Too easy tables (PC version)

[SilverBalls]

Apparently Farsight were told by some big cheese in the Pinball world to make the tables easier than the arcade version - a big mistake and game killer. A Novice/Pro setting from day one would have been better. Wasn't that promised multiple times before along with cab options, a new UI, EMs, etc. etc. ?

For a real challenge with all of the above check out VP9/VP10. It is the way forward.

 

[MagnumXL]

I think you are on to something about table slope.

Well, I (PacDude) did make many of these tables myself for Visual Pinball and slope was always an option. For a few tables, I even had a easy/hard setting because SOME arcades had steeper slopes than others and some didn't like really fast gameplay. In ALL cases, I left the tables modifyable by anyone so someone could always alter the slope and flipper settings to their likings (and you had to alter the flipper settings in VP for a different slope as the flipper physics weren't right for everything and sloped changed the angles that they would aim for. If you own a real world table, you can set the slope to anything you like within the limits of the leg adjusters. You may need to replace some flipper solenoids at some point (steeper slopes need more power to make steeper ramp shots, etc.), but for the most part, something like Attack From Mars is as fast as F-14 here with a steep slope and good flipper solenoids. I know I played one at a bowling alley that was like lightning. It was a lot of fun. Most were slightly less steep, but still steeper than whatever they are using. I know with VP, the "4" slope was not equivalent to the real world "4" at least not with a waxed playfield, etc. (i.e. friction and dirty playfields have a lot to do with table slowdown in the real world too).

I don't know what measure these guys at Farsight use to pick their settings, but I know it doesn't match most real world tables I've played and they are way easier. Having extra balls set to the most liberal settings doesn't help anything either. Set the table roms to use the default settings and increase the slope and you'd have an "arcade" mode in most cases. If the physics are right, changing the slope won't change the aiming so there's no reason they couldn't offer table slope control. Pro Pinball had FULL CONTROL over table slope. It amazes me that a simulation made in 1998 is more advanced and feels more realistic by far than tables made in 2015.

 

[Zaphod77]

Beyond one simple effect, slope does not significantly affect difficulty.

a low slope, like EMs had, encourages lateral movement, and makes outlane drains more likely.

a high slope makes center drains more likely instead.

what really affects the difficulty is how easy the shots are. When there are shots that are easy to hit and safe to attempt, we have a game that's way too easy.

It's always a balancing act with digital pinball. if the shot is too hard, then the table cannot be mastered at all.

That said there are a lot of effects not properly simulated in TPA that affect difficulty.

1) give and warping of standup targets. they shift position slight after each hit. this causes rebounds off of them to be slightly randomized. lack of this is what makes TPA T2 a joke. you could NOT reliably shoot the three bank with one shot in real life.
2) fatigue of rubber. similar to the standups rubber also does not precisely return. the effect is less than it is for standups, but it can make the difference between a ball rebounding into the inlane vs the outlane.
3) for many tables scoop kickouts are totally non random. while scoops ANGLES are very consistent when working properly, their strength is not. there should be slight variations which affect your ability to hold trap and dead bounce. they also would have randomized minor spin, which also affects dead bounces.

In real life, every single time you hit a standup that doesn't feed a flipper after, you are tempting fate. And that's usually not the case in TPA.

Were I a programmer, i'd add in this subtle randomness, and it would increase difficulty on most tables without being unfair. No one wants every failed shot to drain after all. stuff that's about a 50/50 chance of drain or safe shot is more like 100% or 0%. for that matter, what should be about a 25% chance is either 100% or zero.

Since live catches are now in, we can be more random with the scoop kickouts and still be fair.

PS: tables are usually set to default settings, then changed to add-a-ball mode and free play. If anything else is changed, usually it's the handling for specials. Also, the self percenting features are inactive on TPA generally. in real life the table will dynamically adjust the replay score and shots for extra ball to continue to challenge the players.

