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U Interested in a New UI?

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·39m 27s·analyzed·Nov 11, 2015
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Farsight reveals new Pinball Arcade UI in beta with tournament/head-to-head features planned.

Summary

Farsight Studios UI developers discuss the new Pinball Arcade interface currently in public beta on PC. The redesign addresses space limitations from 60+ tables, modernizes the '90s-era interface, and enables future features like head-to-head play and custom tournaments. Beta testing is expected to last ~1 month before PC release, followed by mobile platform betas.

Key Claims

  • New UI will be in beta for approximately one month before PC release, then mobile platforms will enter beta

    high confidence · Mike Lindsey: 'I guess we're thinking probably about a month in beta, maybe a little bit longer, and then we should be releasing on PC. And then after that, you're going to start doing beta for the mobile platforms.'

  • The UI redesign was announced two years ago during Farsight's 12 Days of Christmas Facebook event

    high confidence · Ben: 'I think, announced it two years ago on our 12 Days of Christmas Facebook event that we usually do.'

  • Original UI screenshots shared two years ago were mock-ups/wireframes, not actual in-game footage

    high confidence · Lee: 'They were mock-ups, I believe, if I remember correctly' and Ben confirms.

  • Head-to-head play is functionally implemented but has 'a lot of fluff around it' remaining

    high confidence · Mike Lindsey: 'That's our dream. We would love to have head-to-head in there. And it's actually, I believe, functional. There's just a lot of fluff around it.'

  • Turn-based head-to-head (alternating balls) is planned initially; simultaneous real-time play is a future goal

    high confidence · Mike Lindsey: 'I think initially we might head out in that direction. But, you know, we is possible that in the future we might work on something where you'd have to both be there at the same time.'

  • Custom user-created tournaments are not yet planned but developers acknowledge they want to implement them

    high confidence · Mike Lindsey: 'We have to finish the UI first, probably' regarding custom tournament creation.

  • Tournament settings are currently manually created through database entries, not through a user-facing interface

    high confidence · Mike Lindsey: 'Right now it's database entries that we manually input... We manually set up everything through the database.'

  • Between 40-50% of old UI code was reused in the new interface; most graphics are entirely new

Notable Quotes

  • “The number of tables was definitely a driving factor. Also, just the general look of the old or the current UI is very '90s. Definitely could use some updating, and it didn't feel really polished.”

    Ben (Programmer) @ Early discussion of UI redesign motivation — Explains primary drivers for entire UI overhaul: scalability and aesthetic modernization.

  • “We have the ticker in there. We have a timer to count down to the next tournament or to the end of the tournament. I'm hoping that it'll finally update for time zones because right now our server time is off by, I think, like six hours.”

    Mike Lindsey @ Tournament timer discussion — Reveals ongoing technical pain point affecting player experience across time zones.

  • “Once you have it programmed in, sorting isn't all that difficult. I mean, it's basically just sorting based on the name of the table or manufacturer or whatever. Probably the most difficult part of implementing the sorting was just the graphical portion of it all.”

    Ben @ Sorting feature discussion — Highlights that UI/UX visual implementation often harder than underlying logic.

  • “From a coding standpoint, the old UI has just been there for so long, and there's been so many times where you just put something where you think it can fit, that kind of undoing a lot of that has been kind of a difficult issue.”

    Lee (Graphics Designer) @ Legacy code challenges — Describes classic software engineering challenge of refactoring legacy systems built with ad-hoc solutions.

  • “Steam has really been good, and it's so nice to be able to just update whenever we want... They don't really regulate us, you know. We just can—we can do whatever we want.”

    Chris Frebus @ Platform comparison — Contrasts Steam's flexibility with console platform restrictions, explaining Farsight's platform strategy.

  • “Console is really strict. Like they won't let you make any connection to anything outside. Everything will have to be submitted to them and then approved... it actually goes through... it has to go through the whole process, and then it has to stay there until we have a patch.”

    Mike Lindsey — Explains why console updates are slower and more difficult than mobile/Steam platforms.

Entities

Farsight StudioscompanyMike LindseypersonLeepersonBenpersonChris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonScott HumblepersonNormanpersonThe Pinball ArcadeproductTommy pinball machinegameNBA Fast Break

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Farsight developers participating directly in podcast interview to discuss technical decisions, gather feedback, and signal transparency about development challenges.

    high · Mike, Lee, and Ben taking time for detailed Q&A covering code reuse, platform constraints, and future roadmap.

