Welcome back to For Amusement Only. This is Nick Baldrige. Neil Wilson is a professional software developer and a new third-party developer for the P3 pinball platform. He's released his first game, Young Martial Artists. It's my pleasure to welcome Neil Wilson to the show to discuss his new game, Young Martial Artists. Welcome, Neil. Hi, and thank you very much for having me on. Happy to have you. I've been a fan of yours for a little bit of time anyway, ever since I've had my P3, and you've helped me a lot since then. So thank you very much for your assistance. And I've enjoyed your games as well. Oh, thank you very much. Let's talk about you, though. How did you find pinball? I started really in 2020. I had a couple of friends who just before the pandemic kind of got into pinball, which was a very good time for them. And they started streaming. And so we were watching the streams. You know, eventually restrictions started to let up somewhat. And we were able to go to their house and play and then moved and needed to get rid of some machines. And so I bought one of them. I was a bride of Penbot. And that was in 2021. Played that quite a bit. Enjoyed it. I had before that I'd been playing mostly computer pinball, like Pinball FX and Zachariah and that kind of stuff. But, you know, playing on a real machine is a more interesting and probably fulfilling experience. And so I got to do basically everything you can do in Bride of Penbot. And then we ended up also getting a Ghostbusters Pro, which is probably my favorite game, you know, single game anyway. And then we also got a virtual pinball machine with like 1300 tables. So, I mean, it's a very good virtual pinball machine, but it's really good for learning rules of a lot of variety of games. So basically any kind of a classic, maybe not all of the EMs or whatever, but it's got a surprisingly good selection of EMs and solid states. and a fair number of modern systems. So trying to learn the rules of games and just getting good skills down is helpful for that. And then I was aware of the P3 ever since probably about the time that Weird Al's Museum of Natural Hilarity came out. And it sounded very interesting, but I wasn't really thinking about getting one. But as I was getting into pinball, I was really thinking about, oh, what would I like to make as a game? And I had several ideas, but one of them was a karate themed game. And I started thinking of it as probably a virtual pinball game. But then as time went on, I was watching other streams and watching people playing. And I think I was watching MPT3K, Manu's stream. He was playing Heist. And I realized, oh, this play field would be perfect for for the game that I have in mind. And so I really started thinking about the P3 more and kind of decided to get one earlier this year. And a friend was selling theirs because they just kind of needed the money at the time. And so I picked that one up. And I guess that was in March, I believe. And so I've been playing that a lot since then. I've got five playfields, including Drained, which I love. I've been really just kind of full steam ahead on that. I knew that I wanted to create a game for it even before I bought it. And then I had a couple of months before I really got into actually developing it. But since then, I've gotten the bug and I've wrote Young Martial Artist and I've already started working on my second one and I've got ideas for more. It's kind of addictive. It's a fantastic creative platform that really enables creativity as you start creating. Definitely a shared experience that we have, I think. You picked up a P3, You started developing and you started working on this concept for the karate themed game, which became Young Martial Artist. What was the initial concept and the inspiration for the game Young Martial Artist? Well, so I grew up I mean, I was born in the 70s, but I kind of really grew up in the 80s. And there were some good karate themed movies in the 80s. There might be one in particular that had a kid learning karate that kind of stands out more than the others. So I was thinking about maybe inspiring my game based on that. That was really kind of the inspiration. And like I said, I'd actually started thinking about it in terms of a virtual pinball game. And I knew that I wanted like a symmetrical play field so I could have like a balance mode. and I wanted, you know, orbits and loops so I could do like some kind of a circular blocking mode. I knew that I wanted something for punches. I was initially thinking if it had been a virtual pinball table, it probably would have been a Vera target for punching. But when I came to the heist play field, I realized the spinner is a great option for that. And, you know, the more spins you get from a single hit, then it's kind of like the harder the punch is. So it's really taking the place of the Vera target there. But really realizing that the heist play field had the symmetrical layout, it had ramps for vertical block simulation. It had obviously the sealer for me was the crane because I can do crane kicks. The crane on Heist is really impressive. I'm really only using it as a bash toy. I'm not using any of the magnetic capabilities or the ability to hit a ball off it or anything like that. But the ability to use that and to move it around. And once you're done, once you've hit all the shots you need to hit, it still stays out there and kind of blocks your ability to get back into the dojo to complete the mode. I just find that as a kind of a fun mechanism to use. And I originally did have it kind of further in the game. but my initial concept of the game was much more linear than it is now so you basically have to complete modes originally in order and then I had okay well the blocks are up front and then you have