Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. We are on episode 108. I'm Josh Roop. With me, my co-captain, as always. Scott Larson. I almost blanked on our intro. We've done 108 episodes and I've almost blanked on how to do this. Almost blanked. It's all good. It's all good. Holy crap. And tonight, we're going to be talking about the magic of Foo Fighters. And Scott, I know you ordered one, right? I did. I ordered a premium and I ordered that through Zach and Nicole Mini at Flip N Out Pinball. They've always been really good. And I am super excited because I ordered the Rush Shooter Rod that glows, which is the Starman from 2112, which is awesome. And I also got the, or at least I placed an interest in getting the topper. So I'll have the gears grinding away and hopefully the cats won't jump up there and get smushed a little bit because they love walking around on the toppers. But yeah, contact Zach and Nicole. They've always been really great to work with. And yeah, for all your pinball needs. You know it. And I got a pro on the way too, and it should be here in like two months. Oh yeah, you're probably going to get yours sooner than mine. Oh yeah, mine was supposed to be in June. The production schedule got pushed back just a little bit by two weeks, but it sounds like we're looking still to the beginning of June. Yeah, I'm still stuffed with gills, so I'm okay with waiting a little bit. But enough of us talking about flipping out. we have a special guest on tonight the man that goes by number one formerly number one in our hearts no he is currently number one in our hearts is he currently number one in our hearts well he he's number one in my heart he's killing it with foo fighters code he's killing it with pin Slash he's just he's just killing it so if you want to uh all welcome we've got mr raymond davidson with us hello yeah see i like having ray on because he actually has a black rose also and he loves black rose like i do yeah so uh we can always talk about all the magic of black rose and the the depth of the code of black rose which is non-existent hey i was actually just gonna say it's actually much deeper than people know uh there's actually okay that was one of the first games where i actually went online and read this rule sheet. It was pretty long, and it details the seven different cannon awards, the multi-balls, the hidden treasure, the jackpot. There's actually a lot more in there than you think. I don't know. I have a soft spot for it. Especially for a 1992 game. Yeah. It is exceptionally deep for something that was intended to be on location and really a coin drop game. Fun fact, Brian Eddy did the software on it. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Currently at Stern Pinball. So over lunch, you know, me and him would talk and talk about, you know, man, I loved your work on Black Rose. Kind of hit him like, you know, blindsided him. And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah. That's hilarious because he probably doesn't get that very often. It's like, I love your medieval madness. I love your attack for Mars. And it's, you know, he gets the occasional shadow, but I highly doubt he gets Black Rose. And that's the play field design though. So what you're saying is he did the rules for it. Yes. Yeah. Which is, I mean, that's a, that's a different thing. Now that the, the thing that I love talking about with you, Raymond, is that you have such enthusiasm for rules that I, I am still on the, on the pro level. I'm not on the premium or LE level of understanding code. But every time I talk to you, I was like, I don't understand what this thing is doing and i'll text you occasionally like can you explain this to me a little bit and he's like oh yeah it's this uh oh and by the way if you do this this this you can do that that that simple yeah it's just a cascading effect right yeah well and you know it's funny because like a lot of people like oh i'm hard up for cash and you know sometimes budgets are a little tight but if you want to you could go the raymond route it sounds like you won your foo fighters recently right you You've got to tell us about this. Yeah, yeah. The North American Pinball Championships, otherwise known as Nationals, happened at the District 82 in De Pere a few months ago. And I took it from Escher. Me and him battled in the finals. He had a couple of rough games, but, you know, sometimes you just got to do a little bit better than your opponent. And I managed to hang in there, and I won it. So I won a Stern Pro of my choice, and I chose Foo Fighters. Nice. No bias at all, right? You're like, this game is probably the number one game. It's going to battle out Godzilla for the top spot. Well, at least rules-wise, right? So, Ray, when did you get pulled in on the rules on this game? and walk me through how you're going to approach a rule set and incorporating storyline, incorporating songs. How does that all work in your mind? Yeah, I think I basically just rolled right off of Rush, right on to Foo Fighters, and basically the outline was kind of made of, like, these are the modes. we kind of have an idea of what to do with but nothing set in stone really and then like the overlord's going to have something, he has three different songs so he's going to do something there, you know Area 51, a multiball the wizard mode so all that was kind of already all laid out and I just had to go and kind of fill in the gaps and actually implement all the different features kind of like how it was when I joined Rush and when I joined Zeppelin where there's an outline and I just go and fill in all the details. Well, and I'm glad that you mentioned Rush, Zeppelin, Avengers. You've got your name attached to those four games. You have not worked for a consistent designer yet. You've been bouncing around. How was this process working with Jack Danger versus Richie or Borg or even Elwin? yeah it's been really fun working with jack he's really easy to just uh message and he'll also you know message me and and tanya will join in we'll have little mini meetings of you know hey i was thinking this could be cool you know that sort of thing when we have kind of like a problem that we need to solve we just all huddle and we all throw our ideas out you know i'll throw my idea is Jack for his. Tanya will kind of, you know, wrangle them all together and maybe add one of his ideas, and we all just kind of blend together. And it kind of shows in the game, because you see a very approachable game with some nuances, but not all the sophisticated complications thrown at you all up front. You kind of have to dive into it. And if you don't know any of that stuff, it doesn't really matter. you're still beating cities, you know, starting multi-balls, getting Fubot parts, whether you know how you got them or not, you're getting them. So that's exciting. And the game just kind of all flows together really well in a good package. So when you were approaching code, there is the danger of the, you know, it's been described as chopping wood. It's like, it's not really interesting. You just keep doing the same thing and you slowly get more and more points, but it's in a very methodical way. How do you avoid that sort of approach to a rule set and make it exciting so you can blow it up? Yeah, I'm always looking to avoid any sort of, you know, exploits that would be boring. Like, you never want the thing you should do to be the thing you don't want to do, right? If those two are in opposition with each other, your game's not going to have as much legs to stand on. You know, you're not going to be coming back to it as much. So, you know, things like examples in Foo are the modes, you have to beat them to qualify the wizard modes, because I didn't want people just shooting a shot and then trapping up and waiting for the timer to go down, and then go on to the next mode and wait for the timer to go down. But that led to some conflicts of, well, the modes, you know, they're kind of hard to beat, You know, how long should they be, you know, we want people to be able to experience