PPS: slope DOES change aiming. a higher slope will cause the ball to lose vertical momentum faster, which will make the flippers aim wider unless the solenoid is beefed up to compensate. If slope didn't change aiming, then thing flips wouldn't need to be recalibrated after a slope change.

 

[MagnumXL]

Beyond one simple effect, slope does not significantly affect difficulty.

I don't know what pinball Universe you live in, but the mere fact the Mac version (or PC on a table that's too much for a given CPU) goes into "slow motion" mode while say in Multiball in Junkyard means I can play INDEFINITELY tells me YES, speed has a LOT to do with difficulty. When the Raptor kicker sends a pinball screaming back at the flippers at just under the speed of light (it seems like it) in Jurassic Park, the difficulty is not that bounces oddly off some target, but that your reaction time will be too slow to either do anything or to do it at the exact right moment. Pinball is all about timing your shots to hit a target and faster speed makes it THAT much harder to hit a given shot and that's true in the real world and the digital world. It's not that I don't know where to aim a shot, it's that it's hard to do it in 1/100th of a second just right Make t hat 1/10th of a second and it's a LOT easier. Plus it's incredibly boring just waiting for the ball to come back down to the flippers on low slope tables. I can practically go get a drink out of the fridge in that slow motion multi-ball mode on Junkyard (happens on my old PC with the ball reflection effect turned on).

a low slope, like EMs had, encourages lateral movement, and makes outlane drains more likely.

If you can aim properly and have more time to get it right most of the time, the ball will rarely, if ever go near the outlanes on newer pinball games, particularly ones with great flow like Theatre of Magic. I'm saying that I can play TPA games 2-10x longer (really I got bored and quit a few times on some tables) than in reality. F-14 at least gives me something to do. I'm not sure if it's realistic coming off a drop target as I rarely ever played the real thing, but I know I'm not bored to death waiting for the ball to come back to the flippers....

I'm not disagreeing with your other points about the physics, but until the ball speed is at a rate where I can enjoy playing the table, they feel moot. I don't want to get bored waiting for the ball to come back down the table. Firepower should be FAST and it's dog slow here (and yes bounce-back sucks off the standups. They should spring right back down towards the flippers. Fortunately, my own Firepower table in VP plays the way I want it to).

 

[Locksley]

I think Zaphod is thinking a few degrees slope angle. Getting 30FPS instead of 60FPS is more than a few degrees

Love all your tech talk Zaphod - hope Farsight is listening (need tough tables and easy tables - 2 score boards for each)(and tourny settings for SYT too).

 

[Zaphod77]

I won't argue that the ball moving at warp 9 affects difficulty, but it's not slope that does that. it's fresh waxing. the speed from a high slope is predictable, and easy to compensate for. it does, as I said, cause more center drains by causing the ball to curve more sharply, but waxing has a much greater effect on ball speed.

Also if you have a good enough reaction time, the limited timer resolution of digital pinball comes into play. it dosen't matter how fast the ball is going if you can perform frame perfect flips.

 

[vikingerik]

I'm surprised in a way that virtual pinball flippers are stair-stepping though. There is certainly mathematics that can determine the exact location of something between two digital points (interpolation), and I doubt you'd need anything more than a simple linear interpolation formula (which shouldn't be terribly taxing on CPUs) to get any amount of points you want on a flipper.

The stair-stepping comes not from the physics model, but from the timing of the inputs. That's is a limitation of the computing environments in which TPA runs. Most if not all of the consoles check the controller input state once per frame. So no matter how sophisticated the simulation is, it can only detect inputs at 1/60 second resolution. If a fast-moving ball crosses a flipper in 1/6 of a second, there's only 10 possible paths it could take coming off the flipper.

Farsight knows this, and deliberately tunes TPA's table and flipper geometry so that most of these 10 possible paths find a ramp or target. CFTBL is the most extreme example, where you literally can't miss with a rolling feed to the right flipper, every single physics result within a certain range goes up the Kiss lane or left ramp or center lane.

