Pro Pinball

[fenderbendr]

Here's a comment from December 15th from the Kickstarter page:

@Ron: I'm sorry there hasn't been update recently, there hasn't been anything dramatic to announce. We're currently finishing off rendering the flippers to get the first build out to our Testers and we are looking into various options to speed up that process. Once we have an improved rendering system in place we should be able to come up with a new ETA.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Been a while since the last post...anyone still excited?

I am, now you brought it to the forefront of my mind.

 

[superballs]

I thought I saw somewhere that it was delayed until January or something.

Once a small nugget of new news is released, this thread will explode.

 

[Sun Vulcan]

Been a while since the last post...anyone still excited?

I'm not excited anymore, specially without Steam. If stay like this I'm gonna get just my backed on IOS.

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

I'm not excited anymore, specially without Steam. If stay like this I'm gonna get just my backed on IOS.

They did say they would push further into Steam when it comes out first.

 

[Worf]

Why would not being on steam be a deal killer? A full DRM-free version you can run on multiple PCs without tricks (you can't do it on steam) is a better copy, other than having to save an email with the download link.

 

[netizen]

I don't know enough about the rendering times but could it be they are rendering multiple permutations of different lights going off/fading at different times and in parallel which maybe amounts to 1000s of frames. Then add all the different views could that account for the time? When I look at the Kickstarter video of the lighting sequences it looks so impressive I can imagine the tech behind it is pretty complex. Looking at what they did in 1995 they are obviously perfectionists.

Everything except for the ball is pre-rendered at 4K resolution. If you consider that each flipper has many different positions, which can be lit by many different lights, the number of individual graphical frames per flipper is in the hundreds! On top of that, the renderer we're using is the most photorealistic we could find, which in turn means it takes quite a lot of CPU power and time just to render one frame.

There is a new version of the renderer due in the new year that will be able to use GPUs instead of just CPUs, which should help speed things along. In the meantime we continue to look for the most cost effective way to bring more CPU power into the mix.

That was as of Dec 17th, 2013

 

[oqvist]

Not being on steam would be a big bonus.

 

[SilverBalls]

They have posted an update in the VIP section of the forum.

 

[fenderbendr]

Link?

 

[jaredmorgs]

They have posted an update in the VIP section of the forum.

Link?

If you're able to*, please post an update here. Folks without VIP level will be in the dark.

* it doesn't break any NDA you agreed to.

 

[netizen]

from vip forum post, minus images

Over the Christmas period all three flippers for the first view finally finished rendering and we are now working on hooking them into the first playable version for our testers. Work is also continuing on the UI and server backend systems.

In the meantime, here are a few images including one with thumbnails of all EIGHT HUNDRED AND EIGHTY flipper frames we had to render!!! (The original version only has forty eight frames...)

 

[jaredmorgs]

from vip forum post, minus images

Well that gives some insight into why things are taking much longer. Now just imagine the amount of frames required for something like the time capsule or lock mechanism animation. Now imagine the frames for each lighting scenario on each of those objects.

Wow. Just, wow.

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

from vip forum post, minus images

Geez, 880 frames??? Freaking INSANE. Although, on the other hand, it'll make simulation that more freaking realistic.

 

[vpalmer]

Geez, 880 frames???

808, and amount of prerendered frames is not releated to level of light simulation - you can have million frames of total bs, fortunately propinball looks realistic on demos.

 

[Baron Rubik]

Just got an update email...

 

[mmmagnetic]

The amount of details in the renders is completely insane, way beyond what can be seen even on retina-class displays. One could argue that Ade and his team might be slightly overdoing it, but on the other hand, they´re making sure that this game will look good even ten, twenty years from now.

And who knows, with all the talk about 4K TVs becoming more affordable, that could be very well suited for such insane resolutions (coupled with the fact that the game isn´t very graphically intensive thanks to the prerendering).

 

[infernogott]

Yeah, but it's a good thing they did. The old games did the same thing with 1600x1200 resolution in 1997. Who had a monitor with that kind of resolution back then?

 

[SilverBalls]

The guy is an absolute perfectionist and this thing is going to be mind blowing.

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

This is an amazing thing going on right here. Maybe PAPA needs to start doing things with the Pro Pinball team.