everything. So we ended up coming up with a nice compromise of your first mode, you're going to get five shots spotted, and then your second mode, you're going to get four shots spotted, and then three shots. So someone who, you know, plays a mode, the first mode they play, you can probably beat that mode. You know, you might not get it your first try, but the modes all carry their progress as well. So you can just go right back in. And that was kind of a cool thing, too, is it was challenging to build a rule set around a game where you can pick your modes. I know Avengers does that, and it's very challenging because you have to make sure there's not just one mode. Everyone's always going to want to pick. So to kind of counteract that, I like to have the modes have different pros and cons depending on what game state you're in. So if you have a bunch of shot multipliers, this mode might be good. Or if you are about to start a multiball, this mode might be good. Or if you have nothing lit and your multi-balls are miles away, this might be the right mode for that. So that's kind of what you have to aim for and balance when you're designing the rules for the modes. Now, with Insider Connected, do you get audits back for how many modes are started and how many modes are completed? And like, I guess, what information do you get back? Because I could imagine that being amazingly valuable for you as the designer to say, oh, well, that mode is being played way differently than I thought it was going to be. Yeah, I definitely watch a lot of streams to make sure there's nothing out of whack. And if you just look on the game, you can view audits. And so anything you can view in the game audits is something that might get dumped after a show, and we can look at what everybody did. It's like, oh, nobody in the entire show started this mode. Maybe that's okay, maybe it's too hard. You know, that sort of thing. And then another valuable thing is achievements. You know, if there's an achievement nobody's getting, you know, we can check on it or maybe make it a little easier. You know, that sort of thing. So do you get feedback? You brought up shows and audits, which is perfect because they're basically, you know, the games are roughly connected to you guys. You may have a distributor that brings them. but what about like a game that is is put on joe's bar in cheyenne uh wyoming like are are you able to see how it's played at at different locations uh with insider connected well the achievements are all connected so you know you can see people's achievements and stuff um i don't i don't know about the you know the game audits i can't speak to that okay so i noticed there i mean this has obviously got a lot of nuance from from deadpool a little bit from jurassic park did you use some of that code structure from those games as well because like i noticed like with van it's kind of similar to map right like you shoot the white arrows and it spells out what you need to is there any kind of other similarities i guess to other codes and something that you tried to emulate or are you trying to i don't know i know that like yeah i mean the van was was definitely right out of jurassic park that was actually my idea to spell van because i thought of jurassic park kind of like huh you know that's the white arrows reminded me of jurassic park and then i was like oh you're spelling map what could you spell oh duh van you're trying to light the van so yeah that was a good catch there yeah i'm trying to think if there's other things but i i kind of blend you know whenever i need inspiration for rules i'll think of other games and kind of incorporate their progressions and things ideas i guess the overlord is kind of like rush time machine multiballs where there's three different multiballs from the same sort of device but each one is different. So, you know, all my, all of my life, multiball and then monkey wrench, multiball, and then the pretender multiball. So that kind of worked really well in rush where you're, you're in the time machine and you can do any of these, you know, multi-balls. It's a little different on foo because you always go in the same order, but also on foo, each one is sort of better than the one before it. Like there's more jackpots, you get more balls in play, that sort of thing cool is there any throwback games that you use code for or like some idea because like it's one thing i love about drastic park i don't know if people realize it or not but you hit the five shots and then the spinners lit for those five shots and you hit it it's just like in stars from stern you hit the five stars and you can hit the spinner for for big points i don't know if there's some kind of inspiration that you pull from what some of those older games too. I mean, you know, there's the in-lane targets that Jack came up with. I think he said he got those from Heavy Metal Meltdown or something. Okay, yeah. But rules-wise, you know, the older games are just, they're different than the modern games, so it's hard to just port rules directly from them but uh you know there is a super spinner in the game so when that's active it's worth more but there's yeah i mean i don't know it's it's it's hard to think of any direct parallels which mode do you usually like to start with I usually like New Orleans just because kind of all the shots are available. It's kind of a nice one to get your feet wet. And it's good with multiball because of that. That or Seattle is kind of similar. But it really just depends on what I'm feeling. New York is fun if you just want to rip spinners. Like my favorite combo in the game is the center spinner to side ramp over and over again. So I'm really dialed into that. New York can be good but yeah I mean I like all the modes did you get to put any easter eggs of yourself in from like Seattle or anything like that no I don't think I have anything hiding come on party pooper it'd be cool though just cause you know that was your hometown and what not and anyhow you could have Dave Grohl give you a shout out yeah all the Seattle friends it is cool that seattle is on there though as a city i'm happy about that yeah okay we um as typical when we design games we have the pro premium and le and you have the it's interesting because sometimes sometimes the pro kind of wins out as the preferred game sometimes the premium wins out in the preferred and i'll use an older one like metallica i would say the the vast majority of the people who get Metallica, they tend to get the Pro. But there are other games where the premium far and away is the winner for popularity. So when you're designing a game, you don't know which one is going to win out. It sounds to me like it's kind of 50-50 on this one, which is nice. I'm staring at a screen with two people, and one has a Pro in order and one has a Premium on order. and you have a pro but then again you want it so yeah yeah yeah i'm sure they'd let you upgrade for an upcharge so yeah so like how how does that affect your mindset for the the rules and saying well i i don't want it to drastically affect how we play the game but there is something different with the premium that has the upper upper play field yeah i mean that's a great way to describe it um i like to have clear benefits and and uniqueness to having the the uh the premium but not have things that are totally different or you feel like you're missing half the game you know with a pro so for like the premium area 51 is in both both models but on the premium you know it all involves every play field so you got to hit the little targets and the orbit and the ramp and stuff. But on the pro, we don't have an upper play field. So we just kind of, once you hit the ramp enough times, it'll start. And so you're kind of missing out on the pro, that satisfaction of like lining it up and then hitting the upper target and you know you're starting area 51. Because on the pro, it just sort of happens and you might not know when or why. So like as a premium owner, you can be like, yeah, I really like that experience. I'm happy to, you know, get the