Journalist Tool

Kineticist

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

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Trololo

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·52m 39s·analyzed·Jun 6, 2017
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.026

TL;DR

Debate on Farsight discontinuing Pinball Arcade legacy console support; tuning fixes and restoration work discussed.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss Pinball Arcade platform support strategy, specifically whether Farsight should discontinue updates for legacy consoles (PS3, Wii U, 360). They debate the business logic of dropping dead platforms to focus development resources on current-generation systems (PS4, Steam, iOS/Android), drawing parallels to how other studios handle legacy console support. The episode also covers recent Pinball Arcade tuning updates, playfield restoration work on Firepower, and tangential pop culture discussion about the Trololo meme.

Key Claims

  • Pinball Arcade PS3 is still receiving updates, but very slowly compared to PS4

    high confidence · Direct statement comparing PS3 and PS4 update frequency; PS3 described as receiving patches 'very, very slow'

  • Stern Pinball Arcade has not been released on PS3, only PS4 and Xbox One

    high confidence · Explicit claim about Stern Pinball Arcade platform exclusivity to justify next-gen platform shift

  • Recent tuning patches to Pinball Arcade (Gap Month) significantly improved gameplay quality across multiple tables

    high confidence · Hosts express enthusiasm about Cirqus Voltaire and other tables post-patch; community forum reports of 'Oh my God, I love playing this now'

  • Android 6+ devices lost flipper sound effects in Pinball Arcade, which were recently restored

    high confidence · Specific technical detail about Android sound regression and fix in recent tuning update

  • Terminator 2 in Pinball Arcade received a cannon view camera angle change making multiball targets easier to shoot

    high confidence · Chris describes testing the change; camera now does 90-degree turn instead of slight angle shift like Star Trek: The Next Generation

Notable Quotes

  • “Cirqus Voltaire's tuning is delicious. I love it.”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-episode — Strong endorsement of recent Pinball Arcade update quality and community sentiment shift

  • “I wish there was a mid-year Gap Month, honestly... it makes such a huge difference to gameplay quality.”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-episode — Indicates demand for more frequent tuning updates; suggests current schedule (annual) is insufficient

  • “What I'm saying is, rather than string them along... just finally go, 'Okay, look, we're done. Let me meet up to what we had people pay for.'”

    Chris Freebus @ platform discussion — Core argument for drawing line in sand: fulfill existing obligations but discontinue new content on legacy platforms

  • “When the last table pack dropped, how many buyers did they have for that? Because this is what I'm saying. It's a dead... these three systems are dead systems, basically.”

    Chris Freebus @ platform discussion — Emphasizes business case: legacy platforms have only decline ahead, no growth potential

  • “It's amazing what a fresh coat of white on the playfield does for it—it really pops.”

    Jared Morgan @ restoration segment — Commentary on restoration work aesthetic impact; validation of playfield painting effort

Entities

Chris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonFarsight StudioscompanyPinball ArcadeproductStern Pinball ArcadeproductZen StudioscompanyCirqus VoltairegameTerminator 2game

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Farsight appears to be maintaining legacy platform (PS3, Wii U, Xbox 360) support despite minimal active player base and development drag; hosts debate business case for platform discontinuation

    medium · Chris questions: 'draw a line in the sand for these systems that are honestly weighing them down, that are hard to keep up on' and proposes explicit end-of-life announcement

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Arcade community enthusiastically embracing recent tuning updates; forum posts indicate renewed engagement and gameplay enjoyment

    high · Jared cites Pinball Arcade fans forum: 'they're basically saying that there are certain tables that they've been playing... Oh my God, I love playing this now'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Rob identified as Farsight developer handling Pinball Arcade collision/physics tuning; appears to be lead technical contact for bug reports on mesh/physics issues

    medium · Jared: 'if you're listening, Rob, you may be able to find out where that is if you have a look at the meshing'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Terminator 2 cannon view camera angle changed from slight shift (like Star Trek: TNG) to 90-degree side rotation, significantly altering target-shooting difficulty and requiring player adjustment

    high · Chris explicitly describes testing change: 'goes all the way to the side of the table... sniper shooting... really like it caught me off guard'

  • ?

    product_concern: Sticky collision behavior on Terminator 2 skill shot targets and similar tables; ball physics exhibit sticking behavior not consistent with expected play dynamics

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.158

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. Hello! You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I'm your host, Shut Your Trip, a.k.a. Chris Frebus.
0:21
That guy over there sitting, well, he's in a little window box for me, but on the other side of the world, that'd be Jared Morgan.
0:30
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, hello. Those of you who know what that's from will be laughing right now. I was going to say, was that your audition for Pentatonix?
0:41
No, that was the Trellalololol man. Oh, which I just saw yesterday. Yeah, there you go. It's been running through my head all morning. Did it open for you guys over there too? the Captain Underpants movie?
1:03
I'm not sure. I have not seen Captain Underpants. So maybe it's completely different than what you were just doing there.
1:12
It is... Oh, I know the Tra-La-La guy. Yeah, yeah. He's like an Italian singer, right? No, he's a Russian singer. Russian singer, that's right, that's right. Yeah, and it's actually... People think he's just like forgotten the words or something, but it's not. It's what they call a vocalization.
Firepower
game
Robperson
Eduard Khilperson
PlayStation 3product
PlayStation 4product
Xbox 360product
Wii Uproduct
Steamplatform

