New Stern Pinball Arcade: AC/DC Kickstarter is FULLY FUNDED!!!

[invitro]

Still love Definitely Leopard: "Pyromania".

Pyromania was the album that made me finally surrender to rock music at the ripe old age of 13.

 

[shutyertrap]

Also, that late-'80s Depeche Mode is great, but you gotta watch the videos while listening. I worship Devo but I don't know about anything after 1982 or so. One of the best live bands ever. Great DVDs. Super fun when they're being transgressive. I might have to give Tool another try sometime but last time I thought they were just silly, like Metallica.)

I tapped out on D'Mode post Songs of Faith and Devotion. Ex girlfriend was ginormous fan, so once we were done I kinda was with DM too. Few years later was able to listen again, but never followed up with the new stuff.

Devo is phenomenal live. Their live album "Now It Can Be Told" is a perfect rollercoaster of songs. The last album they put out maybe 3 years ago, "Something For Everybody" is a total throwback to the early 80's stuff.

I really only like Tool's 1st 3 discs. I did follow Maynard over to A Perfect Circle, and it's taken time but I've grown to really like his other side project Puscifer for how subversively funny it can be.

 

[wolfson]

ACCA DACCA is a live band,bands that play better live and sound better than there studio albums,i can add to that list,QUEEN,THE BOSS BRUCE,LOU REED,COLD CHISSEL (JIMMY BARNES)after they split !!!!and my fave WILLIE DEVILLE !!!

 

[Ben Logan]

I may be risking official Debbie Downer status in harping about physics further, but I think (hope) this is worth addressing:

When the player gets control of a ball and takes careful shots from a cradle position, the shooting physics in TPA can feel fairly realistic. I can throw up some bricks when things are "calm."

But tonight during several chaotic Medieval Madness multiball sessions, I COULD NOT MISS. I'm not nearly that good a player. It's like the "choices" for paths for the ball to travel had been reduced to loops and ramps. Medieval is just one example. I've seen this on other tables as well.

I really hope this is addressed in physics 4.0. Chaos should INCREASE with number of balls on the table / accelerated velocity of ball movement. The way Medieval played tonight, I experienced the exact opposite.
It's hard to suspend disbelief and buy into the "pinball sim experience" when you feel like the shots are planned.

Again - forgive me if I sound like a grouch. There's so much I love about TPA. It breaks my heart a little because it's so close to being really great!

 

[invitro]

It's hard to suspend disbelief and buy into the "pinball sim experience" when you feel like the shots are planned.

But they are "planned," in the way that you mean it.

Here's how it works. In reality, if you flip at 0.2 seconds after the ball starts down the flipper, and later flip 0.201 seconds after, you will get two different results. This can't happen in a digital simulation unless the code has "time resolution" <= 0.001 second. But if the resolution is low enough, you won't notice.

The problem is that in TPA, the resolution is not low enough. This varies from table to table, and among flippers, and if the ball was moving or still before starting down the flipper. There is an array of possibilities hard-coded into the table .rez file that determines the resulting ball trajectory. So in MM, perhaps a R flipper shot at a moving ball goes up the L ramp, with the exact same trajectory, if you flip between 0.2 seconds and 0.35 seconds.

I say these things based on experience playing TPA, but mainly because of the presence of things like the following in the table code. This is taken/extracted from the TFnHouse.Rez file, PC/Steam revision 1.41.7, which was right after the change was made to make possible ~8 previously-impossible shots, and I think this is the change to Physics 3.0 but I'm not sure :

Table = PBObject:FlipperUpperLeft
        Object, PB_OBJECTTYPE_FLIPPER, 2500,
        Switch, 12,
        DilPos, upper flipper L, 0,
        Models, 1, RSID_TFUNHOUSE_MODELS, 22,
        Lights, Def_Flippers,
        Collision, Mesh, 2, RSID_TFUNHOUSE_COLLISIONS, 1, RSID_TFUNHOUSE_COLLISIONS, 0,
        SwitchEOS, 2,
        EnvMapReflection, True,
        Vars, 2, 40.0, 78.0,

        UseAccurateLength
        UseSpecialRotation, True,

        //1(length) 2(angle speed down) 3(elasticity when flipper static) 4 (elasticity when dropping) 5(bottom speed mult) 6(number of trnsfer pts)
        Physics, UpperLeft, 350, 26, 0.5, 0.25, 0.3, 10,

                TransferPoint2, 0.13,  24,   110, 200,  0,  0,   220, 250,
                TransferPoint2, 0.20,  26,   220, 270,  0,  0,   250, 320,
                TransferPoint2, 0.24,  28,   290, 270,  0,  0,   250, 320,
                TransferPoint2, 0.35,  32,   340, 270,  0,  0,   280, 320,
                TransferPoint2, 0.55,  36,   360, 320,  0,  0,   295, 360,
                TransferPoint2, 0.77,  42,   370, 350,  0,  0,   320, 390,
                TransferPoint2, 0.86,  45,   335, 320,  0,  0,   285, 360,
                TransferPoint2, 0.92,  50,   285, 270,  0,  0,   245, 310,
                TransferPoint2, 0.98,  60,   220, 200,  0,  0,   200, 250,
                TransferPoint2, 1.00,  70,   140, 150,  0,  0,   140, 200,

