Journalist Tool

Kineticist

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

v0.1.0

← Back to items

38 Weeks Old. Next week: Brains

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·48m 33s·analyzed·Nov 3, 2015
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Blockade discusses Pinball Arcade beta UI issues, tournament ops, and table of the week standings.

Summary

Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan discuss Blockade Podcast operations, Pinball Arcade's new beta UI with icon issues and display glitches, Mac platform performance problems, and tournament results from their October Table of the Week competition. They also cover technical feedback on Pinball Arcade's controller mapping improvements and extensive personal anecdotes about film production work and entertainment media.

Key Claims

  • The new Pinball Arcade UI is in beta and has display issues on DX11 scoring across the board, with some crashing on incorrect clicks

    high confidence · Chris directly tested the beta UI and reported specific technical issues with DMD/alphanumeric displays and DX11 compatibility

  • The new UI features icon-based table sorting with options for alphabetical, favorites, manufacturing, and release date organization

    high confidence · Chris described the new UI features in detail after hands-on testing of the beta

  • Blockade Tournament of the Month had 28 sign-ups on Halloween, consistent with recent tournaments, and many new players don't follow participation instructions properly

    high confidence · Jared reported tournament organization challenges and participation issues from direct experience

  • Blockade is on week 38 of Table of the Week with Victory (Gottlieb Race Car) as the current selection

    high confidence · Chris stated 'we are in our 38th week of Table of the Week' and confirmed Victory as the current table

  • The Mac version of Pinball Arcade on Steam lacks dynamic lighting and has significant speed/slowdown issues despite decent hardware

    high confidence · Jared tested Steam Mac version directly and reported these technical limitations

  • Farsight Studios' new UI improvement to add table favorites and sorting was one of the most requested features from users

    medium confidence · Chris attributed the feature to 'listening to user feedback' and noted it addresses frequent complaints about scrolling

  • Controller button customization is a new feature in the beta UI that allows full mapping of analog sticks, shoulder buttons, and triggers

    high confidence · Jared described the new controller customization feature and his experience testing it with a Logitech controller

Notable Quotes

  • “I would love to be able to do that because then I could pre-do all the madness that needs to be done for the tournament of the month and just at a certain time, boom, it'd go live.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~06:30 — Identifies technical barrier to improving tournament administration workflow on Pinball Arcade Fans forum

  • “So it's like on the one hand, I'm trying to make it as simple for everybody as possible and get the thing up and running as quickly as possible. But on the other hand, it winds up biting me in the butt almost every single time.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~07:45 — Illustrates operational tension between user experience and technical constraints in running community tournaments

  • “It's pretty crap. It really makes me just go, can we please have Indy 500? It's such a better table.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~19:30 — Strong criticism of Victory table design and software implementation relative to other racing games

  • “Not that the other UI didn't have a learning curve, because it did. Geez, you know, I wrote a whole manual about it.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~32:45 — Indicates ongoing documentation burden for Pinball Arcade UI changes and user guide maintenance

  • “So when I went to play the tournament, I undownloaded the beta, put back in the original version. And right away, I was like, I got to scroll through the tables to find them. I mean, already I was like, ooh, buttons.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~39:00 — Direct contrast showing perceived improvement of new icon-based UI over previous scrolling interface

  • “It's like a little gold lock, like a padlock displayed on there. Now you would think, oh, that means I don't own that table. No, what it means is you don't have the Pro Mode on that table.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~36:15 — Identifies specific UI design flaw where icon meaning contradicts user expectations

Entities

Chris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonKai (Drexclown/Bonzo)personBlockade PodcastorganizationPinball ArcadeproductFarsight StudioscompanyPinball Arcade Fans forumorganizationVictorygameSwitch3FlippersonGusperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Blockade pursuing documentation overhaul for new Pinball Arcade UI, anticipating need for updated user guide as with previous UI changes

    medium · Chris: 'I wonder how much I'm going to have to write for the new UI if I'm going to have to document any known issues or workarounds with it... I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to write a new version of the user guide for it.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Blockade operating consistent monthly tournaments (~28 regular players) and long-running Table of the Week series (38 weeks), but facing user education challenges with tournament instructions and participation procedures

    high · Jared: 'we had 28 people I believe sign up, and that's actually been for the last two tournaments that we've run.' Discussion of repeated tournament procedure confusion: 'I sent out a notice in the sign-up sheet... And then I went ahead and I created the thread that would have what the groupings would be. And I locked the thread because last time I did that and people immediately started playing'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Blockade season standings show tight competitive race in top positions: Gus 140 pts, Switch3Flip 138 pts, PinballWiz45B 137 pts, with multiple competitors battling for placements

    high · Jared: 'there's a much larger spread now between first place and tenth place... the top three, it's a neck-and-neck battle, because Gus is at 140, Switch3Flip is at 138, PinballWiz45D is at 137, so they are definitely battling it out.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Victory (Gottlieb Race Car) has poor rule design with unclear checkpoint locations, missing visual indicators, non-intuitive shot targets, and repetitive countdown timer mechanics that wear on players

    high · Chris: 'It's pretty crap.' Jared: 'It has potential. It just needed software... instead it's, checkpoint one, checkpoint two, checkpoint seven, repeat!' Discussion identifies missing flasher bulbs, unclear insert locations, and poor new player experience.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.146

