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The Pinball Arcade / Farsight Studios
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Too easy tables (PC version)
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<blockquote data-quote="MagnumXL" data-source="post: 219251" data-attributes="member: 2512"><p>I'm glad someone liked it. I really wished I could have included the MP3 I used myself locally ("Battle Without Honor or Humanity" by Tomoyosu Hotei that was used in the Kill Bill movie and numerous car commercials, but I can see where a track from the Matrix would work well too; that and Tron are my favorite two movies of all time), but I suppose ultimately people prefer their own music to kick in. I always thought the secondary trick was to keep the song running (as draining ends it). I got this idea to animate the ball itself and it worked out better than I could have imagined. My favorite was on Fireball II. I had these little imp "pacdudes" inside a gem-like "fireball" and they did different things as they moved inside the ball (imps based on a short story called "The Bottle Imp" by Robert Louis Stevenson about a bottle with an imp in it that can grant your desires, but if you don't sell it for less than you bought it before you die, you burn in hell forever). So I figured, why not PacImps? <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite8" alt=":D" title="Big grin :D" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":D" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't know if you ever checked out my Fathom table (Scapino, aka Kurt Herman's table was a rendered version so it got more attention), but it also has enhanced rules on it, although perhaps the SLAM TILT penalty for sending the same colored power orb back to its own home base/saucer (thus destroying it and your game) might have been a bit much. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite11" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes :rolleyes:" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /> (but that's why it's an extra play mode)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I hadn't really intended to "bail", originally, but a few different events occurred that all seemed to derail further development:</p><p></p><p>1> I bought a used Power Mac G4 while at the Pinball Wizards Convention in Allentown, PA (met MrHide there on two occasions) just to tinker with OS X since I've always despised Microsoft and Windows since my Commodore Amiga days. I liked what I saw and tried iTunes. I saw the potential of the 1st Gen AppleTV and upgraded the PowerG4 to ~2006 specs with a 2GHz G4, 1.5GB memory and an ATI 9800Pro video card, USB2 card and Sata controller. I actually used this machine as a server and surfing machine until 2012 when I replaced it with a Quad i7 Mac Mini with dual RAID0 drives (although I bought a Macbook Pro in late 2008, which brings me to #5 in a moment. I spend a LOT of time compressing my DVD movies into digital form, etc. and bought a large home theater with a 93" screen and HD projector, which also became a new time bandit (yeah I started watching that show too).</p><p></p><p>2> My step-dad died shortly after I released the re-make of the Addams Family table in late 2007 (he died in early 2008 and this caused a sobering delay of several months and I ended up taking my mom on trips to California, Alaska and Arizona later that year into 2009 to get her mind off it (I hadn't been on vacation in over 7 years myself at the time). </p><p></p><p>3> Let's just call this conflict with certain people in the community dating back to forum bans, arguments over Pinball 2000 emulation, people badgering for me to make various changes or certain tables, etc. I'd call it a negative vibe or irritant factor. How much effect it had, I don't know, but it was probably cumulative over the years. If you're not having fun, you find another hobby eventually. Interest seemed to wane to an extent after most popular tables were made as well. Releasing a table and getting 5 comments wasn't conducive to feel like bothering for other people's sake or some desired adulation or whatever. Ultimately, you should be making a table because you want to make it, not to impress others or make other people happy. Otherwise, you'll burn out.</p><p></p><p>4> VP9. I hated that it was released. Why? Because while it sounds like it offered a lot of nice new commercial-like features, it also KILLED (as in they didn't work without minor to major modification) most existing tables for various reasons (i.e. they broke a lot of things in the process). Rather than even attempt to toil and figure out how to make my tables work in VP9 (most people just had this attitude of "Let's just make BRAND NEW tables instead to take advantage of the features!), well, let's just say like #3 above, after spending SEVEN YEARS making tables to have the more complex ones simply not work for reasons I didn't even want to dig into the reasons (in fact, I took people word for the issues and I swear that I only just recently as in the past week even DOWNLOADED VP9 and TRIED one of my tables in it. Suffice to say, Addams Family died pretty fast with it. I haven't tried any other tables with it. I kind of DESPISE it for those reasons as I have zero interest in re-making nearly three dozen tables. I realize VP8 still works fine (at least it does here), but the few times I peeked into the VP Forums, the attitude seemed to be that VP9 was the most bestest thing ever made. Again, 7 years is a lot of time and I realized it at that point. I've also had depression issues for a long time and frankly, VP was rather cathartic for me. I should probably go back to it for that reason alone.