medium · Jared reports: 'targets seem to have like a stickiness to them... ball going and almost like sticking to the targets as it goes down... weird physics dynamic'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Pinball Arcade console releases scheduled roughly twice yearly; season 7 anticipated 5+ months out; creates release timing gaps that impact purchasing decisions

    medium · Chris: 'season 7 is not going to be released for another five months, probably... first couple of tables aren't going to be released... for that amount of time'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Positive community sentiment shift toward Pinball Arcade following recent tuning/bug-fix cycle; gameplay quality improvements driving re-engagement

    high · Jared: 'Cirqus Voltaire's tuning is delicious... There's a lot of people posting... 'Oh my God, I love playing this now... It's fun again'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Android 6+ devices experienced sound regression (flipper effects dropped); recently restored in tuning update, indicating platform-specific audio degradation

    high · Jared: 'flipper sounds again because they had dropped on any device running Android 6 and above... didn't have any sound effects... really frustrating'

    • 1:31
    So I actually did some digging on Wikipedia. It's strange that rabbit holes you go down when you find something. You see, the back story is that everyone at my work uses the Troll the Lol guy as, like, when things are going wrong, they just start breaking out in Troll the Lol song. And I was using it last week because it was lots of funny things were happening last week. and um so it's got stuck in my head which it often does um the guy was um i think the backstory to it is that he they the composer who actually wrote the music had a falling out apparently with um a lyricist so um the the end result was they they had lyrics written for it but they weren't really good so what um the guy did i forget his name too um but the troll guy let's just call him that for brevity's sake and i think if you go to youtube and you put troll guy it'll probably pop up yeah it absolutely will um and so he basically did a um a vocalization instead um and he just made up sounds along with the music.
    2:48
    And Cholo was born. The thing with it is, it's not so much the music and the words that make the video funny. It's the facial expressions. With which he's singing it. What would you say? Was it early 1960s? The late 50s?
    3:06
    Oh, it's color. So it would have to be like 69 or 70s, I think. Right. But think of like a Lawrence Welk. You know, you got people sitting in a cafe kind of thing and this guy is singing to them.
    3:21
    I don't know, there's just something kind of funny just about the sincerity with which he's singing it and with which everybody else is listening to it. Nobody finds it the least bit funny and yet I would be dying of laughter.
    3:36
    Yeah, as an extra on that set, you'll be struggling not to break into fits of hysterics. Right. The one you saw was the black and white one, right? Yes. The black and white one. No, I think the one I saw was black and white. Yeah, the black and white one is the very first performance of that song that's been captured on video. There's another one afterwards that basically has...
    4:03
    Let me just do a quick Google. His name is Edward Kill, and you'll know it because basically you search for Troll the Little Guy on Google and the first one that comes up is a still frame of the video.
    4:19
    And it's sort of like a sepia background with these weird sort of shapes. It looks like he's walking behind a screen, basically. And Edward Kill has the most funniest facial expressions in this video. It looks like he's not moving his mouth at all when he's singing. Because he's doing the vocalisation, he doesn't have to. It's all being made by his voice, basically. and he doesn't really need to move his lips because he's not doing any plosives in the performance. So it just looks like he's just dancing around the stage with this really strange look on his face, which adds to the awesomeness of it.
    4:59
    So, yeah, that is your little troll old guy. He's very good. He actually did a performance, I redid the performance in 2012, just before he died. And it's all in color, and he did it for, like, this Russian variety show for Christmas. And he would have been, like, I think 90 or something. Wow. He was 90, and he could still do it exactly the same as he did when he was in, you know, 30, when he was in the 70s or whenever he did the original one. So, yeah, he's a bit of a dude. What we don't know is that was the only thing his mind was capable of at that age.
    5:34
    Can you imagine? it's like hi grandpa you're like no that's right so the thing that I got it mistaken for and the reason why I got it mistaken the Captain Underpants movie opened yesterday and my son was begging me to go take him to that so I technically took one for the team although it wasn't really taking one for the team was when I went and saw the Chipmunks movie with him because I was just like ready to blow my brains out after 15 minutes of that is why I refuse, you know, if he so much as even said, let's go see Smurfs, it's like smack across the face, now dare you that's never going to happen, but I knew that he was really looking forward to this one, so went ahead and saw it, but whenever Captain Underpants is ready to do anything, he goes, tra-la-la so I was all right, okay no, I don't know, it may be related, I'm not sure, but seriously seriously doubt it um okay so what else should we talk about today what do you think um we could try talking about pinball hmm that's a big ask no it's radical it's a radical thing i know but we could try and see how we go well we'll try talking about that and if time permits i'm going to tell you some awesome facts about spiders that my wife wouldn't let her tell.
    7:08
    Okay. In other words, yes. We're going to talk about it. Exactly. So I went ahead and tried out, since you were mentioning the super fast orbits, I guess, on Terminator 2 that you felt had... I don't think they... To me, they didn't feel any different than what they used to.
    7:36