  • ?

    community_signal: Farsight actively soliciting beta tester feedback on UX/icon intuitiveness and planning onboarding help screens; demonstrating commitment to accessibility and iterative design.

    high · Ben: 'We'd love to know that, that way we could change it and make it more intuitive' and plans for 'help screen... that kind points arrows and tells you what everything is.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Farsight prioritizing UX consistency across all platforms (PC, mobile, console) while building framework flexible enough for platform-specific adaptations.

    high · Mike Lindsey: 'One of our goals going into this was to have a really consistent theme that would go across all of our platforms that we support.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: New UI enables tournament timer fixes, platform-specific promotions, and 'Table of the Month' prominence—features previously constrained by legacy architecture.

    medium · Discussion of space limitations forcing 'crazy places' for menu options and inability to easily add features like challenge modes.

  • ?

    product_strategy: New UI enables platform-specific promotions, time zone tournament fixes, and scalable table library display (addressing 60+ table navigation problem).

    high · Mike Lindsey on ticker, timers, and platform-specific notifications; legacy UI space constraints forcing ad-hoc feature placement.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.118

0:00
You're listening to the Cade 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.
0:44
You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I am your host, Chris Frebus, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. With me, as always, is my co-host, Jared Morgan. Hello, everybody.
0:55
How goes it, Jared? I swear I just talked to you. Yeah, it just seems like, well, yesterday. Weird, like we're recording midweek or something. Yeah, that's right.
1:06
Why in the world would we be doing that? Oh, I know. We have a special treat for everybody. Joining us today from Farsight are the UI developers, the brand new UI, and the community manager. So we got Mike Lindsey. Say hello, Mike. Hey, guys. And we also have Lee, who is the, what did you say, graphics designer for the 2D interface? Yep, you got it. And we have Ben, who is the programmer of the UI. Hi.
1:37
G'day, guys. Welcome to the podcast. So, currently the podcast is in beta form and being publicly beta tested on the PC. how long do you guys think that we're going to be playing with beta before it actually goes gold I guess we're thinking probably be about a month in beta maybe a little bit longer and then we should be releasing on PC and then after that you're going to start doing beta for the mobile platforms yes so it's going to be a little while of tinkering and therefore I'm assuming you guys are hoping to get lots of feedback from from this beta to see where people's thoughts processes are yeah that's what we're hoping i can get all the uh all the stuff ironed out make it super nice for everybody cool so let's go back a little ways because this is uh okay when did this all start probably at least well almost two years ago maybe was that something yeah it was a while ago we uh i think we announced it two years ago on our on our 12 days of Christmas Facebook event that we usually do.

high confidence · Ben: 'Anywhere between 40% and 50% probably I was able to reuse in some fashion' and 'almost everything graphically is new.'

  • New music for the UI was custom-recorded, not a licensed version of 'Pinball Wizard'

    high confidence · Lee: 'We recorded that ourselves. We didn't have the rights to use the actual song' and credits Norman for musical work.

  • Platform-specific push notifications and promotions are planned for different storefronts (Steam, Android, etc.)

    high confidence · Mike Lindsey on promoting 'flash sale on Android or Steam' through platform-specific UI elements.

    • @ Console platform constraints

  • “We'd love to know that, that way we could change it and make it more intuitive... Anything from a UX standpoint, anything that just hit you... like ah, this just doesn't make sense, or it's not—it's not feeling right.”

    Ben @ Beta testing focus request — Specifies what feedback types are most valuable for beta testers during active development.

  • “Anything from a UX standpoint is what we're most concerned about. Those things—as far as like the game flow of the game and switching screens, that'll probably all be set. Probably very little changes there. But as far as just the way things look, we're open to feedback there.”

    Mike Lindsey @ Beta testing priorities — Delineates which aspects are locked vs. still malleable: navigation flow is final, aesthetics/icons are flexible.

