Very torn about Farsight as a company (sort of rant but also a question, confused)

[thefly0810]

This matters. Releasing 2/12 fewer tables means Farsight takes in 2/12 less revenue. We don't know anything about Farsight's accounting but it's quite possible that the margin between business sustainability and failure lies there.

Possible, yes, but I don't agree. And yes, none of us know what FarSight's financials are and it's none of my business. But we're fans and we're allowed to speculate. So here's why I disagree. I'm not the most business savvy person in the world but I'm fairly certain that Stern would not go into business with a company to digitally recreate their tables that was so close to financial ruin that they could not take a 2 month break between seasons. I assume that there had to be some level of profit and success demonstrated with TPA in order for Stern to form a partnership with FarSight.

 

[HotHamBoy]

Is it not possible to mod TPA on Steam so that a user could create their own table fixes and improve the physics, etc?

I'm guessing not or it would have happened already.

I actually tried to get VPX running on my PC yesterday and I just could NOT figure it out. There’s no clear guide on the website. I got the installer but I don't understand how to set up VPinMame and I don't know how to set the ROM path, etc.

So yeah, I can see why Visual Pinball is by no means a competitor to TPA.

 

[mpad]

Try harder. I would write a guide, but I just came from a beer drinking session and will fall asleep any minute...

 

[Heretic]

Try harder. I would write a guide, but I just came from a beer drinking session and will fall asleep any minute...

lmao cheers!

 

[vfpcoder]

Nobody has mentioned "Attack From Mars" here -- A season one table. I really feel that the DX11 version is the best representation of that game running on the PC platform. And I have physmod 5 iterations running on my cabinet.

The thing is, my brother has a real "Attack From Mars" in his basement; so I feel like I'm somewhat of an expert on this subject. Yes -- The real machine plays tougher; and yes -- Strobe multiball can not be properly reproduced. But in all other respects when I play this game in portrait mode on my cab I get the same thrill (and sound effects) when a saucer explodes as the real deal.

So Farsight happily gets my money even without official cabinet support.

Having said that, it's obvious that "Eight Ball Deluxe" has better physics ....

 

[travisbickle]

So yeah, I can see why Visual Pinball is by no means a competitor to TPA.

I did the same thing last weekend! I found a VP X installer at Pinball Nirvana that took care of most of the heavy work for me. If you want to adjust the ROM path in PinMame, all you have to do is go into the PinMame folder and there should be a setup.exe that you can use to change the path. After that, good luck... you'll need it! The hard-coded gamepad support in VP X doesn't read the triggers on the Xbone controller and, as you mentioned, trying to set up the physics without any instructions is trial-and-error-error-error-error. It's pretty much an indecipherable nightmare for anyone who's not a VP X programmer. The graphics, however, are the best I've ever seen out of VP and I sorta-kinda played a game of Paragon that kinda-sorta worked. It's been awhile since I did that.

 

[HotHamBoy]

Nobody has mentioned "Attack From Mars" here -- A season one table. I really feel that the DX11 version is the best representation of that game running on the PC platform. And I have physmod 5 iterations running on my cabinet.

The thing is, my brother has a real "Attack From Mars" in his basement; so I feel like I'm somewhat of an expert on this subject. Yes -- The real machine plays tougher; and yes -- Strobe multiball can not be properly reproduced. But in all other respects when I play this game in portrait mode on my cab I get the same thrill (and sound effects) when a saucer explodes as the real deal.

So Farsight happily gets my money even without official cabinet support.

Having said that, it's obvious that "Eight Ball Deluxe" has better physics ....

Attack From Mars is just a brilliant design tha translates very well to digital. Some designs don't, even with better physics, and some designs suffer terribly from the poor physics and railroad paths of Season 1.

We are fortunate that AFM holds up well, though.