    I mean, those orbits are incredibly fast. There's no doubt about it. The thing that I noticed that changed was the cannon view. When you're going for multiball and it goes to the cannon, the whole table... It used to do what it did for Star Trek Next Generation, where the table just kind of shifted to the angle slightly. it goes all the way to the side of the table. So the table just like, you know, a 90-degree turn. So it's basically like sniper shooting the targets. Yeah, it was really like it caught me off guard. I was like, whoa, that's not the angle I was expecting to see. So that was the one thing I noticed. That makes it a whole lot easier to actually get those targets.
    8:21
    Well, yes and no, because I'm so used to shooting them the other way now. I'm screwed up I know the angle the point at which you need to shoot it I can basically it sounds weird but with the original view I could sort of visualize like I could almost draw a line with my eyes as it was going over but it's going to be interesting when you're actually trying to get super jackpot during multi-ball because you then have to revert to the old way of just trying to guess the position well it'll be kind of well yeah exactly it's not going to change camera angles on you in multiball because that'll be a bug we'd be screaming about that if that was the case I'll be honest and I will say without any shame at all I have not even been able to start multiball on that game after I played it initially I must admit I only did one or two games on it but I was completely thrown out with all the shots. So I am going to have to relearn playing that table. And I'm quite happy that I'm going to have to relearn playing that table for the record because it's great. I still, with that table, I still have a problem with the sticky skill shot stand up targets. Have you noticed those? Then if you hit them, they actually have stickiness to them. so they when you sometimes when you do a soft shot up the left ramp and it dribbles back down you'll see the ball going and almost like sticking to the targets as they go down it's got a really weird physics dynamic on those targets for me try and do it next time you do it you won't be able to unsee it once you see it you will not be able to unsee it once you see it there's a couple other tables that suffer from this as well that the targets seem to have like a stickiness to them.
    10:21
    And I think, I can't remember which ones they are off the top of my head, but I know that Terminator 2 is blatant with it. So the other thing I found with the tuning enhancements was that with Circus Voltaire, I couldn't, I had a lot of trouble replicating this,
    10:38
    i.e. I didn't replicate it. But I had a very strange collision issue shooting up the left loop, I must have just sort of glance bricked one of the stand-up targets either side of the lock ramp. And my ball just went straight up, like almost like vertical up and down, not following the loop path, through all of the playfield plastics underneath the ramp and then up sort of towards the top of the table and then managed to hit a wall somewhere up there and then stopped. I went, oh, that was weird.
    11:22
    But I was going, how could I replicate that and actually share it with Rob? Because it would have been probably a byproduct of the tuning changes that we've been doing to that area of the playthrough. The collision detection gap that you found. Yeah, it must have just been that little point somewhere in there. Based on this information, if you're listening, Rob, You may be able to find out where that is if you have a look at the meshing. But I could not do it again. And I thought, well, it's a one-off thing. I can't report it because it's not a bug unless you can reproduce it. But I just sort of mentioned it here just in case someone else has seen some funny collision issues. And if you have, send us an email at blah, blah, blah, k.gmail.com or tweet us, and we can start building a case against it. but overall, man, Circus Voltaire's tuning is delicious. I love it. There's a lot of people posting on the Pimble Arcade fans forum where, yeah, they're basically saying that there are certain tables that they've been playing that they're just like, oh my God, I love playing this now. Yes, absolutely. You know, it's fun again.
    12:32
    Yeah, I just wish there was a, based on the outputs of what Rob and the team have been able to do is Gap Month. I wish there was a mid-year Gap Month, honestly, because I know they wouldn't be able to do it. But, geez, it would be so good if we could get, like, another three tables knocked over mid-year because, man, it makes such a huge difference to gameplay quality. And having the farting saucer and decent sound effects come back too, one of the fixes they did in Android was reintroduce the flipper sounds again because they had dropped on any device running Android 6 and above so we didn actually have any sound effects which is really frustrating But they got those back in there now And again, that little sound file makes such a huge difference to how the game feels, I guess.
    13:25
    Okay, I have a question for you because this topic has kind of popped up a bit with the start of the season. This topic tends to start at the beginning of the season, and it winds up being one of these, here's why I'm not going to buy a season pass topics. Oh, right. Here we go. That'll exist. Now, the current iteration of this, and the one that really got me kind of thinking about this, the person that was complaining, they first had purchased Pinball Arcade on the Wii. Okay. And when they realized that the Wii U was, and one of the things they were commenting with that one was that patches and stuff were going through all the time. Because essentially, wasn't the Wii U just Android?
    14:14
    Yeah, it was basically a, it was using a Tegra 3 processor, and it was pretty much architecturally the same as a,
    14:27
    oh, a TF300T, I think at the time. so it's well and truly aged now but at the time it was architecturally similar to a lot of tablets on the market so anyway we obviously died a horrible death and eventually Farsight stopped supporting that. They're still releasing for it they're still releasing for it absolutely I don't know this person apparently moved on and decided that instead they were going to buy everything on the Wii U.
    15:03