the balance it's kind of like a mini wizard mode and then you have the punches and kicks later but I decided to open it up and put all of those training modes up at the front of the game so you can go to any of them right away and I think that was the right choice and makes it more more fun and you can choose your path through the game. And there are risks and rewards and trade-offs that you can do in terms of... The punches mode is probably the most valuable, especially if you can get really good, juicy spinners. And some people have said, like, you have to hit 100 spins in 60 seconds. Some people have said they can get all 100 spins from a single hit, which is, like, super, super juicy. But because of the way that I designed the scoring, where each time you complete a mode, you get a belt, and that acts as, like, a playfield multiplier. So going for the lower modes, you know, the lesser scoring modes first might not give you as many points right away, but then they give you a higher multiplier so that when you do go for something like punches or kicks or balance, then you get higher scoring for that with the caveat that you actually have to get to those modes. I mean, I liken it to other games like, I don't know if you're familiar with Venom, but they have a multiball system where you can get up to a six-ball multiball. Basically, the strategy is try to do what you can early in the game, and if you're on ball three, then take what you can get, kind of. So it's like that. So as far as I can on balls one and two and then ball three, then I go for the big points. I try to design scoring in ways that will make it interesting. Let's back up a step before we get more into nitty gritty. I'm big into process here. And so we're going to touch on different aspects of your workflow and how you created the game. What is the goal of Young Martial Artist? Yeah, so the main goal is to progress in your learning of a variety of karate skills. So there are six training modes, one with circular blocks, one with vertical blocks, one with sideways blocks. and then there's a balance mode. The circular blocks, you are shooting like orbits and loops and circular shots, basically. Vertical blocks, you're shooting the ramps. Side blocks, you're hitting the side targets and the slingshots. The balance mode is one where you are hitting corresponding pairs of shots on opposite sides of the playfield. So if you hit the left orbit as your first shot, then you would hit the right orbit as the second shot of the pair or the right ramp hit the left ramp. And then there's two kind of attack modes. So there's punches and kicks. Punches, you hit the spinner and kicks, you bash the crane. So once you've completed all six of those modes, then you would level up. Each mode gives you a new belt. So you start with a white belt. You complete one training mode. You get yellow, then orange, green, purple, brown and black. When you make it to black belt, then you qualify to compete in a tournament. And so the tournament lasts up to four rounds, single elimination. So if you don't make it through the first round, then you're out of the tournament. But you can make it all the way to the fourth round. And then depending on how you do in the tournament, if you lose in the first round, if you win the whole thing, as long as you still have a ball to play, then you get to celebrate with a victory elapsed multiball. And the number of balls you get in the multiball is dependent on how you do in the tournament. So if you lose in round one, you get a two ball multiball all the way up to if you win the tournament, you get a 10 ball multiball. So far, my best has been losing in round three. So I've gotten to play four balls, but I do hope to get further than that. I will say that it does get progressively more difficult each time. It starts with you're trying to hit attack shots, so punches and kicks, and block shots. By attacking, you're scoring points against your opponent, and by blocking, you are blocking shots from your opponent. And so you're preventing them from scoring points against you. So in the first round of the tournament, I have to alternate between one attack shot to score a point and then one block shot to prevent them from scoring. And as soon as you get to three points or as soon as your opponent gets to three points, then the round is over. If you win, you move on to the second round where it's not too much more difficult. You get a certain amount of time for each shot and that goes down from round to round. And then in the second round, you have to block first before you can attack. And then the third round, you have to attack twice to actually score a point and block twice to prevent them from scoring. And again, a little less time to do it. And then the fourth round is more complicated because it's bringing in the balance aspect. So you have to block first. If you do a circular block, then hit one of the orbits. You have to hit the other orbit as your second block shot. And then for attacking, you have to hit both the crane and the spinner as both of the attack shots. So I have not made it that far. And I think that even if I do, it will be very difficult to actually win the tournament. But I think it would be a tremendous achievement. It'll be something to celebrate for sure. Yeah, I'm really good in the emulator. But when it comes to actually playing the game, I'm not quite as effective. Still a lot of fun, I think. Just gives you a reason to come back and play more. yeah after each mode is qualified as you start the game you shoot a shot and it will qualify that shot you hit it again and then it will enable that practice mode which you can then start at the dojo the dojo is represented by the jail door in heist which is basically right in the center of the play