Ghostbusters pinball feedback

[dtown8532]

I just wanted to mention this Ghostbusters table is a real life pinball table to everyone. Here is the Youtube of the actual Ghostbusters pinball table:

Something's wrong here. How the hell is something that one educated dude came up with better than something that was created by a team of talented programmers? While this conversion could certainly use more fine tuning in its programming, it just looks so much more fun than what FarSight has done with there HH conversion. The bottom line is the guy who converted this Flash Gordon to Ghostbusters "gets" the theme. It shows in his work. It does not in FarSight's.

 

[Espy]

Alright, having played it it's actually pretty good.

The main screen is absolutely shocking though, like how could you get something that looks so unprofessional? Big blocky text boxes and the whole clicking around to work out which button to press to actually play the game.

It's a design student's nightmare.

That was very poor UI design. For a start it blasts the default TPA music until you download the pack, then Ghostbusters starts playing. Reeks of "We had to quickly adapt the TPA format for the main menu!" Plus that start button is completey unintuitive. Took me a long time to figure out it was a button.

Weighing in on the free-to-play scheme, yeah, it's a pain, but it's not actually terribly priced. It's $1 for 10 games. Given that a TPA table costs $4, I would say I normally get bored with the game and move on by around 40 games. So yeah, free to play is a pain, but it's not completely unreasonable.

 

[Jeff Strong]

That was very poor UI design. For a start it blasts the default TPA music until you download the pack, then Ghostbusters starts playing. Reeks of "We had to quickly adapt the TPA format for the main menu!" Plus that start button is completey unintuitive. Took me a long time to figure out it was a button.

Took me a few seconds too, which is much longer than it should for a touchscreen app.

 

[kimkom]

I feel sad that Farsight would pump god knows how many hours into this, rather than fix outstanding issues in TPA and the platforms supported.

Well said indeed.

Really don't see how development on this takes priority over existing issues and features we were assured we'd have months ago. As Jeff goes on to say... DX11 on PC? Cabinet support? Emulation on Gorgar, Firepower, Black Knight? Bug fixes?

 

[MadScience2006]

As far as tokens go, I didn't play at all yesterday on the iPhone 5 (I use my iPad mini 2 instead for obvious reasons). I believe I played 2 games on the iPhone since GB was installed and now have 15 tokens. So it looks as if there is no cap under 20. Above 20 and we'll have to wait and see.

 

[vikingerik]

How the hell is something that one educated dude came up with better than something that was created by a team of talented programmers?

Probably because that one educated dude spent multiple years of full time effort, while Farsight's team had to push out their table in a month or two among many other competing priorities.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Probably because that one educated dude spent multiple years of full time effort, while Farsight's team had to push out their table in a month or two among many other competing priorities.

Yep. It's amazing how much programming work can get done when you don't have a deadline.

 

[Kratos3]

Probably because that one educated dude spent multiple years of full time effort, while Farsight's team had to push out their table in a month or two among many other competing priorities.

Erroneous!!

 

[Pete]

one of the design issues that pops out to me as cheap is the use of boring text fonts especially in the return lanes. Would look much better with hand drawn pinball table looking text. If I had been given the task of drawing the playfield art I would have done it comic book style like a real table from the 90's era. Can I get a job at farsight animating original DMD's for the next time they do this? I'm a seriously good animator.

anyone ever figure how to extract and put back the images from the tables yet on PC? Ive been going nuts trying to get those playfield images out and mess with them, tried so many extracting programs but nothing seems to recognize the format of the .rez files.

 

[MonkeyGrass]

It's a design student's nightmare.

Yeah that is annoying. Kind of app 101 stuff. ; )

That was very poor UI design. For a start it blasts the default TPA music until you download the pack, then Ghostbusters starts playing. Reeks of "We had to quickly adapt the TPA format for the main menu!" Plus that start button is completey unintuitive.

I'm with these guys. Weak graphics, possibly one of the WORST table designs to "mod" IMO, and boring gameplay. The entire app is a mess. Hell what else do we expect at this point guys? FS has repeatedly proven they do not care about quality, just cranking out bug-ridden tables that generate mobile sales. Wonder why the UI guy left? I don't. Now we're stuck with the same "app-dev 101" UI for god knows how long.... Man they just don't get it. I root and root for these guys to get it right, and they just keep dropping the ball and putting resources in the wrong places - time and time again.

