this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the BlahCade Pinball Podcast i am your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan g'day mates how you going uh it's going well well tell me why it's already going well at the moment for you. We have been having crazy Carl Weathers here in California. When I say crazy, it means it's just raining. We don't know how to deal with that. But we had it to the point where on Thursday, it not only was it instantaneous rain, but it was kind of chunky. What's that frost stuff that's kind of freezing? And it actually snowed in a couple of areas in Southern California. One is Pasadena, one is Malibu, where it just doesn't snow. Hang on a second. So it was raining and sort of snowing at the same time. Yeah, around my house, I guess you would call it hail. But it wasn't – like, normally when it's hail, it comes down as nothing but hail, you know, ice ball. And this was just the occasional ball that was, you know, smacking on my windshield, and I could see the chunks of ice on it. I was like, oh, okay, that's interesting. And then on the radio, they were sitting there going, it's snowing right now in Bestia. I'm like, what? That's just crazy. So, yeah, it's kind of wackadoodle. Yeah. Well, we've got a tropical cyclone hanging off the coast of Queensland at the moment. And it's called Tropical Cyclone Ooma. And it doesn't know what it's going to do. The Bureau of Meteorology doesn't know what it's going to do. And it's just hanging around and making huge erosion on all of our beaches. Like, you know, there's cliffs forming on the beaches where there was sand before. And, yeah, it's just sitting there, like, not really moving, just having – it's enjoying the ocean where it's sitting over at the moment. It's happy. Stupid nature. Yeah. you posted and I just watched it today a thing about the sound of drums oh yeah it's gated reverb gated reverb that basically is a sound of the 80s and I was kind of like when you think 80s yes you think synthetic drums or electronic drum kits those big hexagonal drums and you certainly think keytars and lots of synths that to me is an 80s sound but I never thought of the drum like an actual drum drum having an 80s sound and so the link that you posted was really fascinating because they pegged it as being something that Genesis the band Genesis kind of discovered purely by accident purely by accident because they had an open mic hanging in the studio and it caused the drums to have this kind of really quick cut off sound and it's much higher pitched than a regular deep sounding drum. It's fascinating. I'm not sure where you posted it other than Twitter. Just Twitter. I'll relink it in the show notes because it's produced by the production values on this thing are really good. Yeah, they are. It's always like a vodcast which I've subscribed to based on the quality of that video. It was very well explained the way that it worked. They were talking about the fact that the mic that was hanging in the studio where they just really sort of communicate. It was really the mic that they used to communicate with the artists in the studio. And it had a highly compressed filter on it, which means that all the highs are squished low and all the lows are expanded high, really. and it sort of flattens everything out. And because of that, it was just, it had this really strange drop-off effect with the drums. Yeah. So it was picking up the drum sound in the studio, but this extra mic was like a second pickup. And because of the compression applied to the microphone, it was just cutting off everything at a really strange interval. And that's how getting compression came to be. and they actually made this special, this amp of the 80s, or this effects amp with this preset done in it so you didn't have to set up your studio like that. But now you can download onto your computer. Yeah, this is what the artists are doing. The interesting thing about the video is that this sound is actually making a resurgence in 2019. There are more artists using gated reverb drums and stuff like that to bring back this 80s new wave sound sort of thing. It's very strange, but very interesting at the same time. For those that don't feel like going to the video, which is a shame on you, but just think about Phil Collins in the air tonight, that drum fill, that... That's the sound. Yeah, that's the sound. It's a specific... Because then they played in the video, they played a clip of what the drums in Pink Floyd sound like, and there's a world of difference between the two sounds. So it's very interesting, and it made me even think about it, because I was thinking about this a couple of days ago. There was a song by the Scorpions on the radio, and their drum has this very interesting, like it's almost like a drum beat in reverse, because it kind of goes. And I was like, how do you achieve that sound live? You know, how would you do it? And now I'm thinking, it's how the mic is. It's like auto-tune for drums. I think both that band and also Prince was a huge fan of gated reverb but he did it in reverse rather than having the drop off he actually had the it's like you were saying the drums sound like they were playing in reverse and they had like almost like they were likening it in the video to the sound hitting a brick wall and just stopping and it's just like you know it's like a wave like a wave crashing and then all of a sudden the wave just stops against the brick wall. And it's a fascinating video. If you're even remotely interested in audio engineering, this channel on YouTube is one you should subscribe to. So check out the show notes and check it out. Do yourself a favor. Yeah. Speaking of videos, we are going to now turn it over to a video on YouTube, basically, that we have posted. So when I talked to Zen, that was a couple of weeks ago, we had to stop the audio because there was more. And that more is the table announcements that we're about to have for you right now. So sit back. This was recorded a couple of weeks ago. And listen to, once again, Mel Kirk and Thomas Crofts from Zen as I talk to them. and for those of you watching this video on YouTube, it goes a little something like this. Mel, you apparently have an announcement about new tables. Last I talked to you, it was this next batch of tables was going to be Zen Originals. I'm taking it that may not be the case now. Yeah, the next set of tables coming is Williams Pinball Volume 3. Ta-da! Yeah. The original pack that we had been kind of referencing before has been pushed out a little bit just due to, you know, changes in the video game company. This stuff is shifting sometimes, changing priorities, opportunities, whatever. So, yeah, Williams Pinball Volume 3. Tom, do you want to do the arms? Yeah. It's going to contain my table, which is, of course, the best table, Safecracker. Safecracker, really? Safecracker, yeah. They've got Theater of Magic and Champion Pub. Theater of Magic and Champion Pub. Wow. It's a varied pack. That is a varied pack. I mean, there's no doubt about it. Okay, so I've got to know. With Safecracker, it's a much smaller table for anybody that's never touched this thing. I don't even know if it's – it might be smaller than a three-quarter size. But it's a small table with small flippers. tight action. How did that affect translating it to the video game? From my point of view, actually, it went smoother than I was expecting it to. I thought there'd be sort of all sort of problems with the cameras and, you know, the physics and everything. But fingers crossed, you know, it was fairly smoothly. And, you know, people will enjoy it just the same as the original table. I mean, maybe for the graphics artists it was a bit more work so it was