field did you always plan to use the jail as the mode start shot I had thought of a few different options but yeah I think when I decided to go to heist then I wanted the game to capture the ball. And it seemed like, especially just getting started, it seemed like that was the easiest way to do it. I know now that basically every shot on heist, except for the right ramp, can actually capture the ball. But it really seems like that was the way to do it. If I were going again, you know, starting from scratch, I might consider like the left orbit, you use that to start the circular blocks mode. And maybe the second time you're shooting the left orbit, it would just capture the ball then instead of having to shoot into the jail. But I like having to go into the dojo as a way of starting the mode. I think it's kind of consistent because that's also the way that you complete the mode. I thought of using the scoops as a way of doing that. But when I was thinking of it as a virtual pinball game, I had thought of using a scoop anyway. So I think that the heist jail is kind of a good analog to a scoop. Once I started on the P3, I really did start thinking of the jail as the main shot for starting and completing modes. It's a good thematic representation of entering the dojo, and it draws you in. Yeah, I will say that one person during the beta commented that it might be good to add other shots as an alternative, the jail as entering the dojo. So there is a setting, it's off by default, but there is a setting that will allow you to use either of the inner loop shots also as kind of a wider entrance to the dojo. So when my wife plays, we have separate profiles that we use and her profile allows her to use that to get in there. And so it's nice for her to be able to start the modes more easily. And then once the mode timer completes, I originally was very mean. And so if time runs out while you're playing a mode and you don't complete it or hit all the shots and just haven't gotten into the dojo, it would just end the mode and you'd go back to having to requalify it. But now if you've completed all of the shots and just haven't gotten into the dojo on time, then it will just open up every shot as the dojo or every shot except the right ramp because it can't capture the ball there. So it's much easier to complete the mode, but the thing is it's going to be worth half as much as it would have been if you'd gotten into the dojo on time. So I wanted to make it fun for novice to intermediate players. I don't know that it's necessarily super challenging for an elite player, someone of Colin's status, but I think that it is a pretty fun game and pretty approachable for a lot of people. You do have to be able to hit shots and that can be difficult for people. It is still somewhat of a challenge, but I really tried to make it approachable. And I guess I kind of did that with why I wanted to capture the ball in something like the dojo is so I could show instructions on the screen and tell you basically at each point what you're supposed to do. And so it will hold the ball until you either press the launch button or double flip. And so I have had a number of experiences on other pinball games where it's like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. So I'm just flailing around. Maybe I hope there's a flashing light that I can go for, but sometimes I'm just flailing around. At least for this game, I wanted it to be pretty clear what you want to do at every time. So, you know, really by being able to capture the ball and hold it for till you agree that you're, you know, ready to proceed, then I think it's just a more approachable experience. yeah definitely i think one of the great strengths of the p3 is the ability to communicate objectives to the player efficiently through the use of the playfield screen i think you've done that very well in starting the the different modes going back to the tournament you mentioned once you complete the tournament you can achieve this amazing huge multiball after completing that multiball after draining down, what additional challenges await? Yeah, so you basically start over again. I had originally thought of maybe just ending the game. Like, you win, congratulations. Because I know there are games that do just end once you kind of complete the final objective. I ultimately just went back to the beginning of the game, though, so you're going back again through all of the different training modes, working your way back up to Black Belt. You're trying to play the game again, basically. I would say one of the key reasons for that is, I mean, first of all, I think it's just, it's fun to keep going and see kind of how big your score you can, you can get, or how far along a second time you can get through the game. But also it was from a technical challenge. I wasn't really sure how to just end the game in a multiplayer game. If I beat the game on ball two, what do I do when I would have ball three? I don't want to have accidentally start up and, you know, re-approach the game and then play player two's ball three instead of my ball three or whatever. So I just thought it made more sense from a multiplayer standpoint to keep going. Let's talk now about artwork. Did you end up using any pre-purchased assets like from the Unity store? Or did you hire an artist to create the artwork within the game? Or did you create the artwork yourself? I would say all of the above. The main artwork was actually created by Rhiannon Ferguson, who is a student here at the University of Texas. I have a friend who is a professor of video game design, and I was talking with him about the game, and I asked him if he had any students that might be willing to help out with the artwork. Obviously, it's a paid gig. I'm not just doing it