0:00
You're listening to the Kate Podcast. WizardAmusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rods. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com, sales, restoration, customization.
0:49
You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I am your host, Chris Freebus, a.k.a. ShutYourTrap. With me, as usual, my co-host, Jared Morgan. Guten Tag. Ah, in tribute to Kai, who unfortunately is ill, so he will not be joining us today. Get well soon, Bonzo.
1:10
Says he was having a coughing fit for the last three days. Yeah, I guess that wouldn't make for a good on-air broadcasting. No, not good listening at all. No, not so much. I fortunately have not been sick in quite some time. Usually I get something during the summer, and it didn't hit me this year. So now I'm crossing my fingers that my usual illness doesn't hit me until February, which is when it usually attacks. Yeah, I usually get the same thing. My son's actually been down with something the last couple of days. We had to put him into hospital yesterday.
1:42
Sorry, this is a pinball podcast health alert. So yeah, nothing serious. He's just went in there and he had a, I think he sort of like got a bit of asthma related stuff. and we put him in there yesterday for half a day and got him into this prednisone and stuff like that. So he's okay now, but yeah, he wasn't sounding so great.
2:03
Sounded like a really bad smoker. Because we started him down here in Australia. So I am, well, I shouldn't say suffering because it's the nice time change, but I am dealing with the time change today. Yeah, the time change in your favor. So was it two o'clock in the afternoon? No, it's now 12.30, so I'm earlier than what I normally... Nice. That's the part that's screwing me up because... Well, no, I'd gotten used to doing this at 1.30 p.m., so I'd be able to have my lunch and a little prep time and then jump into this. Instead, I had lunch and went, Oh, crap, podcast. Oh, right, we've got to do this. The weird thing is that Blab, I tweeted about this for those people who follow Blackade because Chris and I share the tweeting duties. But I tweeted that, yeah, for some reason our scheduled recording got toasted.
PinballWiz45Bperson
Stuzzperson
Shulkperson
Voofperson
WizardAmusement.comcompany
Indy 500game
Grand Prixgame
High Speed IIgame
Ryan Rootinperson
Mads Mikkelsenperson
  • ?

    product_strategy: Pinball Arcade new UI adds requested icon-based table grid with favorites and sorting (alphabetical, by manufacturer, by release date), representing significant UX improvement over scrolling interface

    high · Chris: 'They've got the gear which is your classic settings symbol which is that for settings? Yeah, that's for your options.' Jared: 'there's all sorts of ways of displaying them. You can sort them alphabetically. You can sort them as favorites. You can sort them by manufacturing.'

  • ?

    product_concern: UI icon design lacks intuitive clarity; gold padlock icon conveys incorrect meaning (Pro Mode unavailability vs. table ownership), and various buttons (flipper icon for tables, bar graph for leaderboards) require learning curve

    high · Chris: 'Like right now if you have a little gold lock, like a padlock displayed on there. Now you would think, oh, that means I don't own that table. No, what it means is you don't have the Pro Mode on that table. So it's like, come up with a different icon, guys.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Mac version of Pinball Arcade on Steam uses OpenGL instead of DirectX, lacks dynamic lighting, has minimal table library (only 2 tables available), and lags significantly behind PC/console releases

    high · Jared: 'It doesn't have DX anything. It doesn't actually do it. It just says OpenGL... the tables available in the Mac version are High Speed II and what was the first table of Season 5?... basically there's only two releases out at the moment for it.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Pinball Arcade beta UI has display rendering issues on DX11 for scoring and crashes on certain inputs; Mac version severely underperforms with speed/slowdown issues despite adequate hardware

    high · Chris: 'scoring pretty much in DX11 across the board, it's messed up on the scoring, and then it also will crash you if you click the wrong thing.' Jared on Mac: 'the thing still speeds up and slows down terribly. It's been reported in the Steam forums as well, but no real response on it.'

