Pro Pinball

[lio]

I applaud their dedication to making it right and not rushing a release... sure, I have been waiting for a long time but the dev diary posts and the 2 windows/mac alphas so far have been a nice treat - I don't mind if it takes another year...

 

[SilverBalls]

Just found an interesting post on Pro Pinball site under the restricted VP section:

settingsons wrote:
Out of interest how many programmers are now working on the new PP - is it just yourself? If so that is pretty impressive.

Agpg wrote:
Two for the last few months, otherwise mostly just me.

settingsons wrote:
Just like the good old days. None of that 70 EA developers in a team cobblers

Agpg wrote:
Yep, same small team as when it began back in the 90's.

The Kickstarter funds prob covers the salary of one developer. Might explain the slow progress, but at the same time it is pretty impressive when you see what they have done. The good news is they have been doing lots of development and enhancements to their dev-tools so the later tables can take advantage of this.

 

[karl]

Yes. If only Time shock sells a boatload on ios, my guess is that the other tables will be done much quicker. The ios demo is right around the corner. I believe he brought a Alpha version of it to the Dutch pinball open.

 

[mpad]

Timeshock indeed. Maybe my grand grand children will enjoy this awesome game I once supported.

 

[Slam23]

Yes. If only Time shock sells a boatload on ios, my guess is that the other tables will be done much quicker. The ios demo is right around the corner. I believe he brought a Alpha version of it to the Dutch pinball open.

I had the good fortune of playing it on an iPad Air 1 at the Dutch Pinball Open and came away totally impressed by it. Lighting, reflections, shadows were off the charts with the pre-rendered, nigh photorealistic table, and with multiple camera angles rendered, this is working out like the best choice they could have made. Gameplay was smooth and felt a lot like the PC original (from what I can remember anyways). I didn't get to spend a lot of time with it, so it's a quick impression more than anything. But boy, did it impress me!
Adrian Barritt was attending the Dutch Pinball Open on invitation from the Silver Castle guys who are making a real table out of Timeshock. He told me that the demo is not far off (without specifying a date) and that they are working out some performance issues yet with the iPad 3. I hope I'm quoting this correctly, if my memory serves me right. Funny enough it worked better on an iPad 2, but that may have to do with the specific resolution/processor/iOS combinations that differentiate both iPad versions and favored the 2 in this case. There was also a PC setup with a monitor swiveled to landscape perspective. I didn't sit down for that one (I had a busy weekend competing), but that also looked very good. Highpoint was the seminar by Pieter van Leijen, one of the key guys from the Silver Castle project, and he invited Adrian up to the stage. Adrian took some of our questions about Ultra Timeshock, including cabinet support (yes), multiple camera angles (yes), leaderboard functionality (yes), importing previous highscores from 1997 Timeshock (yes) and so forth. I don't know if we heard a lot of new things but there were a lot of yes responses given It was nice to hear about the inspiration for Timeshock which Adrian described as predominantly STTNG as his favorite table at that time (look at the ramps and the central shot to crystal/Borg ship), but also that Rollergames is somewhere in it's DNA. Afterwards I had dinner with Silver Castle and Adrian, and I can tell you that Adrian is totally committed to bringing the best possible product that he can make together with his team. His reputation as a perfectionist is probably justified, especially concerning pinball. I found this more reassuring than annoying, even if it means that we have to wait a bit more. He is also a genuinely pleasant guy to spent time with, especially interesting to hear more about his career in software development. A fun fact was that they actually tried to get the STTNG license first to do a pro pinball with, but when they discovered how much that would cost and the effort involved to get it, they quickly decided to do an original. Could you imagine a 1997 STTNG with the Pro Pinball engine behind it? Well, this is how far my memory stretches, I do hope I got all thing correct, so don't shoot me if something turns up differently (they may change their minds also offcourse about some things).

 

[vikingerik]

Funny enough it worked better on an iPad 2, but that may have to do with the specific resolution/processor/iOS combinations that differentiate both iPad versions and favored the 2 in this case.

This is quite typical for iPad games. The 3 has the Retina display with 4x the pixels to push, but nowhere near 4x the CPU or GPU power.

It was nice to hear about the inspiration for Timeshock which Adrian described as predominantly STTNG as his favorite table at that time (look at the ramps and the central shot to crystal/Borg ship), but also that Rollergames is somewhere in it's DNA.

Timeshock? It's The Web that resembles STTNG much more. It copies almost the entire layout (mirrored) with the same deal that almost every shot feeds the inlanes. The mode structure is the same, including the spinner shots for power levels / warp levels. And the Rollergames DNA is in The Web where the magnet holds the ball for an upper flipper shot.

Timeshock's playfield largely derives from Terminator 2, with skull -> cannon -> targets refactored into lock -> upper flipper -> ramp plus the crystal. The orbits and ramps are identical in layout and even similar in rules: various awards on the left orbit that feeds a top scoop, escalating hurryups on the right orbit, and progression on the ramps where the time drive works identically to Payback Time.