as an internship or for credit or anything like that. I think it was a good experience for both of us. It was my first time working with someone to kind of commission artwork. And so basically I asked for the main concept that I wanted was some kids in a dojo sparring and having other people in the background watching and then just having a few different variants of on that for the playfield background for the backbox. There's the carousel image on the launcher, just taking that and then also kind of a stylized logo for the game. All of that was was created by Ranon. And then I did some of the minor artwork myself, like I did the inserts. I'm not a good artist, but I'm good at CAD, actually. And so I used FreeCAD to design the inserts with like kind of a simulated texture on them and things like that. So because it's very parametric, I'm able to do things like that. Simple things I was able to do in Inkscape, all of the text on the inserts and things like that. And then there were a few things that I also got from Shutterstock. Some of them were I just took as they as they came. Others I was able to modify a little bit to kind of suit my needs. But like whenever you complete a training mode, you get the first one is a yellow belt. And then I bought pre-designed karate belts of different colors. So like if you're running low on time in a mode, if you get down to five seconds and you haven't completed a mode, then it can pop up a scoop and you can shoot into it to to add more time to the mode. Well, there's a little kind of a simple clock design that I bought. And I bought some icons for like danger or exclamation mark or, you know, kind of like a sign road sign type icons that I use for like tilt warning and things like that. A handful of things I bought because they were just kind of really well, you know, pretty well suited for what I have. And then the main artwork, I didn't find anything that I really liked. So I commissioned and then the other things I kind of just did for myself. The light shows in Young Martial Artists provide celebrations for successful shots, flashes and the like and shot indicator blinks. And the overall lighting coloration changes as your character climbs the ranks. Young Martial Artist is a bit unusual from a lighting perspective on the P3 in that it uses the walls and scoops essentially as a row of flashers rather than being constantly illuminated during gameplay. Was that use of the wall and scoop lighting always part of your design? Did you intentionally dial that back and make it more of a standout effect rather than constant illumination as in other P3 games? Basically, so if you hit a shot, like a successful shot, basically everything kind of flashes in the color of the belt that you are trying to achieve. All of the inserts on the play field are designed for the belt that you're going for, like dress for the job you want type of situation. When you start off, the inserts are yellow. You complete the first mode and get the yellow belt. Then your inserts are orange because that's the next belt you're going for. When you're currently a white belt, the general illumination, so all of the LEDs on the heist module itself are white because you have a white belt. And then when you get the yellow belt, then they turn yellow, etc. And so I kind of wanted to have the general illumination be the color of the belt that you are and the inserts and the pops being the color of the belt you're trying to achieve. The only difference there, I guess, is once you become black belt, black is not a very interesting light color. So I do use red as the accent color there for the LEDs. So if you hit shots in the tournament, then there will be red flashes. And if you get a jackpot in the victory laps multiball, it's kind of like an explosion in the scoops, the walls and scoops and the side targets. If you hit the left ramp, then it will kind of originate from there and it will go outward in each direction. That kind of explosion aspect was actually something that Jerry suggested, or he suggested I make the light show more interesting in the multivolume tournament, primarily because it was actually black lighting, which is not the most interesting thing. So I did the LED light show. The inserts on the play field was relatively early into it. and then I never really got back to it. And then it turns out that I ended up having some problems. Problems were in a couple of areas. One of them was I made the mistake of controlling LEDs from the UI thread or the GUI thread and not the mode thread. And then there was also a bug, at least in part of the light show, where I was driving the LEDs, sending commands to them very quickly, multiple times for a millisecond. In some cases, it could cause like the scoops to twitch or something because it was kind of overloading the system. I was able to fix those kind of late in the process. So I had, at a point, dialed back my usage of those LEDs because I had run into problems of overdriving them. But now that I've kind of realized my mistakes and addressed them, I'm not as concerned about that anymore. Still, I do like not overusing them during the game and just letting you focus on what you need to hit. The game includes mostly static inserts on the lower playfield screen, and they're present even in attract mode. And they're used as part of the attract mode light shows and sweeps. What made you choose to have these inserts present at all times? I was really going for a kind of a traditional solid state pinball game. I would say kind of my model there one of my models was Final Resistance which has basically a play field that is a static image most of the time It can pop up things like instructions or messages or things like that But it mostly like it I would say it is more a static image