    • game
    No Good Gophersgame
    Steamproduct
    Androidproduct
    Shield Tabletproduct
    Stern Pinball appproduct
  • ?

    product_strategy: Farsight UI redesign timeline: ~1 month PC beta, then sequential mobile platform betas; head-to-head play planned but with 'fluff' remaining; custom tournaments acknowledged as desired future feature but currently deprioritized.

    high · Mike Lindsey: 'probably about a month in beta, maybe a little bit longer, and then we should be releasing on PC. And then after that, you're going to start doing beta for the mobile platforms.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Console platform restrictions (mandatory code approval cycles, no external server connections) significantly slowing update velocity and feature deployment compared to Steam/Android.

    high · Mike Lindsey: 'Console is really strict... Everything will have to be submitted to them and then approved... it has to stay there until we have a patch' vs. Steam's '4-5 hours' deployment.

  • ?

    technology_signal: Farsight modernizing UI infrastructure from legacy '90s architecture to future-proof framework supporting dynamic feature expansion and cross-platform consistency.

    high · Ben: 'The old UI has just been there for so long... we really wanted to make it so that we could expand in any direction we wanted' and 'we threw all the game modes into their own screen.'

    • 2:46
    And now it's finally in beta. Now, when it was announced back then, was it Lee, were you just basically presenting something as a new presentation and hoping it was going forward, or was it actually actively being developed at that point? It was actually being developed and programmed. We had a playable version up and running. not nearly as far along as the current one is though so Lee those screenshots that were shared like two years ago now they were actually like proper screenshots they weren't mock-ups they were mock-ups I believe if I remember correctly yeah I think they were so like wireframes right yeah that was not in-game footage Oh, okay. Now I'm trying to think, me and Jared were debating this, is this technically the third UI? I seem to remember there being another interface on at least the PS3 before the current version that we've all known for the past. You mean the Williams collection instead of the Gottlieb collection? No, I want, I, I, well, that's where I might be confused. I could have sworn there was one right when it first came out on the PS3. And I want to say it scrolled left to right. It was just the tables.
    4:08
    Yeah, I'm not sure. I wasn't here. I wasn't here right in the beginning and I haven't seen that myself. So I'm not sure. Yeah. You know what? You got, you got new guys here who probably are. That's probably before all of our time.
    4:22
    Not entirely surprising. So, with the current UI that we've all been dealing with and the new UI that's coming through, apart from the unwieldiness of having now, you know, 60-plus tables to scroll through, what was the driving push to now make this an active component that Farsight was going to develop and put out? Yeah, you know, the number of tables was definitely a driving factor.
    4:58
    Also, just the general look of the old or the current UI is very 90s. Definitely could use some updating, and it didn't feel really polished, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah. But were there things with the old UI that you kind of felt saddled with, that you were trying to just make do with as long as you possibly could? And with this new UI, you're going to be able to fully take advantage of everything you guys have planned?
    5:31
    Yeah, a lot of times we, like the challenge modes, we wanted to add the challenge modes in. And we were like, okay, well, we need the button on the main menu somewhere to be able to do that. you know we just kind of threw stuff in wherever we could wherever we could fit it another really big problem we ran into was uh when we started having multiple seasons and and being able to buy the different tables we ran out of room real fast on the main menu yeah i remember all the previous seasons and then the current season right yeah we were actually having to throw options into a lot of just crazy places where it was hard, you know, difficult for the user to find. So it was definitely due for an update. So the user would be able to get around the interface a lot more quickly and get to things like the table of the month much more quickly, you know, just have it right out there in the front. Well, I love seeing it right there on the front. I mean, especially if you've like, okay, fine on the PC where I have most of the tables, but if I go on my phone where I don't have any of the tables and I just want to see what the free table a month is yes it'll be just boom there yeah it's gonna be really nice and then uh also i mean like you mentioned with the basically the storefront um it'll help identify easier what you need to buy correct yeah yeah that's what we're hoping that uh we really want to go to show what you own and what you don't own and what's available and a really nice easy to look at format right
    7:12
    The icons that are currently on the UI, I was describing in our last podcast that some of them are still not quite as intuitive. I mean, it's one of those things where I think that once I start playing with it, I'm going to understand. But even just when we were speculating what the icons were, we were like, I have no idea what that might wind up being. Are they placeholders more or less or are they still in the tweaking phase? what is basically I should ask is what are we going to be tweaking in the beta versus what we visually are seeing?
