Details on PC Cabinet support for TPA

[DaPinballWizard]

Agree. Now imagine playing it on a cabinet with real flipper buttons. It only gets better from here. Good times ahead.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

The mobile version is cool, but now that I've played the PC version, this is where it's at for me. Touchscreen controls will never compare to physical controls, IMO, as well as playing on a huge monitor. Now the mobile version feels more like a novelty that I'll probably only play once in awhile.

And continuously-variable nudging! Glorious!

But I do now have a new appreciation for the vertical-monitor crowd. I forgot how much real estate is wasted playing in landscape. For some reason it doesn't seem as noticeable on the 360 (although that's a much bigger screen).

 

[SilverBalls]

And continuously-variable nudging! Glorious!

But I do now have a new appreciation for the vertical-monitor crowd. I forgot how much real estate is wasted playing in landscape. For some reason it doesn't seem as noticeable on the 360 (although that's a much bigger screen).

We want you to join the vertical monitor crowd Sean. We are an 'almost normal' bunch .

Seriously though the extra 'real estate' given by portrait takes you so close to the feel of playing the real table. I guess this can be appreciated by playing in portrait on an iPad. Just scroll through the 2-screen fullscreen virtual table screenshots shown below to see the view you will play with in portrait. It really makes all the difference, and it will be the future in my opinion.

http://www.dervito.at/pinball_index.html

 

[RetroDude]

I stopped reading once you started making things up. Have you considered that most of the mobile users aren't paying any money at all and that the PC version will cost significantly more than the paid mobile versions?

"Most" of the mobile users?
[Citation needed]

You complain about things being made up and then you go and do it yourself?

 

[Dan]

Once you try a vertical table, you're hooked that's for sure. Slapping the buttons sideways also adds to that arcade feeling.

 

[Dutch Pinball ball]

Jeff..... The ios a novelty now??

I still think pa on my ipad is the best. And dont worry about controls, ios 7 around the corner with official controller support. So the marcet will be flooded with options with fysical buttons.

Same as on pc and consoles then. Dont give up on us poor mobiles jeff.....

;-)

 

[Jeff Strong]

Jeff..... The ios a novelty now??

I still think pa on my ipad is the best. And dont worry about controls, ios 7 around the corner with official controller support. So the marcet will be flooded with options with fysical buttons.

Same as on pc and consoles then. Dont give up on us poor mobiles jeff.....

;-)

For me it is, but not for everyone. I was really into iOS gaming for a couple years, but it's tapered off to the point where now I rarely ever play anything on my iPad, though I use it all the time for web surfing, reading, recording guitar, etc.

 

[ClarkKent]

Will the PC version for cabs support higher resolutin polygon models? The larger the screen is the more you can notice that some objects ( like the ramps in TOTAN) are very very edgy...

 

[Rooter]

I've also considered your accusation that I'm just making things up...I've played in a few leagues

Okay, now you just sound silly. You pulled numbers completely out of your butt and then used them as facts to support your argument. It's complete nonsense.

In the latest issue of Pinball Magazine, Bobby King clearly states in an interview that iOS is providing most of the revenue right now.

Yes of course most of the money is coming from iOS users, the PC version doesn't even exist yet. Every argument you make is made my misleading or completely made up facts.

 

[Rooter]

"Most" of the mobile users?
[Citation needed]

You complain about things being made up and then you go and do it yourself?

It's true of every iOS app. The average conversion rate from free to paid is about 2%. There was also a time when Pinball Arcade was the free iTunes Store download of the week.
You are correct that I used a poor choice of words, but unless Pinball Arcade is converting at over 25x the average rate, yes, most of the people haven't paid any money.

 

[Nightwing]

It's true of every iOS app. The average conversion rate from free to paid is about 2%. There was also a time when Pinball Arcade was the free iTunes Store download of the week.
You are correct that I used a poor choice of words, but unless Pinball Arcade is converting at over 25x the average rate, yes, most of the people haven't paid any money.

And,you know this for sure,just how exactly?
It's speculation. At best...

 

[Nightwing]

I'll say this right off - I haven't played pinball in cabinet mode on a PC. But I think,and I also think that most people who,if they have the proper equipment.would play TPA in that mode. It's part of the reason why I've learned to love TPA on my iPad. Like others have said,it has more of a sense of realism to it.