    • 2:58
    And we had to go and make an ad hoc recording today, which is really random. But I don't know. I don't have any idea why that happened. But, yeah, it just did. Maybe the time change. I don't know. It could be. I mean, I'd schedule it for the proper time, but who knows. Maybe time change didn't happen on Blab yet. I don't know. It could just be that when they switched over to time zones, it screwed something up with Blab. Right. And they toasted any scheduled recordings that were around the time zone change. That would actually make sense, probably. Just so people weren't sort of taken by surprise, I guess. So, yeah. Software glitches. Damn it. That's right. so yesterday was halloween yes and uh in in all our wisdom we ran our tournament of the month on that day yeah did how'd we go did it work all right you know we had 28 people i believe sign up and that's actually been for the last two tournaments that we've run. There's been about that number. So we've kind of settled into who our core players are. We'll get maybe one or two new people. And as usual, the new people don't play.
    4:24
    Could work out why that is. Hey, I don't know why they just don't play. Is it because they're not used to it or something? You know, I don't know. My feeling is, and I don't understand. Well, I mean, I guess for a new player, I could understand this, but it even attacks our usual people. They don't know when this thing starts. They don't understand that I have the starters pistol. And when I click start, that's when it goes. And so also now I'll get text messages from people saying, Hey, aren't you supposed to be serving the thing now? I'm like, um, it's Saturday or not text message, but you know, but a private message. I'll be PME. All right. I was going to say, well, that's a, that's the next level of service. Yes. Cracking down my cell service, and I'm now getting text messages.
    5:10
    Yeah, so, I mean, even this last time, I sent out a notice in the sign-up sheet saying, hey, the tournament might be running a little late from what you guys have been normally playing or whatever. And then I went ahead and I created the thread that would have what the groupings would be. And I locked the thread because last time I did that and people immediately started playing and trying to post scores and then going, hey, how come I can't post scores in the in the usual place? I'm like, because it's not open yet, people. Yeah, right. Yeah, I remember that. Like some people were like, oh, yeah, I'm already playing. You know, I'm done. It's like, really? Hasn't even started yet. So it's like on the one hand, I'm trying to make it as simple for everybody as possible and get the thing up and running as quickly as possible. But on the other hand, it winds up biting me in the butt almost every single time.
    6:13
    Unfortunately, I can't do a delayed post on the Pinball Arcade Fans forum, which would be wonderful if I could. Because you can on the main articles page, but you can't do it with a thread post. and I would love to be able to do that because then I could pre-do all the madness that needs to be done for the tournament of the month and just a certain time, boom, it'd go live. Because I can turn on the Google Forms page from my phone. That's not a problem.
    6:42
    So yeah, I don't know. It's like I don't know what to do to make it more obvious and I'm surprised that I still get comments from people that should know better.
    6:56
    Yeah, there's got to be... With the new people, I honestly think that they're thinking that it is, oh, well, I played the game, my scores will be entered. Yeah. But even in our sign-up sheet, I put something specifically that said this time, or actually I did it last time too, I said, hey, this is not part of Pinball Arcade. This is a separate thing. Could you throw us a bone? Throw us a It would be awesome if you could just write in. Just let us, I don't know, use a web interface. Yes, no problem. Just a little bit of code that would just launch a sub-tournament for us. Because, I mean, you guys are promoting it for us now. It's really nice that you're promoting it for us. But, yeah, that extra level, it would be pretty wicked. Yeah. I'm sure we'd get a lot more sign-ups then, too. Imagine, geez. I think the spreadsheet would fall over in a heap. Oh, God. ship the bed.
    7:54
    So let's go over some of the results then from the October tournament of the month. In first place, and I have to laugh because he boasted that it was a terrible tournament for him, and yet he still took first place, Switch 3 Flip, 45 points. And then it was actually a three-way tie, but Switch won the put up or shut up between the three. So second place was Stuzz. And third place is Shulk.
    8:27
    And then we have, rounding out the rest, fourth place, Voof. That's a new player, and he actually knew what the heck to do, so good on him.
    8:35
    Fifth, PinballWiz45B. Sixth place, JaredMorgz. What the hell, dude? Pretty good one. Sorry, I just realized I was muted. Hey, I wondered why you didn't say anything. Yeah, it's like, hang on a second i bet you my my bottom has muted my microphone because i have one of these if you're on blab at the moment which no one is um one of these microsoft thingies and if i press that button i go mute so there you go yeah so i had a fail but yay 60 yay yay um i will say our season-to-date standings, there's a much larger spread now between first place and tenth place, being first place currently is Gus at 140 points, tenth place, Johnny3w6 with 100 points, but the top three, it's a neck-and-neck battle, because Gus is at 140, Switch3Flip is at 138, PinballWiz 45D is at 137, so they are definitely battling it out.
    9:40
    Also, I noticed that we're in our 38th week of Table of the Weeks. It's a boy. It's a boy, you know, nine months ago.
    10:03
    It should be popping out any time, right? It's got balls. It must be a boy. although two flippers so I keep I keep I'm looking at the list of tables that we still have left and I'm I'm shocked that there's as many left as there are you know we we are whittling down on that list but there seems like a new table coming out every month I don't get it something right now like we've got to get through yeah yeah I know it's a fair number unfortunately a fair number of God Leaves too.
    10:41
    Sad face. Speaking of God Leaves. Yeah, what you got? Well, I hear that we have God Leaves race car checkpoints.
    10:54
    It's our table of the week. Yes, table of the week is victory. You know, it's one of those tables that I hate played.
