BlahCade 64: Posterising in the H2H Lobby

See http://blahcadepinball.com/2016/07/12/Episode-64-Posterising-in-the-H2-H-Lobby.html for show notes, segment timings, streaming and podcatcher links, and other stuff.

[MENTION=134]shutyertrap[/MENTION]: Why do you think the MLP Tournament could only be done with the new UI? I mean, there's nothing really on the front end which requires the new UI. It's just a change of number of tables and reducing the time from 20 min. to 5 min.

Xanija said:

[MENTION=134]shutyertrap[/MENTION]: Why do you think the MLP Tournament could only be done with the new UI? I mean, there's nothing really on the front end which requires the new UI. It's just a change of number of tables and reducing the time from 20 min. to 5 min.

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On the surface nothing suggests this could not have been done with the old UI. What we have to take into account is that this was a 3rd party running the show. FarSight is working on allowing us the users to eventually create our own tourneys within the game. I don't know for a fact if this particular tourney was using a beta of this very function or not, but it was implied to me by a FS employee that the new UI was responsible for creating this opportunity.

While I think the new UI may make it easier to create private tournaments, I don't think the new UI did some magic here. I mean, it's more or less just a few parameters changed at the backend to an existing tournament function.

About the Head 2 Head mode - I'm trying to think how this could be interesting for me. Lets think about the possibilities, first the actual play:

- Players meet via a lobby to play against each other in hotseat mode. Fine. The last thing I want to do is sitting there for 10 minutes (or an hour) until it's my turn again. Even if I was able to see the opponent play. Thanks, but no thanks.

- Players play at the same time. I am playing for 20 minutes, then I'm finished. The other player either hasn't finished the first ball or is already waiting for me to finally end this. Even with displaying the score on the opponent's screen, this doesn't really add anything to my play and it doesn't feel right.

- Players can define a maximum play time and at the end compare their scores. Could be interesting.

- Players play in an asynchronous manner, like in a play-by-email. I could challenge another player (maybe somone on my friend list) and if he accepts, one of us plays the first ball. As soon as the first player has finished his ball, the other player gets a notification for his turn. He could log off in the meantime, play at the next time he logs on, maybe even a few days later. This would solve the problem of different time zones and boring wait times. The current score of the opponent would be visible of course. That could be interesting.

Now lets talk about the game mode:

- I could think about some kind of ladder, where you can challenge other players. This could be done on a matchmaking system, so players with equal skills would play against each other. Might require a bigger player base, don't know.

- Private challenges could also be possible, but this wouldn't affect the ladder. Maybe just some statistics like: Who did I play against, how many wins, how many losses, which tables etc.

Xanija said:

About the Head 2 Head mode - I'm trying to think how this could be interesting for me. Lets think about the possibilities, first the actual play:

- Players can define a maximum play time and at the end compare their scores. Could be interesting.

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There is a description of the rules in the TPA file & has been there for a long time. The object will be the first player to reach a certain score, within some limited amount of time. If neither player reaches the target score, the player with the most points at the end of the time limit wins. Pretty simple. It's a speed run.

I don't know if the eventual H2H mode will have these rules, but it seems completely reasonable to me.

You won't be able to watch everything the other player does, as (I believe) that would be technically impossible. You might be able to see the score of the other player; I hope so.

On the PS3 (don't know about PS4) Zen had a cool setup whereby you and 3 other players could compete against each other at the same time. The two modes I remember playing were either a time battle or a points goal. Time battle you could determine how long the game would last and then it was simply who had the higher score. Points goal was fun because it was first to a pre agreed point total. The cool thing was you could install penalties for losing your ball. There was a thin progress bar with 4 colored triangles representing each player. It was like watching those carnival horse races, seeing the gap increase and all the sudden the leader would plummet back and you knew they'd just lost a ball and got penalized for it.

I don't think FS could do the penalties with Points Goal, as they are limited by what the ROM allows. They could though do a table goal battle, which would be fun too.

invitro said:

You won't be able to watch everything the other player does, as (I believe) that would be technically impossible. You might be able to see the score of the other player; I hope so.

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They would like to do split screen eventually. For now they are working on just showing you the other score.

shutyertrap said:

On the PS3 (don't know about PS4) Zen had a cool setup whereby you and 3 other players could compete against each other at the same time. The two modes I remember playing were either a time battle or a points goal. Time battle you could determine how long the game would last and then it was simply who had the higher score. Points goal was fun because it was first to a pre agreed point total. The cool thing was you could install penalties for losing your ball. There was a thin progress bar with 4 colored triangles representing each player. It was like watching those carnival horse races, seeing the gap increase and all the sudden the leader would plummet back and you knew they'd just lost a ball and got penalized for it.

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This does sound neat. I like the table goal battle also. I'm expecting only the race to a set score, though.