premium and get that. But as a pro owner, you, once you've learned that, you're like, well, I have the same opportunities as a premium player. It's just not quite as, as fancy and not, and you know, warm and fuzzy. But then also in addition to just the way kinetically the premium will have different kind of scoring opportunities Like in modes you can shoot the upper play field to spot shots So on the pro, you might hit the right ramp, and then you're forced to immediately either choose the left ramp or the center. But maybe one of those aren't lit for what mode you're in. But on a premium, every mode, you can spot shots one time each on both of those. So if you work the right ramp into your equation, you can kind of right ramp, upper loop, you know, then come down, hit some more things, go back up there, hit the other one, and kind of changes the strategy. And then similarly in the Area 51 multiball, the way you light your super jackpot is up there. So you can actually hold off on getting the super jackpot or just focus entirely on regular jackpots. Because on the pro, once, like on the premium, you can always build your super jackpot up top. And so therefore down below, you're always getting jackpots. But on the, sorry, did I say pro or premium? On the premium. On the Pro, once you kind of get eight jackpots, then your super jackpot becomes available. And now you're building your super and you can't actually get regular jackpots. So that's actually a pretty big scoring change where on the Pro it's like jackpot, jackpot, jackpot. Okay, my super's ready. Super. On the Premium it's kind of chaos. It's like jackpots down here, super up here, building up here. So that dynamic is totally different. but like I said you're not really missing anything either way it's just it's just different and uh yeah I think that's the way to go and then of course not from a software perspective but from the design perspective there's always all the cool you know sculpts and things and and that little magnet under the overlord is actually kind of fun too it choreographs we actually made it kind of synchronized with the video so when you get captured and the tractor beam comes on especially um on the le with the expression lights it really looks like a tractor beam it's and then it starts shaking and the ball starts going like with the video it's it's pretty cool that's awesome there is a lot of cool those little quirky just like with the pro like there's no upper play field like you said and so the plastics are actually layered and they say like under construction right and just it's cool that I feel like there's a lot with this game that you guys just took a little, just took the material and just tweaked it a little bit and just made it just that, that much better. And, and obviously it's shining through, like it's just the automatic winner. We've had several pinball machines released in the last three months. If you didn't know that you might be under a rock, right? Crazy month for sure. But it's crazy. Cause it's like, what's everyone's favorites besides Foo Fighters. Cause we know you're going to say Foo Fighters. This game has been received very, very well. I hope this has probably made you, pretty happy right right ray like you've have you had any negative feedback on this game so far not particularly no i mean everyone's been loving the heck out of it and uh it's cool to be part of something everyone's so excited about it like and and everyone's like asking me rules questions and i'm like yes i will answer them like yes what do you what do you want to know that's great and uh I guess it's probably a little bit different than some of the previous projects you may have worked on. But I don't know. It's just great to see such a game that's loved. I did find it funny, though. What was it? Dennis Creasel. It's like, finally, a game, a band game that Ray's not on, and then they announced you on. Because everyone just assumed it was just going to be Tanya, but they never realized it. So they're like, oh, yep, Ray's on another band game. Are you going to throw your hat in for a game outside of a band anytime soon? or are you just happy with the bands? I don't know. It's just the way it's all been lining up so far. You never know what's next. So this is, I'm guessing here, this is probably the band that you have been most familiar with of all the bands that have been released, I guess. Actually, it's probably the one I was least familiar with. Really? Yeah, I never really listened to Foo Fighters before working on this. I mean, I had heard, I think Learn to Fly was kind of the only song I knew I knew. Oh, not the early Foo Fighters, too. Yeah. Oh, is it? I think that's off their first album, isn't it? That probably explains why I know it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a huge departure from Nirvana because it was kind of like, hey, this is a light, you know, a light fun thing. And a lot of Nirvana songs were less fun. yeah i guess there's not as much girl screaming in uh in learn to fly as some of the later songs right yeah yeah he kind of went for volume so i i would say that has the theme resonated with uh i am solidly in the the dad rock era right like all the bands that you guys have released. I'm like, yeah, I'm slightly younger than the Led Zeppelin era, totally in the Rush era. And I have a friend who wants a Bon Jovi pinball machine. So if you want to do that next, he'd really appreciate that. But this is actually, of the band pins that have been released, this is the one I'm least familiar with too. I actually don't know too much about Foo Fighters. but I do appreciate the energy they bring. So what kind of feedback have you been receiving? Because you talk to a lot of people playing pinball, and there's a lot of people in their 20s now as opposed to us 40-year-olds. What do they think about the theme? It seems to be a big hit, especially on location. People are playing the heck out of it. And so usually theme is one of the biggest things that draws you to a game at a location. So the fact that people are playing it means it's a theme people really resonate with in that crowd. So, yeah. And I did know a lot of people that were, when I mentioned I worked on the Foo Fighters pinball, they immediately, like, there's a Foo Fighters pinball? I'm like, yeah. And then I, you know, go buy one or go play one. you know so it's uh yeah it's been pretty good more per preferably go buy one yeah and to answer your question scott it was actually after off their third album oh nothing left to lose their first one was self-titled okay all right and the second one was the color and the shape so gotcha so i actually really like monkey wrench which is from their second album i think that one's one of their better songs yeah i i that's it's so weird everyone has said that that was one of their favorite songs, and that was one that I had never heard before. Then I played the game, and I'm like, oh, this is pretty good. I can see... Yeah. Such an upbeat punk song. So good. You can see more upbeat when you activate the bot frenzy and get the chiptune version. Chiptune version? Yes. This is what I'm talking about. Scott's just like, yep, uh-huh. Yeah, uh-huh. Chiptune. Yeah, that's awesome. imagine rock and roll music mixed with video game music well you know it's not our fault the overlord took over and wanted to make everything all tech now and i love it i can't wait for it yeah no that that's awesome for those aren't watching the youtube you just missed scott's little dance to the shoulder dance yeah just in case you're wondering why i never became a professional dancer oh my goodness okay so this is this is your third game you've worked on right or fourth fourth fourth so what what have you learned incrementally through the process to go from you know well first of all what was the biggest surprise that you had from being an enthusiast being a like an elite not even a high level an elite level tournament player and understanding rules probably better than anyone else on the planet and then coming in and saying oh now i