Art of Pinball HD - iOS

The Wolfman

The Wolfman

New member
Jul 2, 2012
55
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Has anyone tried out the new tables of ASK Homework yet?

Art of Pinball HD - Aliens
Art of Pinball HD - The Mummy

I'd like to know more about it but I can't find any useful information.
 
Kolchak357

Kolchak357

Senior Pigeon
May 31, 2012
8,102
2
I like the look of the Mummy table. I haven't played these, but I think it's the same people that make Age of Pinball. Those are not TPA quality, but they are fun. In fact age of pinball has a sale right now. All add ons for 2.99. If you buy the Mummy table please give a review.
 
jhamdotme

jhamdotme

New member
Apr 14, 2012
151
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These tables are pretty fun. They look great, and they’re definitely old school in their feel. The scores are kept low, there aren’t any dot matrix animations or missions, and you can’t change lit lanes using your flippers. But the ball moves and reacts nicely.

Here’s some random observations that I jotted down while playing:

  • Neither of these tables are available in their pinball collection, Age of Pinballs. I emailed them about this, and they mentioned that they don’t currently plan on adding these tables as in-app purchases. Too bad.
  • Be careful which version of the app you buy, this isn’t universal. There’s iPhone and iPad versions of each of these tables.
  • There’s lots of in-app purchases:

    - Flipper Pack: $1.99
    - Ball Pack: $0.99
    - Sound Pack: $0.99
    - Ball Number: $0.99​

    There’s not a naggy sales pitch anywhere in the game for purchasing any of this stuff. It’s available in the main menu, but there aren’t any pop ups or notifications trying to force your hand.

    Before purchasing any of these in-apps, there’s no way to preview what it is that you’re purchasing. You can see some of these alternate assets in the App Store screenshots, but there’s no way to preview anything from within the app. And I’m damn sure not buying any of this stuff, so I can’t comment on what any of these in-app purchases actually provide.

    Note also, that since this app isn’t universal, if you want these extras, you’ll need to purchase them twice if you’re buying the iPhone and the iPad version of each table. If you get both tables, and you got both version of each table, and you get all of the in-app purchases, you’re out $19.84. (If these tables were added to Age of Pinballs, we’d be able to get all of these in-apps for each table with a single purchase. This, in my opinion, is why they haven’t done this, unfortunately.)
  • In what I can only assume is an attempt to coax you to buy the $1.99 Flipper Pack, the default (and free) flippers are ugly white flippers that put “Flipper” on them in bolded black text. This is good, I suppose, if you ever forget what these things are called. It’s bad if you’re averse to in-app nickel and diming.
  • The plunger control isn’t analog. You don’t pull back to release it, you just press in the bottom-right corner, and it pulls it back. So if you want to release the plunger at less than full speed, you have to release your pull early. If you hold the onscreen press too long, there’s no way to lessen the strength of the pull. This is problematic on the Mummy table, because there’s a 1000 point shot you can hit with a well done pull. On Aliens, it doesn’t seem to matter as much.
  • There’s a ball-save feature, where you’ll get your ball back if you drain quickly.
  • The physics seem tweaked from what appears in the Age of Pinballs. To me, it seems less floaty, and it feels a lot better.
  • Inexplicably, there’s an overlay on the left side of the screen where you can toggle the music on and off. If you press this onscreen button, the music turns off, but the sound effects remain. You can’t hide this distracting button from the interface.
  • In Age of Pinballs, there’s an ambient crowd noise that isn’t present here.
  • If you’re backgrounding music from another app, you won’t be able to run it while playing any of these tables. Even if you turn the game’s music off, you still won’t be able to play any of your music.
  • Each table is portrait only, and there are four views you can choose from. The first view shows the whole table from a three quarters view, and there’s no zooming that’s necessary. The other views have zooming in and out, but it’s nowhere near as jarring as what you’ll see in, say, the Gameprom tables.
  • Each table supports OpenFeint for leaderboards. Age of Pinballs supported Game Center, but it doesn’t appear to be supported with these apps for some reason. (I thought OpenFeint was supposed to have built in support for Game Center, and that this was something that developers would get for free when implementing OpenFeint.)
  • OpenFeint scores are not synced between iPhone and iPad versions of the app.
  • When entering initials, the text field that they’re using doesn’t limit text shortcuts. So even though I’m limited to only three characters here and I’m not trying to invoke this shortcut, when I type my initials, I’m triggering this shortcut that I’ve created to enter my email address. This shortcut doesn’t work, and I don’t want it to, but this suggestion should never be made to the user.
  • There’s a bug in the plunger code. When pulling all the way back on the plunger and holding, the ball will spin and spin and spin. The spin is fine when you’re pulling back initially, but if you hold it, it should come to rest. Otherwise, it looks bizarre.
 