</p><p></p><p>5> Near the end of 2008, I bought a brand new Core2Duo Macbook Pro (8600M GT; I got lucky my NVidia GPU never failed and it still works fine today). I bought it with the idea in mind of writing a music album (I play guitar and piano/synth and discovered I can sing to boot and wanted to see what I could do with Logic Pro. I spent two and half years working on that album from late 2009 until midway through 2012 and released the Pink Floyd/Tori Amos/Nine Inch Nails inspired album in the fall of 2012. I really thought it turned out spectacular compared to my early wondering whether I could even write songs or not, let alone perform all the required parts myself, etc. It turns out all those engineering skills + VP building skills = Layering Skills that work for writing music (or books) very well. It's kind of the same process as layering things in Photoshop even in away. Anyway, marketing is NOT one of my skills and sad to say the album is virtually unknown to this day due to a lack of any kind of music video to put to the songs or other marketing ploys. One of the songs (This Can't Keep Going On) is rather anti-establishment politically/religiously charged and could sell to either party (even Trump now that I think about it) and it's pretty catchy as an anthem. Anyway, I still don't know how to market it since I'm not a videographer or a publicist.</p><p></p><p>By this point, a lot of things had happened in my life (some career changes, shoulder surgery, etc.) and Visual Pinball seemed long gone, in a way. Believe it or not, I didn't play or even load up any VP tables probably from about 2010 until last week. Yeah, last week (same time I downloaded VP9 while I was updating VPinmame). But I bought Pinball Arcade back in 2013.... Hey, a pinball emulation I could finally play on a Mac (yeah, other than loading it up in virtualization or Boot Camp or my old Windows machine for some games, I kissed Windows goodbye a long time ago).</p><p></p><p>I had a few tables in progress that never saw the light of day. I even had all the fading lights done and working on Lord of the Rings (just checked them out again after all these years and they are pretty darn nice looking in terms of the photo-realistic fading lights) along with part of the table and most of the basic table layout was done for Pinball Magic. I DO feel bad about one thing, though. A VP Forum member who was working on his own Monsters Of Rock VP table was dying and wanted me to finish his table for him after he died. Sad to say, but I can't even remember his name because all the stuff he sent me and our emails was sitting on an email account that got deleted by Yahoo for not using for like 6 months or something at the time (as above, things happened during some of that time). For some reason, I must have never downloaded the images locally (at least I haven't found them) and at the time I wanted to do TAF first (and possibly one or two others that were in my priorities). But I did plan to give it a go at some point (he hadn't really got that far, but he had assembled some resources). Then the material got deleted by Yahoo. Yeah, I still feel bad when I think about it. Hell, the old forums got deleted and all my private messages with it as well when AJ's closed. If there was any access to the new forums, I didn't have it. I couldn't even create a "Pacdude" account there as it says it was already taken (guess I didn't have the password for the new forum for some reason). So I used "The Dude" (from The Big Lebowski) instead, but nothing much came of it. They wanted to do a chat interview when I announced I wasn't dead and I think three people showed up. I figured the scene was kind of dead or doing well without me. People told me how GREAT VP9 was and how awesome all the tables were for it, you know ones that could be made REALLY BIG like that closest camera view in Pinball Arcade where your nose is on the table...the view I despise since no one plays real pinball that way, but a large number of VP fans wanted every square inch of their monitor filled with a pinball table even if the camera had to be right behind the ball to do it. See #4 for why I didn't care to hear about VP9 once again (lol).</p><p></p><p>Anyway, there you have it. The story of my not so turned out the way I'd planned or hoped life. BTW, Borderlands 2 might be the most awesome game ever made other than pinball.... I spent a lot of hours playing that one the past year along with the Pre-Sequel. Kind of back on a pinball kick now, though. I have been having this sudden urge lately to make a table, if only to play with even freakier fading light effects. The issue would be that VP8 doesn't work in virtualization here at all (at least not with VMWare Fusion 6) and I'm set up for Photoshop and the like in OS X now. I think VP9 works OK virtualized, but did I mention I don't like VP9 because of petty and immature reasons??? Besides, it's easier to just let these Pinball Arcade guys do all the work and I spend some cash to play the end result, even if the tables are a bit too easy.