Multiball | A Pinball LP Show

[Captain B. Zarre]

So I've had an idea in the back of my head for a while now.

One of my favorite pastimes is playing pinball on location. Another one of my favorite pastimes is watching people play video games and pinball. Pinball is seeing a major resurgence in the US and it's better than it has been in the last 10 years. So I figured I'd share my love of the game with not just myself, but with everyone I watch and enjoy.

I may be doing the first tests for the show right here on PAF with forum members. Each episode will contain one random guest (I'll be choosing people here for the test run, but expect a post to RT on Twitter once the series picks up momentum) and be recorded live. Because I don't have the time or money to record a stream on location of actual pinball, I'm primarily going to be using Pinball Arcade and Zen Pinball 2 as gameplay material. Not only are they going to help boost the popularity of pinball, but they may also boost the popularity of my collaborator's channel if they have one.

The only problem I have is how not to push myself to the audience watching. Even though I love getting people excited I don't want to force myself upon my viewers. I may have a bit of trouble not doing that as the series starts, but I'm sure I'll grow accustomed to it as time goes on. I just may need a bit of help with that.

So, with all said and done, post in this thread with your Skype name if you want to be on the first episode. The game I'm planning to play first on the show is Sorcerer's Lair, a free Zen Pinball 2 table that comes with the game when you download it. Later tables have to be purchased.

I hope this series turns out to be a success and I hope everything turns out well.

 

[invitro]

My comment is only partially related... I would like to see some games of TPA on youtube that are high scores (top 50?), and also indexed (the description has a list of clickable times for the game, for maybe each ball start and major events) and annotated (the description has for each time: score, number of EBs, number of widgets collected; maybe the video has a text overlay talking about certain interesting rules or situations).

I don't know of any existing videos like this, but I haven't looked much, and I doubt if too many people would be interested (if you're reading and you would, I'd like to know). I'd like to try to make some myself, when I get the money to buy the hardware to do it and the tuits to learn how to do it.

 

[shutyertrap]

I'm a bit unclear of what it is you are doing then Captain. Is it you playing the game and somebody else commenting on it? Or are you watching them play? In other words, be clear in what you need your 'guests' to have and what they will be doing.

 

[vikingerik]

I'd be interested - skype is erikmooney - but yeah we want a bit more info about what you're actually doing. Also I'm only really interested in TPA not Zen.

invitro: I've thought about doing that sort of thing. I sometimes do short non-video writeups that touch on that area about my TotM or other high score games. The chief constraint on doing it in video form is that my machine isn't quite strong enough to play smoothly and record at the same time, so I wouldn't be playing for an actual leaderboard berth while recording... and well I'd rather spend my play time doing that. It's also, well, a lot of work for an audience that's only so big, and it'd be a learning curve as I'm not experienced in any video editing software. What do folks use, anyway? Is there any decent free analogue to Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas? Or... would you be interested in doing it as a collaboration - I record and you edit and annotate?

 

[Captain B. Zarre]

So people have asked me about this project...

The show will be a collab commentary. Me and the other person selected will both download the chosen table for the week's episode. Once we have both tables, we'll have a bit of a discussion about the table itself along with other pinball related topics, such as what the person's favorite table is. It's very casual and it's going to be recorded live.

What I may do is invite the other person to record a version of the gameplay from his / her point of view. Im going to be leading the discussions but the guests are going to be involved a lot in these discussions.

Sorry for any confusion the original description may have caused.

 

[invitro]

invitro: I've thought about doing that sort of thing. I sometimes do short non-video writeups that touch on that area about my TotM or other high score games. The chief constraint on doing it in video form is that my machine isn't quite strong enough to play smoothly and record at the same time, so I wouldn't be playing for an actual leaderboard berth while recording... and well I'd rather spend my play time doing that. It's also, well, a lot of work for an audience that's only so big, and it'd be a learning curve as I'm not experienced in any video editing software. What do folks use, anyway? Is there any decent free analogue to Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas? Or... would you be interested in doing it as a collaboration - I record and you edit and annotate?

Sorry for late reply. I think because of the amount of work I expect it is, I probably better wait to do my own game as I'll hopefully reasonably be more interested then. Well it's probably something a little different... the annotating I have in mind is mainly just copying handwritten notes that I often make anyway, and adding times to them. I think going through the entirety of someone else's game -- even yours, which I know I'd be very interested in -- would be more work than I'm willing to do now.

I am of course willing to offer feedback to anyone .

I have never used video editing software. I imagine that it'd be easy to learn, at least for the minimal things I'm thinking about, which I think is only writing text on the video to last for X seconds, maybe drawing some arrows. Come to think of it, such a thing might be the ideal rulesheet, but ONLY IF the video were accompanied by a text table of contents (the major thing missing from video supplanting text for pedagogy, IMO).

I have actually never watched an entire video of a pinball game, or anything remotely close to an entire video. I have many times watched short fragments, though. But I think having full-game videos of games that are high-scoring as possible (or notable in some other way) is tremendously valuable historically. If one takes pinball games seriously, anyway.

I ask that you keep us informed if you take on any video projects. And if you have an archive of your videos somewhere, maybe put a link to it in your .signature, or a link to your home page if you have one.

 

[Captain B. Zarre]

I have a YouTube channel already, but it's mostly video mash ups you guys won't be into. I'm considering putting Multiball on a separate Captain B. Zarre YT channel.

The software I'm using for editing is (sadly) iMovie, but when I obtain enough money I'm considering purchasing an El Gato camera and recording using that. One of my YouTube friends uses it and it looks like his videos have turned out really professionally done.