    What is this person doing? Do they love abandonware? That's my thing, because I'm like, you know what? No matter how much you loved the Wii U, by the time Farsight released it on the Wii U, all the reports on all the video game sites were saying Wii U was dead. It's done. They were already talking about the code words for Switch, but it was clear that Nintendo was making a new system. And if you honestly thought that you were going to get cross-buy out of Farsight for that, well, all you had to do was look at the PS3 to PS4 and realize, no, that ain't going to happen. So it did make me kind of go, well, you picked two loser formats. You know, maybe buy a PC. I don't know. That's just me.
    15:51
    Or maybe buy a console that's from the big two, maybe. But this goes into the other reason why people go, I'm not buying the season, is because since the consoles are essentially only being updated twice a year,
    16:09
    there's no... You might as well wait and see what tables are going to get released. Otherwise, you're going to be making that complaint, where you're like, well, if I had known that it was going to be, you know, Wipeout, and I don't care about Paragon, you know, whatever. but it, you know, so you might as well wait for that. But then I also kind of sit there and, and go, well, I hope you're going to be happy when the consoles switch to another next generation and TPA doesn't transfer over to that, you know, it's, and you can guarantee that they won't be happy. Right. So it happens, but here's my, Here's my question to you. Do you think, or I should actually ask, what do you think the reaction would be? For those people that are still on a PS3 or an Xbox 360. Well, if you're on an Xbox 360, you're a glutton for punishment with regards to Pinball Arcade. But let's say you're on a PS3 because it's still getting updates, just very, very slow.
    17:20
    Do you think that Farsight, now that they did this month off and did a whole bunch of fixes, that they should make an announcement and basically go, look, here's the final patch for PS3. We're done with it. We're not going to release on PS3 anymore. We're only going to be releasing on PS4. We just want to give you the heads up that this is it. That's all the tables. Because obviously, Stern Pimble Arcade has not been released on PS3. That's only been on PS4 and I believe Xbox One. So they're clearly moving on to next gen. Xbox and PlayStation have abandoned PS3. Nobody's releasing games, brand new games for these. At least not to the best of my knowledge.
    18:04
    They sure as hell aren't on the Wii U. So, do you think there would be a load of fallout from Farsight doing this? Do you think that's something they should look at? unless the porting over to the PS3 is an absolute just flip a switch and it's done kind of thing from whatever they're doing on the PS4. But I don't believe that's the case because the lighting is completely different.
    18:33
    I think, okay, so let's use the example of PS3 to PS4 because we know for a fact that Xen offers cross-buy on that platform. So from an entitlements perspective, it would be pretty trivial for Farsight to flick the switch and allow PS4 owners to activate the new tables in PS4.
    19:02
    So for that reason alone, we already know there's already a precedent being set and Zen do it. So we know it can be done. it may require a little bit of wiring in the back end in Farsight's entitlement system and potentially linking the PS3 entitlements to PS4 but I would say that the Play Store allows you to do that as a developer anyhow that's pure speculation on my part because I haven't read the docs but I'm not even talking about entitlements I'm not even talking about allowing cross-buy what I'm saying is I'm going to make a bunch of assumptions because those make me look good assumptions exactly I am assuming that the PS4 build of Pimble Arcade is different than the PS3 build because of the lighting I do not know if the PS3 build is the same as the DX9 build on Steam now if they are identical that way there's still porting that has to be done to the PS3 because they used to do it they used to code on the Xbox 360 and then port over and do porting that way so what I'm saying is you have a system that's dead you as a studio are swamped right? so would it not make sense to put out fine, here's the patch for everything season 6 because we know season 7 is not going to be released for another 5 months probably the first couple of tables aren't going to be released on PS3 or PS4 for that matter for that amount of time so put out the patch at that time don't release any of season 7 and say this is it for this we're sorry, thank you for your support thank you for buying but we can't keep on supporting a dead platform and even if you then switched over to the PS4, you're going to have to rebuy them all anyway, if you want the tables. You see what I'm saying? Because since they don't have cross-buy now,
    21:19
    there's not necessarily... And I don't think that the install base of PS3 users that are purchasing Pinball Arcade, I can't imagine is huge at this point. I would imagine that they've all migrated over. Migrated to a PS4. PS4, right. Or switched over to some other console, you would think. So that's what I'm asking. I wonder what the fallout would be. The reason why I'm bringing this up is my son plays a game called Terraria. He has it on the PS3. They have a PS4 version. Now, we're talking significantly less money. It's $20 for a PS4 version. That's it. Wow.
    22:00
    There is no cross-buy. they just released a patch to the PS3 said hey we fixed this bug we fixed this we did all of this we made the game stable as stable as we can possibly make it that's going to be the last patch that we do on the PS3 everything else we do is going to be for the PS4 and the Xbox One here's the interesting part there's no final boss in the PS3 version they just put it in on the PS4 version so if you want to complete the game you cannot do it on the PS3. Oh, that's a bit rude. And what they used to do was your game progress on the PS3 could migrate over to the PS4. But because they just did this huge coding shift for the next generation consoles you can't even do that. You can't even migrate over anymore. So you have to start from scratch.
    22:56
