Episode 57 – Tanio Klyce (Deadpool Software Ninja)

Head2Head Pinball·podcast_episode·2h 17m·analyzed·Aug 20, 2018

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.024

TL;DR

Stern Deadpool team reveals extensive art/code work, upcoming fourth mode, and post-launch development plans.

Summary

Stern Pinball's Deadpool development team conducts a live factory tour and gameplay demonstration, showcasing the game's extensive art pipeline, innovative rule mechanics (team-ups, battle modes, quests, multiballs), and post-release development roadmap. The presentation highlights thousands of hand-drawn pixel art frames, interactive LCD backgrounds, character-specific abilities, and confirms upcoming content including a fourth mode and additional secret features.

Key Claims

Deadpool contains thousands of frames of hand-drawn pixel art, individually modeled in 3D then converted to pixels and cleaned up frame by frame
high confidence · Tim Sexton and art team presentation during factory tour
Tanya is the lead programmer on Deadpool and this is her first time as lead programmer at Stern Pinball
high confidence · Tim Sexton introduction of Tanya
George Gomez designed the Deadpool game and contributed original shot concepts
high confidence · Tim Sexton credits George Gomez as lead designer
Additional content is planned post-launch including a fourth mode and secret features not yet revealed
high confidence · Closing remarks confirming 'Fourth mode Deadpool is coming up' and 'some cool new secret stuff'
The interactive LCD game within Deadpool shows classic Stern games (Sea Witch, Frenzy) in the background as Easter eggs
high confidence · Tim Sexton describes 8-bit lair background with classic Stern titles visible

Notable Quotes

“Tanya is the lead programmer on the game. So she is responsible for everything that goes in here. And this is her first time as the lead here at Stern Pinball doing games. But she knocked it out of the park with this.”
Tim Sexton @ Early in presentation — Confirms Tanya Kleiss as lead programmer and highlights first-time lead role success
“All these individual frames of animation were modeled in 3D, then converted to pixels, and then cleaned up frame by frame. So we have thousands of frames of hand-drawn pixel art in the game.”
Tim Sexton @ Art discussion — Details the unprecedented pixel art production scale for Deadpool
“We're not done yet. We're still adding stuff. Fourth mode Deadpool is coming up. There's a bunch of more additional polish that's gonna go into a lot of the animations and a lot of the stuff that you saw. There's some cool new secret stuff that we're not gonna talk to you about today that's also coming.”
Tim Sexton @ Closing remarks — Confirms post-launch content roadmap and ongoing development
“So if you were personally recording this bootleg video, I will sue you if it shows up on the internet.”
Host @ End of stream — Indicates Stern's protective stance on unreleased content footage
“So there's a risk-reward element. Once you hit it, you actually reset the value of everything. So you want to kind of keep boosting it, but make sure you don't drain so you don't lose that jackpot value.”
Tim Sexton @ Colossus mechanic explanation — Describes innovative risk-reward design philosophy in Deadpool rules

Entities

Tanya KleisspersonTim Sextonperson George Gomezperson Jeremy Packerperson Zombie Yetiperson AlexpersonDenypersonMark Silkperson

Signals

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community_signal: Stern conducting live factory tour with full development team presenting gameplay and design philosophy to media/community
high · Entire Head2Head Pinball episode structured as factory tour with team introductions and live gameplay demonstration
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design_philosophy: Deadpool implements risk-reward mechanics where players must balance building jackpot value against risk of draining and losing accumulated progress
high · Tim Sexton explaining Colossus mechanic: 'So there's a risk-reward element. Once you hit it, you actually reset the value of everything. So you want to kind of keep boosting it, but make sure you don't drain so you don't lose that jackpot value.'
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design_philosophy: Stern incorporating easter eggs of classic Stern games (Sea Witch, Frenzy) in interactive LCD background as homage to company history
high · Tim Sexton describes 8-bit lair background showing 'Sea Witch in the background. You'll see some Frenzy and a bunch of other Stern games' visible in interactive sections
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personnel_signal: Tanya Kleiss promoted to first-time lead programmer role on Deadpool, successfully delivering complex rule set
high · Tim Sexton: 'Tanya is the lead programmer on the game...And this is her first time as the lead here at Stern Pinball doing games. But she knocked it out of the park with this.'
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product_strategy: Deadpool has confirmed post-launch content including fourth mode and unspecified secret features coming after release
high · Tim Sexton closing statement: 'Fourth mode Deadpool is coming up. There's some cool new secret stuff that we're not gonna talk to you about today that's also coming.'

