An Afternoon At FarSight Studios

[Fungi]

Owners of iCade might want to start practicing putting a smile on their face.

No one seems to have pointed this out so I will. I'm smiling already.

 

[targa]

Thank you for that great report.Best wishes to all people at Farsight

 

[Bass Mummy]

Thanks very much for the post. A very interesting read, and the pictures were great as well.

 

[Mike Reitmeyer]

Does anyone else think Mike bears a passing resemblance to Kelsey Grammer??!!

How old do you think I am?

I used to get that I looked like Heath Ledger, when I had longer hair.

 

[DopedToInfinity]

How old do you think I am?

I used to get that I looked like Heath Ledger, when I had longer hair.

Sorry Mike, I couldn't resist! I've never really seen Heath Ledger without "makeup" so I couldn't really judge that one. I have been seeing a lot of the early 90's Fraisier re-runs so please don't be offended. I will say "Does anyone else think Mike bears a passing resemblance to Kelsey Grammer from the early 90's??!!"

No hard feelings, I appriciate all your input on this forum

 

[jaredmorgs]

Wow, Chris! Absolutely top job with this article. I remember you hinting about it on the IRC room, but the detail you went into was stupendous.

Great work, and easy-reading prose.

 

[shutyertrap]

Wow, Chris! Absolutely top job with this article. I remember you hinting about it on the IRC room, but the detail you went into was stupendous.

Great work, and easy-reading prose.

You must have finally had a moment of peace with the newborn to get the chance to read it! Glad you liked.

 

[Nik Barbour]

How old do you think I am?

I used to get that I looked like Heath Ledger, when I had longer hair.

Heath Ledger's been dead for a while now, and can't look too good at all - I'd prefer to be told I looked like Kelsey.

 

[Palmer Eldritch]

Heath Ledger's been dead for a while now, and can't look too good at all - I'd prefer to be told I looked like Kelsey.

 

[Pinhead45]

Whats that sheet on Jasons desk? ball skins? and after starring at it more, the edge of the tables graphics arnt blurred and you can clearly see BRICKS! as found on The Championship Pub, even the colors match.

I was playing The Champion Pub and realized it has an irish theme to it. You know that would actually make a good table for March. (St Patrick's day)

 

[SKILL_SHOT]

That would be nice but thats not happening for PS3 even if they got it digitized and submitted on Janruary 1st the backlog and almost 1 1/2 month wait per pack puts us into june before were talking about AFM so 3rd quarter.

 

[Pinhead45]

That would be nice but thats not happening for PS3 even if they got it digitized and submitted on Janruary 1st the backlog and almost 1 1/2 month wait per pack puts us into june before were talking about AFM so 3rd quarter.

I wonder why Farsight is submitting the STTNG PS3 pack with the January PS3 AFM/Genie pack. If STTNG was done in DEC why wait to release it. There making people wait even longer for the tables. These should be submitted as soon as they are done with them.

 

[SKILL_SHOT]

The licensed tables have to submitted and approved by license holders then submitted to sony then wait for thier approval.

 

[BJ Wanlund]

Going to react to a lot of this below, as this is what brought me here

Remember what was talked about with resubmitting? Some tables, the changes needed are so drastic, it might have to wait for a completely new Pinball Arcade build, much like Zen did with Pinball FX2 and Zen 2. Or at least that’s how I understood it. Here’s hoping the lighting settings will do the trick instead.

I'd love to see what they did with the lighting settings! Let's hope that works well.

There was no way I could end my visit to FarSight without talking about table difficulty. I started by asking Bobby how he viewed the game by comparing it to a completely different genre, racing games. Gran Turismo is known for being meticulous about getting every last detail correct to the point of it being a bit unforgiving, while Need For Speed is all about fun. Bobby feels TPA is 85-90% Turismo as far as style, but they’re not trying to eat your quarters like a real machine is. It’s still reality, just the easiest version of it.

I can see some difficult tables, Twilight Zone for me is a fairly difficult pinball table to score over 10M on regardless of the control scheme.

When I asked Jason about it, he said it comes down to math. He makes the point that in the real world, you’re dealing with gravity and forces at play that are random. In TPA, it’s all math. You discover a certain point for the ball to be on the flipper equals it making a particular shot, well the math never changes. So yes, the same thing is going to happen every time if you hit at that exact same moment. For true randomness you’d also have to factor in wear and tear of a table, how oily the ball gets during play, temperature and how that affects the rubber, etc.

Sometimes it goes the other way though. Bobby had this to say…

“Some of the physics, and this is with WMS’s and Stern’s permission, when there’s something on a table that may have been designed where maybe a feed wasn’t feeding quite the way they wanted it to, and the way a table might wear over time causing a straight down the middle drain, we have tuned it to not be a SDTM drain. I see people complain about, oddly, Medieval Madness, the right ramp. On the real table, ours drains straight down the middle if you fail to make it up that ramp. And people were complaining that on either of those ramps it should never do that. Yet that’s just not the way it is! But they thought it was more ‘real’ for it not to go SDTM. But no, that was making it more fun in our opinion, and that’s why we made it that way. Even though there is still the chance that, I think it’s the left ramp, that before a slight re-tune of MM we did a couple of months ago, it would drain down the middle.”

I have pinballs draining down the middle even when I'm doing fairly well in many of the TPA pins I've played so far.