    And pay $20 just so you can finish the game. Right. So as far as I'm concerned, though, I'm like, well, I asked my son, I go, have you even beaten the first boss? No. I'm like, well, then who cares about the final boss? That's not even an issue. but and I would say that if somebody was really up on playing this game they probably would have shifted by now they gave the studio gave ample notice that this was going to be happening so the people could purchase PS4 transfer their save codes before the new patch went into effect so that's where I'm sitting there going I'm like wouldn't it make sense for Farsight to basically do this. Draw a line in the sand. Draw a line in the sand for these systems that are honestly weighing them down, that are hard to keep up on, and that they have people being mad at them, and instead just come out right out and say, look, we're done with Wii U. We're not going to be putting it out on the Switch. We're done with 360. We're done with PS3. We're done with the Wii A.
    24:03
    From now on, if you want to play Pinball Arcade, it's either on the one PS4, Steam, or iOS and Android platforms and that's it? This discussion really is down to platform numbers and that's only something FastFight could answer really. Like what would be the impact from a, like how many players would be affected if they drew the line in the sand and said season 6 is the last on PS3? How many users would that affect? And that would then give you the quantifiable information to go, well then yeah, it's either a sound business decision to do it because it's going to free up X amount of development hours for the other platforms, which means more bug fixes and more improvements. It's going to mean that we're only supporting the latest gen consoles.
    24:48
    And it's going to mean that that's going to, you know, improve the development environment at the, at the business level. So, you know, there's a lot of advantages to doing it for, I would. Cause I mean, I honestly don't know. I don't know what the download numbers are. I don't know what their sales figures are for those platforms, Right. But that's one thing. The only way you could find that out is to go to the storefronts and look at the average amount of downloads for the titles. And if anyone's listening to the show, perhaps you could, and if you're a user of those platforms, perhaps you could actually tweet that out to us if you go to the storefront and look at the amount of times a game has been downloaded. Now, I know that that doesn't necessarily mean active players. I'm talking about current buyers.
    25:35
    So when the last table pack dropped, how many buyers did they have for that? Because this is what I'm saying. It's a dead – well, these three systems are dead systems.
    25:50
    Basically, there's not going to be growth on them. There's only going to be drop-off of customers. and then you're going to see those customers shift, you would hope, to the next system. But what I'm saying is, rather than string them along and be like, well, hey, look, season seven's available for me to purchase. Why not purchase it? And then they complain that they're either not getting updates or like the 360 people where they like we haven got an update since X table To just finally go okay look we done Let meet up to what we had people pay for, which would be season six.
    26:32
    Fill that obligation with the patch to make the game as stable as they possibly can, and then be like, we're done.
    26:40
    To do that, they would have to go back through what you then have to ask the question, okay, so for the game to be quote-unquote stable and as bug-free as possible, that would actually be a huge amount of work on those platforms. You just did it. You know what I mean? You just did all these bug fixes. You took a month to do it. It's not all of them, but what I'm saying is you're making this as stable as you can currently.
    27:12
    And this is... sorry, these are the bugs you're going to have to live with. Well, look, yeah, I guess.
    27:22
    Yeah, it's a tough question to ask because it all comes down to financial. I mean, I'm a bit cavalier about it because, like I said, I saw the handwriting on the wall back in season two. Long time ago. Yes. And it mystifies me that people don't see the handwriting on the wall and don't make their shifts accordingly.
    27:41
    But, yeah. Some people don't like to futz about PCs. It's a known fact. They just like the walled garden of the consoles.
    27:55
    But with that, you've got to expect that things are going to end on a console because a console has a limited shelf life. Yeah. And PCs are upgradable forever, basically. Steam is not going anywhere in a hurry. You just have to make sure your hardware matches. And that is the trade-off.
    28:17
    When I can still play the original Tomb Raider on my PC, granted it has a whole bunch of user-based hacks to make it functional,
    28:28
    but when I can still do that on my PC, whereas I would have to drag out my PS1 in order to play that game on disk, of which, again, I would say that thing came out on disk. any bugs, there was no path.
    28:45
    The thing back then is software quality is very different to the way it is now. Absolutely. Because they knew that they couldn't get it wrong. They actually had to do adequate testing on it and people would sit there for hours and days running into walls to make sure they couldn't get through them. But now they just go, whatever, we'll just solve it with a zero-day patch. Yeah.
    29:06
    Okay. Well, that was That's been something I've been commenting on throughout the week on the forum, and I just thought I'd bring it up here, see what you...
    29:17
    Throw it out to the general peanut gallery, see what everybody else thinks, too, but see what your thoughts would be.
    29:25
    Moving on, I did some painting this week. Did some painting. So you did some walls? No. So I've been working on Firepower and basically what I was involved in doing was masking off all the areas basically the entire play field I masked and then with a razor blade cut out the frisket that I would be then spraying the color white and the color red are basically the two things that I was choosing to do. I think we talked about it before with how much white there actually is in terms of there's all the lettering, there's pinstriping around the large areas, and I didn't know how severe I was going to go. But after I started masking,
    30:21