than than Young Martial Artist is, because at least in Young Martial Artist, I'm changing the text on the inserts from time to time based on what you're what you're doing. But I would say I decided to make that going after the solid state kind of look. So the backbox, you know, I use simulated 14 segment LEDs for the score and the ball number and the number of credits and things like that. And then, yeah, just the inserts are typically there all the time. But, you know, they may change. They change in color based on how far you are in the game. And the text on them changes based on oftentimes there's just no text on there at all. If there's not anything that makes sense to put on them. But, yeah, I really am. I was trying to go for a traditional pinball game that just happens to be on the P3. And I would say also I'm not I've never really dealt with things like animation or anything like that. So I didn't want to get too complicated with that, especially my first game. So. You mentioned the 14 segment simulated LEDs in the backbox, right? What made you choose to develop that's quite a bit more than like a seven segment LED would be for an early solid state? So this is more of an alphanumeric style of display that allows you to to do a little a little more with those segments. What was the inspiration behind that? I thought about doing seven segment LEDs, but I wanted to do 14 segment just so I could show additional information on them occasionally. So if you get a tilt warning, then, you know, it will continue to show your score, but you can have, you know, up to four players in the game. And so if you're player one, then players two, three and four will show warning one, warning two or tilted or, you know, something like that. And if you get a replay, it will show replay. I wanted to be able to put extra text on there. I had thought initially also about maybe trying to incorporate that into the light show and somehow making doing something interesting with the LEDs there. Again, my first real pinball experience with owning a game was Bride of Pinbot, and it does use the 14-segment LEDs in interesting ways, bringing the machine to life. Then it shows kind of like an EKG heart monitor kind of animation. And I had thought of doing something like that, but I just never really got around to it. And I don't know that it would really be necessary, but I knew that I wanted to at least display things like tilt warning or that kind of thing on there. The ability to have a little bit more than seven segments to do that was was helpful for that. So regarding the music and young martial artists, how did you decide upon the song that you chose for the primary background music? I knew that I wanted it to be kind of thematic, like Japanese sounding music. So I just went online and I looked for what options were available. I wasn't going to create it myself. And I didn't know if I wanted to commission something. Basically, almost all of the music and sound effects in the game are from Pixabay. So I was able to, you know, download them and they say free for commercial use license. So I do, you know, in the acknowledgments, I mentioned that I I got them from there. And then in the player's guide, I have more thorough descriptions and everything. But yeah, I wanted to I think because of the kind of Japanese origin of karate in general, I wanted to have something that was kind of harkened to that without being too stereotypically Japanese. Yeah, I just found a few different song options. Actually, the original option that I had was is no longer in the game because I had some friends over to beta test it and they they said it was kind of too slow and it put them to sleep. So I ended up changing with a different option. It's a little more upbeat. And I think it does work better now. Fits the game very well, I think. So there are actually four different background music sections throughout the game. So there is the background music for the training modes. And I guess something I haven't talked about yet is there is kind of a mini wizard mode in the game where after you've completed three training modes and have gotten your green belt, then you qualify for a break bricks mini wizard mode where the goal it's a three ball multiball where you are trying to break shots off the stand up targets in that mode. There is a separate background music track for that. And then there's different track for the tournament and then also for the victory laps multiball. So there are four different background music tracks in the game. And I think that that kind of makes it more more interesting because you're not always hearing the same thing. But I think, you know, for a lot of people who may not, you know, make it to the tournament very often or even to break bricks or whatever, the main music is both long enough that it's not looping so frequently and interesting enough that you're not going to get too tired of it, hopefully. You've touched upon how you procured the sound effects and the music, but What purpose do you believe the sound package serves overall in a pinball machine? How do you feel that it helps or hinders the player? What what is the main purpose that you see? Well, I think ultimately it's to help kind of provide feedback whenever you're accomplishing things. I think that having different sounds that kind of makes sense in the context just kind of further enhances your experience in the game. So in Young Martial Artist, if you hit a shot that you're supposed to hit, you kind of get like a like a punching sound or like a whacking, like punching sound. And if you miss, then it's like a whoosh kind of sound. And if you hit a shot that's inconsequential, it's just kind of like a like a donk or something like that. If your timer is running down, you get a