    11:07
    it has potential. It really does have potential. It just needed software. I'm fine with the playfield layout, actually. I kind of like the playfield layout, but the software, just your modes, your missions, or the lack thereof, it could have been so much more exciting, and instead it's,
    11:28
    checkpoint one, checkpoint two, checkpoint seven, repeat! Vroom, vroom, vroom, get out of my way. Yeah. It's pretty crap. It really makes me just go, can we please have Indy 500? It's such a better table. Yes, with the turbocharger machine. That's pretty wicked, that game. Or Grand Prix, or whatever it's called. NASCAR over here, but Grand Prix in Europe. In Europe and the rest of the world, yeah. I don't know. There's two schools of thought about that particular table. I love that around the perimeter of the table magnet accelerated loop that they got going on there but it a bit of a one pony from what i remember i only had the opportunity to play it now on a short period of time when it was on location um sort of shortly after its release and yeah it was it was okay to play but yeah indie 500 is probably a deeper game and probably better i really enjoyed playing that on visual pinball.
    12:29
    Yeah, I've gotten to play it at a couple of our tournaments and it's quickly grown on me. I'd love to be able to just really sit down and dig into it and learn all it has to give. Yeah, it's cool. But instead we get victory. Victory.
    12:49
    I find it really hard as a new player coming to that table. It's brutal on new players. Well, it's like, where do you shoot for some of the checkpoints? Wait, the checkpoints are not obvious. No, there's not like a big, like, if I was modding that table, I would put, not that I would because I wouldn't ever own one, but I would put little checkpoint number flags everywhere on that table so you would know where to shoot. Like, it's really... Or at least a bigger insert, something that screams, shoot over here. And some of them don't even flash. like i think checkpoint six or seven doesn't even flash no it's like um so what am i supposed to shoot for now it's really poorly conceived as far as a rule set goes and and you i mean as a primary objective to try and get the checkpoints you think that would be as you say like it should have flasher bulbs under each of those inserts or at least any incident at all but it doesn't it's just like well then the fact that each of the checkpoints is just a countdown timer which i mean it's just countdown timer after countdown timer that that wears on you after a while too or eventually you just don't care you just kind of go whatever whenever i play that table i usually try and focus on something other than the checkpoints which i know is like not the way to get points but i normally focus on that little mini mini play field area with the drop targets and try and get those mixed out and um try and get some of those upper play field ramps there because they're really quite tricky to get some of them like if you're trying to make one of those checkpoints that gets you to shoot um the ramp from that upper play field it's not an easy shot to actually number one get it up there and number two you know actually make that shot at least for me maybe it's just because i don't play it very much well and again for a new player it's the mystery is how do you even get the ball up there yeah that's right because the obvious ways aren't the ways to get it in there no enough about victory enough about victory call it fail call it fail um so i have seen the new ui in the beta test oh you've actually physically played it not just i have messed around with it now it's definitely clearly in beta um it's it's wrecked some havoc on some of the displays the the scoring pretty much in dx11 across the board it's messed up on the scoring and then it also will crash you if you click the wrong thing. DX9 is a little better off, but there's still scoring display issues.
    15:23
    But that's just, you know, that's playing the game. That's not playing the UI. If you want to dance around the UI, that's a whole other question. So just to clarify, the issues are with the actual in-game DMDs? Yes, currently. So it's glitching out basically on the DMDs and all the alphanumeric displays. Yeah. okay yeah that's to be expected i guess in the yeah exactly that's something as big as this like this is a massive overhaul of key parts of the game so yeah right probably alpha is a more polite way of putting it i think um yeah so my thing was instead i just wanted to see how it was to navigate around and look at you know look at tables and i've already quickly grown to like because it's all just all icons right like you just it's a big grid well you can show all the icons but then you can sort them too you can sort them alphabetically you can sort them as favorites you can sort them by manufacturing sort them by um table release order via farsight um so there's all sorts of ways of of displaying them there's a few icons that need to work on like right now if you have a little gold lock, like a padlock displayed on there. Now you would think, oh, that means I don't own that table. No, what it means is you don't have the pro mode on that table.
    16:49
    So it's like, come up with a different icon, guys. We need something that says pro. And in general, that's my critique of the UI, is that it's not painfully obvious. the little flipper that's at the upper top of the screen what is that? that's what displays all your tables what?
    17:14
    so it's not intuitive they do have the gear which is your classic settings symbol which is that for settings? yeah that's for your options or settings and stuff but like down below they had in the lower left it looks like um looks like a bar graph and i think instead what they were trying to do was make it look like a podium to stand on because that's your leaderboards all right so let's let's do it from top left to in a clockwise direction so you've got the exit icon is the first time yes you go back to your back button which takes you to your table yes like overviews, like list of balls, basically.
    18:04
    Then the one beside that is, what is that? I don't know what it looks like. I don't have it in front of me. Yeah.
    18:12
    I think it's, oh, geez. I don't know. There's one beside it. Did you ever click the third one from the left? Yeah, I'm sure I clicked it, but I don't. Without me putting up the game right now, which then I wouldn't be able to be on this. No.
    18:28
