listeners well that's a very good question see I thought, well, you know what? They have this referral thing that you can actually,
    28:11
    if you share a link, you can actually sign up and you get a discount as well. And I thought, gee, I wonder if they have some sort of affiliate program for that.
    28:20
    Turns out they do. So, yeah, we've got us all signed up with this affiliate program. So if you don't like shirts, you can go and support the show this way. So every time you sign up through a special link, which I'll put in the show notes, but the link for everyone here who doesn't read the show notes is trylootcrate.com forward slash blockade. If you click on that link and you then use the promo code of bridge 10, so that's all lowercase bridge 10, you get 10% savings off your crate. So that's kind of cool. Yeah. That brings the cost down a little bit more for you. Sure. And yeah, it's as easy as that. You click the link, you sign up and enter the code, and you're locked in for 10% savings of all your crates. And then you get a box of joy every month. Yeah, that's right. So what more could you want? It's cool to get things in the post because, you know, we don't often get things in the post anymore because of the digital age we're in. So getting a whole lot of cool stuff that you can put on your desk at work or like trick out your office at home or just throw things at people with, it's cool. So, yeah, help the show out. Help yourself out. Go ahead and give it a try. One more time for that link, Jared. Yeah, sure. It's trylootcrate.com forward slash blockade and enter bridge 10. That's bridge 1-0 for 10% savings. So what I was going to be mentioning about new things that have happened with the introduction of the new UI, There is a tournament going on, just started, for the PC users. And it's a private tournament. This is not run by Farsight. It's run by Major League Pinball. They happen to be giving away an MSI gaming laptop as their top prize. They're also giving away some Stern signed translights. Translites. I believe Star Trek, Walking Dead, and I'm not sure what the third one is. I can't remember.
    30:32
    But anyway, so big, nice prizes, right? And all you have to do is just sign up through them first at the link that was provided, and then the private tournament becomes open to you, and you'd be able to play in the tournament.
    30:50
    So they're basically doing a drawing for these things. Top 50 are the ones that are entered into the laptop drawing. Top 100 are entered into the Translight drawing. But the cool thing is that it's completely using Farsight's Pinball Arcade tournament without Farsight having to do anything. So Major League Pinball basically set the rules. Rules being they pick 10 tables. They put on a five-minute time limit. and they set the dates that it's going on between. And Farsight is basically just being used as the tool, or I should say PimpleRK is being used as the tool to run this thing. And this is a new aspect that was only capable because of the new functionality of the UI. That's pretty cool. It's very cool.
    31:45
    They're setting up their own tournament. Wow. So they must have a login to the system, I guess, to be able to do it. Yeah. So when I signed up, I got the message over Twitter. Via Twitter, I pushed the link. It took me to Major League Pinball. On there, I entered in what my username was and I think my email.
    32:09
    And push send. 15 minutes later, I was able to join the tournament. That's awesome. Yeah, so all within the app. And the exciting thing is potentially this will become something that we, the users, will be able to do ourselves, setting up our own little mini tournaments. That's exactly what I was thinking.
    32:33
    That's pretty cool. That's why I was going, oh, they've opened up the floodgates. Right. you know um especially if we i mean and think about if we get head-to-head going that could be i mean if you could pair that with the the tournament kind of thing i don't know anyway it got me excited because it just opens up so many new opportunities for us to be able to play against and with each other and then in the case of say tournament of the month where we were having to ask people to go to Pinball Arcade fans, register there, go to a separate website, enter their scores, it's all honor system at the end. It's a bit of a trip, really. It's a bit of an ask for people to do that. Yeah, I mean, the people that were playing it appreciated it and stuff, but it certainly hampered our numbers for who we attracted. Whereas with this thing, currently, last I checked, there was over 280 entrants. and if you are somebody that is on the fan forum a lot you kind of recognize a lot of the names you know who, my friends list of people that play Pimble Arcade on Steam has all come from our fan forum I've got maybe 50 some names, something of that vicinity by the way if you want to hit me up and be a play against me, friendly, score-wise. Yeah, shut your traps. That's what I'm identified as on Steam. Pretty much anywhere, that's what I'm identified as. But anyway, I was going through the leaderboard, and there's so many names, I have no clue who these people are. And I'm like, right there, what you were saying with our forum being a vocal minority,
    34:28
    exactly. Who knows how many of these people have never or don't like to frequent the fan forum, they may go on Facebook. They may have opinions of their own. They may think that everything's hunky-dory or whatever. They may not know. They might go, yeah, look, it's a game, whatever. Some people just take what they get and go, oh, yeah, it's a bit crap. I don't like this bit, but whatever. It's just a game. They don't get too emotionally involved.
    34:55
    Well, I'll tell you what. Playing five-minute tables for a high score, it's a mind frack do you remember i don't know if this was ever released on other platforms but they released um elvira as a standalone table on android and the free mode only allowed you to play two minutes of the table two minutes but the score was recorded so it basically changed exactly the way you're talking like now it changed exactly how you play the game into basically get multi-ball and just spam the ramp as fast as you can.