clock ticking. If you complete a mode, then you get kind of a fanfare celebration. When you start a training mode, there's actually kind of like a gong sound. I think it's good feedback to know you don't have to see necessarily that I've hit a shot. I know I've heard the feedback that I've I've hit a shot. I think that's probably less important on the P3 because you've got all the screen real estate to to also convey that information. But it's useful. I think it's it's also it's still useful to know that you've done something auditorily. auditorily. And it's also helpful if I'm, you know, if I'm playing in a multiplayer game and I'm not the one who's actively at the game, I can still tell their progress by listening just and hearing the sound effect. Yeah, I find it to be very useful. But again, I didn't want to go overboard and I didn't commission sound effects. So I think that I did an OK job of coming up with things that make sense and not too too hokey or stereotypical or anything like that. But I'm actually I mentioned and I'm kind of developing my second game, and it's actually going to be for the drained play field, and I'm going for a more EM style, and so I'm trying to keep to chimes as much as I can. I think I am going to end up probably bringing other sound effects in just because I don't know that I can convey as much as I would like with just chimes, but I'm trying to do as much as I can with just chimes because I am trying to be very electromechanical in my sound effects. Exciting scoop here. Another game on the drained module in development. Very exciting. We have talked about assets. Now let's talk about programming. What was the biggest challenge that you had in programming the game? You mentioned a couple of things that you ran into, like with light shows and so forth. But were those kind of the biggest challenge that you faced or did you have any other big issue getting started? Yeah, I would say like code wise. I mean, this was my first time using C Sharp. So I've done a lot of Java work. So I'm familiar with Java. and C Sharp seems to me kind of like Microsoft's ripoff of Java. I mean, I know that Java is a ripoff of C and C++. You know, it's all kind of interconnected, but it does seem like as a Java developer, it was very straightforward to get into C Sharp, which is, you know, what the Unity platform requires. So I didn't find the language to be that complicated. I did have to look up things like, how do I do this thing that I know how to do in Java or some other language? How do I do that in C sharp? But so from a programming perspective, it was not that difficult. I will say kind of wrapping my head around the the event based mechanism or the reacting to things is different from the style of programming that I often do. You're kind of just waiting for things to happen a lot of the time and then reacting to them. So it's not being able to do things in the mode thread that will tie up anything or having to transfer transfer events back and forth between the mode system and the GUI system. I didn't find it that much a challenge, but I think there were there were cases in which I had to kind of change my thinking about how I'm doing things. I think also kind of realizing what you need to do in the mode thread versus what you do in the GUI thread. So, you know, obviously anything on the screen is a GUI thread thing. Any sound effects are a GUI thread thing. LEDs, I had assumed would be a GUI thread, but they're actually they're more hardware. So it's a mode thread. So that kind of thing took a little bit of time to fully understand. And I would say that one of the biggest challenges, actually, I ran into is the backbox just because and I still haven't figured it out really. Even into the second game, I've run into the same problem where I'm ending up having to kind of distort the way that it looks in the emulator to fit it on the screen naturally in the on the machine. So I think I don't know if it's just because Unity has problems or at least the specific version of Unity that we have to use because of the SDK dependency has problems with multiple screens of different resolutions. But, yeah, I ended up having difficulty with getting the backbox looking correct. It was kind of squished and not showing everything on my initial attempt. But, yeah, my approach now is basically I will I'm designing it so it looks good in Unity and looks terrible on the machine. but then once I kind of get everything the way I want it, then I will rescale it and, you know, get it looking right on the machine. So, but yeah, I would say that, that one probably took the longest of anything to kind of figure out and get right. But it was kind of trial and error before I really realized, Oh, I have to scale things by, by this amount or whatever. So I'm pretending that it's a in portrait versus landscape kind of thing, but then scaling things to, to accommodate the different resolutions. Was there anything that was easier than you expected? You mentioned being able to move pretty naturally from Java to C Sharp. But other than the basic language change there, was there was there anything that was easier than expected about the SDK or about Unity and creating a game? And one of the things I added in later was sound effects. And that, you know, basically was just I wasn't it was a combination of not sharing, not being sure what I wanted to use. And then like sound programming isn't something I dealt with before. So I wasn't sure, you know, what what really is involved in this? Do I have to worry about the timing of things or, you know, do I have to worry about what if I'm trying to play multiple things at the same time or that kind of thing? It ended up being just very straightforward. Like you just tell it to play a sound and it plays the