properly but yeah for me it went well with the then the the enhancements that are going to go on that is there going to be something tackled differently with the uh the game board aspect of things or is it going to be just a pan up and and see it kind of aspect yeah yeah it's it's it's just the same as a sort of a pan but we've got a burglar character that he sort of jumps in the sewer from the overlap and goes up to the backbox and sort of plays along with the board game. He gets captured by the guard and throws the cyber dog biscuits and eventually gets the stash at the end. So it's a lot more interactive that way. So lots of opportunity for the 3D animated characters that you guys like to throw on tables. sounds like. Yeah, so this one I sort of also wanted to make the animations a little bit more cartoony. It sort of fitted with the table style a bit. I think the sort of motion capture guy deep this table and then the animators had a lot more deep ones again. Yeah. With the comedy sort of animations on this table. Yeah. How are you guys handling the tokens? So you can win the tokens the same way. Just win the backbox game and it comes out. And what you do is they get stored on the overlap and they get stored sort of from game to game so you can collect all 20. Okay. Can you use them? Will you have to use them to play the super game aspect? Yeah, there's an assault on the vault mode and you have to actually use one of those tokens to start that mode. Okay. Theater of a Magic. I've got to believe that's one that you get to go nuts on with the animations. Absolutely, yeah. I think the animators had quite a few problems with that as well because, you know, like the magicians sort of disappearing into a hat and, yeah, all sort of magic tricks with cards and everything. So it was, yeah, one of the more challenging tables. It's one of those tables, too, that when you see it's a very heavily modded table. I mean, one of those that people love to mod in real life with having, you know, a fully rotating tiger saw doing all sorts of extra lighting on it. So, yeah, I got to imagine that'll just look fantastic. And then the last one you said, I forget what you said. I'm getting popped. Oh, Champion Pub. Yeah. A, I'm looking forward to the lighting on that one. Because that is one that... I always hate comparing you guys back and forth with Pinball Arcade, but I gave them the riot act over their lighting of that one because it was just like, guys, I can't see the fighter. There's an uplight blowing up on it. So I've always been looking forward to one that's properly lit. But that one too, when you think about it, you've got the jump rope challenge, you've got the speed bag challenge, you've got just the boxer himself. There's all sorts of stuff that will go in on that. Mel, you had kind of mentioned before that Champion Pub might be an issue with, I'm assuming it's the gambling aspect of it, that when we were talking about censorship, initially, there was something that would be having to take out. What would be for what was the issue? Let me put it to you that way. What's the questionable content of that table? I believe there's gambling and there's alcohol reference and probably tobacco reference. A lot of alcohol. A little. A lot. Will you... So with consoles, because I don't know where we are in that whole area. Obviously, mobile and PC, we're not having any issues with censorship. But is there something that you're going to have to just plain excise from the game for a family mode? I don't know if we had to totally take something out for the family mode. But we'll probably be hearing about that from the Internet very soon if there was. YouTube comparisons. Right, right. No, I don't know. Okay. Yeah, we'll have to confirm what that is. Look, it has to meet age rating on consoles, so yeah, there's going to be alterations. I can confirm that much. Right. On PC and mobile, no. It is the game itself. Yeah, that's a pretty good pack right there. I'm surprised by Safecracker. I didn't expect that one to rear its head for a while. It happens to be a favorite of mine, but that's... Yeah, I know it sort of splits a lot of opinions. You know, a lot of people don't like the, you know, the complete randomness of the board game. You know, there's not enough pinball action in it. You know, it's not so skilled-based. But, you know, on the other hand, it's a novelty. It's a fun table, you know, and I like it. Well, it's also because it's those little short flippers, it changes up how you have to play the game. And that kind of messes with your head if you're not used to it. So I think that's where a lot of the angst comes from it, too, because it's just like your typical flipper aiming is not the same. It's not pinball at all. certainly with the infinite ball save you've got as well it takes getting used to it but I enjoy playing with it I enjoy designing on it so hopefully other people will do too I forgot to mention this or ask this earlier but what are just some of your favourite tables in general Tom? Real life tables you mean? No, no I know but of the real life tables what are some of your favourites? I mean, I've mentioned my two favorites already, Twilight Zone and Circus Voltaire. OK. You know, Twilight Zone's probably the only table where I've sort of reached the wizard mode and got a really, really good score on it. And then Circus Voltaire, I'm actually quite rubbish at playing it, but I just love it. I love the light show and the sound effects and, you know, the judges at the end and everything. And it's, you know, I really love that table. Do you guys look at the light shows that are currently going on? I mean, Guy, Modern Stern and Jersey Jack Pinball have been just going crazy with their light shows. You know, where it's not just a matter of light sequencing, but it's, you know, the entire table changes color via that. Has any of that worked its way into what you're planning for Zen original tables? well so i mean we've just got a an acdc table here in the woods um and yeah we've we've looked at the light shows on that it's very impressive um i'm not sure technically if we're able to do that sort of stuff yet but it's yeah it's it's certainly something we're looking at and you know admiring at the moment. Okay. So these, volume three, we're looking at March release here. Are we kind of expecting now this pattern of probably, I'd say, every three months we're seeing a table pack drop, Mel? No, it's going to actually speed up. What? Yeah. It's not working overtime. No, it should be, let's see. So we're, we have a March release. We going to have a May release So maybe it every six weeks eight weeks hopefully We can have something rolling out Wow And we see how it goes how that cadence works But ideally, we want to announce, and then two weeks later, we're out. So we don't like to announce something and have everyone sitting on it. Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? But we're going to get in a cadence here where hopefully it's very steady. You know, last year we got two volumes out quickly, but we were working on one for quite a while, getting our workflow worked out and the whole process going. But we're getting more efficient at this. And, you know, Tom is really, really good at it. Yeah, it's so now that we've got the first, you know, two, three packs out, you know, we know what to expect. You know, things always come up that are, you know, a little bit difficult, a little bit challenging. but yeah, so the overall process is a lot more efficient now. Almost like you've got the infrastructure built, so now it's just easy to drive down the road. So yeah, I mean, it's kind of like kids' go time. Hopefully there's some surprises this year. And now that we know what's going on, we know what to expect from this new group of players and mobile's becoming established and new, I don't know, It was just, we got the baseline built so we can roll now. I foresee a whole bunch more beta testing for me. Which is fun. It's kind of cool. I enjoy seeing the process. I mean, what you guys are putting out in beta is close to finished, as far as I'm concerned, a lot of times. But it's fun seeing those little quirks, seeing those little things where you're like being able to give the suggestion, being able to give the input and seeing the changes and how those changes get put in, it makes me even more excited for the final release to be able to hype it for and tell people, are you really going to dig this? You know, because I got to see where it was and then where it kind of went to. So that's that's fun as far as I'm concerned. And yeah, I mean, we really value that sort of feedback as well. you know, for instance, like on the attack from Mars table, you know, you guys helped us really push the lighting effects for like the strobe multiball. So yeah, it's really good feedback that you give us as well. Yeah. The uniform for the general, like that was good. You know, that was one of those things where, and I've read, I've only read, I think two comments where they were like, Hey, air force was in blue. And I'm just like, it was blue, but it just didn't work for me. It just, I don't know. I'm, I'm quite happy with the coloring change. Cause to me, a, like we said in the, in the beta test where it was just like, all I thought was, Hey, why is the cop from the getaway now suddenly on attack from Mars? And I had to think about it and be like, Oh no, no, no, I get that. But then also he was the only blue thing on the entire table. And now he feels like he fits in with the whole color scheme of the table. So, um, yeah, to me, I designed the table as well. That guy was like on the right-hand side of the overlap. Yeah. That's just the getaway guy. Let's move him over to the other side. Yeah, then the color changed as well. I got a note from Brian Eddy. He was like, looks good. My favorite thing on Attack from Mars is the missiles firing. I love that to no end. It actually helps me identify the lanes that I still need to shoot. Because sometimes when multiball, you're not keeping track of where the balls are going. You're just keeping track of where your flipper is. And so seeing the direction the missile is flying off to. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, I think I agree with you as well. Because when you're playing and you need to look up and see where the jackpot lamps are, it's a lot more difficult. Yeah. So, yeah, I dig all that kind of stuff. It's very cool. Well, I'm, as usual, jazzed and excited for what you guys got coming out, because it's all good stuff to me, and I've been playing it now. You can see in the background there my microcab that I built. I've been playing it using that. I'm curious to see what eventually happens. I've mentioned this to Mel, but when you guys get a game that uses two flipper buttons or a MagnaSave, how that's implemented, that's why I'm all prepared for it. Yeah, so I think on the getaway on mobile, there's a gear up and gear down issue. I think we've added another button into that now. I'm not sure what happened on the Steam version or anything, but certainly on mobile it's been addressed. That would be one of those things where if you're using a basic controller, I would think that the plunge button, since you're not plunging, could just be a flick it up, flick it down kind of gear shift thing. yeah I personally even when I've played it in real life never downshift I can care less about downshifting somebody said that there is a a special bonus that you can activate I guess if there's three cop cars at the donut shop it's like flick up flick down twice flick up or something like that and then that'll make every score 500,000 points or something like that and I'm like never knew it don't really care it's like me in actual racing car games i just never change gear like formula one simulations because you know you need to change down there i just don't so i don't play them yet that's fine uh okay well i'm going to wrap things up here uh uh i just wanted to thank uh thank you mel kirk thank you thomas cross and uh thanks although we already left Akos, New York for stopping by after hours there at Zen Studios in Budapest. I'm still waiting for my plane ticket and room and board. But, you know. So, and thanks to all the listeners for listening and making some suggestions for questions that I could ask. We will talk to you guys again soon. Thank you so much. Bye, guys. Cheers, guys. Bye. There you have it, folks. We are talking about Theater of Magic, Champion Pub, and Safecracker, which that one's the shocker to me. I did not expect to see Safecracker this soon. It was a very... Let's compare this to TPA. I mean, Safecracker was a season four edition, I think, wasn't it? The memory? I think, yeah. It was around that. Four, maybe five. So it was pretty late on, and it felt like that this is one that they went, okay, well, we're up to the... We're getting towards the end of the non-licensed. Let's go and put this one in, because, you know, because Jared's been harping on about it too much. I think it was the main reason why I got in, because I was pressuring him all the time about it, because I have so much influence on the Pimple Like Kate design schedule. Lol. Anyhow, so this was a really big surprise for me, and while it was a surprise, it's also full of possibility, right? Oh, absolutely. I mean even though it's a compact little tiny small thing as Tom was saying there's a lot that you can do with the animation aspect and kind of liven up the table and I'm really excited to see what this animation style that he's talking about is with it being a little more cartoony when you think about what he said in the previous interview that we had posted where he was talking about what kind of table he would like to design for a license. And he was saying he loves old 80s cartoons. Well, there you go. That's what I'm kind of imagining this stuff looking like. You know, I actually saw, as an aside very quickly, I re-watched original Eastman and Laird Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the other day. And, wow. That animation is pretty crude. I'll tell you that. You're watching, I don't know whether it was just because of the transfer, but the motion was really janky. and all the colors were sort of like off there were some bits where the colors were like different like the different greens and stuff like that that is I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before on this podcast it's been a while but that was an era of animation where they were trying to do things as quick and cheap as possible to the point that and I got all this from John Chris Felici, who is the creator of Ren and Stimpy. Oh, yes. And he spent time in this animation hell. And it's why he broke out and created Spumco Studios to do Ren and Stimpy. Because he said that the animators, there was just a complete lack of respect for them. And it was all about the story and had next to nothing to do with the animation. They could care less about the animation. It just happened to be a medium for which they were used to carry the story. And sell the merchandise. Let's be serious. And so they weren't interested in the animators creating gags, doing interesting looks. There was none of that. And the story that I love that he tells was that he worked on He-Man. Yeah, that's a good example of it. the studio behind He-Man was very much about you being on, and I'm, the word is slipping from my head, but basically