Patch 1.30 NA and 1.31 EU

[Tom Devaney]

Patch 1.30

Features Added:
- New audio system

Bugs Fixed:
- Looping sounds don't have a delay when restarting
- Elvira's voice is no longer sped up
- Fixed sounds being cut off prematurely (introduced in 1.29)
- New Stern's are muted when paused
- Sounds pause and resume correctly when you pause you game
- Tournaments work

---

A while ago I started to look into some audio issues on PS4. Looping on short sounds sounded terrible and Elvira's voice was high pitched. The looping problem was due to some padding at the end and beginning of sounds; this was due to the sound format that we were using. I tried to skip these samples in our engine, but it didn't work. For one table, it might make the looping sound acceptable but on other tables, it was now cutting off too much. So I decided to implement a new sound format. One that Sony has designed exclusively for the PS4.

So that's what I've been working on for weeks. Swapping out many parts of the audio engine in our engine and replacing parts of it with Sony stuff. Then replacing every single audio piece with the new audio format. Unfortunately, in the midst of this I submitted a patch for the new Stern tables. While I did revert all of the new format stuff I was working on, I accidentally left in that code that affected our old audio format. Very sorry about that. And by the point I realized this, I was already deep into the new audio system and couldn't push out a new patch until I finished up my work.

Well, I finished it last week or so, and it took a while to QA it given all the tables were affected by this update. I am pleased with the result too. What you hear is 1:1 with the source audio. If you were to open up the file and play it in Audacity, that's what you can expect from the PS4 version now. So basically, this should be very close to the PC version's sound.

This all means that the loops have been fixed and Elvira's voice has been fixed. Hopefully, this fix applies to any other sounds that were sounding funny as a result of the padding at the beginning and end of the audio sound.

Also, because I was the one who added the sound system, it made it where when you pause, the sound pauses. Then when you resume, the sound resumes. Sounds basic enough. This wasn't how it previously was though. Before, when you pauses, it would just restart that sound over.

As for tournaments, those are working on PC and PS4, and I don't see anything in the near future messing with them. So we will get out a tournament to you all soon!

Anyways, again I'm sorry I pushed out that terrible audio build. Hopefully, this makes up for it.

 

[Captain Caveman]

Just saw the download pop up.. thanks again Tom!

Look forward to another tourny.. been a while..

 

[xAzatothx]

Nice work Tom, many thanks.

What were you saying Zombie?

 

[blkhwks19]

Everything sounds great, but I played a game on medieval madness and found that the music stopped after pausing and resuming my game. I didn't get music back until the ball drained and i was ready to launch a new ball. This happened several times for me. Other than that, everything else seems to be working great so far.

EDIT: Tested some other tables and it seems like it's happening on pretty much every table. I pause then unpause, and any music and sound clips that were currently playing are just killed. Music restarts once a new mode triggers new music, or the ball drains and the music resets for a new ball.

Also, I'm noticing some glitching on Medieval Madness. The ball seems to go through barriers sometimes, most notably when you hit the target in the catapult lane it jumps through the barrier back into play instead of settling into the catapult. I can't say for certain this is a glitch caused by today's patch but I play this table all the time and I've never seen it do that until just now. Maybe it's a coincidence, but just thought you should know something seems "off".

In any case thanks for your hard work on the audio bugs, it seems like what you did vastly improved things. Hopefully these last few things can get cleaned up and we should be good!

 

[Captain Caveman]

Everything sounds great, but I played a game on medieval madness and found that the music stopped after pausing and resuming my game. I didn't get music back until the ball drained and i was ready to launch a new ball. This happened several times for me. Other than that, everything else seems to be working great so far.

EDIT: Tested some other tables and it seems like it's happening on pretty much every table. I pause then unpause, and any music and sound clips that were currently playing are just killed. Music restarts once a new mode triggers new music, or the ball drains and the music resets for a new ball.

I've seen the same so far as well exactly as described.