sound the background music was pretty straightforward Having that happening in the background. I also say like all the hardware was was really straightforward So things like you know the heist module you can configure in a lot of different ways for different shot paths And you know being able to control whether I shooting into the orbit Is it going to go out the other orbit? Is it going to get captured by the machine? Is it going to go somewhere else? You know, like all of that was pretty straightforward. And even using the crane really was surprisingly straightforward. It took me, I guess, a little bit of time to realize I knew the crane was able to move around the playfield. I originally thought it was forward and backward and side to side movement. But I guess really in its bash position is kind of all got to be fully extended the whole time. So it ended up being more just side to side than I had originally envisioned. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but I just I assumed that it would be able to cover more of the playfield. And so I had had planned for maybe more more usage of it. But the side to side ended up being simpler than simpler than expected. So I found that to be to be kind of helpful. But really, yeah, I found the hardware interaction was was really much more simple than I than I thought. There were there were things of aspects of the development that I'd put together that I kind of put off because I was. Well, I'll get to that eventually or something. But but then it ended up being really satisfied when I when I got it working right away. And then I'll also say I kind of started in earnest on the game in August. You know, I downloaded the SDK earlier than that and kind of looked through things and gone through kind of the birdwatcher tutorial. But really, I had a sabbatical, a month long sabbatical from my job in August. And so I kind of started early in the month just, OK, I'm really going to focus on the game. and I was shocked that within the first week I basically had most of the modes like the first five modes done really it kind of just a few days once I got my head around oh this is how you do the the programming in the unity and the SDK framework it really just came together super quickly I mean I was spending like eight hours a day on it so it wasn't like I was surprised and impressed by how simple it kind of was once I really just started like doing it with focus and intention. Excellent. Yeah, that mirrors my experience for sure. I really like the separation of function, but also how easy it is using the Semaphore system that they've implemented to communicate with the hardware and create these different experiences. Moving on to testing, your beta testing process was unique in that any owner of Heist was able to download a beta of Young Martial Artist and provide feedback during the development via the P3 community Discord. Were you always planning to have an open beta? I developed the game as what to a state that I thought was pretty close to complete before I had before I really let anyone else play it. and so I had a couple of friends over to play it, and they had some really good feedback that made me really rethink some critical aspects of the game. You know, originally, at the time that I showed it to them, you could only play the blocks modes first. You had to complete all three of those before you could go to the balance mode, and then you had to complete the balance mode before you could go to punches and kicks. And then I really wasn't using the side targets for anything at all except for the side blocks mode, and then later in the tournament as side blocks. They were pretty unused for the majority of the game. I hadn't used any of the walls or scoops for anything at all. They had some good ideas for, you know, maybe putting more of the game up front, making it less linear, adding in the ability to add time to a mode. So I will say that, yeah, the game started off meaner, a lot meaner than it currently is. I will say it started very mean when I was only playing it in the emulator and misjudging my level of skill in terms of, you know, putting it on the actual game and what I could do in the time that was available. But yeah, actually playing it in the hardware, you know, made me realize that, yeah, it needs to be a little easier. And then seeing other people play it for the first time, understanding what to do, but yeah, maybe we're not hitting the shots as well as we should. So things like not being as mean when the mode timer expires. I used to make you have to go into the dojo anyway. But like the mode ended, but you had to enter the dojo before you could go back to choosing a new mode or requalifying the same mode. That kind of thing I found really helpful from other people who knew a good amount about pinball. I thought, well, I will probably get a lot of really good feedback by opening it up to a wider audience. And I thought the best audience would be on the P3 Discord. So people who have Heist could play it for free and would provide some really good feedback. And I did. I got some excellent feedback. Some of it was directly suggesting, yeah, maybe you could do this kind of thing. Maybe you could add some sound effects for different areas where it might be helpful. So originally I didn't have the inlanes or any sound effects rolling through an inlane or hitting a side target, that kind of thing. So adding more sound feedback, things like that. And then other things were, you know, people were just mentioning things in general and that kind of triggered something in my head as, oh yeah, I can make this change. And that would really add an, you know, a more interesting level of scoring to the game or things like that. So I found it to be extremely helpful, especially