there is a set character sheet, right? And it'll have very different facial expressions and it'll have their different angles of view that you can draw from. Right. And on one of the characters, it had two left hands. Oh yeah. And so, oh, the model sheet, that's what's called the character model sheet. so the animator drew a proper right hand and then got in trouble for it. Because they were like, no, it doesn't match the model sheet. And he's like, but it's two left hands. It's not supposed to be. And so he got in trouble for it. But is He-Man a mutant? So, like, does he have two left hands? Well, it wasn't He-Man either. It was one of the side characters. I think it was, like, Man of Arms or something like that. Anyway, which would be hilarious. He-Man of Hands. Man of Hands. and it wasn't a show in He-Man it might have been on another show but they said they got to the point where basically all they were doing was photocopying the model sheet enlarging or shrinking and then just putting those in for the animations because there was no point in they had to be so on model there was no point in drawing it yourself it was just like forget it I'm just going to photocopy it and put it on I mean that's how little respect there was for the animators Wow. And one of the things that he points out, he goes, where you want to see is a company cheaping out on animation or not. It's look at the face. Does the face have any moving parts outside the draw lines? Or is it the mouth always stays within the draw lines, the eyes always stay within the draw lines? Because if that's the case, then all you're having to do is animate that. You're not having to animate anything else. Essentially, it's like a template that you just put moving eyes and mouth on. Exactly, exactly. So he says if you see something that is animated where the whole mouth or the whole face is moving and changing shape, then that's something where they committed a budget to. But if you look at any of the old Looney Tunes, that's exactly what they're doing. The faces are moving. They're fluid. There was none of this money-saving kind of aspect. Because back then, they were paying animators to animate. Right. It's funny too because you think about what they used to be doing for any of the anime, the cheaper producing anime, not the movies but again your television shows and that's where they were only animating 12 frames for every 24 seconds. Oh. And so that's why everything is so kind of janky. Yeah, because they were... I reckon that's exactly what they did with Eastman and the Laird Turtles because it was really it was janky as. It looked like someone had actually done stop motion almost. Yeah. Yeah. Today, all that animation is done now on computers. So it's much more fluid and it's easy to animate so they can animate full facial expressions and stuff like that. You know what? They still don't. Oh really? They still don't. You watch, there's so many kids. Yeah. I used to do for kids and I'll, I'll look for that now. It's like, I'm going to be able to unsee it anymore. It is. It's one of those things where I just ruined it for everybody. Okay. So back to you. Circling back to the whole animation bit on Safecracker. So a cartoon style will fit really well into Safecracker because it's already, like, Safecracker's theme is already sort of lighthearted and comical anyhow. Like, you know, the dude's getting electrocuted by Candy and Candy's ribbing him all the time for trying to, you know, invade the vault and all that sort of stuff. So done right, which I'm sure will be done right in Xen. This is going to add a very new dimension to the game, I think. It's going to be pretty cool. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. And like I said, I'm very curious to see what the table itself looks like. One of the things that when you look at it in TPA, it looks like a standard-sized table. It does. It doesn't have any dimensional difference to it. Even the flippers aren't really three-quarter size flippers because they're not... The thing with the flippers here, which I wasn't fully aware of until recently, is that they're not full size. They're not mini flipper Twilight Zones. They're midway between the two. They're a special custom flipper bat just for that game. So you'll probably see a lot of them without that custom flipper bat now because you can't get it, I don't think. But they were special. It was a special size game, for sure. So I don't know what I expect. I don't know what I want to see. I don't know if I want to see a smaller table. I'd like to see the scale. I would definitely like to see the scale. I would too. Yeah. You know, because I don't want the ball on that game to suddenly look larger than on any of the other games, you know. I don't think it will because everything will be in perspective. So it'll still be a smaller play field. Right. But the ball will be the same size in relation to the play field. Right, but what I'm saying is if they don't do it to scale, if they make it fill the space, then the ball is going to look huge. Yeah, it's either going to look huge or it's going to look like a BB, depending on how they go. I'm sure that won't be a problem. We'll have to see. What's funny is when I think about it, I was surprised at the idea of Safecracker, but then I realized if they're only doing DMDs right now, there are only so many DMD unlicensed that they can do. There's only about four or five releases a year generally from 1992 onwards, which was, 92 was kind of the first year that they started dabbling in DMDs. Right. And a lot of those DMDs are licensed properties. So, you know, there's, I mean, the champion pub and the games of that era or that year, really that I think that year, so a lot of unlicensed pins come out. So that's obviously why they're drawing from that, that particular year. Yeah. Hmm. So anyway, that's safe cracker. I'm stoked that they are going to be doing the individual tokens again. So you'll be able to collect them all. Yeah. Interesting though, in the, in the interview, you know, there was 20 tokens, not 26. It might've just been a miss, misspoke. Who knows? I think probably yes, because there's definitely 26. I'll be curious to see how they implement that, though, with are you going to be able to look at them or not? Or is it just going to be your collecting tokens? I don't know. It seems like you're specifically going to have the looks of each, but again, we'll see. I think so. Yeah, I think they will at least give you the ability to have a look at them if you want, which I think was actually taken away in Pimble Arcade. They broke it. Did they? Yeah, you couldn't see your collection anymore, on mobile at least, which is disappointing. But yeah, that will be good. It'll be really good because of the perspective they've chosen in, well, certainly on Steam and in mobile, you'll be able to see that coin fully rolled down the glass. Yeah. and it will look good because it will be coming out the right place right so the other tables Champion Pub I don't know how I feel about this one it's not really a favorite of mine but because it's very much a stop and start kind of game to me yeah it's got a lot of interesting mechs on it though which I think is what I like playing it. I liked playing it in Pimble Arcade because it's, it's one of those games you can sit down with and just flip around and you, you get there in the end. Yeah, you do get there Yeah And I never beaten all the boxes so I haven actually got all the way to the end of the boxes and beaten them So there plenty of legs left in it for me But that where also Farset had some issues with the jump rope and the speed bag Yeah, they had to bake in some physics into that area. Yeah, so I'm going to be very curious