I'll be curious what this app ends up doing for them. Once again - they have missed the point that putting out half-baked crap doesn't really attract customers. And don't even get me started on the token system!! Do they really think people are going to play TEN GAMES of this table, and then rush out and spend $ to play it some more? Wha? I played two games and was completely over it by the 2nd ball of game 2. No way I would spend money to continue to play this joke of a table.

They needed a "Halloween" themed table? Well, you *could* have just given us BSD for Halloween, FS!! Or POTO.

Jeez, enough with the horror themed pins already. We get it - you guys looooove the goth/horror/campy-comedy genre. We've got plenty of those tables already, how about something that isn't horror/goth themed for a change? You put out two horror themed tables and still have to put out this GB weaksauce? C'MON MAN!

 

[IGoFirstIndy]

i deleted the app. just not my thing. To get past ten tokens on this table took me several days. the table just does not have enough replay value for me. the downstairs train is way too easy to get in and out of and is the least interesting part of the table from a licensing perspective. it would have been better to make the entire table from the first movie and do either the library scene, the ballroom Slimer scene or something with Walter Peck and the ghost containment machine.

but basically it comes down to i dislike Haunted House immensely. The sales of Haunted House must have been pretty high to risk using it on this license. maybe i'm just in the minority.

 

[StarDust4Ever]

but basically it comes down to i dislike Haunted House immensely. The sales of Haunted House must have been pretty high to risk using it on this license. maybe i'm just in the minority.

To each his/her own. I rather enjoyed Haunted House on TPA. Haven't had an opportunity to try GB yet as I don't own a supported device. Again, it's not the table or layout that's offensive, but the pricing scheme.

It seems the few improvements with the physics/slightly modified table layout were partly to keep people from losing balls as quickly. I had to train myself not to attempt to cradle the ball with the right flipper on HH, as it would result in an instant drain if I did. A lot of pinballs back in the day were quarter gobblers. Unless you're a pinball wizard, on many digital recreations just like their real world counterparts, you will have some games that just drain-drain-drain game over and others where your game lasts 15 minutes and you score a million/billion/whatever points. So since this game actually consumes tokens which have a real world monetary value, it makes sense that Farsight would modify the table slightly to make it more forgiving and avoid complaints about stealing your tokens.

 

[Rich Lehmann]

Why is it on Google Play and not Amazon? Not everyone can access Google Play, like Kindle Fire.

(PS, Haunted House is awesome, it has always been one of my favorites.)

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

Why is it on Google Play and not Amazon? Not everyone can access Google Play, like Kindle Fire.

(PS, Haunted House is awesome, it has always been one of my favorites.)

It is coming to the Kindle Fire soon. Could be a few more days to say the least (either that or next Friday).

 

[Zaphod77]

well if it played as slowly as the real haunted house did there would be no issue. but it seems the ball moves at warp nine and i'm reduced to flailing around a lot of the time. would have more fun if i had a full sized tablet.

 

[dtown8532]

Probably because that one educated dude spent multiple years of full time effort, while Farsight's team had to push out their table in a month or two among many other competing priorities.

Sounds like Atari's E.T. And we all know how well that did.

 

[DanBradford]

I'm staying a million miles away from Ghostbusters, and sticking to TPA and pay-once on a table that worked.

I hope this pay-to-play concept dies a painful death.

 

[StarDust4Ever]

I'm staying a million miles away from Ghostbusters, and sticking to TPA and pay-once on a table that worked.

I hope this pay-to-play concept dies a painful death.

x2.

 

[MWink]

I'm staying a million miles away from Ghostbusters, and sticking to TPA and pay-once on a table that worked.

I hope this pay-to-play concept dies a painful death.

x ∞

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

I'm staying a million miles away from Ghostbusters, and sticking to TPA and pay-once on a table that worked.

I hope this pay-to-play concept dies a painful death.

You do realize that we have to pay to play just about everything? I still see redemption games in arcades that require payment. Pinball machines do this, too.

And their "unlimited tokens for a day" deal follows that of some places, like Bradish Street Pinball Parlour and Modern Pinball NYC. It's all over the place and not just Ghostbusters.

How much are tokens, anyway?