    I actually had put some of the frisket down on a pizza box and tried cutting with the razor blade the Frisket on that because that way I'd be able to see how hard I can push before the knife went into the cardboard. But also because there's all sorts of shapes on the pizza box, whether it's lettering or curves or whatever, I could see how steady my hand was with pulling off the area. I actually colored in the area and then pulled off the major masking to see how fine of a line it created. After I did that, I was pretty confident that I could do the lettering and the pinstriping on firepower.
    30:59
    So I started with the big areas that are basically where all the general illumination lights are. And then I, I did one big area and then I was like, okay, let's try the lettering. And I tried the lettering using a straight edge and I wasn't quite happy with how it went. By the time I was done after about a week and a half of doing this, I was free handing everything. I was like, forget the straight edge. If you're just very careful and going very slow, I had this OTT light. It's called an OTT light. I don't know what else to call it, but it's a portable light that just put it right on the playfield. It was shining nice and bright. I was just right up there against the playfield watching my blade doing the cuts.
    31:42
    It's amazing how fine the Frisket will let you do a cut. I mean, how narrow you can get on either side because it stays tacked to the surface. So it wasn't bunching until I actually took the razor blade and picked off and then pulled it off.
    32:02
    So it's a very precise way of asking. It was. It's very precise, and it's no less tricky. But I was able to, like I said, really do a number. If you're interested in seeing what the end results are, I posted some pics on Twitter. but there's also a thread on pin side thread is called firepower. My first pin,
    32:28
    my first share down previous podcast. So I'll put it into show, like show notes based on that last link. And, uh, there, you can really see where all the masking, even after doing the basic masking, then there was even more tape masking that had to be done. What we discovered was the, in the, the advice I've been given was to use this paint called creatics. It's this opaque paint.
    32:54
    However, my buddy with his airbrush station was shocked to see what the PSI that wanted to be shot at, which was 40 to 50 PSI. He does airbrushing usually like 15 PSI. He was like, my God, it's like he wants to hurl the paint. Well, when he opened the cap and started to pour the paint, it was thick. I mean, really thick. And he's like, whoa, this isn't like my other paint, which is kind of watery and flows really nicely. So we start spraying, and within 30 seconds, the nozzle would get clogged. Yeah. And so we spent an hour trying to shoot and trying to figure out how to get this thing to work right. And he was going on all of his airbrush forums, and everybody was like, oh, you need to dilute it 10 to 1. and all this. Then when I went on the pin side for him and the recommendation was, no, you can shoot it straight out of the bottle and a cheap $15 airbrush from Harbor Freight will do the trick. My friend is just like his head's spinning in 360 because he was just like, what? That is horrible advice because he's coming from an artistic airbrush for him.
    34:11
    Finally, he was like, all right, let's just try it. He cranked it up to because he was like, at 50 PSI, it's going to blast any of the clogs right out. And he goes, unfortunately, that means it's blasting all over your masking. All over the job. Yeah, all over the job. So it was, you know, you start the airbrush off of where you're going to spray, and sure enough, it would splatter, and then you go ahead and paint over. So what it meant, though, was no precision painting. It's very brr, brr. Yeah. Yeah, so I had to mask off even more than I initially had planned to mask just to protect certain areas. And where it really got nuts is we did all the white, dried it with a heat gun, then we went to go do the red lasers. Well, all the white that we had just painted was fairly close to some of the lasers, and I didn't want to take off any of the frisket. but the paint doesn't stick to the frisket. So if you put down any more masking tape, it was just loose and would come right off. So we wound up having to put down butcher paper and kind of like just put gobs and gobs of tape everywhere, trying to just cover because the overspray was so severe. And now we're, she was red and I didn't want the red to go splattering onto the white. Yeah. It was just brutal. so it was just like blunt force basically for painting it but it turned out pretty nice I mean it's amazing what a fresh coat of white on the playfield does for it really pops I've got to say it looks bloody good and I was having a look at the you won't see this on Twitter if you're following Blackade but on the Pinside post you can just see the level of detail that you've managed to get on the white around the pop bumpers like those jagged edges there's only one photo that you shared I could see a slight amount of lifting on the paint, but the rest of it the angles are really sharp, so it's clear that you put in a lot of time getting the points right on it. And for the most part, because I kind of then put the playfield down and stood up, you know, I put the playfield on a tabletop stood up, got in player's position, you're never going to notice. No, exactly. Especially once you populate the playfield, you're never going to notice. No, exactly right, and Probably the skirt will cover most of it anyhow. It'll be a white skirt, and all you'll see is this little jagged edge around it, which is exactly what it's designed to do, of course. It's supposed to extend the look of the skirt to make it look like it's jagged.
    36:44
    It'll be fine, and you're right. No one's ever going to notice. The only thing that slightly bugs me is the first lettering that I attempted to cut was the stuff that was at the outlanes. so it's close to the player and that was where I was using the straight edge well what I soon discovered with the straight edge I was constantly lifting the blade so I was doing all the horizontal edges first then turning the straight edge and did all the vertical but each time you lift the blade making it touch it's not necessarily it leaves a string you might say so when I went to go peel up that section, a lot of times they were connected and I had to make one additional cut. As a result, that lettering is a little bit janky, a little bit thicker than it should be. It's not quite as precise and clean because by the time I got to all the other lettering, that's when I was just doing everything by freehand. I was never lifting the blade.