    7:48
    I assume you're talking about the icons across the, like the main menu. Yeah. You know, things like the, the one where it was just the flipper and the ball or then there was one next to it that was the controller. I mean, we all understand the universal symbol of the gear being that's your settings button.
    8:07
    Yeah. Since they are icons, there's going to be a little bit of a learning curve there, just kind of an adjustment.
    8:15
    The actual icon may change. It's not impossible that it may change. I mean, you could always do things like put long press hover text over it for the mobile interface or, you know, if you can sort of like select and leave the cursor on there for a bit, you can give a tool tip or something like that, which might work around some of the initial learning curve. yeah one thing we were uh that is not in the beta is we're hoping as soon as to have a screen as soon as you open the arcade to uh uh have like be like a help screen like one of those help screens that kind of points arrows and tells you what everything is all right let's look at overlay type of thing yeah that'd be cool yeah just kind of you know orient people better I will say in the limited time that I've spent with the UI, just kind of futzing around and poking about, seeing what the potential was there.
    9:14
    Then I had to, in order to play the tournament, since the current build, the scores were kind of messed up for how they were displaying. So I went back to the old build and immediately was like, no, I want the new one. so it's it's already effective just even in this state um just visually i i mean again once i once i loaded up the screen and saw all the tables i mean that really is an impact when you see exactly how many tables you guys have produced yeah um i i feel like it a little deceiving it feels like there there not very many tables but there are quite a few Well then when you start scrolling it like ooh
    10:00
    Now, how difficult was it to apply all of the, you're allowing us to sort the tables in all manner of different fashion.
    10:10
    Was that a difficult thing to implement or was it kind of just go with the flow easy once you had it programmed in? Sorting implementation wise, I mean, once all the tables were there and displaying, sorting isn't all that difficult. I mean, it's basically just sorting based on the name of the table or manufacturer or whatever.
    10:35
    Probably the more difficult, probably the most difficult part of implementing the sorting was just the graphical portion of it all. because there are a lot of stuff we're doing on the new UI that wasn't in the old ones, so there's a lot of new code that had to be written.
    10:55
    Now, is that going to be the UI as we're seeing it with the PC? Is it going to be very similar to what we see on the mobile?
    11:06
    That's what we're hoping, yeah. One of our goals going into this was to have a really consistent theme that would go across all of our platforms that we support. There's going to be inevitably some things that we'll have to change across platforms. Sure, especially when on phone or mobile, a lot of times people are playing in landscape mode versus portrait mode or vice versa, just the very nature of how you hold your phone. Is there anything being pushed through? I know that at one time there was talk, and I'm assuming that it's still kind of there, with one of the reasons why you needed the new UI was because of, I think, certain tournament settings that you guys are going to be doing and whether you're going to be adding head-to-head play to this.
    11:55
    That's our dream. We would love to have head-to-head in there. and it's actually I believe functional there's just a lot of there's a lot of fluff around it when you dad in no just so I can define what head to head you're talking about the classic you know I play ball then you play ball then I play ball you play a ball not like score tax but we're both playing at the same time kind of thing correct yeah getting it synchronized to play at the same time was something that's not in our plans. Yeah. I remember that at one point, Ryan on Android did a very early, early test of that. And it was really cool to see the scores ticking up in real time. But there was some real challenges with particularly on mobile, getting GSM stuff working right. So the actual getting it all to travel over mobile networks and the various ways that You have to pass through the data through all those networks. It was really causing you guys a whole headache. So, yeah, having a turn-based system, I think, will be, it's, I guess, more traditional pinball.
    13:10
    So, yeah, I think that will be a good move. Yeah, I think initially we might head out in that direction.
    13:16
    But, you know, it is possible that in the future we might work on something where you'd have to both be there at the same time and, you know, and possibly even be playing at simultaneously in the game with live, you know, with the ball live going back and forth from player to player. And that I believe is a goal. That sounds pretty cool. I think especially if they ever bothered to, you know, get NBA fast break in there and then we get head to head against that. I'm just going to push that as much as I possibly can. Sorry.
    13:48