    And then you've got the controller, that little, is it like a controller icon? Okay, so the controller icon, you push that, and you can completely map out your controller. Oh, you can change button assignments. So that's really cool that you can actually now customize your controller to whatever button you need to be pushing, and it'll do. I hope that comes to Android, because I know at the moment they've got the Mocha API implemented for Android, and it's good. It means you can use controllers natively with it, but you can't really – when Ryan Rootin set up the profile, what he did was he made it so you could use the top triggers or the bottom triggers, and that was it. So you could switch between those two settings, but you couldn't fully map it out. So maybe this might only be a PC thing because you guys have a keyboard that you can assign anything to. so it would be interesting to see how that's shaken up on mobile but this isn't for the keyboard, you can select keyboard or controller but what I'm saying is when you push controller you can assign whatever you want to whatever, the analog sticks or the shoulder buttons or the trigger buttons, it lets you customize all that that's good, that's very good. I actually had a problem the first day it popped up where my controller wasn't moving, excuse me, I can move the mouse basically around. And that's what you're doing. You're with your controller.
    19:59
    There's a cursor on screen and you wind up moving the controller with either your D-pad or your analog stick. But I couldn't select, like I'd hover it over a button and I'd push, push my A button and nothing would happen. And so then I had to actually use my, my touchpad. I'm on touchpad instead of a mouse, you know, to, to start up the button. And so I put it in a bug report saying, hey, my controller doesn't work. And the response was, oh, what controller are you using? Are you using the Steam controller or the PS4 controller? And I'm like, really? Those are the first two options you guys think of? I'm using, well, I wasn't using my Xbox 360 controller. I was actually using a Logitech controller. Oh, that terrible Logitech controller that made you want to throw it out the window. I haven't wanted to throw it out the window, though, in a long time because I found that workaround that Logitech couldn't figure out.
    20:48
    Yeah, go work for them. It's clear you know more than them. I doubt that, but, you know. So, yeah, they wound up fixing that, though, so now the controller fully functions with selecting your tables and stuff. Like I said, there's some learning curve going on here. Not that the other UI didn't have a learning curve, because it did. Geez, you know, I wrote a whole manual about it. Exactly, right? I wonder how much I'm going to have to write for the new UI if I'm going to have to document any known issues or work arounds with it. I'm kind of waiting to see it so I can actually start writing about it.
    21:26
    I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to write a new version of the user guide for it. Because there's always going to be something, particularly on Android, where because the status quo is they've had to support so many devices, there's all these random graphics settings like, you know, high-lod and all these random developer words. So I think there's probably going to still be a little bit of that unless they've done magical things and relabeled those things to something more sane, which I'd be really thankful for if they did.
    21:55
    Yeah, and I'm almost thinking even if they didn't come up with new icons, even if they instead added in, you know, when your mouse is hovering over the button, that it actually gives you a text of what that button technically does. Yeah, to admit it to you, I would be nice. Yeah, it's not quite the intuitivity that I was hoping for. But here's the thing. Okay, so like I said, the displays were screwing up on the scores. So when I went to play the tournament, I undownloaded the beta, put back in the original version. And right away, I was like, I got to scroll through the tables to find them. I mean, already I was like, ooh, buttons. Yeah, you know. So I like the tiles, being able to see all the tables at once. It was being able to organize them how you want. Yeah, that's a huge improvement. That is definitely a massive win. So good on Farsight for listening to user feedback, because that's one of probably the most requested features when people go, oh, new UI. Can I just favorite the tables I like so I don't have to keep on scrolling past going nuts and haunted house all the time?
    23:00
    Because, you know, I really don't want to play them. And I did get to hear the Pinball Wizard music, and yes, I appreciate it so much more. Yeah, it's better. It is better. Like, it's not going to grate as much as the cheesy pinball wizard did. No.
    23:15
    And I'm glad they did a bit of a musical refresh. I still reckon they should just have gone into the boardroom with pizzas and beer and just recorded ambient pinball noise. I think that would have been such a much better thing to do. But like Norman has already said, that would have copyright issues on some of the sounds. Such a shame, though, because it would be perfect. It's like a pinball arcade, you know. it'll just be great but anyhow challenges environmental music challenges licensing etc let's go to the mall let's go to the mall hey speaking so what you got well i i joined steam the other day okay because i wanted to try i've got a mac pro macbook pro and i thought you know what i should probably see how the other half lives and try out pimple arcade on steam for mac so i installed it and it a little bit like the mobile the Android mobile version like there no dynamic lighting or anything on it oh for the Mac Yeah for the Mac And this isn the App Store version of the as I wave my fingers around crazily in the stream, but this isn't actually the App Store Mac version. This is the Steam Mac version. and from what I've seen of the reviews for the App Store Mac OS X version is basically like the iOS version. Yeah. That's it. And it lags behind as far as releases go as well. So there's not a really big reason for you to get that one. But so far the tables available in the Mac version are High Speed 2 and what was the first table of Season 5? when that was the first table season five yeah that was what was the second one that basically there's only two releases out at the moment for it um so yeah it's lagging terribly behind certainly yeah not something i'm going to be spending my money on anytime soon well yeah that sucks