to see what Zen does in that respect, if they're able to kind of conquer some of those. Because the jump rope, there were times where your ball would just get kicked out for no reason. You're like, what happened? I don't even understand. And the speed bag never worked the way it does on a real machine. I don't think I've played a real machine enough to actually experience a speed bag in real life. So I don't have a reference point for that. I just played it when I went to the Museum of Pinball and specifically got the speed bag. and I was messing around and I was like, boy, this plays... Very difficult. Well, in TPA's version, it always felt like it was just kind of like this random, okay, just push the buttons and let's see how long you can keep the ball up there. Exactly. And playing the physical machine, it felt like I was in control of the ball, like I had more control of the ball, rather than it just be kind of, I'm just going to flip badly and hope that it survives a while. Yeah, it was flipper spam for sure in TPA. So that I'll be very interested to see how Zen accomplishes. And then, like I mentioned, the lighting. Boy, that table. You see it in person and you see it in TPA, and that's a world of difference going on. Oh, yeah. And it was one of those things that that's where I first became aware of the fact that the lighting on Pinball Arcade is a flat plane, doesn't project up. Yep. and that table needs the up projection. So... You know, I've been thinking about, you know, the type of animation effects they could do with that table. Imagine in the enhanced graphics mode if they just ripped out the boxer altogether and fully animated him, you know? That would be amazing. And change the look of the boxer for each... Each dude, yeah. Because DMD, each one has a different look. So, yeah, if you change the look of the boxer to match the DMD, now we've now we're talking now you got some now you're playing punch out even well yeah totally i mean even if they don't like you're fully like remove the the physical model and replace it with a fully animated digital model which you know obviously is quite technically complex to do that yeah if they just change the face the face like map on it that would make a huge difference yeah um like you're leaving in the um the wife be to singlet that's fine but just change the face yeah that would be great it would make you actually feel like you're battling the person be curious to see what uh what happens with that one plenty of possibilities i think and then be curious like like mel pointed out we'll find out from the internet what they uh took out for yes for the consoles um well a lot of stuff i mean it's based in a bar so you know what's it going to be called now? Champion Pugilist Champion Boxer yeah and they're not going to be in a bar they're going to be in a milk bar yeah and they're going to be having frosty beverages cokes and sodas instead of beers oh boy and then the final table and this one I don't think is much of a surprise is Theater of Magic. Oh, yeah. Which, the thing that has me most excited about that one is the physics. Yeah. The physics on Theater of Magic have never been good. I just never... Number one, it was a launch table. Number two, it looked like a launch table on Pinball Arcade. It looked really basic. There's no life to it on Pinball Arcade. It's just very flat, and it's easy as anything. You could shoot shots with your eyes closed on it. So, yeah, make that brutal. Well, of course, not ridiculous, but make it so. Not brutal, but it's a table where, and Tales of the Ruby Knights suffers the exact same problem. Oh, yeah, yeah. The angles that the ball comes off the flipper don't make sense. They don't feel natural to what you normally would be shooting it. shooting the right orbit is just like what is going on why is the ball not going where it should there should be no reason why shooting the the basement is as difficult as it is it's in that same spot that if you guys remember playing attack from Mars when it first came out from a caught position you could not shoot the right ramp it was impossible you could only make the shot on a running shot. And when I say, I'm not kidding, that it was impossible, it literally was. There was a couple of guys that worked it out and somehow had the flippers timed to when the ball would hit certain points on the flipper and try it. And they were like, it's not physically able to do it. It takes off on two different trajectories, and it'll never hit the ramp. And that happens to be in about the same place as that basement is. and it's one of those shots where it's like shooting the basement shouldn't be that. It's right in front of the ramp. Like it should, it should just be, you shoot the ramp, you shoot the basement. Yeah. And the basement kick out as well is it's very, it's because of the way that mechanism works under the play field. I had one, I remember servicing one of these things and looking at the way that mechanism works. There are so many, because it's a shoot and it pops up, there's so much play in it that it changes the way the ball shoots out practically every time. Sometimes it'll be a hard shot. Sometimes it'll be a soft shot. If there's a problem with the trough underneath the play field, because there's like a stage trough that you lock the balls in under there. There's a problem with that. And there's two balls in the trough. It'll like skew the balls everywhere. Like it's, it is a very variable mech. So having a bit of randomness, randomness, they will be great. Yeah. So that, I think that's what I'm perhaps looking forward to the most on, on that one. It's just new physics. should bring new life to the table. It might make me like the game again because it's got a lot going for it. But it's just like I don't really enjoy the music either, which is very repetitive. That's the thing I think probably too, because I'm quite into audio, as you well know, over the years. And it just drives me nuts. It's the pipe organs of Doom. Yeah, I think that's my problem with Champion Pub, is that the music just kind of... The old-timey piano music. Yeah, yeah. It's not as bad as a class of 1812. Yeah, because you activate chicken multiball so easily in that game that it's just like oh... I can't believe that someone thought that would be a good idea in that game. They must have been smoking the crack, eh? Really? And then like I'll be, again, equally interested to see what they do with the animations, because it's almost planned out. The animators are... They're just nuts, basically. They're nuts, and they're having difficulty with it, which is kind of a good thing to me. If they're having difficulty animating, yeah. You must be trying something good. Yeah, that's right. I reckon it'll be a little bit of, I don't know, well, not Penn and Teller, because they're more practical artists, but, you know, the two Vegas music Siegfried and Roy Siegfried and Roy sort of magician grand scale stadium giant illusions yeah giving Copperfield stuff yeah like having the but the the whole concept of the ball being cut in two I can actually see that actually being a thing when they animate it in Zen mode that it'll actually be a ball that's just cut in half and you'll see it actually split into two sort of thing Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. Yeah, that'll be kind of interesting to see what they go with. So when you think about upcoming tables, we're now about halfway through that stack of manuals that they showed in that reveal video way back when, and they're kind of going in order. So what we have next, we have Circus Voltaire, we have Whitewater. What else was... Tales of the Arabian Nights. I forget what the fourth one is. Judge Dredd? No, that's