Transcript

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14:06

perfect ladies and gentlemen what is going on welcome to the stern pinball factory ladies and gentlemen we are in the cafeteria today as you are uh we're gonna be streaming some spider-man pinball it's gonna be great

14:23

Deadpool we've got the entire freaking team here the entire team we got artists animators designers programmers the works and we're gonna let Tim or George whoever wants to do it Tim will do it Tim's gonna give you like a sort of play-by-play on how the other rules go down but if every wants to get in here and introduce yourself please feel free yeah hi I'm Tim Sexton I was a programmer working on Deadpool the game what you're gonna see today you guys are gonna be really excited to see all the stuff we have going on and we've got a huge team of people here that have been working on the game so first there's George Gomez here he's the Holyfield is better designed a ton of games you put everything you had into this game you put some really awesome ideas really awesome shots you've never seen before in the game and you know we're happy to work on this game with him got it's on your clothes over here like to introduce Tanya [Applause] this is the Tonya is the lead program on the game so he used responsible for everything that goes in here and this is his first time as the lead here at Stern pinball doing games but knocked it out of the park with this soil you love a hill we've got Jeremy here Giambi Eddy here he did the the text bubble right here yeah that was that was mine as well as the rest of the yard on the play field and if you guys can see here we've got this amazing art package on the game we've got you know art everywhere back last sides this is the pro right now looks a little busy to me kind of working doing it's not bad for a first pass and we've got a ton of other people here too so to talk about all the other stuff we have in the game I'm going to start up the game and sort of start walking through it so hit the start button and you guys may have seen this from Facebook we've got a background we've got this interesting 8-bit style that we've never done before in a pinball machine so this is actually Deadpool's layer here and this is where he's playing his own pinball machine and you'll see the sea witch in the background you'll see some frenzy and a bunch of other stern games and as you hit the different shots around the play field like the Dazzler spinner you'll see Dazzler you'll see Colossus when you hit the Colossus shot we have a whole entire interactive game within the game that we've done for this game we've got a ton of our a ton of awesome stuff in here so just right off the bat when you plunge the ball into the top lanes from the skill shots the popovers spawn ninjas so now that Interactive's at the game these ninjas are coming out here and all these individual frames of animation were modeled in 3d then converted to pixels and then cleaned up frame by frame so we have thousands of frames of hand-drawn pixel art in the game and I'd like to introduce it at this point the art team because they knocked it out of the park with this game art director for the motion graphics in Stern and he's responsible for coordinating literally every piece of art that goes into our games I like pixels pixels pixels and then this awesome background we have here this was done by Josh play puts the details into ton of environments in the game all those classics Stern games and everything he put that in here he put disco ball you put everything together and there's gonna be a ton more levels we're gonna see throughout the game and Josh did also some other animations like some some wipe effects we have some really cool stuff in the fight scenes yeah we also have Alex Alex Alex I'm sorry Alex did all the animations of all the characters in the games so he's taking that Deadpool character or the Dazzler character the Colossus character all the enemy characters or siren or everything and he he made it work in the game and it's it's looks sweet like I said thousands of frames of hand-drawn pixel art in here