if it doesn't even have the dynamic lighting i was thinking that i don't know stupidly i guess that it was the same version as the pc but um i think the problem is it doesn't have dx anything it It doesn't actually do it. It just says OpenGL. So, you know, if they use an open source framework to actually do their dynamic lighting, they could actually make it cross-platform. But that's probably dependencies on other console platforms that would use DX as well. Like the Xbox One would actually be a DX one because it's Microsoft. So probably for those ones, they just went, well, I wonder how they do it on PS4 because PS4 apparently has dynamic lighting as well. so yeah but i don't think it's dx i think it's something else well it's probably some proprietary straight into technology exactly so yeah frameworks are hard i don't envy um fastlight for trying to support them but so yeah it's pretty it's pretty substandard on mac and the speed up and slow down issues terrible like i've got a you know i think it's like an i7 processor and a decent GPU in these Mac Pros, an 8 gig of RAM, and the thing still speeds up and slows down terribly. It's been reported in the Steam forums as well, but no real response on it. So I think PC seems to be the focus at the moment.
    26:41
    So, yeah, I don't know. I'll be sticking to my Android one with pretty much the same environmental lighting effects. Right. Yeah, such a shame. I was going, oh, yes, Mac. It's like a PC variant. It's going to be awesome. Well, the good news is if you own it, you know, once you own it on Steam, you can play it on Mac or PC. PC or any platform that Steam supports, which is kind of cool. That is the cool thing. That is very cool. I like that. Yeah.
    27:09
    Warning. The following contains little to no actual talk about pinball. So on Friday, I had the shortest workday I've ever had. Oh, did they not keep you back for heaps of hours? so the way our our uh contracts work we are guaranteed eight hours of pay you show up it's you're now on the clock for eight hours um i don't know for what reason that was what level of protection that was you know put in for especially since we normally work 12 hour days but anyway there it is so we go in and i have what's called a pre-call which means i go in 12 minutes before the actual call time for the the cast and many of the so you can set up basically yeah basically so that yeah when they say okay let's go where it's you've you've already got your equipment on set and you're ready to go yeah so we'd unloaded our truck i pushed my cart onto the set and our assistant director looks at me and he goes, I wouldn't roll any other carts on. And I go, why? And he goes, just wait four minutes and four minutes from then would have been call time. I'm like, okay. So, sure enough, rolls in, they call us all into the room and they go, yeah, so our actor today that we have in every single scene, he's got a fever. He won't be coming in today. Goodbye! Oh, poor dude. but yeah, we just worked with, we just worked with him the previous night, you know, getting off at one in the morning. Um, and he was in that entire bit of business. Well, he was in that entire day actually. So he must've been suffering something serious that night. And then, yeah, I'm dosed. So yeah, I'm going to pass through, roll the carts back onto the truck and lock the thing up and goodbye. Thanks for the eight hours of pay. thank you i'll be down at the pub my previous record for that had been a um half an hour after call and it was same instance where the actor was sick um at that particular instance they knew the actor was sick they're trying to frantically put together something else for us to work on for that day and they just realized they couldn't it was too many strings to pull to make anything happen um the production companies call it an insurance day and that's basically what they do. They have insurance on actors, on equipment, on everything has insurance, so that if anything goes wrong, they just file the insurance claimant. Yeah. That must be expensive insurance. Like, seriously.
    29:56
    Man, the amount of time... Because people are people. Like, we get sick and stuff happens. Well, you think about this, I mean, morbid to think about, but with that last Fast and Furious movie with Paul Walker. Yeah. he died, that insurance claim paid out something like $100 million. Jeez. So that's why they were able to then go in and dump heaps of money on special effects because they brought in his two brothers to basically stand in. And then they digitally imposed Paul's face on there or his voice or whatever. ever so i mean it was a technological nightmare for them to do that plus they had to rewrite the script for the rest of those scenes to try and make it a cohesive story and explain why he's not you know as active in the movie as you normally would expect or whatever um i mean i think they pulled it off really really well i don't think the movie it didn't feel like it was thrown together because I know some movies, again, similar instances have happened. Well, shoot, you could even look at The Crow.
    31:12
    Exactly. And what they had to do to rejigger that to make it work. But, yeah, so they call it an insurance day, and the insurance pays out, and you just throw that money back at the production.
    31:24
    And it pays for everything. It pays for everything. Wow, there you go. Lucky you, eh? Yeah. So it wound up being an interesting week last week.
    31:37
    Warning. The following contains little to no actual talk about pinball. I call it my evil week. So I started off by going to the library and getting a book called The Scarlet Gospels, which is by Clive Barker. And it's a sequel to Hellraiser. Okay. and Clive his descriptions are you truly gotta wonder what's wrong with the man somewhat disturbed so yeah reading that then I finally watched the last four episodes of Hannibal which were genius did you get Hannibal in Australia Maybe on pay TV. I'm not sure. Certainly not free to air there. Okay. Not free to air. So the thing with Hannibal, I almost didn't watch it because how can you possibly top, you know, Anthony Hopkins being Lector, right? Yeah. It only took about three episodes before I was like, Anthony Hopkins, who? I mean, the, yeah, Mads Mikkelsen. Is it a known principal actor or a new actor? Mads Mikkelsen. he's been mostly smaller parts but I know he is known in certain arenas if you've read I've read all the books and when you've read the books you realize that the Hannibal character is not in you know a I don't want to say Hopkins is portly but a fuller Englishman it's not that he's an Eastern European type. Yeah.