//              TransferPoint, 0.12,  26,   155, 120,  0,  0,
//              TransferPoint, 0.15, 30,   250, 200,  0,  0,
//              TransferPoint, 0.25, 33.8,   345, 250,  0,  0,
//              TransferPoint, 0.35,  34,   345, 300,  0,  0,
//              TransferPoint, 0.355, 34,   345, 300,  0,  0,
//              TransferPoint, 0.40,  38,   345, 300,  0,  0,
//              TransferPoint, 0.405, 45,   345, 300,  0,  0,
//              TransferPoint, 0.65,  60,   345, 300,  0,  0,
//              TransferPoint, 0.655, 63,   275, 325,  0,  0,
//              TransferPoint, 0.90,  64,   135, 325,  0,  0,
//              TransferPoint, 1.00,  65,    80, 100,  0,  0,

                Sound, Generic, GEN_SOUND_HIT_default
TableEnd = PBObject:FlipperUpperLeft

Now, I don't know what all those things mean, but I think it shows the change that was made in the Funhouse upper flipper shot trajectories, and is evidence for the claims I make above. (There were a few other changes that were made in this part of the FH.rez file at the same time.)

Extracting and analyzing these bits of data is not trivial for me and so I haven't done anything other than yank a few bits like the above and stare at them some. So I'm mainly just throwing this out there and saying hey, look at this, maybe this will explain some things that aren't clear. I may be wrong... don't believe me, believe the data.

(Also: I'll say that it's been known or suspected for a long time that some shots in MM and some other tables had been made easier than normal physics would allow. This includes the "ramp vacuum" and other things that people talk about. The L ramp in CftBL is a particular/extreme example of a ramp vacuum. I personally think the lock shot in MM is the most noticeable vacuum in that table. And I will guess that your noticing the vacuums in multiball over single-ball is just an illusion, because I don't recall seeing a difference trajectory array for multiball anywhere, and because there are logical reasons why you could be led to such an illusion. )

I hope you're not expecting too much from the 4.0 physics. I don't think it's logical to expect more than the change from 2.0 to 3.0, which was very minor: vikingerik has posted in detail about that. However, the change in general table quality has increased in I believe a major way which may make it seem like 2.0/3.0 is a bigger change than it actually is.

(And for my own opinion, I'm quite satisfied with TPA physics in terms of getting value for my money. I don't need SPA to have any improved physics at all. I know TPA is not perfect, nor all that close to Pro Pinball physics quality, but being able to play simulations of real machines is far more important to me than the physics, and getting lots of new Stern tables is far more important than getting a big Physics 4.0 change.)

 

[invitro]

While talking about Physics 3.0, here is a section of the FH .rez that shows some of the code/parameters for live catches:

////////////////////////////////////flippers
Table = PBObject:FlipperRight
        EnablePhysics, DownAccel, DeflectionMod, LiveCatch, End,
                          //min speed   vector range       min % up to activate
        LiveCatchPhysics, 95.0,         -0.35,            0.70,
                        //transfer of power based on how high up the flipper is from the bottom to top
        DeflectionModPhysics, .95, 1, 1, 1, 1, .99, .98, .97, .96, .95, .94,
        DownAccelPhysics, 0.7, -5, -12,
...
Table = PBObject:FlipperLeft
        EnablePhysics, DownAccel, DeflectionMod, LiveCatch, End,
                          //min speed   vector range       min % up to activate
        LiveCatchPhysics, 95.0,         0.35,              0.70,
                        //transfer of power based on how high up the flipper is from the bottom to top
        DeflectionModPhysics, .95, 1, 1, 1, 1, .99, .98, .97, .96, .95, .94,
        DownAccelPhysics, 0.7, 5, 12,

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

A lot of it is down to the enforced 60Hz cycle. If you increase the speed of the cycle, you can get more "transfer points" on the flipper. What I understand from that table above is that there are only really 10 shots available from the upper flipper in Fun House. The actual outcome of those shots will depend on the ball speed (typically, if it's come all the way round from the plunger, from a full orbit shot through the bumpers, as a release from the secret passageway, or a release from Rudy).

What they tweaked looks like the angle the ball comes off the flipper (relative to...? the flipper? a certain axis?) plus the bounciness of the flipper. Thus potentially making the lock->trapdoor shot more possible.

 

[Fungi]

It always did feel like the shots were partly determined by ball speed to me. Like no matter when I flipped a traveling ball, it always felt late. Now I know why.

 

[invitro]

A lot of it is down to the enforced 60Hz cycle. If you increase the speed of the cycle, you can get more "transfer points" on the flipper.

I don't know if the first sentence is true... it only is if they're using all the transfer points that they currently have with 60 Hz, and I don't think they are. But I do have some confusion about these things.

 

[invitro]

Addendum: I bet that when Farsight was talking about increasing table difficulty per table, they meant changing these transfer arrays to make shots harder. (Presumably, along with playfield slope, and hopefully ROM settings.)

 

[yespage]

Wow... so when they say physics, they don't actually mean physics. Kind of like being told there isn't a Santa. *spoilers*

 

[vikingerik]

This is taken/extracted from the TFnHouse.Rez file, PC/Steam revision 1.41.7, which was right after the change was made to make possible ~8 previously-impossible shots, and I think this is the change to Physics 3.0 but I'm not sure :

Holy crap, I had no idea there's physics data human-readable in the game files. That's a gold mine of information, if we can figure out how to make use of it. But I think this deserves a new thread rather than being buried in the SPA one. I'll start it.

 

[Ben Logan]

Holy crap, I had no idea there's physics data human-readable in the game files. That's a gold mine of information, if we can figure out how to make use of it. But I think this deserves a new thread rather than being buried in the SPA one. I'll start it.

Thanks! This brightens my morning to see some interest in improved TPA physics.