19:54

danai here did also a ton of work in the game he did a lot of the little Deadpool 3d animation so you may have seen him holding the bomb it could have exploded in front of pins that was all deny who you know came up that whole idea and created the character and so I'll just show off right here there there's some of the denies a little bit pool but we'll see more of that we've also got mark llaves mark mark left but he did a some whole screen effects some icons some HUD elements that you see on the screen and we've got Zach you disappeared levels the quests yeah and we did deny it yes so that's the art team and I'll go back into the game now and then we'll do programming team letter so later so just to like play the game see already something into's you saw a couple of other characters so as you hit this Dazzler spinner you're advancing the disco modes you can see the icon come up of how many disco spins you've hit in the pro we've got disco multi ball you qualify after enough spins there and in the premium with the up-down ramp you actually get a another disco mode that we won't be able to show because this is the pro but there's really cool stuff with the up-down ramp yeah you've got this shot corresponds to Colossus every time you hit this Colossus is actually boosting the value of different things around the play field and all those points go into what eventually becomes the Colossus jackpot in the game and if you hit it as a combo of going through it around there you'll get a double Colossus jackpot later in the game so there's a risk/reward element of once you hit it you actually reset the value of everything so you want to kind of keep boosting it but make sure you don't drain so you don't lose that jackpot value and that happens throughout the game at all points got the ninja pop umbers which spawned more ninjas and then taking out the ninjas you know Deadpool can take it up with the shots please build up the ninja multi ball jackpot every single ninja you take out there's ninjas all throughout the game and they also ability your bonus and on the center spinner maneuvering so Wolverine does a couple things if you go through a spinner I know these ninja stars a little sharp going through his spinning around the loop which is easier to hit from a flipper and impossible hitting your hands so you had you advanced different characters around the loops and he actually helps you double your damage that you do in all the battle modes and also if you hit his target and go up the ramp here that combo builds up your and play field multiplier so it's actually throughout the game that's the physical shot dictates your play field multiplier it's never like qualified and the shots tough to hit but it's super satisfying when you shoot it flies up that ramp and you'll see that especially when Keith plays because he can nail that shot yeah you get some some play field multiplier boosting and then as you move up the playful multiplier Leto levels you have to keep hitting that shot to advance it or else your time will run out and once like the pauses time his his eyeball is actually blink faster and faster to indicate that you're running out of time in your play field multiplier as well as the actual light itself on the right orbit here we have the the chimichanga truck it and then you light your chimichangas everywhere shoot the orange shots and as you collect the chimichangas you'll get some effects on the screen so you've got a chimichanga punch card and as you punch your chimichanga punch cards Deadpool is cashing it out once he cashes out all his chimichangas he actually takes the chimichanga truck to travel through time to battle the t-rex or the Megalodon so that's sweet I got a chick colossal jackpot lit now hit that for some big points and another thing we have is the katana gem so you get a little fun mode if you advance through all these gems start hitting the shots you get a little mode called katana ramen time there's like really great speech and music you guys are gonna love the game like everything that happens just being super funny destroying a pie keep building this destroying a teddy bear and it's just a fun goofy mode you got kind of like a mini mode in the game and we return to the hell house once he's done Deadpool plays more of his pinball game so with the battle modes you start with a battle mode lit you get a choice on your mode selection screen between who you want now you see from hitting all the shots I've actually qualified some team ups and this is a really interesting thing we have in the game where the team ups completely change which shots are lit in the mode so if you qualify any team up that shots going to advance you through the mode so you'll play a mode like mystique you'd be like oh you know I don't have a lot of shots like when you bring in your team up suddenly like the whole play field opens up and you get a lot more points in the mode the team ups also have these secondary abilities that you'll see when you go in the scoop Dazzler is going to give you a extra health so Deadpool is going to you know take a little longer to get defeated during a mode Colossus is gonna give you double points on all your modes Wolverine gives you double damage you'll see health bars come up during the modes and Wolverine will help you beat the modes way faster to get the final mode bonuses right and on the right side Domino she gives you actually a super mode during your mode so if you play Domino with juggernaut you're gonna get some super targets Domino if Sabretooth you're gonna get super pop bumpers Domino with mystique super spinners so we'll go in the scoop now I didn't want that there we go and we'll actually choose our battle like the old-school fighting games so I'll take juggernaut here and we've got another hand-drawn pixel level of him you know hand pixelated juggernaut character all in this early nineties fighting game style and as you hit the targets in this mode you'll actually get deadpool taunting juggernaut trying to entice him to knock him through the wall so I hit a couple shots and here we go check it out crashes in through the wall knocks himself out and this is where you get like a you know a fast scoring phase so you want to hit all your shots get the points and if you hit a team-up shot I got the team-up wipe and I got Colossus in here you know punch it and juggernaut a little bit same thing here with Dazzler here she comes to do her dazzle attack and as you advance through these modes you get a lot of big points in the mode so you want to make sure you do it but this whole time Deadpool is losing health but I'll be able to beat this one because I'm not playing real pinball I'm playing for my hands