    33:26
    So this guy that was playing him, Mads, just embodies that nature. And they said the books, or they said the show was based off of Red Dragon. And it's based off of Red Dragon because the other lead is the character of Will, who was, he worked for the FBI, but he also, So he's one of these profilers, you know, can walk into a crime scene to be able to see what the heck was going on.
    33:58
    So it was those two. But, you know, in Red Dragon, Hannibal's already in jail. He was caught by Will. This goes even way further back and dealt with when Hannibal was still working for the FBI and helping him out.
    34:16
    And they've kind of danced around the books. The only book that they didn't have the rights to was Sons of the Lambs. okay so they did the books before they did the books after and they kind of made it their own but if you've read the books you knew where the storyline was going to go and this last season which was the third season they finally did go full bore into red dragon and it was interesting how they retold the story and made it their own and actually we were able to throw in a couple of surprises um though when they filmed this they didn't know that they were going to get canceled but they still managed to put an ending on this that works beautifully as a series ender i mean they stuck the landing big time and the the fact that they were planning a fourth season you kind of go but how because the way it ended was just like what no way um how do you come back from that the it's very similar to how they had to do it with dexter right because dexter sort of they were thinking, oh, we really want to wrap it up around season five. But that was pretty much the original sort of, or season four, when they had that amazing ending with Rita. I don't know if you watched Dexter. No, I didn't. Well, on season four, it was the ending of all endings. I remember it still. And then from there on down, it just kind of went downhill, honestly. Like, they could have ended it there and it would have been fine. well you know writers like to say that they the best writing comes from writing yourself into a corner and then trying to figure out how to get out of it because that means the audience also doesn't know how you're going to get out of it the problem is sometimes you write yourself into that corner and you can't figure it out then you're toast you know um the other the other beautiful thing about Hannibal and the final, it gave us a brand new Suzy Sue song. Ah. Suzy Sue hasn written new or hasn put out a song in eight years and for whatever reason they had the idea to bring her in and they paired her with the show composer And they came up with this song called Love Crime. And I am a sucker for strings being put over the top of, call it alternative style music. you know, anything with a drum beat or... Basically where strings shouldn't be, you know, non-classical music, but then throwing them over the top of that, which, if you remember the song that was in Batman Returns that Suzy Sue did, it's very similar in tone to that, the face-to-face. Ah, okay. I'm not actually very familiar with Suzy Sue's work, so I couldn't actually pick Suzy Sue out. Oh, my God. What's wrong with you? Didn't you grow up in the 80s? No. bastard well well i technically did but my 80s for me was like leading up to age 10 before i really started getting into music you know what it's like yeah like so um yeah um my my musical forays i think the first cassette i ever bought was pump up the jam by technotronic and i had no problems with that because pump up the jam was awesome yeah no i'll give you an example of where how much putting an orchestra over the top of something can can sell me on it i could have cared less about metallica and then i heard that snm album where they had the san francisco symphony play with them yep and that i thought was just pure genius and that made me like their songs and then after that i went and looked at some of their albums um they a similar is
    38:13
    There's a band called Juno Reactor. And if you've seen any of the Matrix movies, their music is featured heavily in them. And again, it's that heavy electronic music, but then throwing orchestration over the top of it.
    38:29
    It's pretty awesome. It's good stuff. Yeah. It is really good stuff. One thing speaking of... Oh, sorry. You go ahead. Well, I was just going to finish off my evil week, but go ahead. No, no. You finish off your evil week, and then I'll kick off after that. I want to hear more. Well, then I topped it all off then by watching Walking Dead last week.
    38:50
    The original Walking Dead movie? No, the TV show. TV show? Right. And last week they presumably killed off one of their major characters.
    39:03
    It was one of those... Did they just... Holy crap, they did. They did a Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones still does it better but yes and so it's been a hot topic all week long in social media circles and stuff of is this guy dead, is he not because they did leave some ambiguity to it but so yeah between reading a Hellraiser sequel, watching The End of Hannibal, watching Walking Dead and then walking onto the set of American Horror Story I was like, you know, there's a lot of blood, violence, and just plain wrong going on in my week right now. That's pretty cool.
    39:49
    Warning. The following contains little to no actual talk about pinball. So, speaking of evil week, we circled back to Halloween again. So, I put up on Twitter some shots of how we decorated the front of the house. and we got some of that fake spider web.
    40:08
    Yeah, the cotton stuff. I never realized that's what it was. I'm sure they use the same stuff in the movies as well, like for horror. Yep. That stuff is terrible to work with.
    40:19
    It's so hard to get it to do what you want. But the good thing is that once you've wrapped it around things with even a few little sharp edges on them, it sticks like shite to a blanket. That stuff's not going anywhere. So, yeah, we had that. You know, something else they use on movie sets. Actually, they'll use it more often than the fake cotton stuff.
    40:40