    37:45
    I would transfer to my left hand and do a little bit on my left hand and then back to the right hand.
    37:52
    But again, I'm thinking, you know what, once I clear it, once I populate it, once the glass is back over the top of it, it's probably going to be perfectly fine and you'll never worry about it. I think so. So what is your decision going to be with the areas near the lasers that are completely wood? Are you going to just paint those a block color?
    38:16
    So above the planet, there's a mess in between the lasers. the lasers were a mess too but now they're nice crisp straight lines which you wouldn't believe how unstraight those lines were before so they're now nice and razor sharp straight so above the planet in between the lasers I'm going to paint that flat black good yeah and basically here's what the process is I'm going to spray clear a sealer coat basically what I've just done. Yep. Um, then I'm going to go back to my friends.
    38:56
    He's going to cut on his laser CNC machine stencils, uh, for all the insert numbers. Okay. And lettering. And so we'll, and he's going to cut that out of blue tape, I guess, although I'm going to see if he can cut it on the frisket. Um, I don't see why he couldn't. And, uh, but anyway, we'll lay that over, spray that with the airbrush. That's going to be black paint, obviously. While we're doing that, I'm going to also do the black in between the lasers and above the planet.
    39:25
    When I done with that do another layer of clear on top of that then it decision time do I want to add in stars actually I probably could add in the stars I could probably dry the black and then add in some little white blobs and just be like ta-da stars and then lay down a layer of clear on pin side I asked the play for playfield restoration guru vid, um, what he would do. And he was saying that the planet, because it's such a random mishmash of patterns that you almost can't go wrong doing it yourself. You're right. Yeah. You just put random. The trick is, is matching the base color that's underneath. Yeah. Um, so I, and the faded white base color. Yeah. And there's three different fades in the planet itself.
    40:26
    So that is, is I had a look at a really close up shot of the play field. It's actually not a fade. It's actually a, it's a dot mask that they put over the play field. So you could actually use that same technique and put a dot mask over the bit you painted and it would probably have the same effect. You just print out a bit of what do you call it? Film. If that printed on there and put it on, it would probably work.
    40:56
    Yeah, so I don't know. Again, it comes down to do I want to leave this looking like a leave it with the character of having some worn playfield aspects to it or do I want to eliminate every eyesore possible? and I'm still leaning towards leaving it somewhat with a bit of character that's what I'm leaning towards because honestly to me nothing looks worse than a bad touch up paint job when something screams look what I tried to do and I failed miserably it's much better to have it so it looks like all the other bits you've done are good they're all straight lines that look sharp and the bits that you're going to touch up, you know, with the actual lettering and the black areas above the planet, they're going to still look, they're going to look basic, but they're not going to look bad. That's the thing.
    41:58
    And I think you're probably on the money there. I would probably just let some of that character shine through on the play field. It's going to be locked in. You're not going to get any more wear on it. So that's no danger. So, yeah, I just let it ride. and it'll be uniquely yours.
    42:19
    Now, as for 8-Ball Deluxe, I'm still... Well, I haven't gone forward with any activity on that because any activity I need to do requires spending money on it at the moment.
    42:30
    Unfortunately, I now have broken the stand-up target for the two-time multiplier. So it's clearly going to need to get a full drop target set, really. It does. They're all brutal. So, yeah, currently it's, if you go for a multiplier, you pretty much start with the two times already lit, and you go straight to the three times multiplier.
    42:55
    But, yeah, that's, I'm going to go to League tomorrow and have a talk and see if anybody has any other bright ideas, but I'm pretty sure I know what the bright ideas are going to be. Spend some money. Yep. That's what it's going to be. Go replace all your connectors, and they're probably going to say, go replace all your capacitors, which I probably should. Yeah, you probably should. At least I know where I can buy the capacitors now. So there's a store near me that sells them. So I'll talk about that. Yes.
    43:31
    Yeah, so that's the update on that. It is looking good. I think not too long now before you might actually be able to put it all back together. and get it done. I think so.
    43:47
    I joked that people were guessing what's, well, basically putting out what tables they hope to see in season seven.
    43:56
    And it kind of coincides with, there's a thread that is the top 100 wishlist of tables to be in TPA. This has been going on, I don't know how many years it's been going on. The guy just basically updates it as tables are confirmed. and then alters what his wish list is. But we're only down to 15 tables left before he hits 100. Yeah.
    44:21
    But I'm pulling roller games off the list now. Sorry, I don't want it in TPA anymore yet. Okay. For selfish reasons, I should say. Until you get one. Exactly, because Lord knows if it goes in the TPA, it'll probably jack up the price then on the real thing. so same with NBA fast break right like well yeah but I don't I wouldn't plan on getting that until after other pins I mean I don't think there's that one's gonna be out of my price range no matter what so whereas roller games could be like right on the border so you know yeah it's plausible it's not impossible exactly so because I mean I think with an NBA Fast Break, those wind up being about the same price as a Whirlwind. No, as like a Whirlwind. Because Whirlwind winds up being like, I don't know, I see them priced at $3,500, $4,000 all the time. All right. I have a feeling that you can get an NBA Fast Break for about that same price. But that's just it. I'd rather have a Whirlwind.