It might be possible at least on a PC platform to check the inputs more frequently than that. I believe Pro Pinball does. But messing with the timing is tricky, Farsight has commented before that just getting TPA and the ROM emulation running at all at a consistent speed is often challenging. And high resolution input timing would skew scores on the PC even more compared to other platforms.

Also if you have a good enough reaction time, the limited timer resolution of digital pinball comes into play. it dosen't matter how fast the ball is going if you can perform frame perfect flips.

Exactly. Playing games with 1/60 second resolution on inputs is very much within human capability. Plenty of fighting game experts routinely execute moves and combos that require single frame timing precision. I can do it myself in some cases.

 

[Zaphod77]

Yeah, you are not only limited by the nubmer of frames and subframes, but you are also limited by timer resolution.

And this is why it's pretty much impossible to get things just right. it's always either too easy or too hard. It was true in VP, and it is true in TPA.

TPA, for the most part, errs on the site of too easy, even when the real life table was very hard (TZ, i'm looking at you!)

But sometimes, to make the table less boring, something is deliberately left too hard. Phantom of the Opera is one such case, where looping that ramp is a bit harder then it should be, but the difficulty is required for the table to be challenging at all. f-14 tomcat is another. the important shots are all harder to hit then they are in real life. And it's still rollable. BUt it's also rollable in real life.

Well done cheating with randomness in certain circumstances can mitigate this somewhat. I've posted many times on how exactly to do it. one degree of randomness in all angles bouncing off of rubber or standups.

 

[Locksley]

Hopefully after all the new hardware roll-outs, FarSight will have some time to add a multiple difficulty settings to each table. I like having little easier tables than IRL. I am just an okay pinball player who has a great time playing pinball.

Posted in 2013 and i feel and thought the same thing!

Set up ROM more difficult - everything off and on hardest. Remove rubber if it makes table more difficult. Increase angle if it makes it more difficult.
And then add one Tournament mode with the hard settings PLUS no extra balls - make em points if ROM has the option.

Then you have Leaderboards for each difficulty setting...
I totally agree that I just space out from boredom playing some tables and I aint that good!

 

[MagnumXL]

I just tried Pinball Arcade on my Mac Mini under El Capitan with the Mac version from Steam and for whatever reason, the tables ran a LOT faster in terms of ball play and difficulty. Where I could easily play for over and hour on Firepower, Junkyard and Circus Voltaire on the Windows version without even trying, I lost pretty fast on all three on the Mac version. Now I was testing things out for that "slow motion" problem since a lot of Mac users claim it's Yosemite and El Capitan bugs, but I saw none of that here at a sane resolution (1680x1050 native on my 24" monitor with 16:10 aspect and everything was smooth as could be). I have seen it on the PC version if I'm running VMWare on the Mini and turn on Ball reflections (virtualization just runs slower period; I'm lucky it plays at a good FPS virtualized period; on my old 2008 Macbook Pro, it's unplayable virtualized but runs fine even with ball reflections turned on if I use Boot Camp, but the 2012 Mac Mini can play virtualized if I leave ball reflections off without the slowdown).

Now the Mac version looks like you're playing in a very bright (almost daylight) room compared to the DX9 PC version (let alone DX11 that looks dark), but the graphics are pretty much the same, only the lighting is different on most tables, but I'm thinking I like faster/harder play better than prettier lighting but too easy play. Maybe I was just in a hurry and I got unlucky or something, but Firepower felt night and day faster to me. Maybe there's more than just a graphical difference at work here?

 

[The loafer]

It has been reported previously that running the windows version under Mac seems to affect the playability/physics. Really have no idea if this is fact or fiction but maybe there's overhead that affects the game.

 

[kristian]

Returning to this tread after a few years. PacDude amazing... what's up my old buddy? Great to hear from you. Didn't see your original reply until now.