According to Jason, putting in a difficulty setting would basically involve complete rebuilds of tables, as collision meshes would need changing, new bug fixes would be needed, and each table would need to be re-tuned.

I hope they can do that eventually. I would be interested in being able to play a pinball the exact way I would have if I found one of these pinballs in a local arcade.

There is hope on the horizon though for those of us wanting more of a challenge and it’s called Tournament Mode. In tournaments, there’s going to be tiers of experience people can be involved with, from Easy to Pro. For those playing Easy, it’ll probably use the same ROMS as are currently in TPA. For the harder tiers, it’s each table’s tournament ROM, as well as all the settings PAPA uses on the tables.

I asked whether Tournament Mode was going to be like Pro Mode, a separate purchase. The short answer, no. The longer answer is, you’ll have a certain number of replays for free, but subsequent entries into a given tournament would be monetized. It’s still really early in the planning stages, as what they’re trying to eliminate is people finding ways of posting ridiculous scores through bug exploits or hacking. Still, after what some have speculated, it’s good to know it’ll be free to all.

I like this tournament mode, but I would like to see what it can do when I can actually play a tournament mode.

I wish I could say I had news on the PC front, other than it’s a priority to get on there. Well, there is this. Once PC is out, development will probably shift from being done on the 360 to being done on the PC. Cabinet support will probably not be a day one feature, but seeing as how they’re going to get one in the offices, you’d better believe it’ll happen. Mike Reitmeyer, who is dealing with the PC builds (and all the console builds), actually thinks doing the cabinet version will be quite nice to work on since most people building cabinets are running on high end PC’s, much like FarSight has. In other words, no worries about minimum system requirements!

I like what I see on the PC side of things. Hopefully a site like GOG.com can become a priority if the Steam Greenlight process takes too long.

Couldn’t help but ask if stereoscopic 3D was a possibility for Playstation. Possible, yes, priority, no.

Ehh, it's fine with me either way. I know some folks IRL who would like stereo 3D in every PSN/PS3 game, but I am not one of them.

I thought nobody would like my idea of opening an arcade in Big Bear with all the tables FarSight owns. I argued that space in the building is quickly running out, and then what? The response was, we like playing these too much to not have them on site. Room will be found! Plus they still reference them for all those tweaks that we keep demanding. But then it comes out they actually are looking into opening a place up, potentially a retro bar with tables in it. Oh hells yeah!

I like arcades. Arcades that are just rows and rows and rows of pinballs? Ohh yeah! Been a pinball fan for awhile.

How ‘bout partnering with a peripheral company to make a dedicated pinball controller? Owners of iCade might want to start practicing putting a smile on their face.

I would LOVE a dedicated real pinball controller! But one that worked across as many of the platforms supported by TPA as humanly possible, AND made by the iCade folks??? Now THAT would put a huge smile on my face!

I go for another shot in the dark; selling t-shirts emblazoned with any kind of Pinball Arcade or FarSight logo. Well, it would require a 3rd party to make and ship, but could we one day be able to purchase those of FarSight’s website? Absolutely.

Maybe Elvira would be okay with wearing such a shirt? I'd be impressed if she was the "shirt model"...

 

[night]

If the tables are esentially PC builds, isn't it a better idea to port this to the Mac instead of porting the iOS version? The Mac deserves the highest quality, just like a future PC release deserves the highest quality..

 

[SilverBalls]

Chris - Farsight mentioned previously they will be getting a virtual pinball cabinet at some point. Was there any mention of this during your visit?

Recently a video of Pinball FX 2 was posted running in cabinet and it looks really good, so can you imagine how good Pinball Arcade would be.
http://youtu.be/1j3bY8_kX3g
https://forum.zenstudios.com/forumdisplay.php?40-Pinball-FX2%99-Windows-8

 

[Squid]

Awesome stuff, Mr. Trap. That was a great ride through the mindset of what the chefs at FarSight have in store for us.

It's nice to see artists throwing themselves into their work.

 

[DarkAkatosh]

I wonder why Farsight is submitting the STTNG PS3 pack with the January PS3 AFM/Genie pack. If STTNG was done in DEC why wait to release it. There making people wait even longer for the tables. These should be submitted as soon as they are done with them.

Content doesn't go live until 3 weeks after it passes Sony QA.

 

[shutyertrap]

Chris - Farsight mentioned previously they will be getting a virtual pinball cabinet at some point. Was there any mention of this during your visit?

Recently a video of Pinball FX 2 was posted running in cabinet and it looks really good, so can you imagine how good Pinball Arcade would be.
http://youtu.be/1j3bY8_kX3g
https://forum.zenstudios.com/forumdisplay.php?40-Pinball-FX2%99-Windows-8

Bobby said they're getting a cabinet in the offices soon, so absolutely it's happening. Mark said programming the tables for cabinet mode should be nice since they'll pretty much be able to dump the build they do on their VERY high end PCs onto it with few changes, since most people with cabinets are also running high end PCs.

 

[SilverBalls]

Bobby said they're getting a cabinet in the offices soon, so absolutely it's happening. Mark said programming the tables for cabinet mode should be nice since they'll pretty much be able to dump the build they do on their VERY high end PCs onto it with few changes, since most people with cabinets are also running high end PCs.

That's great news Chris - thanks. 2013 is going to be a good pinball year.