Normal
By the way, Norman is a pinball geek through and through. While talking with Jason, I brought up the joke that is TPA: After Dark, where mature rated tables like The Sopranos and Playboy would have to reside. It is just that, a joke by the way, but it got us talking about the various ‘safe’ modes of certain tables. I brought up how I didn’t think Scared Stiff was really any worse than Medieval Madness, and Norman suddenly appeared out of nowhere to join in on the conversation.He said, “MM is just drugs and cursing, where’s the sex?” I make mention of the princess, which got nodding approval as he started rattling off quotes from the table.Norman is also the guy that gets to find and buy the tables for FarSight. If there was ever any doubt about FarSight’s love of pinball, look no further than Norman.Let’s get back to my conversation with Bobby.We talked a bunch about how the game is developed, what it takes to take the 360 version down to a mobile version, and then started getting into the PS3 and Vita. “Well I think the Vita’s main complaint is we don’t have any HDR lighting, there’s no real time lighting effects, which we do have on the PS3, which is why there’s a slight lag. There was a bigger lag, we actually improved that in the update patch that I think was in October. It went from being a 2 frame lag from HDR lighting to 1 frame lag that’s still there for 1080, but it’s there because we’re doing this post processing thing. In order to have the lighting technology that we do and run at 60fps, we need an extra frame to process everything after the controller input.”I asked if putting in the option to remove HDR was possible, and Bobby said that’d mean it would have the same look the Vita does. Having your TV set up properly to interact with the PS3 should get you to that 1 frame lag. My PS3 is hooked up to a CRT rear projection, so I didn’t think I was experiencing the lag, but I guess I am. They keep on trying to optimize the code, so there’s still hope yet for some of you experiencing it badly. It shouldn’t have anything to do with your controller, but then Bobby uses a wired controller when he plays. As to why it’s not a problem on the 360? Not as many HDR effects, and it’s a different way of running them.I felt this was the perfect opportunity to ask about the lighting in the console versions. For a while now people have been asking for a slider, so they could set how dark the table got. Bobby said they’re looking at having 3 settings; a brightly lit room, a medium, and a dark. I hinted at whether that would solve the way Black Knight looked on the PS3. When I talked to Jason later, he showed me how it looked on his monitor, running the 360 version. It looked like it should. I didn’t quite understand the why’s or how’s, but something happened to it in translation to the PS3, and they’re more than aware. 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.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.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.”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.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 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!Couldn’t help but ask if stereoscopic 3D was a possibility for Playstation. Possible, yes, priority, no. 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!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 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.In case you haven’t noticed, it’s garbage time for questions!I inquired about tables being in mono and being converted to stereo soundscapes…as if they’re not busy enough trying to keep deadlines, I want them to add in something inconsequential? Thanks for putting me in my place Norman! I asked Rob how much he has to hold back when dispensing info in the forums and Facebook due to proprietary info, and it turns out it’s quite a bit. “It really sucks, ‘cause I see the fan’s frustrations and I totally get it, but there are some things we really can’t talk about!”And believe me, every last person I talked to wants nothing more than to put out a kick ass pinball game. Everybody wears multiple hats when it comes to actual job duties. The love for pinball is every bit as much as we fans have, and I think that’s why we feel the connection to FarSight that we do. This isn’t a game company just putting out a title that happens to be pinball. This is pinball geeks putting out pinball games for other pinball geeks. There’s a reason Tim Arnold, owner of the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, allowed FarSight into his building after hours to photograph tables all those years back. He doesn’t even like virtual pinball, but he likes pinball people.FarSight is as much a part of our forum here on Pinball Arcade Fans as any of us. I’ve seen ‘em in the chat room, they scan the forums to see what problems we’re having and what we’re loving, and they wanna make these tables as much for us as they do for themselves. This next year is gonna be every bit as good as the last from what I saw. I’ll have to make the trek up the mountain again for another update. Maybe there won’t be a need for so many questions, and instead I’ll actually get to play some of the tables. Then again, I didn’t get the chance to talk to Jay Obernolt. Next time!I also think it’ll have to be during a warmer month when I won’t have to worry about putting chains on my car!My thanks to Bobby King for the invite and allowing me to interview him. Rob was great at introducing me to everyone, and giving me ‘the look’ when there was something I wouldn’t be allowed to repeat. And no, I won’t tell any of you in a PM, I signed a Non Disclosure Agreement! Jason, Norman, and Mike were more than gracious with their time, as was everyone else I failed to mention I met during the 4+ hours I was there.Viva la pinball!Now how soon before we can play TAF was that again?
