Farsight comes clean on issues with 360 platform

[karl]

Richard B. I Seem to remember I told Worf that exact same thing earlier in another thread. Maybe you have better luck than me (no disrespect meant to you Worf)

 

[Worf]

It's still more testing than it seems Farsight does. I mean, how can you excuse MM not having playfield lights? Just running the table makes it pretty damn obvious.

Or balls getting stuck in locks. RBION is unplayable if a ball gets lost (it just goes to ball search endlessly). Heck, just running ball search slows down play. Anyone who spends maybe a couple of hours would find it.

Yes, they won't find bugs that don't affect gameplay, but that's usually more cosmetic issues. But a lot of bugs reported here ARE gameplay bugs that stop the game requiring one to exit and restart. Or use Call Attendant far too often.

 

[karl]

Just because there is a bug in the IOS port or playstation 3 etc and not in xbox does not mean that microsoft found the bug. Xbox is the platform Farsight makes first and bugs will occur when they do other versions that is not in the first one. Microsoft, like all the others do not check for game playing bugs. If something is wrong with the game and people complain they can just blame the developer. They have a set of standard rules (too keep their neck clean) they check on every game, like do the game crash when you take out a memory pin, do the game start at all or do the game make the xbox repower etc. I do by no means claim to be an expert and this is just my belief, but if microsoft does it any other way you can color me very impressed

 

[bavelb]

It's still more testing than it seems Farsight does. I mean, how can you excuse MM not having playfield lights? Just running the table makes it pretty damn obvious.

Or balls getting stuck in locks. RBION is unplayable if a ball gets lost (it just goes to ball search endlessly). Heck, just running ball search slows down play. Anyone who spends maybe a couple of hours would find it.

Yes, they won't find bugs that don't affect gameplay, but that's usually more cosmetic issues. But a lot of bugs reported here ARE gameplay bugs that stop the game requiring one to exit and restart. Or use Call Attendant far too often.

Which is none of the things MS QA's department test for. They do stuff like unplugging controllers (or memorycards...remember that one?) during play, turning of power in the middle of a game, does it have achievements according to the standards of MS, how much resources does the game take up, how is leaderboard behaviour. In other words, stuff a game can do to make THEIR platform look like **** is tested for, anything else is up to the developer.

Ms will not test if your slingshot posts are in place, your lights are on, if your balls are still chromy, or if the lower gate in BH opens and closes at the right time.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Which is none of the things MS QA's department test for. They do stuff like unplugging controllers (or memorycards...remember that one?) during play...

Don't forget trying to play pinball with a guitar!

 

[Richard B]

Don't forget trying to play pinball with a guitar!

Don't recall that one. They really rejected it for lack of guitar support?

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Don't recall that one. They really rejected it for lack of guitar support?

Apparently if you had a guitar controller active it caused problems with the game. It's the reason the initial 360 release was delayed back in March.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

Apparently if you had a guitar controller active it caused problems with the game. It's the reason the initial 360 release was delayed back in March.

I actually don't find that unreasonable. Obviously nobody is going to try to play TPA with a guitar controller (except as a joke/stunt), but if you've got one active when you start the game and it makes the console unresponsive, or causes something similarly ugly or unrecoverable to happen, that's something that really does need to be fixed.

 

[Pete]

I know this sucks to say and I am an xbox owner and would love to get those new tables on my console but damn how is it worth 60,000 for any company to make an upgrade to their game? I don't see why companies are even paying for that. Why wasn't their a huge boycott over this years ago? are game developers that much pushovers that they are letting Microsoft practically take their money?! That's almost enough loot to pay for an awesome new big name table license EVERY time they have to update it! If developers continue to put up with Xbox's standard of submissions what is to stop everyone else from charging the same. sony will say "they willing to pay that much let's also charge that.". we need some kind of revolution to end this because it's destroying the video game market.

Also can't pinball arcade just release itself in the independent section and avoid that cost? why not just go the independent route where they don't charge you an insane amount of money every update. I mean word of mouth from all the other consoles and established fanbase going it doesn't really need to be among the regular titles for us to find it.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Also can't pinball arcade just release itself in the independent section and avoid that cost? why not just go the independent route where they don't charge you an insane amount of money every update. I mean word of mouth from all the other consoles and established fanbase going it doesn't really need to be among the regular titles for us to find it.

From what I understand, the indie section does not allow developers to make title updates (patches for the game's executable code). Since FarSight needs a title update for each new batch of DLC tables, this would not work for them.

EDIT: This is not true; it's DLC that can't be released on indie games, not title updates. Need more sleep...zzz...

 

[Sumez]

The indie section allows patches. There are a billion other limitations, though, the lack of Leaderboards being just one. Also the pricing options aren't favorable for FarSight, and you could never release DLC, each table would have to be a separate game. And then there's the region coverage - there are a ton of countries that don't have the indie section.
Of course the main reason this would never happen, is that the game would have to be made using the XNA framework. Even though XNA is awesome, it would easily make the game code a lot less portable, and introduce myriads of problems (such as the lack of memory management) that would no doubt result in the game running much worse.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

The indie section allows patches. There are a billion other limitations, though, the lack of Leaderboards being just one. Also the pricing options aren't favorable for FarSight, and you could never release DLC, each table would have to be a separate game. And then there's the region coverage - there are a ton of countries that don't have the indie section.

You're right, that's what I meant to say. Too little sleep...must...get through...day somehow...Zzzzzz.....

 

[Pete]

just saying i'd rather not have tables come out on xbox at that price and instead have that giant submission fee go into getting a new awesome licensed table every month. if the pc version comes out I won't need to touch it on xbox ever again and I hear playstation is like 150 now so if they fix ps3's flipper lag issues I would rather buy a ps3 then see them waste so much money supporting Microsoft's financially crippling submission rates.

 

[Nik Barbour]

Re:- the post above.
I can't decide if you're deliberately trolling for an enraged response, but to post on an xbox thread, where we have had the ****tier (not the ****tiest end of the stick) and where a lot of people don't have multiple platform's where they can jump to and from at will, and then state that you'd rather we didn't get our dlc just because you can shift to pc land if it ever gets green light, isn't going to receive much in the way of a positive response.

FarSight is a business!
If they didn't think that profit could be made from release on the Xbox platform despite the submission fees MS impose, they wouldn't do it.
Leave Farsights business to Farsight maybe.

Happy Christmas!