just one of the tables Yeah, yeah But anyway, those I'm going to basically say that those are what you're going to consider your AAA titles on each table pack release So you're getting one AAA, and then you're getting kind of these surprises. Yeah, I don't want to call them B tier or whatever, but yeah, your more surprise things. Also think about so this is kind of interesting what Mel said about the release schedule Every eight weeks? Every eight weeks. So I did a little quick bit of math here. That puts us at 15 tables for the year. That's not including... What we've done already. Well, no, I'm talking about four this year alone. Oh, right. It'll be a total of 15 tables. And I don't believe that includes the originals pack. Like the Zen original. So they were going to be releasing this next time, and then they delayed it a little bit. Because reasons. For reasons, but it's not like it's because we didn't start on it reasons. It was long in the works kind of thing. So, dang, we're getting a lot out of Zen. This is going to be, compare this to the cadence of release that we had with Pinball Arcade in the first couple of seasons. They were pumping out They were pumping out tables But I think the balance here is that They now know the pipeline Like Zen know their pipeline now And they know that To do things with the level of quality they need That this is the cadence they can hit So that's great They got the metrics Well now that they've got mobile essentially out of the way Other than mild tweaking all their assets, their resources, can go forward to doing these resources. They've figured it out. So now it's, you know, the R&D is done. Now it's just a matter of cranking. So I'm curious again, based off of if okay, take out these three. Now we're down to 12. So what are those remaining 12. I leave it up to you fine listeners what 12 non-licensed DMD tables are left. Go. Straight to Pinside and have a look at those. And then post it to our Twitter so that we don't have to look it up ourselves. Be a researcher listener. And I would also encourage everybody to start in a Twitter campaign at Pinball effects and at Zen Studios. If you type in those, those are their two main Twitter accounts. When they get to Cactus Canyon, Cactus Canyon continued, folks. Let's lobby hard for Cactus Canyon to continue. So that when they get to that table, that's what we get. Because that's the only... I don't care about any other enhancement. That's the enhancement I want. That is my enhancement. So, we'll see. very, very good if they could swing that. And, you know, if they could cut a deal with Dutch Pinball and get Brider Pinbot 2.0 as well, I'd be down with that when they get around to doing that. The thing is that Brider Pinbot takes the alphanumeric and turns it into a DMD. They also change the rules. They do, completely. It's a brand new game, basically. It isn't a bad thing. It's a fun layout. I do like the layout of Brighter Pinbot yeah it's a great game it's just heavily weighted on that left ramp which is what they completely turn around in the Brighter Pinbot 2 reels like that ramp is used very infrequently you've got to do a lot of stuff to actually metamorphose the machine so it's much better balanced it actually makes metamorphosis feel like a wizard mode rather than like an everyday thing yeah oh look we made it turn yeah exactly yeah what else was kind of mentioned in that that I was kind of like I did find something speculatively interesting oh did you tell in the fact that they have an ACDC table in the studio now yeah I mean I think they've had other Stern tables in the studio too. Oh yeah? I do. I think if anything what would be interesting is that they're talking to Brian Eddy. Yeah. Who's currently at Stern. Well yes that's right. I think it might have just been a I have a feeling that the comments that Brian had about the on pointness of the general was more probably hey I've seen it's out in the wild now and it looks really good. So, nice work. Yeah, but I'll point out to a couple months back when we mentioned that both George Gomez and Brian Eddy were in Budapest, and the people from Zen had met up with them at the pinball museum there. So, just, you know, yeah, if we want to throw fuel on the fire, yeah, you know, interesting. Well, I mean, we haven't seen a stern release from Farsight for months now. And we haven't really heard. People have listened to their Twitch streams and there's been mention that they have something in the works, but they won't even say what. They just are saying that there's something in the works on the pinball side of things. So, yeah, it's one of those things everybody's assuming that they're talking about Stern, but who knows? And I come back to the Stern conversation with Zen doesn't really even happen until the licensing stuff with Williams Pinball and Zen happens. once we start seeing what they do with license tables for the Williams app, then you can start letting your imagination go that direction. Until then, there's no point in even putting your imagination there because, again, Stern is so heavily licensed. Until we see what Zen is capable of, I mean, we kind of know what they're capable of, but we haven't officially seen what they're capable of with these older licenses. That's right. Yeah. Again, other than what, what Thomas said about, he's stoked with the idea of if they're able to do Indiana Jones, that he might be able to do an original table with the license. That would be amazing. So I'm really hoping that that is a direction that they, they get to go in. Yeah. The things you could do, the things you could do. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, yeah. And interesting that, you know, because all the Zen original tables are all wide-body format, like, you know... I didn't know that officially before. I mean, some of them felt like it, but... Yeah, they're all wide-body, which is kind of logical, really, because they fit a lot of stuff in there. Like, you wouldn't be able to do a narrow with most of the stuff they put into the original. So, yeah, it's good to get that confirmed. I did kind of laugh. I went and saw the Lego movie too. Oh yeah. And there was a joke in there with, they had, you know, DC characters, the superheroes, Justice League kind of dancing around or whatever. And at one point, at one point, one of the characters goes, yeah, cause Marvel's not returning our calls anymore. And I just, I really thought that was funny. Cause it was like, yeah, you're right. You know what? I mean, they have, they've done Marvel sets, but none of the Marvel stuff is appearing in the Lego movies, which is a Warner Brothers movie, which owns DC. So, I mean, it totally makes sense, but I thought that was very funny. Yeah, that's a very nice little in-joke there. Very nice for the adults who know their way around the universe. It kind of made me think about Stern with the tables that they do. They're not doing any DC tables. They're all doing only marble tables. Marble, yeah. So it's kind of like, hmm, interesting. That is interesting, isn't it? Yeah How some of those licensing things go down Yeah Before we wrap things up here because that basically all we have with the table announcements I did learn a few things off the air that I'm unfortunately not able to share from those guys. All I can say is it puts a grin on my face. We like grins. I do like grins. so Zen's got a plan let's just put it that way there's plenty of stuff that they've got in the works but you were mentioning that you got to play finally put some time in on the Williams app on Android with the tournament yeah I did, after the last podcast we did, there was a bit that was pretty low coverage for me on there and I decided to do a couple