have to design it what was the biggest surprise that it's uh it's really hard like like you run into a lot of what ifs and a lot of like when i'm playing and i think of an idea i'm like why didn't they just do this or why you know you know it'd be cool if x y and z like when you don't have to actually implement it you can come up with thousands ideas a second like it's so easy to just you know oh man they should do something like this but the problem is when you actually make the rule you actually have to think of like every implication and execution of that rule and and how it interacts with the other rules and and and what it actually means like like will people understand that there's so much more to it it's it's it's funny that you say that because it has to be like simplistic complex complexity right because like look at um i think of the 90s games like i always kind of think of like giant mnemonic that game does have some good depth to it and whatnot but the problem is is everything gets overridden because everyone lines up their their their grid and then they get the the spinner lit for ridiculous amounts of points, and then you just spin it all day long. And so it's like that. You constantly have to balance, like, well, what do I do so that way someone doesn't just focus solely on Overlord? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yep, yep. You've got to make sure there's nothing too crazy. I know on Rush I kind of went wild and was just like, yeah, you can boost things as high as you want, and you can put multipliers on things, and you can blow it up, do all this crazy stuff. and it was fun for a while and then people started getting like hundreds of billions instead of just like a few building billions i'm like okay this is starting to become meaningless right like the scores have to mean something uh and so we we adjusted that in the latest update to try to make it more uh balanced and and so when you actually get a good score it's because you you did something cool you didn't just you know have the one thing lined up and and did it a certain way or whatever so that that that was kind of a lesson learned um and on foo you know there are crazy multipliers so i'm a little worried people might find some crazy things but so far i think i've kept it all sort of um balanced where people are picking different different cities people are you know you can pick either wizard mode. People aren't just like always in a play field multiplier because it gets, it gets harder to start, you know, the in lane targets. You're not always just shatting because it's really fricking hard on that game to actually shoot into the in lane targets. So you only do it when like the opportunity presents itself and you have like a big thing. You're not, it's not like star Wars where you're just always do, do, do, do, do, do, you know, make sure I'm multiplying everything. So all that stuff is stuff I've learned and I'm thinking about as I'm making rules. When you're playing it, what triggers for you wanting to try to shoot the shot shot, the stand-up targets? Because for me, that looks almost like, you know, attack from Mars straight up the middle. It seems like it is a ricochet waiting to happen that will go right between your flippers. yeah I mean if you have like your last shot in a mode is always worth a lot so I've seen people try to double that you know or just double like in bot frenzy you can actually double the spinner rip like when your spinner is lit for a lot it will actually multiply all the spins not just like one that was fun to implement too all that logic of you know a shot multiplier seems so simple and then you have to think like wait what is a shot like defined shot for me so yeah how many times do you break a game starting to code it like do you just have moments where like you're you're coding everything out you guys are testing it out in the lab or whatever all of a sudden the game just like shuts itself off i mean i hope it does that doesn't happen i didn't know he's saying when you're testing not on location yeah i'm saying when you guys are creating the game does that ever happen like you you're like this will be awesome and then you put it all in and it just like breaks the game. I mean, when I'm developing, it's literally like writing code and then sending it to the game and then testing it. And I'm sure, yeah, sometimes you'll forget a semicolon and you'll be in an infinite loop. Like that stuff happens to everybody. And when that happens in pinball, everything just locks up. And you're just like, wait, why is nothing happening? And you're like, oh, you know, oops. So, yeah, it's kind of, it can have some crazy consequences if someone was just watching the game. But when I'm testing, I do it with glass off, you know, with my hand. So it's not like I'm physically, like, I'm going to play a game of Foo, and then something bad happens. It's more like I implemented a new mode, I start the mode, I hit some shots, and then it dies. And I'm like, oh, okay, I need to go look at this thing. Like, that's sort of how that works. You should make that a Silver Ball Swag shirt. Did I forget my semicolons? actually i i'm just gonna make one that says pro tip play with the glass off play like the professionals now your life before pinball was in coding like you were in software right yeah yeah and so is are you a unicorn that you actually have that background in actual coding but also being an elite player too and coming over. Has that been any different? First, I would say it's actually not as rare as you'd think. I think of people that find themselves good at pinball or at least very enthusiastic about pinball. In my polling, it seems like there's a good amount of them that either have computer programming jobs or are in that field or just like math and stuff in general. And so it's not quite as unicorn coincidence as you'd think since it kind of aligns that way. But in my case, it worked out especially well because, yeah, I'm really passionate at pinball and they needed somebody who could code and could move to Chicago on a whim. And, you know, I'm not I mean, I do have a house in Washington, but I got it rented out. So that's, you know, still there. But I was basically able to take advantage of the opportunity and just dive in. How have you been like in Chicago? Is it definitely like is a change of pace from Seattle? Like are you enjoying the food more? What are your thoughts on Chicago? Yeah, it's I mean, it's similar in a lot of ways. you know things are expensive and like there's traffic on the 90 and you know it's it's very a lot of things are similar but i will say it's nice where it's not always gray and raining like it's cool to see the sun when you step outside the wind is annoying but i think i'd trade the wind but then you actually want the wind when it's hot outside so that actually cancels out and then in the winter you just you just don't go outside so that solves that problem hibernate duct tape the door shut remind me how this whole experience started that and you're a programmer in seattle an elite level level player and how did it end up that your job and your passion merged this was basically tim sexton's doing he reached out to me because he had seen me at tournaments, and I think he knew that I was in software, and he had actually just had the same sort of crossroads in his life where he was working in software and was able to – had an opportunity to go to Stern, and he had to make that decision, you know, do I want to leave what I know and try this new adventure? and so he did it and he loved it so much that he kind of recruited me thinking I'd be a good match and I I was like well I literally just closed on this house like a few months ago why don't you try in a year and sure enough next year he reached out and was like hey we're still you know what do you think did you want to come give it a shot and and I was like well I do have a renter now and I mean, what's worse, sure, I'll do an interview, you know, yeah, let's see where this goes. I mean, I didn't really believe that I