    You know, link table. Yeah, I know. It'd be awesome. yeah there's a lot of uh interesting possibilities that that would open up to especially with tournaments right could do some engine yeah that way speaking of tournaments and this is purely because we're selfish and uh it's one of our requests is there any chance of being able to create a custom setting tournament that the the user themselves can set up and run among their friends.
    14:24
    I would personally love that and I would like to push for it because I think it'd be great to be able to say, hey, I want to play with this and this person on this and this table with this score set. I think that'd be great.
    14:42
    We have to finish the UI first probably. Would that be linked into what you're talking about with the head-to-head play? or would it be just a completely separate programming just like how you guys do with your monthly tournament?
    14:56
    We may need to think about how we are implementing our tournaments. I'd be, just as an aside, and feel free not to answer this if it's like inside baseball stuff, but how do you actually go and set up a tournament each month? What is involved in actually doing it? Because it sounds like it's a little bit more complex and just like clicking tables to activate into a tournament, right?
    15:20
    Yeah, it's a little bit more complex. And I'm hoping that at some point we can, you know, start creating a new system that makes it a little bit easier. But right now it's database entries that we manually input. We input each tier and we select the tables and the tables have, you know, numbers that are associated with them and we put those numbers in. and we manually set up everything through the database. Right.
    15:49
    I'm not quite sure. Do you actually change the tables over to tournament settings for the tournament, like disable extra balls and stuff like that? I haven't actually played a tournament for a couple of months now, and I'm a bit hazy on that. We currently don't. Because that would require a completely different emulation set for each table. Yes, different ROM settings. Yes. Right. Yes. And I'm thinking that maybe in the future we might be able to implement tournament settings on a table that are in the tournaments. They can be in tournament mode.
    16:23
    But that's not promising. Yeah, that's just – I would like to have at this stage. Yes, we would also like to do that. Yeah, it's something we'd like to do. Yeah, that would be pretty cool. I was thinking the same thing just in terms of it'd be funded to have different style tournaments like pin golf for example right? like which? like pin golf for example first to 10 million points on a table first to get 5 holes in one for example on no good gophers or something like that, that'd be really cool that type of thing it'd be a bear but it'd be cool yeah yes well you know maybe You know, maybe when we come up one of these meetings, sometimes we can put it on the list. You know, that's why we talk to you guys.
    17:08
    Is there anything that we don't know that you're possibly wanting to implement with the UI? I mean, that isn't painfully obvious just with what we're looking at.
    17:21
    In other words, are you making it open-ended that you can add more stuff to later? yeah that that was uh in view of the problems we ran into with with space we we really wanted to make it so that we could expand in any direction we wanted to okay so um like the we threw all the game modes into their own screen so we could add more game modes if we wanted to if we wanted a new a new challenge mode you know we could do that without uh too much trouble so So the new UI really is a future-proof framework, I guess you could say, that allows you to plug things in really easily rather than – I imagine with the older UI, you had to sort of really think about what you're putting where and, you know, to make sure that it was – because it was a shared UI across all platforms, you had to make sure that it wasn't going to impact mobile, for example, or console players or things like that, whereas this is more of a unified approach.
    18:22
    and it allows you to sort of shove things in where you need to shove them. Yeah, we actually have some space for things now.
    18:30
    I remember in the Android interface, the settings menu sort of became a bit of a dumping ground for stuff that you guys obviously had limitations on with the menu. You sort of just had to put a lot of the settings stuff like, for example, Kickstarter backer information went into the settings menu and stuff like that. Have you been able to sort of, it sounds like you have been able to sort of break that out much more into a better sort of category system or a better focus on the information inside the UI?
    19:09
    Yes and no. We have, to a certain extent, been able to kind of consolidate things and move things around. We moved some things. One thing we moved is the game settings. When you first land on a table, you get the table menu and then the table settings where you can switch to two-player, three-player, four-player. That's in the top middle of the screen, is it? I just trying to visualize the interface because I just been living vicariously through Chris at the moment because I on Android So I can actually play it So is that sort of top center of the screen I noticed it was like a gear icon and sort of like a little mini options menu when you're in the flyover view of the table.
    19:54