like spend a few um on there because you know i mean the app at the moment still is 3 000 tickets upgrade to level three at the moment so there's not much point me striving for that yet until whatever happens with the app happens so why not try out some tournaments and sort of try that aspect of the of the ecosystem so i did i i have progressed slightly in the the tournaments there And I think the interesting thing is that I think if you play tournaments on Android, it actually increases your chances of getting better unlocks in the regular game. Oh. I think. So if I understand correctly about the on-screen instructions and what I've seen, it's like completing tournaments will give you an increased chance in unlocking better things in daily challenges. I'm happy to be proven wrong if people out there have been playing this more than me. But that seems, that's what I got from the instructions in the game. So I started to, it's only 25 tickets pop and I've got a bit more tickets up my sleeve now. So I've been playing, there's three tiers. There's like a easy, difficult and hard tier in there. I'll call them that. But essentially they're just people with better skill. and I'm starting to wonder whether the players are actually real players or not because I'm I'm playing games and I'm getting quite large scores on these games and the bots are getting like they like for example on uh Junkyard the I'm getting you know 12 15 million in the five minute challenge and the bots might be getting one million for example and it just like it was very different to the game I had when I first tried it with the score racing up in real time almost. And it just, it was very different. So I don't know whether that was just a one-off and it was actually a real player that I was playing against there. But seems to be that the players are bots, maybe. So what difficulty are you playing it in? I'm the very start tier, which I think is like, I don't even know what the name is. It's very strange names in there, but it's like, it's the, it's the B it's this D division. Probably if you're thinking about it like that, like it's, there's like, I think four or five tiers. And I'm at the bottom tier. So what's your, what's your screen name on there? It's Jared Morgz. so folks if you play a match tell us if you come across jared's name that'll help us understand whether or not because we don't know you know it's amazing how many people on the digital pinball fans forum i recognize those names but then they have a completely different username when they're playing a game so it's one of those things it's like well i don't know that i'm playing against you i've had people identify themselves later go hey oh yeah i played against you i'm like oh Really? What was your screen name? They're like, oh, you're that guy. So it'd be fun to know how many of us are real. And yeah, how many are bots? It'd be nice if they just had like a little flag against each one. Because I don't mind playing against bots. Like if it means that I get to play tournaments and I have a good range of players, then yeah, bring the bots on. Just don't make them too good. But bring the bots on. But if I'm playing against a real person, it'd be good to know that. you know um don't make them like the uh the old uh car racing games where it was the rubber band effect where if you got too far ahead all of a sudden they would just somehow slingshot forward and and match you and you're like wait a second there's no way that they were able to catch up to me like that yeah yeah exactly yeah no so it's been fun to play it is they're all five minute challenges unlimited balls um and yeah you just flip and flip and just keep on keep on going really it depends on um it doesn't seem to matter what what table you play on the players at here that i'm on all seem to behave the same like the scores are pretty low and it actually looks like but i'll be i was watching the scores and they didn't change for like two or three minutes it's like they were trapping the ball and not doing a single thing so it seems suspect to me yeah anyhow over on skills they changed the one ball challenge of over to a three minute challenge and I hate it well here's the thing it's all about trying to figure out how to get the maximum score in that three minutes. And on Medieval Madness, I've come up with a method that garners me around 13 million pretty regularly in the three minutes. And it seems like all the other top players have also figured out that. And if you just get one extra jackpot available or one extra thing available, that can kick your score over into the 17 to 20 million variety. But because it's unlimited balls and it's just fire away for those three minutes, it feels like a real crapshoot as to whether or not you're going to win or not. Whereas when it was the one-ball challenge, that was brutal. You have to actually be skilled to win that. You have to be skilled, and I consider myself fairly skilled at it. And even still, you'd have games where it would drain within 15 seconds. and all the other players that I was playing against, yeah, sometimes they have great games and other times it was clear that they had a fail game. Whereas with the three-minute challenge, nobody's having a fail game. Yeah, so it's all just about exploiting the scoring mechanism in the game. It just seems more like a, again, for a cash game, for a winning cash game, it seems like just a roll of the dice where it's a coin flip if you're going to win or not. And I don't like the coin flip. I want to know that it's actual skill that's coming in on it. Yeah, that's fair enough. I noticed something visually different in the tournament area is that on Fishtails, the DMD is a different color to what it is normally in the daily challenges. Like it's a much lighter orange than what it is in the daily challenges, which is quite a deeper orange color. And I looked at it and went, that's definitely different. so I don't know what's going on there but maybe they're experimenting with different DMD shades in different parts of the app or maybe it's helping you identify that you're in a different mode oh maybe yeah could be a visual clue where if you're playing it in regular Zen mode the flippers are one color if you're playing it in pro mode they're stylized yeah it's true anyhow things to wonder Yep. Things to wonder. All right. So, folks, hey, go and, well, we don't know yet when these tables are going to be released, but like what Mel says, he wants to announce, and then two weeks later, have the tables out. So you'd expect that it'd be pretty soon. It's going to be pretty quick, I would imagine, yeah. And, as was said last time, day and date with mobile, PC, and console. So that'll be great. everybody gets to play at the same time which was something that was sorely lacking with tpa exactly yeah it was just not fair um it just it kills the fun of the community you know everybody in the community wants to be on at the same time and when you can't then you feel like you're left behind and then you just kind of stop caring about the conversation or you or you get this whole new batch of worries that are unfounded because you didn't play it yourself. I don't know. We'll see. One thing in closing, which we've been alerted to on the forum, and that is Magic Pixel, makers of Zachary a Pinball, they have had their Android version taken down. Yeah. Yeah, which is... It happens, but the interesting thing is that they've taken the decision not to reinstate the app. And in a forum thread that is in the Android forum, we're trying to work out what rights we have as Android consumers to actually get our DLC refunded. Because it's sort of like, it'd be different if the app, like there's apps up on the Play