Just updated my TPA to latest version. Nothing has changed, really. I still love TPA but can't play certain tables because they're so ridiculously easy.

Is there a global dip switch settings file "to hardest" that could be copied? I don't feel like going to operator's menu and adjusting every single table one by one... and when I update to next version my dip switches are gone again. I think I got 10 extra balls on Scared Stiff... scored over 100 million on my first game (after hiatus). That was no fun at all. I'd love to have some challenge.

PS: Any plans on adding genuine ROMs to Black Knight and Firepower? BK looks incredible but feels completely FAKE without real rom support.

 

[shutyertrap]

PS: Any plans on adding genuine ROMs to Black Knight and Firepower? BK looks incredible but feels completely FAKE without real rom support.

Black Knight is running real ROMs now. Got put in a couple of months back. Firepower is still lacking. Bride of Pinbot just got the once over, removing the baked in lighting and automatic camera moves, as well as a tuning update. Scared Stiff supposedly got the same done to it this month, but other than the backbox looking better, it plays the same to me. The unfortunate part of the Pro Mode, is once you exit that table to play another, all your settings are lost. Or maybe it's the next time you load the game. Whatever, point is you're right, it's a pain. There's talk at FarSight that with head to head they might institute 'tournament' settings, but that's all it is right now, talk.

 

[kristian]

Thanks for the reply man. Wasn't aware that BK is running real ROMs now. I have to check that out asap. It's such a classic and it looks just incredible in TPA.

I think it'd be extremely easy to just make a the games harder. Just an option that automatically installs the hardest dip switches to all tables. I wonder if these dip switches are in a separate file somewhere so we could share it to other users. In VPinMAME they're all stored in nvram file.

Some newer tables are definitely more challenging. I really love TPA despite these flaws. Just spent 4-5 hours straight playing it... and loved every minute.

PS: Alien Poker and Bsby Pac-Man (video / pinball combo) would be extremely cool to have. I made them both to Visual Pinball / PinMame back in the day. Two of my favorite old tables. Cheers.

 

[The loafer]

Kristian, it's really good to see some sign of life from you man! Not trying to pry you away from TPA, but Visual Pinball has grown leaps with version 10, it's an amazing light show now and the physics are something else. I still love TPA/SPA, as long as I accept that polish is a word they just don't quite comprehend.

 

[kristian]

Thanks Loafer. Likewise, great to hear from you. I'll come to VP Forums one of these days. Cheers man!

 

[rehtroboi40]

Just tried AFM, TAF and BoP-the latest updates have made them much, much harder. I make every 5th or 6th bear kick I attempt and the ramps on BoP are no longer easy shots. Lots more STDM on BoP too.

Haven't tried JY yet-maybe sometime this weekend I will to see if it's been toughened up. But I do find myself gravitating back to EBD, and Fathom has become one of my top faves in TPA.

 

[FlippyFloppy]

Just tried AFM, TAF and BoP-the latest updates have made them much, much harder. I make every 5th or 6th bear kick I attempt and the ramps on BoP are no longer easy shots. Lots more STDM on BoP too.

Haven't tried JY yet-maybe sometime this weekend I will to see if it's been toughened up. But I do find myself gravitating back to EBD, and Fathom has become one of my top faves in TPA.

AFM, TAF, and JY haven't been had any tuning changes recently like Scared Stiff, BoPB, MM, CFTBL, Genie, and Black Knight.

 

[gust334]

Couldn't decide to open a new thread, or necro-post. (After a brief search, this seemed the best thread to use for future enhancements to gameplay.)

Some folks have requested a table slope adjustment. I understand this might be hard due to gameplay tuning.

Something on some real tables is the liberal/moderate/conservative adjustment, which has to do with different installations of certain playfield posts or rubbers; these can vastly change how hungry outlanes are, and the trajectory of too-soft ramp shots. Since this is just a tweak to the playfield geometry, this might not be too hard to do.