 

[Slam23]

Hi VikingErik,

You are right! I mixed the stories up in my head, but he was talking about the Web at first. He described Timeshock not in terms of T2 but as a project that had to surpass the Web in scope and complexity. Thanks for your input, also that remark about the differences between iPad 2 and 3 makes sense, I didn't know the 3 already had Retina display, I thought that came with iPad Mini and iPad Air first. Then again, the naming/numbering of the iPads brought about a lot of confusion about which was which, so I excuse myself here a bit .

 

[SilverBalls]

I had the good fortune of playing it on an iPad Air 1 at the Dutch Pinball Open and came away totally impressed by it. Lighting, reflections, shadows were off the charts with the pre-rendered, nigh photorealistic table, and with multiple camera angles rendered, this is working out like the best choice they could have made. Gameplay was smooth and felt a lot like the PC original (from what I can remember anyways). I didn't get to spend a lot of time with it, so it's a quick impression more than anything. But boy, did it impress me!
Adrian Barritt was attending the Dutch Pinball Open on invitation from the Silver Castle guys who are making a real table out of Timeshock. He told me that the demo is not far off (without specifying a date) and that they are working out some performance issues yet with the iPad 3. I hope I'm quoting this correctly, if my memory serves me right. Funny enough it worked better on an iPad 2, but that may have to do with the specific resolution/processor/iOS combinations that differentiate both iPad versions and favored the 2 in this case. There was also a PC setup with a monitor swiveled to landscape perspective. I didn't sit down for that one (I had a busy weekend competing), but that also looked very good. Highpoint was the seminar by Pieter van Leijen, one of the key guys from the Silver Castle project, and he invited Adrian up to the stage. Adrian took some of our questions about Ultra Timeshock, including cabinet support (yes), multiple camera angles (yes), leaderboard functionality (yes), importing previous highscores from 1997 Timeshock (yes) and so forth. I don't know if we heard a lot of new things but there were a lot of yes responses given It was nice to hear about the inspiration for Timeshock which Adrian described as predominantly STTNG as his favorite table at that time (look at the ramps and the central shot to crystal/Borg ship), but also that Rollergames is somewhere in it's DNA. Afterwards I had dinner with Silver Castle and Adrian, and I can tell you that Adrian is totally committed to bringing the best possible product that he can make together with his team. His reputation as a perfectionist is probably justified, especially concerning pinball. I found this more reassuring than annoying, even if it means that we have to wait a bit more. He is also a genuinely pleasant guy to spent time with, especially interesting to hear more about his career in software development. A fun fact was that they actually tried to get the STTNG license first to do a pro pinball with, but when they discovered how much that would cost and the effort involved to get it, they quickly decided to do an original. Could you imagine a 1997 STTNG with the Pro Pinball engine behind it? Well, this is how far my memory stretches, I do hope I got all thing correct, so don't shoot me if something turns up differently (they may change their minds also offcourse about some things).

Great post Slam and thanks for the detailed write up - I would have loved to have been there. Reading the dev posts in the VIP part of the pro pinball forums it is quite obvious that they are the Grand-daddy of perfectionists. It is easy for KS supporters to become inpatient waiting for this (and I can understand it), but at the end of the day it is costing Barnstorm money the more they tweak so they are the ones paying the price. In think in this day and age it is nice to know someone if prepared to put that extra effort in rather than cash-in early. They are obviously not getting pressure from a big client like Nintendo, étc. to meet a deadline so they can do this. We waiting 20 years for Timeshock 2, and we are almost there

I loaded up the Alpha 2 again the other day - it had been a while. And I forgot just out good it looks.

 

[oqvist]

Watch the 30fps version then - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqimU0uWMsk and imagine how amazing 60fps is!

I don´t have a CRT so I could verify. Could try on plasma though. LCD is doom of smoothness

nice video but it´s obvious it´s not pinballwizard that is playing. He can´t hit a ramp when he wants to lol

 

[jaredmorgs]

iOS: prepare for beta!

Tell us how it plays!

 

[mpad]

Finally! Other platforms beta around the corner (as always ) ToDo list in the KS Update looks doable.
Can we hope for a Pinball Christmas?

 

[SilverBalls]

....and here is the Kickstarter post mentioned above:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/500643708/pro-pinball-timeshock-the-ultra-edition-0/posts

Apple won't know what hit them.

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

Man, I can't wait!

 

[Heretic]

i guess on this scake testflight is new*rolls eyes* eye candy and feel are all well and good and ill certainly buy it but the cheese is old and moldy

 

[jaredmorgs]

...but the cheese is old and moldy

Or expertly-aged and matured.

I'll make that call when I see some action in person.

 

[Heretic]

touche convict

 

[kindhumor]

The Web was the first game, and in my view, by far the best of the series! I kept a playstation 1 for an extra 4 years so I could play that and the tengion tetris.

 

[Jeff Strong]

i guess on this scake testflight is new*rolls eyes* eye candy and feel are all well and good and ill certainly buy it but the cheese is old and moldy

Meh, even the old cheese is better than any of the current cheese we have in other pinball apps.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Meh, even the old cheese is better than any of the current cheese we have in other pinball apps.

Time for driveway cheese, and crackers.

 

[SilverBalls]

I am lost with all this talk of cheese

But I can say from what I have seen on the 2nd Alpha this is going to be the dogs boll**ks.