would actually be able to work at Stern Pinball. Like, that's pretty cool. But I was like, well, I don't want to pass this up. So, you know, I followed the interview. They flew me out to Chicago. I had to like, you know, not be at work on a Friday randomly or whatever. Just be like, oh, sorry, I'm not in today. I'm sick. So, yeah, that was cool. They treated me well there, showed me some of the cool Chicago spots. They put me up in a nice hotel downtown. It was really, really a cool experience. And then they hit me with, like, the coding questions that, you know, very beginning of the day like 9 a and I like I kind of froze up but then I like remembered like remember you know how to code It okay Just do your thing And so got on the whiteboard So we writing code in a marker and whatnot Well, did well enough and then got an offer. And pretty much had to think about it a little bit and talk, get over with my parents. What should I do? Should I go to Chicago? I don't know. And my friends were like, well, yeah. I mean, it's pinball. you love that's your thing right like you still make those right yeah yeah exactly so yeah that's kind of basically it and just sort of Tim Sexton just kind of reached out and yeah that was it that's awesome it's not what you know it's who you know right well in a little bit what you know and you end up in a they're going to hire Ray over me because he can code and he can play and he knows rules so just make sure you put your semicolon on the board when you're writing in a marker is it the same is it a coding language that you use that you have been familiar with or did you have to learn a new language so it's uh c plus plus which is i had done it in college a lot that was pretty much what you wrote well when you first when i first went to call it like your first year in college, you do like Java, which is kind of like the beginner's language to kind of get you concept of programming. But then your later classes are all done in C++, which is like a more hardcore language where it doesn't do a lot of the stuff for you. You kind of have to be more particular meticulous with spelling things out and learning how the computer memory works and and algorithms and data management. And so all that kind of thing was all in my upper CS classes, and that's what they use at Stern. But I hadn't really used it in my jobs, except for, like, briefly touching on it. One of the jobs I worked at actually had a Mac and a Windows version of their program, but the program was more just a wrapper for a Flash application. so you'd actually download like a Windows or Mac thing and you'd run it and then it would have a Flash window where you'd be able to do all your things in. And so at that job I mostly did Flash programming, but I did every once in a while have to peek into the Windows code, which uses C++. So I didn't have zero professional experience with it, but it was pretty low on the list of things that was fresh in my mind. But I did remember from my – I had to kind of remember my college, you know, remember your training, and that came in handy. So my mind is blank. What do you got for me, Scott? I lost you in my code talk. I should have – No, no. We're so entranced by the code talk. We didn't know it was this late. Yeah. Okay. So coming to Stern Pinball, it's a dream job. And a lot of people, like, were you concerned at all that some people say, it's like, don't meet your heroes, right? Because in your mind, they're going to be someone different than they are, and they may or may not live up to your expectations. How has that been merging your love with your job? It's been pretty great. I haven't really seen much downside to it. I mean, it can be a little, you know, you have to be a little more who you talk to about what and, you know, make sure you're not like you're super excited about everything, but you can't say what you're working on and you can't participate in the rumors and speculations, you know, part. but other than that i mean i still uh go to all the pinball tournaments i can and and still play games at my home and and even play on location and yet i still work on a game it's code every day and i can't get enough of pinball i don't know i'm crazy we want to remind everyone after the show we have the patreon where raymond's going to be opening up about all the rumors and secrets yeah uh-huh yeah sorry all right i apologize it'll just be you know a million dollars a month or however how many you know to take place of losing your job years of employment and the lawsuit to follow with it it reminds me of when star wars came out then like the last three terrible movies uh j abrams handed out like a a sheet that said this is everything you guys can discuss and it was a blank piece of paper. That's funny. That's great. Okay. Now, there are a crazy amount of talented pinball players in the Chicago area. How brutal is League? Do you have League nights or do you just do competition or how does that work? Yeah, I'm part of the Chicago Pinball League, which is, you know, it's pretty small, only 24 people, but we go to people's houses and play once a month. And you're kind of grouped with people who are doing as well as you in the league. So, yeah, I'll be facing all the top dogs. You know, Keith P. Johnson is in the league. Andy Bagwell is in the league. I mean, it's not quite as crazy as it used to be. You know, I don't think Josh or Zach Sharper are in the league anymore. Roger Sharp is, though. It's really fun playing with him. And he'll still kick your butt if you're not careful. You've got to watch out. He can still play. And so it's cool because he is kind of like a hero, right? And you're just playing pinball with him, like, in the Chicago League. And same with, you know, a lot of industry people like Joe Katz, Keith P. Johnson, Mark Seiden, Jim Shearer. Yeah, I think that's his name. Yeah, Stern Pinball. There's even, yeah, just all sorts of people that you hang out with and play. It's pretty cool. I will have to admit, if you ever get the opportunity to meet Roger Sharp, definitely do it. Because we always joke about, like, don't meet your heroes. But, like, Roger is, like, the most down-to-earth guy I know. Roger is one of those people that actually exceeds your expectations on meeting your heroes. because he makes you feel like you're awesome as opposed to you going and saying, hey, you remember that shot you did? That was really cool. Yeah, he gives you such good praise when you do something cool. He's, like, genuinely impressed, and it makes you feel really good. And he's very, very humble about his own playing, and I definitely did not expect the mustache to be as awesome as it is. It's an impressive. You remember when he shaved it off and people were like, whoa, whoa. Oh, he did? Yeah. It was like for a week or something, and he posted a picture, and people are like, no, no, no, no, you need to grow that back. It came right back like nothing. Yeah. He woke up the next morning and poof, it was there. Tim Allen in a Santa Claus. Yeah. Yep. There's two people who are required to have mustaches, Roger Sharp and Tom Selleck. Yep. Definitely. Oh my goodness. So what has kind of stood out to you in the Foo Fighters process versus some of the other stuff you've done in the past? I mean, there was, there is this whole storyline and lore that I had to learn and, you know, with the Overlord. Okay, so describe this. I don't know the lore at all. So just tell me about it. I'm still kind of trying to figure it out, too. I'm not the guy. Tanya could be able to tell you, or Jack, but it's basically, from what I gather, the Overlord's like this alien who grew up in Area 51, kind of raised by scientists, who kind of treat him as their kid. And so he, kind of like the Sonic movie, where he grew up on all the pop culture and stuff, but then at some point he kind of was like old enough and and tanya described as his angsty teenage years where he wanted to to go out and reformat everyone and everything to be techno and digital um you can kind of that's kind of why on the game you'll see like the area 51 area those buildings you know area 51 is like a desert with like warehouses so you might be wondering why it looks all like purple neon sort of thing. That's, that's basically the overlord turning everything into his futuristic vision of reality. And then also giving people these helmets that reformat their brain to just kind of rock out to the techno music. Kind of like, what was it? The Riddler in Batman forever. