Hugh Jass Koda
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- Jun 4, 2015
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Welcome Back to Digital Pinball Fans - please read this first
Official Announcement.
- Thread starter FlippyFloppy
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msilcommand
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- Mar 22, 2019
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Would the hindsight lesson here be to NOT make deals for exclusive licenses that expire after a few years? Competition is always a good thing. It makes you push yourselves. Also, investing hundreds of thousands in building a product that has licensing that can expire, negating all of your investment, seems pretty risky, no?
If you could back and do it again, what would you do differently?
If you could back and do it again, what would you do differently?
msilcommand
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- Mar 22, 2019
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There is an upside...you did build those virtual tables yourselves, so you can reskin them, change them up a little, add core gameplay code and sound, and viola! you have Farsight original tables.
I remember a Ghostbusters themed table that I wasn't impressed with. I think they re skinned Haunted House. They did another for their new app. Is that the other you are referring to?
If so, you're right. Most definitely.
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One issue as well is the use of the core assets (in terms of game code) in the tables. As I recall, Ghostbusters/Haunted House is scripted and doesn't use anything from Gottlieb, but Doctor Who places new animations and callouts over the WPC code, with the switch matrix adjusted to fit the new layout.
Presumably in a new world without the licensed end of the Williams properties, the emulation would have to be replaced by scripting, or some conversion would have to be made to run Stern-like code (which seems too much hassle). This would be OK for the pre-DMD stuff, as a lot of that was scripted in the first place, and replaced by emulation of actual game code down the line.
The Farsight engine has advantages here, the sound is all samples, the animations can be simple MP4 video. However, finding a way of modding these tables to be non-infringing may be as much work as building new ones.
Presumably in a new world without the licensed end of the Williams properties, the emulation would have to be replaced by scripting, or some conversion would have to be made to run Stern-like code (which seems too much hassle). This would be OK for the pre-DMD stuff, as a lot of that was scripted in the first place, and replaced by emulation of actual game code down the line.
The Farsight engine has advantages here, the sound is all samples, the animations can be simple MP4 video. However, finding a way of modding these tables to be non-infringing may be as much work as building new ones.
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Then there is a third. Their Pinball Tournaments app used the Fireball layout for their Black Hole table.
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- Mar 14, 2012
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I’ve had fun with that app. It’s just Fireball with a more user friendly rule set (but not by much). It’s all about the competition though and figuring out how to get the best score in the limited time. It’s only available on iOS, same as multiplayer in Zen’s Williams App. Since that has come out, I’ve barely touched the other because Zen has a much larger pool of players to get matched against, and that honestly is what makes the game.
It seems Zen is doing different things on different platforms.
On Android, I can use tickets to play in a timed round and try to score more points than an opponent who I assume has already played.
On iOS, there is a multiplayer option that actually opens another app or something, and I can only guess that it's real time competition.
Are these the two models they are using for head to head competition, and is there one that is more common across all platforms?
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- Mar 14, 2012
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Multiplayer in iOS kicks over the the Skillz platform. They are an app that matches you to other players. Each player puts in an ante, either tickets or real money depending on the match you select. You post a score, they post a score, winner takes a percentage of the pot. For instance, a $1 match costs you $.60 and if you win, you get that plus $.40 back, the loser loses the $.60. Each win is worth a point and that puts you on a leaderboard. Top 3 players will win a prize of say $3/$2/$1, but the more people that are playing the game in general, the higher the pot can be and the farther down the leaderboard a prize payout will go. There are other apps that use Skillz, and top leaderboard prizes can be $50 with payouts going down 20 places. The types of matches currently available are...
$1 Medieval Madness - Best 3 minutes
2 tix Medieval Madness - Best 3 minutes
2 tix Medieval Madness - Best 1 ball
10 tix - Medieval Madness - Best 1 ball
10 tix - Medieval Madness - Best 3 minutes
50 tix - Medieval Madness - Best 3 minutes
The tickets used are not the same as in the main Williams App, they are a currency that is used across all Skillz games and can be earned relatively easily. Ticket matches are considered 'practice', with the real money match being 'pro'.
GooglePlay apparently does not allow gambling apps, so for that reason the Android players of the Williams App have a multiplayer matchup game that is closer to what is in the FX3 game. Not having an Android device, I don't know the particulars.
Thanks for that. It makes me more comfortable with this otherwise inexplicable difference.
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msilcommand
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- Mar 22, 2019
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When are your servers being taken down for PS4?