    45:31
    Yeah, right. So in the scheme of things, it would be a, yeah, look at me talking out my butt as if I'm going to be able to get any of these. Um, so you might be able to get one if you're still both the other ones in my fantasy world. Um, yeah. In Chris's fantasy arcade where he has 50 pins lined up and his mansion. Uh,
    45:56
    Oh, gladly trade you too for that. A shiny new one. yeah, that's right. Yeah. Pinball commodities. So that's my rule to you, Fireside. Please don't put out roller games until I get mine.
    46:10
    And the next table after Wipeout will be roller games. Exactly. I'm reverse psychology-ing them. That's right. Don't put it in. Oh, wow. We managed to find one in the pinball museum that we have a partnership with now. So we're going to do it now, Chris.
    46:31
    Bad luck. That's what they do at Paragon, apparently. They got the game in. They imported the game in temporarily to do it up. From the Pinball Museum? Yeah, from the Pinball Museum because it's a pretty rare table to find. It also makes sense because Farsight doesn't have any room for these things anymore.
    46:50
    And the thing is, if you've got a commercial arrangement with a place like this, why would you invest the money in actually buying it? They've got the digital conversion equipment now up to a level of quality that would mean that even if they swore blunt, they would never not own a pinball machine if they were going to include it in the game before. But I think that's changed now with the scans and the files on hand. Not to mention the ease of access. This place isn't that far. I mean, it's probably, well, it's a half an hour drive down the mountain and then probably another 15 minutes over to the place. That's fine. Obviously, if the place is willing to let them take it up to Farsight for all their basic teardown and scans, Farsight sends it back to them. And if they need to do any tuning or anything else like that, they can go down the hill, visit the place, check it out for themselves, make notes, and do it all up again. So I think that's certainly a wise allocation of assets. Definitely. It's a smart way of doing business. For God's sakes, the collection that Farsight has currently is valuable. Oh, yeah. When you realize they own Cactus Canyon, Monster Bash, Adam's Family, Medieval Madness, Twilight Zone,
    48:11
    those are all pins that are on everybody's top list that you frequently see going for $8,000 to $10,000. Yeah, they're sitting at probably about $50,000 to $60,000 with the pins just there, really. I would almost push it up to 100.
    48:26
    With just those titles that you've actually mentioned. Right, but then I'm talking about the fact that they have probably 60 to 70 pins themselves. They would have more than $100,000 worth of pins there, without a doubt.
    48:44
    They're going to need to be doing what all these other guys do, which is buying a warehouse to store this stuff in. no I think partnering with the Pinball Museum is a good call and you know maybe there could be some sort of reciprocal arrangement there with all the games that they've got sitting in their warehouses doing nothing maybe I don't know they put the games that are in their studio out on the floor of the museum and you know let people play them if the museum doesn't have them to hand. Yep. So yeah, there's, there's a, there's a way that they could do that. I'm sure. But yeah, that's up to them. Of course. Yep.
    49:30
    I mean, they could get their boardroom back. So that's probably advantageous. Yeah. Nobody needs a boardroom, but they shouldn't, they shouldn't put those season one and two tables down until they've re-scanned them. Of course. Oh God. Yeah. Cause that will be superb. I haven't seen too much more on, um, uh, Black Knight since we last spoke but I think that's probably going to be coming out in the next DLC so Wipeout will probably see that come out as well which is going to be good, there's going to be a lot of people going excellent, I won't be playing Wipeout I'll be playing Black Knight that's exactly what's going to be happening here's your Gottlieb now play something different Here's a gogobly. Time to explore the other tables in your collection. Yes, exactly.
    50:24
    Well, speaking of exploring, I think everybody should explore their own time and stop listening to this podcast. You'll be spared the spider story, or at least my wife will. We'll save that for another time.
    50:35
    Okay, so hey, why don't you drop us a note? Jared already mentioned it, but I'll mention it again. You can give us some comments, give us show ideas, whatever you want us to talk about. Send those over to blahblahblockade at gmail.com. Check out the website, blockadepinball.com. There you will find show notes as well as links to any of the websites that we mention during the broadcast.
    50:59
    Follow the show on Twitter, at Blockade. Why are you doing that? Why don't you go ahead and follow Jared and myself? He is at Jared Morgz. I am at ShutYourTraps.
    51:09
    Do that. You will be pinball wise. well, at least wise as far as anything that we link and patch to it because we're not all that smart either. Yeah, that's right. We're just smart enough. Just enough, yes.
    51:24
    Enough to annoy the layman but not enough to impress a pin geek. That's right. Do we have any competition winners to announce? Not that I've seen.
    51:37
    Okay. No one wants free games. I guess not. Oh, well, that's a shame. Our audience doesn't like to participate in those things. No. They just like to consume. If you've ever wondered why we stopped giving away pinball shooter rods, now you know.
    51:54
    People weren't signing up. Alright. We'll talk again next week. Bye-bye. WizardAmusement.com The site to visit for custom pinball shooter rods. Easy to install. totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. Withremusement.com Sales, Restoration, Customization.
    52:21
    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 and play some pinball.