By the way, Norman is a pinball geek through and through. While talking with Jason, I brought up the joke that is TPA: After Dark, where mature rated tables like The Sopranos and Playboy would have to reside. It is just that, a joke by the way, but it got us talking about the various ‘safe’ modes of certain tables. I brought up how I didn’t think Scared Stiff was really any worse than Medieval Madness, and Norman suddenly appeared out of nowhere to join in on the conversation.
He said, “MM is just drugs and cursing, where’s the sex?” I make mention of the princess, which got nodding approval as he started rattling off quotes from the table.
Norman is also the guy that gets to find and buy the tables for FarSight. If there was ever any doubt about FarSight’s love of pinball, look no further than Norman.
Let’s get back to my conversation with Bobby.
We talked a bunch about how the game is developed, what it takes to take the 360 version down to a mobile version, and then started getting into the PS3 and Vita. “Well I think the Vita’s main complaint is we don’t have any HDR lighting, there’s no real time lighting effects, which we do have on the PS3, which is why there’s a slight lag. There was a bigger lag, we actually improved that in the update patch that I think was in October. It went from being a 2 frame lag from HDR lighting to 1 frame lag that’s still there for 1080, but it’s there because we’re doing this post processing thing. In order to have the lighting technology that we do and run at 60fps, we need an extra frame to process everything after the controller input.”
I asked if putting in the option to remove HDR was possible, and Bobby said that’d mean it would have the same look the Vita does. Having your TV set up properly to interact with the PS3 should get you to that 1 frame lag. My PS3 is hooked up to a CRT rear projection, so I didn’t think I was experiencing the lag, but I guess I am. They keep on trying to optimize the code, so there’s still hope yet for some of you experiencing it badly. It shouldn’t have anything to do with your controller, but then Bobby uses a wired controller when he plays. As to why it’s not a problem on the 360? Not as many HDR effects, and it’s a different way of running them.
I felt this was the perfect opportunity to ask about the lighting in the console versions. For a while now people have been asking for a slider, so they could set how dark the table got. Bobby said they’re looking at having 3 settings; a brightly lit room, a medium, and a dark. I hinted at whether that would solve the way Black Knight looked on the PS3. When I talked to Jason later, he showed me how it looked on his monitor, running the 360 version. It looked like it should. I didn’t quite understand the why’s or how’s, but something happened to it in translation to the PS3, and they’re more than aware. 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.
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.
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.”
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.
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 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!
Couldn’t help but ask if stereoscopic 3D was a possibility for Playstation. Possible, yes, priority, no.
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!
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 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.
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s garbage time for questions!
I inquired about tables being in mono and being converted to stereo soundscapes…as if they’re not busy enough trying to keep deadlines, I want them to add in something inconsequential? Thanks for putting me in my place Norman!
I asked Rob how much he has to hold back when dispensing info in the forums and Facebook due to proprietary info, and it turns out it’s quite a bit. “It really sucks, ‘cause I see the fan’s frustrations and I totally get it, but there are some things we really can’t talk about!”
And believe me, every last person I talked to wants nothing more than to put out a kick ass pinball game. Everybody wears multiple hats when it comes to actual job duties. The love for pinball is every bit as much as we fans have, and I think that’s why we feel the connection to FarSight that we do. This isn’t a game company just putting out a title that happens to be pinball. This is pinball geeks putting out pinball games for other pinball geeks. There’s a reason Tim Arnold, owner of the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, allowed FarSight into his building after hours to photograph tables all those years back. He doesn’t even like virtual pinball, but he likes pinball people.
FarSight is as much a part of our forum here on Pinball Arcade Fans as any of us. I’ve seen ‘em in the chat room, they scan the forums to see what problems we’re having and what we’re loving, and they wanna make these tables as much for us as they do for themselves. This next year is gonna be every bit as good as the last from what I saw. I’ll have to make the trek up the mountain again for another update. Maybe there won’t be a need for so many questions, and instead I’ll actually get to play some of the tables. Then again, I didn’t get the chance to talk to Jay Obernolt. Next time!
I also think it’ll have to be during a warmer month when I won’t have to worry about putting chains on my car!
My thanks to Bobby King for the invite and allowing me to interview him. Rob was great at introducing me to everyone, and giving me ‘the look’ when there was something I wouldn’t be allowed to repeat. And no, I won’t tell any of you in a PM, I signed a Non Disclosure Agreement! Jason, Norman, and Mike were more than gracious with their time, as was everyone else I failed to mention I met during the 4+ hours I was there.
Viva la pinball!
Now how soon before we can play TAF was that again?