    We actually moved it into the table menu. So there's just the table. Cool. Yeah. So, so we did reorganize some things, but a lot of it also is still kind of still the same as it was. I imagine the way you have it set up now too it will be more obvious when special things are going on with Farsight whether it be that a tournament is running that particular week or next time you guys do a Kickstarter that it'll just pop up right away on that main screen we have the ticker in there we have a timer to count down to the next tournament or to the end of the tournament oh and the end of the tournament I'm hoping that it'll finally update for time zones because right now our server time is off by, I think, like six hours. And that gets people pretty confused with the tournaments too because it'll say a time on there. And the game itself doesn't compensate for the time difference on the server. So I'm thinking we'll probably get that in there. That'd be pretty nice to make it more intuitive for the players. I imagine it gives you guys a real opportunity to do things like promote promotions per platform as well. So you could actually do, say there was a flash sale on Android or Steam, you could actually push notifications direct for those platforms into the UI and not actually spam everybody, if you get my idea. Yeah, it could be platform specific. I'm hoping that would be that way we can communicate different messages. Yeah, that'd be really good. I like that you could do that because I'm thinking that it might pull the information from a database, you know, just directly from it so we can update the text and the ticker or, you know, maybe change an icon on the front page. But it all just depends on the platform, like what they require us to build into it. Yeah.
    21:53
    Because a lot of times they won't let you communicate with the outside servers, you know. All right. Pressure on call. Console's really strict. Like they won't let you make any connection to anything outside. Everything will have to be submitted to them and then approved. And then, you know, so, so it actually goes through.
    22:10
    I was going to say, sorry. It's, it's almost like a, for consoles, it is actually a code change rather than a, a customizable push notification. So it's physically a commit into their bill chain that they need to then approve and push down. Yeah. Usually everything's built in like that. And that makes a lot of things a little more difficult to get done because it has to go through the whole process and then it has to stay there until we have a patch. I've got a pain in the ass. That's such a pain. That must be so frustrating.
    22:43
    Yeah, it is pretty frustrating with the consoles. Yeah. Once again, I'm reminded of why I jumped from playing on PS3 and went to Steam, and I'm much happier for it.
    22:56
    Yeah, Steam is a good, it's a definitely good platform. It's funny, too, because I was thinking about how much effort just went into even trying to get onto the PC and trying to get into Steam when you had to go through that green light process. And, you know, when you're thinking, oh, do we go through Steam to go through Origin or whatever the other platform was that was a possibility. And it was just like, now that we're on Steam, I've almost eliminated what the thought process was back then and how much of a pain it was.
    23:28
    Yeah. I remember, too, we were thinking of just self-distributing, too. Oh, yeah. Steam has really been good, and it's so nice to be able to just update whenever we want. Oh, and then the updates happen so fast. That's what's incredible. It's just like all of a sudden Mike Reitmeyer will throw up a notice and say, oh, this just went up, and I'll go check it. Yep, sure enough. It's already downloaded and in.
    23:56
    Yeah, they don't really regulate us. you know we just can we can do whatever we want that's great so it's pretty much like android and you just submit the patch and away you go it's live in about four or five hours yep android is very easy going um the only the only thing with android is is sometimes it takes a few hours for it to propagate to the store but we don't have that problem with steam and you know we just push it and then everybody downloads it pretty much wow that's really good yeah so what do you think the um the the biggest challenge you've had with the converting things from the old ui to the new ui has been what do you think that like the top thing was that's caused you guys the most frustration doing it yeah this is a lee and lee and ben yeah well from a coding standpoint the the old ui has just been there for so long and there's been so many times where, you know, like we've already discussed where you just put something where you think it can fit, that kind of undoing a lot of that has been kind of a difficult issue.
    25:05
    Just dealing with code that's been there for so long, so many years, you almost have to kind of just back away, get rid of a lot of the stuff that's been added and kind of build it up again. So imagine, yeah, it sounds like you're speaking to a bit of like this happens in pretty much every software project, the issue of code rot and having that legacy code that you've got to sort of work around. And yeah, you're right. Sometimes you kind of just need to throw it out and start again.
    25:35
    It's a really tough call to make because I imagine there are, you know, getting into more of the business side. I think there's definite cost implications that you need to factor in when you're doing something as major as a UI rewrite and balancing out, you know, the cost versus, you know, reusability of the code and all those sort of tough business things, I guess.
    25:59
    Definitely. The more you throw away, the more time you spend building it back up. And then there's the consideration of what happens when you want to add stuff later. So then when you're building it back up, you've got to make sure that you don't run into the same problem that you did before.