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what I gathered. And then the part that starts confusing me is when you get into the meta of the Saturday morning cartoon where there's like the action figures that the Overlord is collecting. Because I guess in this world, the Foo Fighters are a TV show and they all have their own action figures. Okay. And so the Overlord, that's kind of why in like the match sequence, he's like flipping channels on the TV because it's kind of like he was watching the Foo Fighters, I guess. But also the Foo Fighters are not only on the TV show, but then they're also real because they end up being the ones to stop the Overlord from his plan. And so the Foo Fighters get in the van and they travel to these cities that he's reformatted and try to, you know, take the helmets away and save everybody. Or like in the Seattle mode, you know, this is a call. They're kind of going around everywhere, like, you know, helping everybody run is the Roswell mode where the Overlord actually is there and he's chasing you. You kind of have to run away from him. And Chicago's, I know they all have, like, the helmets on. You're freeing the helmets. So all the modes have their own little storyline to it. And then the Area 51 storyline is you're going to Area 51, and you're actually digging through the old files of this overlord. Because, remember, they've had him since he crash-landed as, like, a little baby alien. And so you're finding all these embarrassing facts about them. So if you're ever watching a stream and someone's playing Area 51, look at the display. There's all sorts of hilarious folders that they show and things. So there's a lot in the art in this game, for sure, and story. And, yeah, that was a lot to kind of take in when I joined the project and learn. And it's cool, though. It's really cool. Okay, so they assemble to form like – so when I was a kid, there was a show called Voltron. Oh, I forgot about that. That's – yes, that's how they plan to beat – or that's – see, this is where I get confused again because – Is this the cartoon, their Saturday morning cartoon, or is this the actual Foo Fighters who are traveling around? Yeah, I'm not sure, but I just know that, yeah, there's this big foobot that you end up fighting the Overlord's big suit, you know, thing that he's in, spaceship with legs. Kind of like, what was that, Avatar style? Yeah. And so you build this foobot, and now you can control the foobot, and that gives you the extra power to kind of take him down. that's kind of like the late game stuff Fubot and Final Battle after you've saved everybody and whatnot so I was listening to Brody even talk pinball this week with Nick Lane and Kevin Manny and they were talking about like pinball machines being scripted like the old Williams would just be like Second City they'd pay to come in and like Tina Fey was part of Medieval Madness and whatnot how much of it is Stern coming up with this content versus do you guys even pay people to do a script like because this this seems all pretty off the wall like did this i think this was most i think this was all in house um i know zombie eddie uh Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) came up with a lot of the art concepts that then we ended up building off of and uh yeah i don't i don't actually know how all that sort of happens because like i said when i join it's all done already and i just am jumping into the code so yeah it's pretty impressive though it's pretty cool do you usually see a completed play field or is it still whitewood when you're working on code it's always a whitewood yeah but it has all the shots and lights and things so you can encode it and then once you do see the final art you're always blown away because you're like oh wow this is way better than just a blank play field like this is really cool so what's your go ahead i was gonna ask what's your favorite game you've worked on so far the current one yeah right i mean they've all been pretty cool i guess i have a soft spot for led zeppelin because it was like my first one where i really got to just go ham and basically you know come up with the multiball rules so i got to think of all the cool different progressions of like this multiball is going to be based on shots this one's ramps this one switches that sort of thing and then you know it was your first your first i mean avengers was like getting my toes wet and kind of just doing what keith wanted and that was cool too that definitely was a great way to to jump into it but I think I have a soft spot for for Led Zeppelin but then after that Rush was even better like in terms of I got to that game had so much going on that I was it was like Led Zeppelin on steroids and then Foo Fighters is kind of orthogonal to those games where it's Yeah, I get to do a lot of cool things, but I'm not coming up with everything on my own and just kind of going wild. It's been more of a work with Jack, work with Tanya kind of collaborative kind of experience, I guess. And it's been fun. Yeah, it's really cool, and I'm really happy with how it came out. So I don't really have a favorite. They're all just kind of different experiences. What's your favorite shot in the game? Probably the side ramp. It's just like the smoothest, easiest side ramp in a long time. Like it just, you just hit it and it just flies around there. I feel like you don't really brick it. It's like if you get it in that vicinity, it just kind of sucks it up there and it just feels really good. And then you can shoot the spinner afterward. So, like, that combo is probably my favorite. That's all Ray does. He sits in the lab and just shoots that shot over and over. What's the most shot combo that you have planned for the code? Like an eight-way combo, seven-way? Well, I think it stops after about 12 or 13, which is when it gets to red. So every time you're hitting a combo, the color gets a little more up the spectrum. And you actually can see it, like, both on the play field with the lights, the little circle Combotron lights. They'll start changing colors, and once you get it to red, that's, like, the max, and that's, I think that's 13 or 14. After that, it doesn't go up any higher, but you're still getting, like, huge, you know, millions of points every time you keep it going. Yeah, it's, the combos on that game are really fun, and if you just keep hitting combos, you'll get good points. Like, don't underestimate the combos. awesome we're kind of coming up onto the hour mark is there anything that you haven't got to share about Foo Fighters that you want people to know there's just something that's like yeah what what haven't we asked that we should have been asking i mean you haven't asked any rules questions but i guess you guys don't have your games yet so you don't really it's true well and like so we did talk about the van uh at least the lighting of the white, I do like the actual van shots. I've played a handful of times, but the drop targets, I like how you have that lined up to do your missile or your speaker or I can't remember what the third thing is on there. But that roving shot with locking it in and boosting your van is really cool too. So, go ahead. Before you start a mode, yeah, you hit those drops and then you hit the thing behind it. But the fun part is, if you ever hit the Yeah if you ever miss a drop like you hit the behind paddle it actually resets your drops So it actually challenging to try to pick those off without missing and resetting them But you do get progress towards a bonus multiplier so not all is lost if you miss those. You get rewarded pretty well if you get all three down without resetting