    If you take a hot glue gun and then you take an air compressor and you blast the air over the front of the hot glue gun while you're spraying, you know, pushing the glue, it'll just send out these silky fine strands that glimmer. And that's really good for web. Yeah, it would be really good for web. That's pretty cool. We've got a hot glue gun at home. Stop buying that cotton stuff next time. I'm just going to be doing that. I'll say, excuse me, Kim, I need to go get a compressor. Why? Because spider webs. Spider webs? Yeah. That sounds really cool. There you go. So, yeah, we put that all up around the pillars, and we got this from Costco. We've got this big, like, double high inflatable, you know, with a little fan that's built into it, sort of a jack-o'-lantern thing. So we put that outside. It's got lights in it. It looked pretty cool. And, yeah, we had a pretty steady stream of trick-or-treaters come through, which is good. Halloween sort of – it's relatively popular here in Australia.
    41:44
    It's not a holiday or anything like that, but we do sort of do it. And, yeah, it was pretty good. My littlest, Sienna, was doing the lolly handing out. She was on duty, and she had a ball handing out lollies to the kids. Yeah, she loved it. so yeah all two and a half of her um so yeah she was she was dressed up in a little cat costume and everything so that was pretty cool and my son zachary had a big glow-in-the-dark um skeleton shirt on which looked pretty awesome yeah yeah so it's pretty good my son went as a raving rabid oh the rabbits and uh he even had a plunger he had a plunger oh yeah we had a plunger for him to walk around with.
    42:32
    People were like, are you a plumber? He's like, no, I'm a rabbit. I'm a rabbit, yo. Don't you know? Come on.
    42:40
    Then we made some girl's night. She was walking around and she recognized what my son was. She was probably a young teen.
    42:52
    She mentioned something. She was like, that's a rabbit, right? My wife was like, yeah. and then my wife was wearing a hat that she got from disneyland you know mickey mouse ears but they were jack skillington ears and and the the gal was like oh i like your like your jess skillington and my wife goes oh i like your keyblade because she was dressed as sora from kingdom hearts oh yeah and her and her friends all her all her friends started freaking out because they were like you're the first person to get it oh right i turned around i went i turned around, I went, that's because we're old. Yeah, we know.
    43:26
    I'm like, that was on the PS2, alright? Like, you know, come on. We know how it rolls back in the day.
    43:36
    Yeah. Much candy was gotten and a fair Halloween was had by all. Yeah, that's, yeah, it was pretty awesome. So, yes. So, that was your evil week. Evil week. I like the idea. Well, I... We'll see what next week brains what next week brains did you say brings brains brains brains warning the following contains little to no actual talk about pinball so the thing i'm looking forward to which i really do need to go and purchase on the google play store is the next pentatonix album so they've released a new one and i'm looking forward to repeat playing that over and over again until I get sick of it and then replaying it some more.
    44:26
    So they've got a lot of original songs on this one rather than doing covers. I think there are a fair few covers still, but yeah, they've got some original songs and they're pretty cool. So yes, if you like Pentatonix, go and check them out. Do yourself a favor as Molly Meldrum would say here in Australia. So yeah. And we've got some things that we're trying to work out for the Blockade podcast here. Hopefully we can get Law in from Farsight, who was key instrumental in getting this new UI up. So we're hoping to secure an interview with him and maybe be able to talk a little bit about what the thought process for that were. And then we've got a surprise that we won't spoil yet that we're still trying to make arrangements for another interview. Yes, interviews will be coming. Things we look forward to. Yes, you might just have to keep on listening to us blather on about stuff and things. You'll get to hear other people blab on about stuff and things. Yes. That'll be much better. Yeah.
    45:28
    So, yes. We're doing what we can. We do what we can. We're doing what we can. And apparently nobody wants a t-shirt because we didn't get a single email about... Oh, well. If that makes it easy, we'll just make a couple for us. It does make it easy. And rock them. I'll do one here. And, yeah, I'll send it over to you. Yeah, there we go. And then we'll make everybody jealous. Yeah, that's right. We'll rock them, put them on Twitter, and we'll go, oh man, those shirts. Where do I get one of those? If only you had bought one. Yeah, well, you know, we've done a really limited run. Or expressed interest, I should say. It wasn't even a matter of purchasing. We just wanted to know if anybody was remotely thinking about one. It's funny that, like speaking of responses and stuff, I guess we probably should close out the show, but it's funny. I've seen a drop-off in responses on the threads in the forum about podcasts. Maybe people don't have anything to say about the podcast. they love it or yeah maybe i don't know have you noticed that too like they're sort of dropping off with the um responses a bit i've kind of noticed that in general about a lot of threads so there might be some fatigue going on yeah i think it could be right yeah it's a little bit i think uh yeah maybe that's the reason that's right fortunately you and i are infatigable yeah we don't fatigue we'll do this we'll keep on doing this every week and being awesome so uh yeah except now all right we should probably go because once again we have surpassed our half an hour recording limit by another 15 minutes we're in overtime as dude woke up soccer would say yes so thank you all for listening we will see you again next week if you would like to join us on blab i am i will have a uh a new session scheduled hopefully it won't get canceled on us It'll be 12.30 p.m. here on the west coast of the States.
    47:18
    6.30 a.m. in Australia. In the future. So, for Jared Morgan, I am Chris Priebus, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. We will see you all again next week. Sayonara.
    47:34
    WizardAmusement.com. The west coast leader in classic pinball. Makers of custom pinball shooter rods to buyer specifications. swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table installs in less than five 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 blockade podcast and receive 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization remember to leave a review on itunes or any podcasting channel blockade is distributed through we can't improve unless you tell us how until next time remember
    48:32
    you