And as for choosing,one over the other - I don't have to. To me phones & tablets are mobile devices. So I can play TPA on the go & have fun with it. I'd rather be playing on my 360,but that's not an option at the moment. So I'm seriously looking at Steam for my home version of TPA. But I want a complete and stable PC version. That is more important to me.

Hopefully a cab version will come. I'm all for that. But get the game out first.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Okay, now you just sound silly. You pulled numbers completely out of your butt and then used them as facts to support your argument. It's complete nonsense.

Are you even paying attention? I said it was an educated guess, and then I went on to say what the basis of that guess was - an extrapolation from the ratio of cabinet owners in my local leagues projected onto all TPA players.

That is not even remotely the same as "pulling numbers completely out of my butt". It's the same thing political pollsters do when they're trying to predict an election: ask a (relatively) small group of people, then use the results to predict the properties of the larger population. It's called statistical sampling. Yes, there are pitfalls associated with it, including the possibility of picking an unrepresentative sample, dishonest presentation of results, etc., but it's a whole lot different than merely creating numbers via rectal dislodgment.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Some of the cabinet/fullscreen tables at VPforums have several thousand downloads (and those numbers would be higher if there was a universal format, plus those tables are also available on other sites). While it certainly won't be Farsight's biggest market, it will bring them more sales, and the cab scene is growing all the time.

The PC pinball crowd in general is fairly large, as for many years it was the platform of choice for pinheads. VPforums alone has over 70K members. If Farsight can get established in the PC pinball scene, it should be a very solid platform for them.

 

[karl]

Extremely well said, Jeff. 2 thumbs up

 

[rob3d]

Well take a table like TZ. On vpforums the desktop version has been download over 16k times. The FS night mod clocks in just under 4k. So that's 25% cabinet users on a niche hobby website. Let's say those are all unique users downloading the tables only once (pro tip: that's not the case) you'd have about 20k users total. Lets apply the same crappy math to TPA downloads which clocked in over 1 million (which much like above isn't a true indicator of unique users). If those fictional 20k vpforums users are already part of that fictional 1 million then pinCabinet users are only 0.4%. If they aren't then the number is much lower.

Basically whether the numbers come out of someones butt, are based on faulty arithmetic, or if someone actually went and polled every pinball lover on the planet; your gonna find that pin cab users are in an extreme minority.


That said..... Please, Please, Please add cab support with ledWiz and 3 displays and bacon on top!

 

[superballs]

I guess I was generous when I quoted 4%. Frankly, I love playing in pirtrait but it shouldn't be a deal breaker if it's not available.

Hey whatever those who won't buy it at launch will have nothing to do but inject vitriolic posts into threads where the rest of us are enjoying what we do have. So while the rest of us are enjoying the pc version, you all can sit around and complain and really, we won't care that much. We will be busy playing pinball and complaining about niggling art issues and having petty arguments about stupid things like we like to do here. Feel free to join us when portrait is supported but don't expect us to share in your misery.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

For the record, I'm not against the cabinet version. I would be very happy to see the cabinet at CP Pinball offer TPA tables in addition to what it has now. I would be happy even with a simple portrait view (and I think portrait-but-not-full-cabinet is a sizable fraction of the PC audience). I'm just pointing out that I don't think the cabinet audience is very large and so FarSight may not have cabinet support very high on the priority list right now.

At any rate, if they don't fix that damned lighting, it'll be a disgrace to cabinets everywhere!

 

[SilverBalls]

For the record, I'm not against the cabinet version.
At any rate, if they don't fix that damned lighting, it'll be a disgrace to cabinets everywhere!

Agree on that point. The latest VP tables have better lighting than the current PA PC build using techniques that the community has come up with.

If we can get the PS4 type lighting eventually it will make the world of difference.

 

[DaPinballWizard]

Agree. The lighting is the only main problem for me too. If they could just tone down the lights under the flippers, that would be a start.
Portrait mode is a start for cabinet, a logical start. I want backglass support and DMD support also, even BAM support. But the first thing needed is portrait. The rest can follow that but that is a starting point. I can play without backglass, I can play without DMD , I can not play for more than 10 minutes on my cab in landscape mode. I wont even purchase it until portrait comes out, it is that bad playing that way. So portrait is a deal breaker as far as I am concerned. As much as i am liking the PC version, I don't intend to go out and purchase a new PC to play TPA on. Portrait or bust!