 

[Tom Devaney]

Thanks guys. This pause bug should only happen on the US digital version actually from what I'm thinking. This is actually something I already fixed it's just that I accidentally pushed out an older version only for US digital. Early tomorrow, expect a fix for this.

 

[Captain Caveman]

Thanks guys. This pause bug should only happen on the US digital version actually from what I'm thinking. This is actually something I already fixed it's just that I accidentally pushed out an older version only for US digital. Early tomorrow, expect a fix for this.

I notice a big improvement besides the pause issue.. so thanks!

 

[shogun00]

Thanks Tom for the fix. High Speed sounds and plays just as I remember it.

I found a bug. Black Knight 2000 is missing the singers.

Most likely the game isn't emulating one of the speech ROM chips. System 11 allows tables to have multiple speech chips. Usually one for character voices and one for singing.

Edit: It appears that Black Knight 2000 has 3 speech chips (U19, U21, U22).

 

[Gorgar]

Another bug: safecracker just repeats the same few bars of music every 5 seconds. Before it repeats, it makes a glitchy noise every time

 

[Rayder]

Can confirm Black Knight 2000 singing and Safecracker music sound issues.

Phantom of the Opera has painfully slow match animation. This is new with the latest patch.

Big Buck Hunter has a jumble of numbers during the match sequence. Cannot see what the match number is because of it.

Centaur.....background noise is silenced with every hit that plays another sound. In most cases, it shouldn't do that. A bit of a delay before it comes back too.

That's all I got so far. Only played a handful of the 100 tables (I have them all, including all Bally/Williams) in the couple hours I had to play. Will test further on the weekend.

All the others I played were a VAST improvement. Thanks Tom for all your effort!

 

[RJB]

[MENTION=1214]Tom[/MENTION]Devaney Just tried a few tables, superb work on the sound, so far.. thank you!

Please! next patch can you make the following fixes a priority:

Scared Stiff - Spider Wheel is still broken with items already lit at the start of every game.

Whoa Nellie - High scores still broken making it "impossible" to get a local high score on this table.

Hopefully both of these are easy fixes as both are very frustrating problems when playing these two tables.

Thanks! again for all your hard work

 

[GIGAMAD]

Patch 1.30

Features Added:
- New audio system

Bugs Fixed:
- Looping sounds don't have a delay when restarting
- Elvira's voice is no longer sped up
- Fixed sounds being cut off prematurely (introduced in 1.29)
- New Stern's are muted when paused
- Sounds pause and resume correctly when you pause you game
- Tournaments work

---

A while ago I started to look into some audio issues on PS4. Looping on short sounds sounded terrible and Elvira's voice was high pitched. The looping problem was due to some padding at the end and beginning of sounds; this was due to the sound format that we were using. I tried to skip these samples in our engine, but it didn't work. For one table, it might make the looping sound acceptable but on other tables, it was now cutting off too much. So I decided to implement a new sound format. One that Sony has designed exclusively for the PS4.

So that's what I've been working on for weeks. Swapping out many parts of the audio engine in our engine and replacing parts of it with Sony stuff. Then replacing every single audio piece with the new audio format. Unfortunately, in the midst of this I submitted a patch for the new Stern tables. While I did revert all of the new format stuff I was working on, I accidentally left in that code that affected our old audio format. Very sorry about that. And by the point I realized this, I was already deep into the new audio system and couldn't push out a new patch until I finished up my work.

Well, I finished it last week or so, and it took a while to QA it given all the tables were affected by this update. I am pleased with the result too. What you hear is 1:1 with the source audio. If you were to open up the file and play it in Audacity, that's what you can expect from the PS4 version now. So basically, this should be very close to the PC version's sound.

This all means that the loops have been fixed and Elvira's voice has been fixed. Hopefully, this fix applies to any other sounds that were sounding funny as a result of the padding at the beginning and end of the audio sound.

