2013 texas pinball festival report

Ark Malmeida

New member
Apr 3, 2012
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Great writeup - nice job Russell! That video is great too, but such a tease. You can see a few times where you can see Farsight's booth in the background but then the camera veers away!
 

Kolchak357

Senior Pigeon
May 31, 2012
8,102
2
Thanks to Russell for kindly sharing his great time.
Love the video and pics too. Nice to see so many younger people there. Gotta keep pinball alive.
 

PiN WiZ

Mod & Forum Superstar
Staff member
Feb 22, 2012
4,158
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I appreciate the report Russell. I missed the Texas Pinball Festival for the second year in a row do to unforeseen circumstances. Hopefully next year!
 

Fungi

Active member
Feb 20, 2012
4,888
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I didn't say any kind words Russell. Nope. I haven't said anything at all. ;)
 
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bagheera369

New member
Mar 21, 2013
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Just wanted everyone to know that I second this opinion. I didn't get to run around and play games with Bobby :( , but I did have an excellent time! That Sorcerer table was absolutely stunning, and I agree with it making pinball arcade. Other notable tables for me were several amazing Tron tables, a superbly customized Spider-man, the whole row of Color DMD tables, WOZ of course, Big Bang Bar (which i had never played...but now understand why it is unlikely for Pinball Arcade *blush*), and several other excellent tables. Pinball Arcade in 3d was stunning too, and i'm looking forward to that feature as well! One day I will actually get around to the seminars....but my father, my wife, and I were all too busy playing. This was year 3 for me....and I can't see myself stopping anytime soon. I urge everyone to make the trip down next year, and come have a blast.
 

Fungi

Active member
Feb 20, 2012
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Cool. Looking at the TZ color DMD, I kept thinking how cool it would be if we were allowed to change the TZ DMD from orange to white. The effect would be kinda the same and would not be a difficult programming feat on FarSight's part. I know, the contract doesn't allow it. But still.
 

shutyertrap

Moderator
Staff member
Mar 14, 2012
7,334
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Here are some more pics and info from Pinball News:

http://www.pinballnews.com/shows/tpf2013/index.html

You can also listen to MP3s of the various seminars (Gomez, Ritchie, JJP, etc.)

Oh my god. That 10 minute video they had was hellish to watch! Couldn't focus on anything, and the side scrolling pans just strobed and gave me a headache. Maybe next time instead of using an iPhone, they can use a real camera.

That being said, with as fast as they were walking the floor so that you could see how big the event was, I doubt I'd be able to play a fraction of the machines and my forearms would be ready to fall off at the end of it! Looked like a lot of fun.

And did they turn dim the lights at night to simulate a proper arcade environment? :p
 

Robert Hunt

New member
Dec 2, 2012
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I agree that video was disorienting and hard to follow, but the truth is that hall was so big it WAS hard to know where you are. And there were dozens of machines that were there in duplicate or even triplicate, so no single machine could ever be trusted as a landmark!

As for dimming the lights, they only did it for a short spell late on Saturday night, but it would be hard to say if they even did it on purpose. The lights went off quite abruptly with no announcement, and came back on suddenly after what seemed like a pretty random interval.
 

whirlspell

New member
Feb 22, 2013
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Thanks to Russell for the writeup! He had kinder words for FS than I would give. As for the Texas Pinball Fest - it was wonderful. My one and only complaint was that there was really no "dark time" which I was strongly hoping for. Also, the beer was crazy expensive, but that's expected given the venue. Some guests were more polite and considerate than others when it came to hogging machines... but that's also expected given the fans. :) A few machines were far too loud - particularly a wicked Dr. Who that was completely and totally drowning out the only Lord of the Rings table, unfortunately positioned right next to it. All of these things are independent of the festival's organizers, who did a superb job. I was even greeted with enthusiasm when I got my badge. The crew really was outstanding.

As for Farsight... I was happy to chat with a couple of eccentric devs. They clearly have a passion for this stuff. I'm just worried that they don't have the skillsets to keep up. One of the gentlemen talked down to me quite a bit when I told him I was most excited for the Steam and Windows 8 releases, as I'm primarily a PC gamer, but I am an IT professional and love using my Windows 8 tablet for light gaming. He didn't know that I'm intimately familiar with how Valve works, that's not his fault, but he completely blew off the Greenlight efforts and basically told me "just don't worry about it, we have a direct line with Gabe Newell" which I have a hard time believing. Maybe I'm wrong and just being pessimistic... that's fine. Just seems like fluff to me.

Also, I'm curious if anyone else thought that the 3D setup had the infamous "flipper lag"? My PS3 version of the game at home is unplayable, it's so laggy. But I have invested a TON of money into my home theater setup, and I literally do not have any trouble playing ANY other media, be it games, audio, blu-ray, or even rhythm game stuff, like Rock Band. I refuse to believe that my setup is in any way incorrect or not optimized based on one game alone. I felt a lot of lag in the 3D PS3 version they had on display, but they explained it as just non-optimized code since they had literally only gotten the 3D to work that day, or the day before or something like that. I couldn't help but notice that they were using slim PS3 units, same as mine, which also have lag. I just really wish someone would get to the bottom of the lag issue. It's not there on the 360 version.

Beyond the lag issues, I'll echo what tons of others have said - I really wish FS would take a month off of their release schedule and FIX PROBLEMS. The list of issues with existing tables is growing every month, some tables seem like they've gotten a lot more love than others, AND - most importantly IMO - mobile device technology has radically expanded over the last year. I've been using a Galaxy Nexus since they came out, alone with a Asus Transformer Prime, TF300, and Nexus 7, but my next phone will be the HTC One, which has that 1080p screen that's become so popular. It's inevitable that the iPhone will also get a huge screen resolution bump (it's pretty lackluster at this point), and many others will be upgrading to quad-core (or higher) 1080p phones this year. Android fragmentation is a big challenge for developers - we all know that. But lots of other games are handling the challenge. I want to see TPA tables on my phone and tablets that look as good as the PS3 version. That should be a top goal for FS.

.... /rant. :) Hopefully no one feels the need to ban me after that one.
 

Heretic

New member
Jun 4, 2012
4,125
1
A few machines were far too loud - particularly a wicked Dr. Who that was completely and totally drowning out the only Lord of the Rings table,


Doctor who eats frodo for breakfast

Edit - and dont worry about getting a ban lol, we love a good bit of critizim and debate..just not certain self entlied posts lol

As for the greenlight process id believe them so far? Ive no idea how the vavle machine works
 
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