them. Yeah, because then they stay down and you can hit the paddle behind them as many times as you can before the time runs out, and each time levels up your van another level. And so if you hit that thing like six times on the bomb, then the next time you start a mode, you'll have six shots already spotted, so you only need a couple more to beat it. Or like the engine will start your mode with 100 seconds instead of 50, or the speakers will start your scoring instead of 2 million a shot, it'd be like 3 million a shot. So it's just depending on which mod you have, the next the next mode you play will be better nice so i'm playing this in logan's arcade and you walk in and i turn to you and say okay so what am i supposed to be doing on this game how are you going to describe it to me uh basically i would say you uh honestly for any game I think I'm stealing this from Travis Meary. The three M's. Modes, multipliers, multiball. Actually, maybe not in that order. Multiball, modes, multiplier. Anyway, so I described those three things. Let's say your modes are hitting the white arrows of Spell Van and shooting the left ramp. Then just pick a mode. Whatever shots show up that you like, pick that mode because it will actually show you the arrows as you're selecting the modes. and then tell them where the multiballs are, which is hitting the overlord a bunch of times. He captures your ball and then you shoot the ball. That's a multiball. Or shooting the right ramp on a pro five times is a multiball. Or on the premium, you can go up there and each time you hit the ramp, it will actually spot you a shot the first time. And you just have to start it by hitting the diverter opens up and you hit the back target. so I would describe those and then I would describe the multipliers of shooting the right orbit three times builds the rock-o-meter to start 2x scoring so don't sleep on just shooting that right orbit and getting it the ball to kind of figure eight into that little side lane and that will start your playfield multiplier and that's kind of all you need to know in the modes you just follow colored arrows and the multi balls I guess I'd tell them about the add a ball which is your radio targets on the left. If you hit both of those, then the big radio light will start flashing, and then you hit either of those to collect that radio, and that's your mystery award, which in multiball is always add a ball. And then I'd tell them if you can beat three modes, you get a wizard mode, and that would be like my goal that I'd set for them. I'd be like, that should keep you busy for a while. Okay. Cool. Well, I'm excited. I can't wait to get my game. I've already sold my Whitewater. There's a spot just waiting, glowing. You probably got a pretty penny for that. I remember that game shot up majorly. So it's been really interesting. I don't know if anyone has tried to sell a game recently. I did get a pretty penny off it. I can't complain. But it was really weird. I don't know if you guys have ever had this problem. I posted on Pinside and someone messaged me can I convince you to give you a heady glass? I don't know what the heck that is. Apparently it's a bong, a really really nice bong and I was like, no! He was really familiar with your pastimes. Yes, and then the other weird part too is, I don't know how deep I want, I know Scott knows about this. Let's just say there was one that shared like an awkward, sad family situation and said, because of this, I'm a little strapped for cash. Can you give me $500 off? No, $1,500 off. Oh, $1,500 off. They want $1,500 off for their... So it was like a family tragedy. And I just kind of jokingly said, hey, I've got this family tragedy. I still want to buy this luxury item. Can you give me, can you cut me a deal on it? It just sounded so bizarre. Yeah. I don't know. I haven't tried to sell anything too recently, but I'm sure it's bizarre out there in the raw. You never know what kind of people you're going to run into. It doesn't help when games like Foo Fighters and six other games come out all at the same time, and everyone's like, we need to get rid of everything right now. Yeah, and everyone wants – yeah. But no, it just made me chuckle because I've had more unique interactions this go-around. And luckily, I ended up selling Whitewater locally to a gentleman. Shout out to Kyle. Thanks for buying my Whitewater. He was in love with it. Got dropped off. Did it still have the topper? It did. I did the new ROMs that actually do the bonus hold on the third waterfall drop reward. Oh, nice. Yeah, that home ROM is nice. oh it's so good and it was you what's funny is i was selling it as like the motor was broken and then i got to kyle's house and we opened it up and i realized the set screw was loose on the yeti head so we just had to tighten down the set screw the motor was fine i had a i had an issue on uh my walking dead i got where the drop targets would do this dance where they go like and i'd be like oh i don't want to look at drop targets and i look and it's literally just a screw that was like loose and i just went and then fixed it isn't it funny some of those every time i have to take off the glass i'm like please just be something i actually i had that with rush when i opened my le and i'm like there's a problem with the with the drop target like i can't remember exactly what was going on and i looked and like the spring had fallen off and so i just reattached the spring and it was fine nice like i thought was with my godzilla the uh the magnet portion of the stomach the metal stud fell out of me mecca god's stomach yeah yeah i was like what the heck so i i texted zach benny because you know he does the warranty stuff and he was training greg bone at the time and they get on a conference call and we're there talking and like oh a screw fell out of the back So he just slid the stud back in and screwed it in. I actually, now that I finished my renovation, I still need to get, because Greg pulled, because my side scoop, the opto was bad on mine. So Ray, and we talked about this a few times, that was the issue, why I couldn't play, because that side scoop, that was such a bad situation. and so finally he's like you and everything was backward because obviously this is the the modern modern era and so greg like pulled his out and sent it and then cern warrantied it sent it out to me but my wife put it somewhere and i have no idea where it is so now that we have finished yeah yeah so so i i need to find that and give it back to greg bone i i've appreciated the patience he's had but he uh it's uh are you going to um anything this year or next year uh expo texas next time planning expo texas is definitely on my list next year i couldn't go this year because uh wife was heading to a girl's trip so i i had to be home with the kids and i i was not interested in bringing my 12 9 and 8 year old to to tpf and uh i think my 12 year old would have been fine, but I think my nine-year-old and eight-year-old would have just been like, dad, this is boring. Except we went over to my friend's house who had a Bond 60. And so we were playing that and they fell in love with sitting on a stool and playing pinball. And so my friend actually gave me a stool. And so my kids have actually been playing pinball more than they ever have since I've had pinball machines. Wow. And it was just the whole, they like sitting up so they can see a little better so that's a pro tip for you yeah i actually uh i did that i sat down on a chair while playing a simpsons pinball party and i was like oh my gosh how how if you're if you're not tall enough to see you cannot the comic book guy's head is in the way of the entire upper absolutely yeah i'm like this is a view that that some that like kids and some people have like it kind of it was like wow okay i'm gonna stand up now so i can play but it is comfy you get to just kind of sit down and relax or if you're in the lineman position because he got he got way down you know yeah well when you're defending the ball towards your flippers yeah i feel like that would be helpful for sure you get to see the angles in a different way i guess Yeah. Yes, but I just booked our hotel for Chicago. So we should be there. I'm planning on it. Wait, why did you book the hotel? I thought we were staying at Ray's house. That's what I thought too. I got too many. See the pinball machines where like furniture should be? There's not much room here. We'll just sleep under them. It'll be like when you had those little tents as a kid. It'd just be like sleep under them and we can even put up like bed sheets on the side. Make a fort, a pinball fort. well cool ray if you want someone to get a hold of you what's the best way to get a hold of you well ray also has a discord yeah yeah oh yeah yeah it's yeah you just uh go to my twitch chat uh like rayday pinball twitch.tv slash ready pinball give me a follow there and if you want the discord you can type exclamation mark discord um or you can just message me on facebook messenger is probably the easiest way, I guess. And I've got to give you a shout out on that Discord. Most of those Discords kind of do great at the very beginning and then they just kind of putter out. Yours always seems to be active. There's always someone commenting on it. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. It blew up with the discussion of all the IFPA changes for next year. The whole other podcast in itself. Have you already gotten Josh on and talked about that at all? Actually, we haven't, but That's a great – we had him on for Pulp Fiction. Oh, that was a go. So we haven't been able to bring him back on, but that's actually a good point. It seems like there's a lot of rule changes. So it'll be interesting to get his view and perspective on that. Josh, the one guy that you could have on four episodes in a row and not have the same material discussed every single time. Seriously, because you could talk raw thrills on one. You could talk, you know, coding on another, and then you could talk IP on another, and it just, yeah. You could also have Roger on for four episodes, but they'd be four four-hour episodes. You get through five questions. You know it. Okay, a couple things I want to point out. So we did something fun, Silver Bar Swag, if you go and check out our stuff. We had Brad Brad Albright do the design for – there's some awesome shoes and a backpack, and you can choose your colors, and there's a Keith Elwin goat shirt. We're just having a little fun with this. It's still – it's a lot of fun, and I know I love seeing pictures of people getting the shoes because they are really fun pinball shoes. and I've been talking with Josh about getting the 3.0 version of the Loser Kid hat made. So those are in the works. So as soon as we get those made, then, Ray, we'll give you the 3.0 hat and get you leveled up. We'll have to bring it personally to you at Expo here in October. Hopefully we'll get them done before then. If you want to check out our swag, it's on silverballswag.com slash collections slash Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. There's dashes in between the Loser Kid and pinball. And this is our second episode on YouTube. If you want to look at our beautiful faces, then that is definitely a way of checking us out. Happy for subscriptions and any sort of listening on whatever method you like. We are just grateful that you guys are able to spend an evening with us or an afternoon or a morning or whatever. I also want to do a quick shout out to Martin Gomez. If you did not check out our – I posted on all the socials this week. But they did – they originally did an episode about pinball on their podcast 99% Invisible. It is a huge podcast. And they did this pinball podcast like a decade ago. Well, at that time, pinball was coming off life support. Yes. Let's put that away. I mean, really what they covered was the 90s Williams stuff. They talked about pinball 2000 and then it kind of puttering out. And it's amazing how much has changed in the last decade for pinball and really having a renaissance. So it was cool because the first part was kind of a remix with Roger Sharp, them talking about the movie. And then the last half was them talking to Keith Elwin and Randy Martinez going and doing a tournament and just kind of recording that as a newbie and playing through it. Thanks for sharing pinball. I mean, it was crazy because I was looking up their subscribers just on podcast addict alone was 1.1 million subscribers. And that is amazing to have. Yeah, it was it was crazy. And so it was really funny. A little sound clip from Josh and me. Yeah, he said, I couldn't get Keith to gloat about himself. He's not like that at all, right, Ray? Anywho, he doesn't talk about himself. And so he ended up pulling clips from Scott, from me, and from our good friend Martin Robbins off of Head to Head, talking about how Keith Elwin is pretty amazing at his job. And so it was cool to be on there. And also they gave a shout out directly to me because I helped get them connected to Keith and to Zach Sharp and whatnot. so that way they could get the episode all wrapped up. But it was really fun. It was really cool. It was really different to hear that. And yeah, I just wanted to give out Martina a shout. And I think he'll actually be at Pinball Expo as well. Oh, that'd be great. Yeah, we'd love to take him around. So other than that, if you want to get a hold of us, we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at gmail.com. You can get a hold of us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, all at Loser Kid Pinball. like Scott said if you want to buy some of our swag easiest way right now is to go to silverballswag.com slash collection slash loser kid pinball podcast and there's shirts, shoes, coffee mugs, there's even fabric you can knit your own thing shout out to Jen Ruper for buying some fabric I guess she's going to make a dress out of it it's going to look amazing I cannot wait to see it and yeah silverball swag I'm sporting my triple drain I guess Travis has got his whole t-shirt collection paid for in the last couple months and it's all double zeros okay yeah yeah yeah tell uh tell what you sent Travis his his special loser kid shirt Ray have you seen our shirt where it's kind of like the baseball shirt and then it has our loser kid logo on the front yeah so it has the hat the this guy on there and it's uh the red and uh red sleeves and black so he got that and saw the logo and he's like well cool why are they sending this to me he flipped it over we got murray on the back with the double zero nice so you will forever be a pinball tournament score yeah so i i gotta plug i also have silver ball swag if you want a coffee mug with my lovely face on it it's uh it's pretty cool okay you have some of the cool i love the uh i love the your logo though because it's in the uh the crash it's the font yeah yeah it works pretty well. I was pretty happy with that. That's like the only thing I've ever done in a photo editing program ever. And I had to learn how to layer and resize text and stuff. And I did it just for that. So, yeah, it's pretty cool. It's iconic, too. If you want a Ray Day hat, that is where to get Ray Day pinball. Yeah, Travis Murray's kid has one. He says he swear it makes him play better. It better. He also has a little kid hat, too, and he had us sign it while we were at TPF last year. That was pretty cool, too. And, Ray, are you still streaming regularly or recording? I stream now and then. Next time you'll catch me, I'll be streaming my Pin Slash finals May 13th, Saturday? Somewhere around then. I mean, you'll probably be watching on IE Pinball because that's where it's streamed. Shout out to Carl. But it will technically be live on my channel doing that. nice nice so well cool i guess uh and ray has some of the best tutorials by the way if you really want to know um how to go deep dive play in his games uh look at look him up definitely well that wraps us up wraps it up for us tonight thanks again for joining us raymond is always a pleasure having you on and uh to everyone else i guess we'll see you in two weeks I'll see you next time.