Also, because I was the one who added the sound system, it made it where when you pause, the sound pauses. Then when you resume, the sound resumes. Sounds basic enough. This wasn't how it previously was though. Before, when you pauses, it would just restart that sound over.

As for tournaments, those are working on PC and PS4, and I don't see anything in the near future messing with them. So we will get out a tournament to you all soon!

Anyways, again I'm sorry I pushed out that terrible audio build. Hopefully, this makes up for it.

Thank you Tom for this patch! Love the new audio! As I've said many times before, I'm from Argentina and the only reason why I bought my PS4 was to play Pinball Arcade. I own every table. I know and appreciate your work trying to restore this game to its former glory so I hope, now that you solved the audio issue, that you can focus your efforts on the graphics. I loved the photographic quality of the original graphics, specially when playing dark room (I use 0% ambient light, 90% bulbs) but I feel the colors and lights are still washed out, and the dark is not dark enough. Difficult to put it in words, but I'm sure you know what I mean (there are several images and videos online that show how it looked at launch). I have a PS4 Pro now, a 4K TV and I'm planning on buying a new 4K HDR TV, so I'd love to know that someday I'll be able to experience this game as I did long ago, and as I'm sure you guys at Firesight can provide.
Thanks again for your passionate work!

Mariano

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

 

[Rayder]

Forgot to mention in my previous reply, had a crash while playing Firepower II during multi-ball. Sent error report to Sony. Not sure what happened, seemed to be playing fine until it crashed.

 

[The M]

Thanks you so much for doing this Tom!!! I have been waiting years to hear those spinner sounds like they should be again. PS3 had great audio so it's great to finally see it working out for PS4 users. Thanks again for all the effort you have put in. The Pinball Arcade for PS4 is a much better game now then when I originally purchased it. As a proud owner of all the current tables I am looking forward to re-experiencing the audio on them all again!

 

[Byte]

Whoa Nellie - High scores still broken making it "impossible" to get a local high score on this table.

I wonder why the 'original' factory high scores aren't used. Either they have been pre-programmed or they should be zero. It'll add to the preservation goal and you'll (almost) never run into problems like this.
With pre-programmed I mean: when you take a brand-new, never used, straight-from-the-factory pin and boot it up for the very first time, the high scores that show up at that time.


[MENTION=1214]Tom[/MENTION]Devaney do you know who's in charge of the Switch version?

 

[Gorgar]

Thanks guys. This pause bug should only happen on the US digital version actually from what I'm thinking. This is actually something I already fixed it's just that I accidentally pushed out an older version only for US digital. Early tomorrow, expect a fix for this.

Tom, the sound on the PS4 version is now terrific! Is this fix still coming for the US version?

 

[DA5ID]

[MENTION=1214]Tom[/MENTION]

Whoa Nellie - High scores still broken making it "impossible" to get a local high score on this table.

Just hit the reset high scores button and they go back to achievable high scores (worked for me on iOS)

 

[RJB]

Just hit the reset high scores button and they go back to achievable high scores (worked for me on iOS)

Sadly there is no reset option on the PS4 version of TPA, so we need a fix from Farsight.

 

[Tom Devaney]

Tom, the sound on the PS4 version is now terrific! Is this fix still coming for the US version?

Thanks Gorgar. I'm happy everyone likes the new sound format so much. Yes, it's already done. I just want to fix the Safecracker and Black Knight 2000 thing before I submit. Hopefully today. If not today, hopefully tomorrow!

 

[Gorgar]

Thanks Gorgar. I'm happy everyone likes the new sound format so much. Yes, it's already done. I just want to fix the Safecracker and Black Knight 2000 thing before I submit. Hopefully today. If not today, hopefully tomorrow!

That is great news! If you could also fix the Centaur sound issue reported by Rayder below, the sound on the PS4 version would be perfect.

Centaur.....background noise is silenced with every hit that plays another sound. In most cases, it shouldn't do that. A bit of a delay before it comes back too.