    26:14
    Yeah, exactly. For some reason, I had this visual of grandma's house, and you're now up in the attic going, what the heck is all of this? And trying to clean it all out, and it's like, maybe we just tear down the whole building and start afresh. I don't know.
    26:30
    This is another interesting question. So if you were to put a figure on it, how much code do you think you're able to reuse with the new UI?
    26:46
    Pretty close to half. Oh, that's pretty good. Maybe 40%. Well, it depends on what you consider UI code. I kept a lot of the lower level stuff. Yeah. Because essentially you'd be keeping the, I'd imagine the database structure would be pretty much static, but it's the front end that we see that would be changing.
    27:09
    Yeah, pretty much all of that was written. Yeah, a lot of the basic stuff I kept, but pretty much all the fluff was gotten rid of and rebuilt. Okay. Yeah, it really depends on what you consider actual UI code. Yeah.
    27:29
    But yeah, anywhere between 40% and 50% probably I was able to reuse in some fashion. That's good. I mean, there'd be stuff like graphic assets, like the ball icon logos that you could definitely reuse and that sort of thing. But I guess it depends on the differences between the old framework and the new framework, how much code you could actually recycle. Yeah, and I think graphic asset wise, we got rid of most of it, didn't we? Most of it's new. Yeah, I almost everything graphically is new. I think we even changed the even changed the little arrow for the indicator when you're in the table of instructions. Oh, like a little hovering arrow that points to the feature. Yeah, the little green. I didn't even think to look at that. I'll have to boot that up and see.
    28:20
    We went deep, as deep as we could. I think there might still be a little bit left. We've got the new music. I love the new music, just saying.
    28:33
    It's good. We were cheekily referring to the old music as the cheesy pinball wizard in the older podcast. I mean, you guys had the, this was a, from what I understand, it was actually a Pinball Hall of Fame sound file, wasn't it? Or am I wrong there?
    28:53
    What, the sound that we're using now? No, the existing sort of like the slightly similar Pinball Wizard, the cheesy Pinball Wizard.
    29:01
    Oh, it could be, I don't know. It may be, I don't know. Yeah. No, it's good to have. Of course, because you guys used the actual Pinball Wizard song that made the forum threads explode with speculation of, oh, that means they have the rights to Tommy for pinball. That's a long bow to draw.
    29:22
    Yeah, the licensing for the music and then the licensing for the pinball table are going to be pretty separate. It's interesting too, because that Tommy pinball machine is actually a stage production not the Who production of the music so that going to be interesting again yeah yep yeah we recorded that ourselves we didn we don have the rights to use the actual song um but i don't know if you guys were fooled or not so that was actually you guys did like re-recorded people with it yourself wow no i didn't even pick it well done nice nice work so yeah norman was uh he was down doing a lot of uh sessions and getting it all together and he got to use his tremendous musical skills there. Sweet, yeah. I didn't even pick it. Nice work, Norman. Hats off, man. Yep.
    30:10
    Yeah. Now, I would be remiss if I didn't ask, even though I'm sure you probably can't answer. So I'll try and skate it as close to the edge as I can. But this new UI, will it have any similarities to the Stern Pinball app UI that you will be doing? Probably too early to say one way or the other, but probably the Stern UI will have it.
    30:34
    Okay. I will accept that, and I won't push farther, because I know you guys really can't say anything about it. Yes.
    30:42
    Super embargoed. Well, I think that is about the time that we normally spend in this little podcast.
    30:51
    I think that's about all the UI questions that I can possibly come up with. I guess I've just got one to maybe close us out here, Chris. Yeah. For when, cause the, the PC is now in public beta, right guys. So anyone can go in and plug in and test this for you guys.
    31:09
    Yeah. What do you think the biggest focus point for beta testers should be at the moment? Like what's the, the things that you're most concerned about, I guess that you want us to focus on?
    31:25
    Anything from an arc standpoint, anything that just hit you know like you were mentioning about the icons like ah this just doesn't make sense or it's not it's not feeling right you know we'd love to know that that that way we could change it and make it more intuitive those things as far as like game the flow of the game and switching screens that'll probably all be set probably very little changes there but As far as just the way things look, we're open to feedback there. One other thing I had to, and this is probably something that will reveal itself when Android gets its turn, or the mobile platforms get their turn at beta testing. But I note that with Chris was saying that on the PC, you can actually configure what keys are used for controllers, hardware controllers. Now, I'm just wondering at this stage, do you guys know if that might be something that we can do on Android? I'm speaking Android here because I know that iOS has limitations on hardware controllers.
    32:34