    35:34
    Well, you know, what's interesting is a table that I'm very familiar with on how to get the quickest score on is Creature from the Black Lagoon.
    35:45
    And in five minutes... Basically, as quickly as you can, you need to get into multiball. So you need to get your KISS score for F. You need to get your snack bar score for I. You need to get your four drop in your four top lanes lit for L. And you need to go on the slide for M.
    36:11
    There are methods that I use that have made it efficient for how I can get through those really, really fast.
    36:20
    And then it's OK. So now you're into multiballs. Now you need to find the girl, which can be so frustrating if you don't find her. yeah because the easiest shot is to get the snack bar shot if you don't get her and if she's not snack bar now it's kind of trickier to get the kiss shot or the slide shot and uh afterwards those ones are wrong the tip of your flipper they're risky shots yeah yeah um because after you found the girl then it's two shots into the snack bar that gives you a jackpot launch up the middle hit 20 bumpers I think Now super jackpot is lit Score the super jackpot and away you go The problem is doing all of that takes about four minutes
    37:04
    All right. So now you've got one minute left in the thing, and it's, okay, so now I've got to find the girl again. I've got to hit the jackpot again. I've got to hit enough bumpers again to get a super jackpot, and that should get me my high score. but the alternative to that and it was one that i experimented with to see what i could do better on in that limited amount of time was rather than go straight for the jackpots boost your multiplier uh your creature multiplier up to four times and then hit the jackpot and then hit the super jackpot again it's risky because that's that many more shots i think it takes nine times up the ramp nine or twelve times i can't remember um but hitting that ramp over and over and over again without losing control of the ball and then as soon as you have that gaining control of the ball again and shooting the snack bar um all with that timer ticking down so it's again it's one of those things of wow how do you maximize your strategy in that short amount of time playing attack from mars that's another one of the tables that they have i discovered real quick it's all about getting to total annihilation as fast as you possibly can, because nothing else is going to score you the points that people are scoring on the thing.
    38:28
    And that's not that hard to get, particularly if you get the super skill. It pretty much completes one of the things for you. For me, the right ramp is just bashing my head against the wall. It's so hard for me. I can hit the loops, no problem. I can hit the left ramp, no problem. I cannot hit that right ramp and save my life. No, it's hard. It's a hard shot to get on TPA. It's not that easy in the real game either.
    38:54
    But, yeah, it's tough in TPA. And then another table they have us playing is big shot. Five ball. Five ball big shot. So here's my strategy for that. Drain the first three balls.
    39:15
    And they go for the big point. I do. I drain the first three balls right off the bat. I'll play the fourth ball.
    39:23
    Just because a lot of times the fourth ball will do a quick house ball anyway. And then it's all about maximizing that fifth ball because that's where all the points are. Yeah, you're right. In a five-minute round, that is what you'll be after. That's a good strategy.
    39:39
    I haven't been able to put it to good use. Theoretically, that's the heck of a strategy. The other tables that they have us playing, Tales of the Arabian Nights. I can't figure out how to score quick on that thing to save my life.
    39:57
    Theater of Magic. In five minutes, it's frustrating because you so want to try and take control of the ball, but you don't have time to take control of the ball. And so now it's just how accurate can you be with run and gun shots?
    40:14
    That's so frustrating. Gorgar it's such a slow burn of a table that again, five minutes it's such a build up it's game over, right? yeah, and that's the only way you're going to score good points, you've got to build it up first yeah, it's a weird one to choose actually in a five minute tournament yeah Harley Davidson it's a put up or shut up, the old Gorgar Harley Davidson I had a strategy for the 20-minute tournament, which was only play video mode. Because after you earn... No, I'm serious. Because after you earn three extra balls from completing the video mode, collecting all 15 or hitting all 15 of the pedestrians, if you complete it the next time, it's $65 million. There's nothing on that table. Yeah, there's nothing on that table that has a jackpot that large. Essentially a one-hit shot for $65 million. That's a pretty good return. Yeah. So I would take the first 10 minutes of shooting nothing, just doing video mode over and over again, collecting all those extra balls. And then doing video mode, it was just like this bonanza of points afterwards. Five minutes? You don't have enough time to do three video modes, get rid of the extra balls, and then start earning. So it was like, oh, crap. Now I've got to figure out which multiball mode scores you the best. Harley mode or green light or red light multi-ball or whatever. I think red light scores the most because Harley, the only way you score points is by hitting the Harley.
    41:47
    Yeah. Red light multi-ball, I believe you score by hitting both the red light target and also the loops.
    41:53
    And there's a big, the one, it's a speedometer multi-ball as well, which is pretty easy to get you to shoot the red. Speedometer is pretty good too.
    42:02
    But yeah, it's, again, it changes the way that you've got to approach these tables. The remaining tables, like I said, Creature, Attack from Mars, Dr. Dude.
    42:15
    If you got to get his excellent ray going, and then the thing is you want the two-time multiplier. So you pretty much do one round of getting the excellent ray going, drain one ball, and now activate the whole thing again so you can get two-time multiplier that time, and that's when all your score is going to be. Yeah. In five minutes. That's really tough. Yeah, in five minutes. Good luck with that. There'll be some people that they can do that. Yeah.