Store that haven't been updated since 2013, but you can still play them. But this app was taken down by Google, and from what we can determine from the announcement that Magic Pixel made, it was not a – they didn't cancel the developer account. They just told them to take down the app because it had Nipple showing in Farfalla, I think, one of the tables. So they could upload and recorrect that, no worries at all. But they've chosen not to do that, which means that for anyone who has not played Zachariah Pinball on their device for a while and hasn't got the APK installed and hasn't got the tables downloaded, most importantly, they won't be able to access that app ever again. And even if you sideload the app onto your Android device, which means install it from your computer onto your phone, you won't be able to download the tables because the tables are actually controlled through DLC, And that DLC is managed through the Google Play file storage. So you basically, if you spent, I think I looked back through my purchase history and it was $25 Australian to unlock the gold membership for that. That is basically gone. So it's disappointing to see that they've taken that approach. They could have actually easily removed the offending stuff that got them breached, then re-uploaded, resubmitted, and we could still be playing it. So what they did comment in their announcement was that they are moving forward with an Android version, a new Android version with improved everything, and that is all they're working on at the moment. They're not working on Steam or anything else. It's just the Android version. So that does suggest that we can expect to see a new Android release in the near future. But what they did confirm is that because they don't hold their own database records of players and their entitlements, they won't be able to offer any cross-grade or upgrades to the new app. So if you want it, you're going to have to re-download it all again. And I don't know, based on their previous, based on how they've handled this takedown, I'm not sure if I'm willing to pay, to be perfectly honest. Yeah, that's a tough one for them. That's not a good way of handling it. That's not a good way of actually maintaining good customer satisfaction. No, but like they said, I mean, if they never kept track of the data, what are they supposed to do? They can, well... I mean, seriously, Like, what are they supposed to be able to do if they didn't if they don't have on file your email address for the account that you have? How are they supposed to determine if you were a rightful owner of the product or not? Well, you could just take a screenshot of your your app purchase because it's available in Google Play history. You say, well, this is this is my entitlement. This is what I purchased. And you can take that as proof and then send it over to them via email. and they could, if they put it into their new Android app, which surely they would have learned the lesson by now and actually had a database record and implemented that into their new app, they could actually then give you entitlements to that tier again. I just, and like they've, at least they've been transparent about it. And they said, look, you know, we are definitely not, we can't do it. We don't have a record. We don't know like who you are on Android. So we can't offer you that option. But apparently to compensate, it's going to be uh the table's going to be cheaper so it's and again magic magic pixel is all of you know like six guys yeah it's not a big studio no and look you know there's two ways of looking at this the one way is hey i've just lost 25 bucks um and i will not get that back there's no way of doing that the second thing is well what they're doing on with the let's call it Zachariah Pinball 2. It's probably got a different name, but like the second iteration of it, it's a brand new engine. It's got, it will have all the features from what I understand from the Steam version, which means all of the, the remix tables and all of that sort of stuff, better lighting, better graphics, better sound. Like it's a, it's basically a 2.0 of the app. So, you know, there, there is the, the other side of the coin where, you know, they are a small studio. They actually have to make money. maybe if you are keen with Zacharia, it might actually be, you know, worth throwing him a few bucks to help them keep doing what they do. Cause they're the only ones maintaining this digital recreation of, of Zacharia pinball. So it's one of those, it's a very hard thing and it's going to be very up to very much up to personal preference, how you feel about it and how you feel about it. Either way is fine. Either way is feeling like you feel pissed off about it or whether you feel okay about it. Both of those ways of thinking are actually fine in this scenario because it's weird. Yeah. It was unfortunate news but I guess the silver lining is that we're going to get a brand new Android app. So that's good. Alright. Well, we're going to call it this one. Yeah, we're definitely calling this over now. I just had a look at the time and I'm like, hmm, yeah. We've actually managed to do a full episode as well as me having to tack on the 20 minutes or so for the interview. So yeah, it's a big one. Exactly. Big one. Um, so as usual, folks, we, we, uh, want to pimp out our t-shirts. So go check out red bubble.com. Look, uh, do a search for blockade and that'll get you on your merry way for, uh, looking at those. Uh, make sure you follow the show on Twitter. It is at blockade. That's B L a H C a D E. In case you don't know how to spell blah. Um, and, uh, while you're at it, go ahead and follow myself at ShaggyTraps and Jared at JaredMorgz. And that'll have all your bases covered for all the shenanigans that we talk about in the show. Beyond that, go check out the website. It is blockadepinball.com slash episodes. There you will find all of our past episodes as well as show notes and links that get mentioned. But thank you, everybody, for taking a listen. Please comment on the YouTube videos. we try and get back to everybody the comments there and post stuff in that vicinity and who knows maybe when we make this particular thing live maybe we did the live chat I don't know we'll find out yeah maybe maybe of course if you're listening to it now at the very end of the episode it's too late so okay way to plan Chris also I've just before we go the I asked the question last episode whether people care about timing points in the episode I've personally received one response to that suggesting that they don't but that's only one that's not a very large data set that would be an easy one for me to go oh 100% people said they don't want the timing points so ship that I think what I'll do is I'll wait and see if anyone else comes back and ask questions And so if you're listening to this, you haven't actually thought about it, have a think about it, let me know on any of the methods that Chris has already said. Because otherwise it might just disappear, and then it's going to be up to you to scream and holler for it to get it back. And, you know, hey, once something's gone, it's not always easy to get it back. Yeah, not always. Not always. All right, folks. Well, again, thanks for listening, and we will talk to you again next time on the BlahCade Pinball Podcast. Bye-bye. Bye now. wizard amusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rolls easy to install totally unique mention blockade podcast for 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization don't forget to leave a review on itunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that blockade is delivered to we can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening Tyson in gold.