27:29

so we'll get to the end of the mode here and after Colossus takes him out here he's he's in a stun stay and I want to hit him for a final shot and I got a big point award there and some other bonuses for completing the mode add one try so now you see the juggernaut is completed you can see the back panel you got the light there to indicate he's completed and beating through all your different battles is going to light your Sauron mini wizard mode once you get to sour and even more things will happen but we'll save that for later you also got some cool multi balls in the game this one in particular like George said earlier was pretty easy to advance to when the shots green hitting the ball and the little bashful area is going to start those little Deadpool multi ball and you want to hit the targets in front of him to start the hurry up you kept the crazy animations and you just keep bashing away for a little bit and then the rules will change a little bit to get it a little harder so that hurry up value is built throughout the game by hitting that target and later in the game Yuri qualify it by beating your different battles so you get the first one pretty much for free and then later on it's gonna get more difficult you got some other shots in the second level of the multi bone out and get some double jackpots and mystery award well like that the mystery world come up this should give you an add a ball in the multi ball and this will help you advance through the multi ball so this one's not a huge amount of points but later in the game it becomes worth significantly more so oh and you can stack this multi ball with any of the battles too so for advanced players there's a lot of strategy and saving this multi ball until you can bring it into a battle to get all the extra battle points which are worth a lot more so there's some points there we'll talk about quests next so the chimichangas are still lit around the play field and there's that shot up there I just did it with my hands once you've played enough chimichangas your quests light is lit when you go in the scoop for your battle select you have the option to select some awesome quest so we'll play the t-rex I hope you're enjoying all this great stuff our art team did with like the different backgrounds at different characters on every single level like it changes so drastically I think it's awesome how it looks as you hit the shots in t-rex mode he chomps at you and he throws some bombs at him to try to get his teeth I lost the balls you keep doing that a couple times and as you hit all the different hurry up shots you actually build the value here at the little fat little Deadpool target and that determines your whole grenade so because I didn't finish the t-rex mode it's it's pulsing right now and if you finish everything that's helps you get to mr. sinister as well as some other stuff in the Hulme and then I'll go through the next to multi balls so ninja multi ball is ready I can't work queue both it yeah so if I go up here look at the double play field with the snake thing and the ninja multi ball will start ninja multi ball it's your classic multi ball where you've got your shot every shot builds ninja jackpot in the future and we built it a little bit already from our pop bumpers and you're gonna get all these hand-drawn ninjas on this level they keep attacking either doing all kind of crazy attacks we coordinated this whole thing in this fight engine for the game so everything is super responsive to what you do on the play field like you hit a shot Deadpool is gonna ghost an engine you here's another thought he's gonna ghost edition and eventually the super jackpot shots lit and here he's gonna do a ninja super jackpot attack he's gonna get all the ninjas and you can see on the the HUD all the ninja counts growing so this is a fun standard multi ball Deadpool hates ninjas really doesn't like them and you'll play that throughout the game and re-qualify it what else is going on we've got the Dazzler spinner here to advance to the disco multi ball and we can show it in play so we'll show that later and then another rule we have is this weapon jackpot rule so you hit the different weapon shots you build up your weapon combo so you're getting points based on how many weapons you already have Plus that combo value and if you go in the scoop during a combo you're gonna get an extra weapon jackpot so he's gonna have even more weapons on them whole different environment for saber-tooth saber tooth's attacks in a different way so you see there's not as many shots would be really useful to have you know like a colossus shot or a domino shot to double up those shots and you have the team of skeleton and there's like a custom fighting scene so you've got a juggle attack in this one we've got custom stuff for every mode so juggernaut crashed him through the wall this one he's got this juggle attack you can do arranged or a close distance knuckle attack we really had to do a lot to make sure like you've got a great experience for the people watching as well as the people playing this game so yeah that's a covered a lot of the game I think we can just play the rest of it now I've seen the rest of it as it goes