BREAKING NEWS: New Difficulty Mode w/ Separate Leaderboards Coming!

[vikingerik]

making a difficult working nudge system in the on/off digital keyboard way seems improbable.

Pro Pinball had this nineteen years ago.

 

[Locksley]

Pro Pinball had this nineteen years ago.

But how? Micro nudge and you 'know' you can do exactly 5 such nudges, unless you compensate in an other direction if you kinda feel where the tiltbob is (and that doesn't need a physical representation, that seems like overkill).
But with analog there is more feel and it could easily be set to double warning if you do a full out move, unlike a key that would be exactly the same force everytime - one can't make it random, that would not imply skill and be unfair.

But overall we can't keep the liberal nudging we got if there is going to be any kind of difficulty I think.

It is just a pet peeve of mine; if I could play real tables like I bang about the ones in TPA I wouldn't feel so adamant about it

 

[relaxation]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_interpolation

it's usually implemented by the games devs, like moving your character half a step, it should be done to the flippers for tap pass ability (not to be confused with a flick pass), vikingerik wants it done to the digital nudge.

big leap here:Problem likely is a hardware limitation, the game interprets an input from frame A to frame B and then does it on frame B, this time frame is 16.7ms and we'll exclude debounce (the time it takes the key to register it's not bouncing off the contact from the inital press, ~5ms), a standard USB polling rate of 125Hz, 8ms, tells the computer the keys state if it's on or off so 8ms on and 8ms off (no room for linear interpretation), PS/2 interfaces didn't have this problem 19 years ago, so there isn't likely anything farsight can do unless people get over-clocked USB peripherals.. atleast that's what I tell myself. I haven't tested how Pro Pinball implements their nudges.

I know nudging is a topic of concern, especially it's secondary property, they've admitted they have an allowance on how floaty they can make their game so we should accept thats how they intend it to play. However, introducing a difficulty setting could allow them to re-tune that nudge without wiping leaderboards.

If they truely want to make a difficulty setting, simulate the tilt-bob too since half the gameplay is the ball coming back toward you. The meter does not reflect a real tilt-bob. I can nudge, wait then nudge again to have the meter think it's going to reduce the emulated momentum and it kind of does that but just before it reduces it'll spike.. exactly what I intended to avoid.
no game I know of has properly reproduced the behavoir of a tilt-bob yet, likely has to do with how input should be handled from a keypress/analog stick since you can tilt a real machine from one nudge but not a virtual one because they set it up that way.

That last bit is important because if you really wanted to emulate a tilt-bob and make it have a tighter tolerance for a difficulty setting.. you can nudge as hard as you can atleast once [decided by farsight], perhaps at a different interval, and never tilt.likely why this design problem is avoided on cabs by using a real tilt-bob as a sensor to detect when 'too much' happens

 

[Jeff Strong]

Got an email back from Bobby on this:

"The proverbial ball has been picked back up and handed off to someone to make sure all the bugs get fixed and this finally gets done.

If it's not in the PC build by the April release, please remind me - but I think we'll get it done finally.

Sorry for the delay."

 

[Extork]

Got an email back from Bobby on this:

"The proverbial ball has been picked back up and handed off to someone to make sure all the bugs get fixed and this finally gets done.

If it's not in the PC build by the April release, please remind me - but I think we'll get it done finally.

Sorry for the delay."

Reminds me of my boss. "I'd really like to get this thing done that you've been suggesting, but it's going to take me a while to email the big wigs, just keep reminding me"

 

[invitro]

Got an email back from Bobby on this:

Thanks for the update! I'm looking forward to seeing how this works out. It doesn't seem like a trivial amount of work.

 

[JPelter]

I really really hope this gets in and gets into the tournaments somehow. 20 minutes is a totally useless format.

 

[relaxation]

Got an email back from Bobby on this:

"The proverbial ball has been picked back up and handed off to someone to make sure all the bugs get fixed and this finally gets done.

If it's not in the PC build by the April release, please remind me - but I think we'll get it done finally.

Sorry for the delay."

did you remind him yet?

 

[Lord Squeak]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_interpolationProblem likely is a hardware limitation, the game interprets an input from frame A to frame B and then does it on frame B, this time frame is 16.7ms and we'll exclude debounce (the time it takes the key to register it's not bouncing off the contact from the inital press, ~5ms), a standard USB polling rate of 125Hz, 8ms, tells the computer the keys state if it's on or off so 8ms on and 8ms off (no room for linear interpretation), PS/2 interfaces didn't have this problem 19 years ago, so there isn't likely anything farsight can do unless people get over-clocked USB peripherals..