    42:41
    But not me. I love the fact that it's five minutes, though, because that's really unique in the way you run a tournament. Like, five minutes is tough, tough. It makes you feel like the scores aren't completely out of reach. No, no, because if you, you know, unless you have a flawless five-minute game, like, that score table is achievable. Like, you see the top scores from, you know, folks like Tarek and, you know, Himble with 45B and all that. Yeah. Like those guys up the top there, you go, yeah, you know, I might actually be able to pip you if I get it right. Like if I work out the strategy right, I might be able to be up there with you. And that's really cool. Well, it's funny because I wrote down for targets for myself, I wrote down whoever was at the, whatever the top 10 score was, the 10th place score. Because I was like, hey, if I can beat that, I'm pretty good. That'll keep me for sure in the running for top 50 because that's all I'm about. I could care less about winning the stupid thing. I just want to be able to be put into the drawing.
    43:46
    For me, it's all about just making a good enough show. Yeah, just put you in an entry, basically. Exactly, exactly.
    43:57
    Because I'm not going to try and compete against Pinball Whiz. I'm not going to try and compete against, you know. Well, they haven't entered yet. Tarek or V. Palmer have not entered yet, but they both were made aware of the tournament today, and I went, ah, crap. That's the eye of the war on this one. One of its. Yeah. Because if there's anybody that knows how to do efficient scoring, it's those guys. Those boys. The last two tables were playing TX Sector and Eldorado. Oh. Which again, the EM Eldorado. Yeah, not City of Gold. Oh.
    44:33
    Yeah. I think I might have to start using the ranking feature in the new UI to just start ranking my favorites, and I'll be putting zero stars on that one. Yeah.
    44:46
    So anyway, exciting that private tournaments are now a thing, thanks to the new UI. So just saying, folks, couldn't have been done before. Yeah, could not have been done before. So even though the new UI has its issues at the moment, most of them I've come to realize are really just cosmetic. There are some things that are just a little bit buggy in it, but most of them are just the way it looks. And on mobile, I don't know what it's like on Steam, it's got a bit of what they call posterizing, which is what I was going to talk about last episode, but didn't get a chance. But posterizing is like, you don't want a really poor quality bitmap image or something like that. Rather than having nicely shaded gradients and you can't see any sort of transition. You see dots. Well, it's dots or it's like these really apparent sort of bands. It's often called banding as well. Well, that's called posterizing or posterization image. At the moment on Android, there's a fair bit of that. And it just makes the UI look really 90s. It looks like it's from the 90s. And it's only because they're working on getting all the other stuff working first before they look at the shyness. I think they're actually trying to do transparencies and stuff like that in there, which is going to look a huge amount better than what it is now. So, yeah, I can't wait for them to actually do that because then I think a lot of the complaints are going to stop about its current state because functionally it's actually kind of okay.
    46:16
    And it's just it's it's being the functionality is actually being overwritten by the look at the moment, which is a real shame. so yeah, hopefully I can get onto that quicker. Here's hoping hey, I think that's our time for today. Yeah, I think so I think we've jammed a fair bit of stuff in there this episode, so yeah, let's make it a wrap. Let's make it a wrap so thank you everybody again for listening, if you would like to contribute, comment, anything that you've heard, go ahead and hit us up on Twitter at Blockade, or you can troll myself and Jared personally, I am at ShutYourTraps. He is at JaredMorgz. You can also go ahead and hit us up on our email, blahblahblockade at gmail.com. Why don't you visit our website, blockadepinball.com. Any and all of the links are always posted there, as are all the shows and all the show notes. Anything you could possibly want from the show is all there, including the link to Loot Crate, which is trylootcrate.com forward slash blockade with Bridgetent as the code. So go and get on that. Yeah, please do try it out, folks. It only benefits the show. It allows us to fund this dog and pony since you all don't feel like doing it with the t-shirts. But in case you felt like doing it with the t-shirts, why don't you go ahead and visit represent.com forward slash blockade dash shirt.
    47:44
    Until next week, when I'm sure we'll have much, much, much more to talk about. I don't know. How could we possibly have more to talk about, Jared? Oh, food. That's right. We haven't talked about food in a while. We've been talking for 45 minutes this time.
    48:01
    Okay, yeah. So anyway, we'll see you all again next time. Bye-bye. See you. WizardAmusement.com. The West Coast Leader in Classic Pinball. makers of custom pinball shooter rods and buyer specifications swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table installs in less than 5 minutes with no custom tools even if you don't own a table looks great as a pinball memento to admire prices start at $39 but mention Blockhead Podcast and receive 10% off your order wizardamusement.com sales, restoration, customization don't forget to leave a review on itunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that live paid is delivered to you can't prove unless you tell us how now stop listening and place it in the wall i was unfortunate enough to be uh sitting i'd take my car's my my car's wife my wife's car in to get service my car's wife my car's wife in for service what a drag