for a first game, for a game that is more involved. And then also I knew that I wanted to make it available for free, that I didn't want to charge for the game eventually. So I wasn't nearly as concerned about keeping a secret and people getting to play the beta and getting tired of it and then not wanting to buy it eventually. But the feedback was all really helpful in terms of both providing suggestions and also encouragement. And, you know, because it was a pretty overwhelmingly positive response, I think. So I am very happy about that. And I got some great, great feedback that just made the game better in the end. So if you had the entire development cycle to do over again, would you still choose to have an open beta or were there any drawbacks that you experienced from having it be an open beta? I don't know that there were any drawbacks, really. I would say the biggest. Not a drawback necessarily, but maybe the biggest hassle is just kind of the limitation of the SDK and that multi morphic can create a build that doesn't expire. I can create a build that's good for three days. And so because of the way that I was, you know, I was just distributing a, you know, a package that I built, you know, put it on a Google Drive for people to download if they had the URL. Well, basically, I had to keep refreshing it every three days for a period of time. And that means that I if I do something one night and I'm not coding on the game, then I have two days to make edits to things. And if I, you know, depending on if I get feedback for something that might be a pretty substantial change, then, you know, now I've got. Do I try to save it and then build in the middle of it or do I try to that kind of thing? So I think I would love maybe having maybe a five day or seven day trial period rather than a three day. But really, that was the only I would say that was the only headache on my part. It's not not really a headache at all. It was just that, you know, I had to keep refreshing the build. I felt like and I don't know if there was if any other people would have felt this way, but I felt like I had to have like notable changes between each build and not just this is the same build, but refreshed kind of. So with the new expiration timer. So but I was I was making changes anyway. So it wasn't it wasn't that big a deal. But yeah, I don't I don't think that there was any real big downside. If I were going to charge for the game, maybe I would have been more hesitant to to have an open beta just for people saying, oh, this is all that it is. I don't know that I want to pay for that. I will say my second game is a lot simpler. So I don't know that I need the same level of feedback. And so I don't know if I will do the same amount of open beta. But I definitely think it will be very helpful to get some opinions. And so we'll see what what happens there. But it is going to be a lot simpler in terms of as an electromechanical game. It's going to be probably a much shorter game and not as deep in terms of all the things that you can do. But I'm sure there will probably still be very valuable feedback that I'm just not thinking of because I'm too focused on what I have in my head. And speaking of feedback, how did you handle the feedback about the game in the run up to the release? So you've mentioned kind of the time pressure and needing to implement changes and wanting to implement kind of larger changes between builds. But specifically, it can be pretty tricky to balance player expectation and the original intent of the designed experience. So if someone suggests something that would have not necessarily improved the game, but it would have changed from your original intent, how did you handle that type of feedback? I mean, fortunately, it didn't happen a lot. So most of the feedback that I got was pretty, I think, just pretty like this is a good idea. I either should have thought of that or I didn't think that it might have been necessary at front. But then multiple people said it. And so, yeah, OK, it is probably probably more necessary. I didn't implement everything that everyone suggested. I think that's probably OK. And then there were some things that people suggested. I made it more a. Yeah, OK, I can maybe make that a setting that's off by default, but you can turn it on. Like the option to to have more shots to enter the dojo than just the heist jail was something that someone suggested just because they said, yeah, my kid can't really hit the jail as consistently. And so maybe having a couple of other options would be useful. And I thought I agree. That's a good idea. But I kind of want to balance like how approachable the game is for a novice player, but then also not make it. Yeah, I don't want to say it's too easy, but, yeah, basically still making it kind of challenging for for someone who's more intermediate kind of player, something like that. So, yeah. And I think that a lot of people, as they were giving feedback, say, you know, take this for what you want or not. You know, don't ignore it if you feel appropriate. But I really didn't get a lot of what I would consider, you know, bad or problematic feedback. So I didn't really have a lot of tough choices to make. So. excellent neil i've enjoyed both seeing the game develop and being able to provide feedback during that open beta so thanks very much for allowing everyone in the community access to the game during that beta period creating this unique and satisfying play experience with young martial artists and for making it available for free for anybody with the heist playfield module it's available today at multimorphic.com or you can download it directly on your p3 neil thanks so much for joining me and talking about your game young martial artist oh thank you very much you