I should add here that USB3 ports most likely overcomes this limitation.
I certainly plugged my keyboard (corsair M90? i think) into the USB3 port,, just in case it helped. But recently while playing around with forcing higher frame rates on FX2 in 3D mode, I found that I can most certainly tell the difference between 120fps and 240fps. As I found that going up to 240fps halved the input delay, causing me to miss all my shots. In the end I limited the frame rate to 120fps just so I could keep the input delay to something i'm used to from playing FX2 and TPA in normal 2D. (TPA itself then limits FPS to 60, but I get the same input delay as i'm used to when playing FX2.)

Point being, that USB3 at least (probably) can poll quicker than 125hz. (have'nt checked numbers but maybe usb2 has a faster poll than usb1? as well?) At the very least it's probably worth testing if you got a usb3 port available.

 

[Jeff Strong]

did you remind him yet?

No, but I will now. Thanks for reminding me to remind him.

 

[Jeff Strong]

"It's been worked on but not finished. Hopefully, we can get it in before too long, but it won't be for the next couple months."

In other words, don't hold your breath.

 

[David T. Melnick]

Yes please. Too many easy tables, and would love to see this especially on the PC version.

Tables to look at:

Twilight Zone
Scared Stiff
Addams Family
Ripley's
FunHouse
CftBL
AFM
MB
MM

----
Mighty good list.

 

[relaxation]

Limited EBs on Addams Family? so once the house is done you're left with a multiball no one likes [timing out] playing and drain, xyz times. That's difficult to swallow.

 

[JPelter]

Limited EBs on Addams Family? so once the house is done you're left with a multiball no one likes [timing out] playing and drain, xyz times. That's difficult to swallow.

Preferably none at all. That's the whole point. Tables you can pound on forever and ever and ever are the bane of this game. There are one or two you can do that on even with no extra balls, but thankfully there are only a few.

 

[invitro]

"It's been worked on but not finished. Hopefully, we can get it in before too long, but it won't be for the next couple months."

In other words, don't hold your breath.

Bad news . I'd much rather have a hard difficulty (with its own leaderboard) than more physics work that everyone's so hyped on right now. Let alone, the crappy new GUI.

 

[relaxation]

Hmmm, a real machine has a big advantage over a controller, you can nudge 8 times in the span of about 1.5~ seconds, we may have our curve balls but they've got the shake.

*coughs* I, of course, could map small nudges to a controllers button and just mash it *coughs*

 

[JPelter]

Nudging in TPA would be really easy to fix I think. Simply make it not affect the ball's trajectory at all unless the ball is touching a physics object. That would make it behave nearly realistically, since the only way nudging a real table does what it does in TPA is if you slide the entire machine out from under the ball, which is usually at least two warnings if not an instatilt.

I think the reason Farsight doesn't want to do this is it would make nudging incredibly hard to pull off correctly, and the game is after all designed on purpose to be easier than real tables. I'm hoping they'd consider something like this for the new difficulty mode though.

 

[Tann]

Nudging in TPA would be really easy to fix I think. Simply make it not affect the ball's trajectory at all unless the ball is touching a physics object.

That's the way the nudging works in Zen.

When the ball is in "open air" (i.e. touching nothing), the ball trajectory is not affected by nudging. But if the ball is in contact with any objects on the table (rubbers, posts,etc), the nudging effect is strong as hell (even too strong, you can go from an inlane to the other one with only one nudge).

As tilt warning is very sensitive in Zen (one nudge = one warning, two warnings = tilt), you have to be very cautious and synchronized (nudge at the right time, when the ball enters in contact with an object).

I think it would work well in TPA, making the tables a lot harder.

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

That's the way the nudging works in Zen.

When the ball is in "open air" (i.e. touching nothing), the ball trajectory is not affected by nudging. But if the ball is in contact with any objects on the table (rubbers, posts,etc), the nudging effect is strong as hell (even too strong, you can go from an inlane to the other one with only one nudge).

As tilt warning is very sensitive in Zen (one nudge = one warning, two warnings = tilt), you have to be very cautious and synchronized (nudge at the right time, when the ball enters in contact with an object).

I think it would work well in TPA, making the tables a lot harder.

I think this change in the nudge system is a justifiable one, IMO, compared to how Zen executed their bang back nerf.

If you do this, Farsight, don't do what Zen did and attack the "cheaters," because there are very few in this game. And basically what was stated in earlier posts.

 

[kinggo]

Nudging in TPA would be really easy to fix I think. Simply make it not affect the ball's trajectory at all unless the ball is touching a physics object.

except, playfield is physical object. Zen is video game where pinball is just a theme. How on earth would we save balls from deadly ramps/kickouts if playfield gets ignored????
Also, how can one machine be more easy or more difficult? Sure, they can change slope and make it faster, or widen outlines, or disable extra balls. But with that aside, no way. The solution is to improve physics and not something artificial. That would just make the game even more unrealistic. And we already have Zen.

Or just start playing on mobiles and you'll see that the game is not so easy, no more endless EB or 48h marathon games.