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Hmmm, Will Wheaton.... he's supposedly quite the gaming "nerd". I wonder if he ever played one of my VP tables.... <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite8" alt=":D" title="Big grin :D" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":D" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MagnumXL, post: 219251, member: 2512"] I'm glad someone liked it. I really wished I could have included the MP3 I used myself locally ("Battle Without Honor or Humanity" by Tomoyosu Hotei that was used in the Kill Bill movie and numerous car commercials, but I can see where a track from the Matrix would work well too; that and Tron are my favorite two movies of all time), but I suppose ultimately people prefer their own music to kick in. I always thought the secondary trick was to keep the song running (as draining ends it). I got this idea to animate the ball itself and it worked out better than I could have imagined. My favorite was on Fireball II. I had these little imp "pacdudes" inside a gem-like "fireball" and they did different things as they moved inside the ball (imps based on a short story called "The Bottle Imp" by Robert Louis Stevenson about a bottle with an imp in it that can grant your desires, but if you don't sell it for less than you bought it before you die, you burn in hell forever). So I figured, why not PacImps? :D I don't know if you ever checked out my Fathom table (Scapino, aka Kurt Herman's table was a rendered version so it got more attention), but it also has enhanced rules on it, although perhaps the SLAM TILT penalty for sending the same colored power orb back to its own home base/saucer (thus destroying it and your game) might have been a bit much. :rolleyes: (but that's why it's an extra play mode) I hadn't really intended to "bail", originally, but a few different events occurred that all seemed to derail further development: 1> I bought a used Power Mac G4 while at the Pinball Wizards Convention in Allentown, PA (met MrHide there on two occasions) just to tinker with OS X since I've always despised Microsoft and Windows since my Commodore Amiga days. I liked what I saw and tried iTunes. I saw the potential of the 1st Gen AppleTV and upgraded the PowerG4 to ~2006 specs with a 2GHz G4, 1.5GB memory and an ATI 9800Pro video card, USB2 card and Sata controller. I actually used this machine as a server and surfing machine until 2012 when I replaced it with a Quad i7 Mac Mini with dual RAID0 drives (although I bought a Macbook Pro in late 2008, which brings me to #5 in a moment. I spend a LOT of time compressing my DVD movies into digital form, etc. and bought a large home theater with a 93" screen and HD projector, which also became a new time bandit (yeah I started watching that show too). 2> My step-dad died shortly after I released the re-make of the Addams Family table in late 2007 (he died in early 2008 and this caused a sobering delay of several months and I ended up taking my mom on trips to California, Alaska and Arizona later that year into 2009 to get her mind off it (I hadn't been on vacation in over 7 years myself at the time). 3> Let's just call this conflict with certain people in the community dating back to forum bans, arguments over Pinball 2000 emulation, people badgering for me to make various changes or certain tables, etc. I'd call it a negative vibe or irritant factor. How much effect it had, I don't know, but it was probably cumulative over the years. If you're not having fun, you find another hobby eventually. Interest seemed to wane to an extent after most popular tables were made as well. Releasing a table and getting 5 comments wasn't conducive to feel like bothering for other people's sake or some desired adulation or whatever. Ultimately, you should be making a table because you want to make it, not to impress others or make other people happy. Otherwise, you'll burn out. 4> VP9. I hated that it was released. Why? Because while it sounds like it offered a lot of nice new commercial-like features, it also KILLED (as in they didn't work without minor to major modification) most existing tables for various reasons (i.e. they broke a lot of things in the process). Rather than even attempt to toil and figure out how to make my tables work in VP9 (most people just had this attitude of "Let's just make BRAND NEW tables instead to take advantage of the features!), well, let's just say like #3 above, after spending SEVEN YEARS making tables to have the more complex ones simply not work for reasons I didn't even want to dig into the reasons (in fact, I took people word for the issues and I swear that I only just recently as in the past week even DOWNLOADED VP9 and TRIED one of my tables in it. Suffice to say, Addams Family died pretty fast with it. I haven't tried any other tables with it. I kind of DESPISE it for those reasons as I have zero interest in re-making nearly three dozen tables. I realize VP8 still works fine (at least it does here), but the few times I peeked into the VP Forums, the attitude seemed to be that VP9 was the most bestest thing ever made. Again, 7 years is a lot of time and I realized it at that point. I've also had depression issues for a long time and frankly, VP was rather cathartic for me. I should probably go back to it for that reason alone. 