    But on Android, I know that it's been implemented using the Mocha API. I'm just wondering if plans are afoot to make that more universal and configurable.
    32:47
    That might be a question for Scott. humble. I don't believe we have plans for it yet. But that does sound like something that would be pretty cool if we put it in. And we definitely want to do things that are make the game more fun for everyone. I think the biggest thing that I've been longing for for ages now, and it's kind of half implemented now on Android, where you can actually navigate everything using a controller. So everything has a key map and a navigation flow to it. So for me, this would allow like for people like me with a shield tablet we actually have hdmi out so we could connect the shield tablet up to a pc up to a monitor and pretty much have a like an android console that you can play um in the arcade on and leave the couch so having having that sort of deep level menu navigation would just be such a huge win and from what i understand the uh wea platform has quite a similar sort of a navigation structure because it is completely controller-based. So maybe add that to the list of please haves for mobile.
    33:57
    We hear you. We definitely hear you. Yeah, and also, sorry, Scott, in advance, because I probably just added eight to ten weeks to your workload.
    34:06
    You don't have to cut. Well, hey, guys, I really appreciate you. come on here and spreading the info about this new UI. I'm certainly very pleased that it's here and, like I said, from what little I've messed with it, going back to the old UI, it was a needle to the eye.
    34:28
    You're definitely on the right track, no doubt about it. It's looking really slick. Early beta looks really promising and I think as more platforms open up, you're going to get a wider set of feedback based on those different, perhaps slightly different interface requirements. And it's just going to get better and better. So really great job, guys. I think you're on to a winner there.
    34:51
    Yeah, thank you. Thank you. That's what we're hoping. Yeah, we want it to be awesome. All right, guys. Well, hey, again, thanks for talking to us. And anytime you want to come on, let us know, and we'll let you spill whatever beans you feel like spilling or get whatever feedback you need from us. always happy to post Farsight on the Blockade podcast. Absolutely.
    35:13
    Thanks for having us. It was actually pretty fun. We'd be happy to do it again. Thanks, guys. Until next time. Thank you so much.
    35:24
    All right, Jared. That also wraps it up for us. I think this might go down as the first successfully short podcast. I haven't been keeping track of time, but you could be right. This is probably about the shortest. That being said, it also might be the most packed with pinfall information that we've had yet. Definitely no pinball warnings will be put into this podcast. There's plenty of pinball here for everybody. And I think that's pretty cool. Yeah, it was good. Good to actually have a chat with the guys about it. So yeah, it'd be interesting to see reactions from this. And you heard it, everybody. Go deep dive into the public UI on, or public beta of the UI on a PC platform, poke every button,
    36:10
    give suggestions, and they will certainly listen. And that way we can get the best product possible. But it certainly seems like the door has been opened that they can adapt and push forward with this in the future. So that's fantastic. I really do get the feeling that the UI will allow them to scale really well as more and more tables get added to the collection. And, you know, I think they do have room in the UI from the sound things to expand on features. And that's really the biggest thing for this new UI. I think it's going to be great. Yep.
    36:50
    All right. Well, again, I'd just like to say thank you to the boys from Farsight. That was Ben, who was the programmer, Lee, who was the graphic designer, and Mike Lindsay, who's the community manager for joining us today. Also, thank you for Jared Morgs for cutting into his normal work day to do this because we recorded on a day that we don't normally do this. Yeah, that's right. Anything for good information for our listeners. So I'm down with that.
    37:22
    Damn straight. Yeah, suddenly Pinball Whiz 45B showed up and goes, what did I miss? You missed everything, dude. Everything. All the things. But that is a good reminder, folks. If you follow us on Twitter, especially if you follow Blockade or at Blockade on Twitter, we send out the push notice for when we're doing these recordings, and you can join us live and be able to comment in the side there or listen live and see what's what before we actually push this out onto the various podcast catchers. That's right. Before we actually add sound and things to it. you can get the raw version here and you can ask us questions in real time, or we might even let you in and you can have a chat if you're nice. Yes. So that being said, we're going to say later days and we'll see you all again next week. Who knows? We might have another surprise interview. We are. Things are happening. We're not just sitting on our little laurels and doing nothing here. Little laurels.
    38:28
    All right. See you later, guys. All righty. Thanks for listening. 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 wizardamusement.com sales, restoration, customization remember to leave a review on iTunes or any podcasting channel Blockade is distributed through we can't improve and they should tell us how until next time remember go for it