5> Near the end of 2008, I bought a brand new Core2Duo Macbook Pro (8600M GT; I got lucky my NVidia GPU never failed and it still works fine today). I bought it with the idea in mind of writing a music album (I play guitar and piano/synth and discovered I can sing to boot and wanted to see what I could do with Logic Pro. I spent two and half years working on that album from late 2009 until midway through 2012 and released the Pink Floyd/Tori Amos/Nine Inch Nails inspired album in the fall of 2012. I really thought it turned out spectacular compared to my early wondering whether I could even write songs or not, let alone perform all the required parts myself, etc. It turns out all those engineering skills + VP building skills = Layering Skills that work for writing music (or books) very well. It's kind of the same process as layering things in Photoshop even in away. Anyway, marketing is NOT one of my skills and sad to say the album is virtually unknown to this day due to a lack of any kind of music video to put to the songs or other marketing ploys. One of the songs (This Can't Keep Going On) is rather anti-establishment politically/religiously charged and could sell to either party (even Trump now that I think about it) and it's pretty catchy as an anthem. Anyway, I still don't know how to market it since I'm not a videographer or a publicist. By this point, a lot of things had happened in my life (some career changes, shoulder surgery, etc.) and Visual Pinball seemed long gone, in a way. Believe it or not, I didn't play or even load up any VP tables probably from about 2010 until last week. Yeah, last week (same time I downloaded VP9 while I was updating VPinmame). But I bought Pinball Arcade back in 2013.... Hey, a pinball emulation I could finally play on a Mac (yeah, other than loading it up in virtualization or Boot Camp or my old Windows machine for some games, I kissed Windows goodbye a long time ago). I had a few tables in progress that never saw the light of day. I even had all the fading lights done and working on Lord of the Rings (just checked them out again after all these years and they are pretty darn nice looking in terms of the photo-realistic fading lights) along with part of the table and most of the basic table layout was done for Pinball Magic. I DO feel bad about one thing, though. A VP Forum member who was working on his own Monsters Of Rock VP table was dying and wanted me to finish his table for him after he died. Sad to say, but I can't even remember his name because all the stuff he sent me and our emails was sitting on an email account that got deleted by Yahoo for not using for like 6 months or something at the time (as above, things happened during some of that time). For some reason, I must have never downloaded the images locally (at least I haven't found them) and at the time I wanted to do TAF first (and possibly one or two others that were in my priorities). But I did plan to give it a go at some point (he hadn't really got that far, but he had assembled some resources). Then the material got deleted by Yahoo. Yeah, I still feel bad when I think about it. Hell, the old forums got deleted and all my private messages with it as well when AJ's closed. If there was any access to the new forums, I didn't have it. I couldn't even create a "Pacdude" account there as it says it was already taken (guess I didn't have the password for the new forum for some reason). So I used "The Dude" (from The Big Lebowski) instead, but nothing much came of it. They wanted to do a chat interview when I announced I wasn't dead and I think three people showed up. I figured the scene was kind of dead or doing well without me. People told me how GREAT VP9 was and how awesome all the tables were for it, you know ones that could be made REALLY BIG like that closest camera view in Pinball Arcade where your nose is on the table...the view I despise since no one plays real pinball that way, but a large number of VP fans wanted every square inch of their monitor filled with a pinball table even if the camera had to be right behind the ball to do it. See #4 for why I didn't care to hear about VP9 once again (lol). Anyway, there you have it. The story of my not so turned out the way I'd planned or hoped life. BTW, Borderlands 2 might be the most awesome game ever made other than pinball.... I spent a lot of hours playing that one the past year along with the Pre-Sequel. Kind of back on a pinball kick now, though. I have been having this sudden urge lately to make a table, if only to play with even freakier fading light effects. The issue would be that VP8 doesn't work in virtualization here at all (at least not with VMWare Fusion 6) and I'm set up for Photoshop and the like in OS X now. I think VP9 works OK virtualized, but did I mention I don't like VP9 because of petty and immature reasons??? Besides, it's easier to just let these Pinball Arcade guys do all the work and I spend some cash to play the end result, even if the tables are a bit too easy. Hmmm, Will Wheaton.... he's supposedly quite the gaming "nerd". I wonder if he ever played one of my VP tables.... :D [/QUOTE]
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