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G

gsxrboy

Member
Feb 21, 2012
137
0
jhamdotme said:
.. says lots of helpful stuff
Click to expand...

Thanks for the review matey. I have Age of Pinball and all the tables, additional IAP in that, but not having this as a universal build and in a collection format makes it for me a non stater. I much prefer having all the tables bundled in a collection and choosing what tables to play and buy from within that. The way they have it now is super triple double dipping on things like all the IAP needed to be bought for each table, on each platform for each game. Devs have to make money so they can bring us the goodies, but I think I'll pass on this and keep the cashola for more TPA tables. Also removing game center support is a bit dopey.

(All thesee things apply super quadruple quintuple to the Pinball HD collection in their endless repackages, broken promises of universal builds et all. They wont see my cash again)
 
jhamdotme

jhamdotme

New member
Apr 14, 2012
151
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gsxrboy said:
(All thesee things apply super quadruple quintuple to the Pinball HD collection in their endless repackages, broken promises of universal builds et all. They wont see my cash again)
Click to expand...

Agreed. Completely. I took them to task for this nonsense over at Touch Arcade. In the process, I think I derailed that thread, which was pretty popular.
 
G

gsxrboy

Member
Feb 21, 2012
137
0
The iPhone version (non HD type) of Art of Pinball - The Mummy has just gone on sale for free, grab it quick to check it out. Maybe they are discovering that the new distro model isnt working as well as hoped and we can return to a better, more normal version as we all want :)
 
mmmagnetic

mmmagnetic

New member
May 29, 2012
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The balls in these ASK Homework games always look like a dog chewed on them, but at least in the Mummy the flippers don't feel like they are about to snap in half at any moment. Pretty nice mechanical sounds, too.
 
mmmagnetic

mmmagnetic

New member
May 29, 2012
601
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BlindSpider11 said:
One think this game does very very well, the flipper and slingshot sounds.
Click to expand...

Yep, that´s something I noticed as well. Good mechanical samples really make a lot of difference for me.


The Wolfman said:
hahaha :) In the Vampire and X-Games table the balls feel like they're made of polystyrene too. In these tables they feel a little heavier.
Click to expand...

Indeed, the new ball feels a lot better.

In one of their games I noticed that they have an in-app purchase for "used pinball". What´s that? Oh, really cool feature: It supposedly makes you machine look all dirty and beat up! I mean, who doesn´t love that dingy, used look of a germ-infested, neglected pinball that´s been sitting in a humid warehouse for twenty years?

Now, what would have been clever would be giving the machines an even more used look from the start, release them for free, and charge for cleaning them up, making them all shiny and fixing light bulbs that have been broken on the free version. Appeal to the pinball lovers love for shiny, pristine pinball!
 
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G

gsxrboy

Member
Feb 21, 2012
137
0
... and now in a universal multi table pack! (how if should have been from the start)

Huzzah!

6 tables included for AUD/US$2.99 converted to something else in your local currency
 
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tripleplonq

tripleplonq

New member
Dec 3, 2012
203
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gsxrboy said:
... and now in a universal multi table pack! (how if should have been from the start)

Huzzah!

6 tables included for AUD/US$2.99 converted to something else in your local currency
Click to expand...

For those who already bought the other five tables, this is sort of insulting.
They should at least release the new table as a separate app for '99. And their silly in-app sales are still silly, which is really sad because their games are really good.
I'm a big fan, I like the visuals and physics(with some exceptions), and if they could add drop-targets and kick-out holes, I would be an even bigger fan. At least.

I still would like to know on which real tables the 'Aliens' and 'Firemen' layout are based on.
The others are:
The Mummy - Count Down / - Gottlieb
Hippie - Old Coney Island - Game Plan
Beast Master- Genie - Gottlieb
Speed King - Sharpshooter - Game Plan

...
 
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jhamdotme

jhamdotme

New member
Apr 14, 2012
151
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tripleplonq said:
I still would like to know on which real tables the 'Aliens' and 'Firemen' layout are based on.
The others are:
The Mummy - Count Down / - Gottlieb
Hippie - Old Coney Island - Game Plan
Beast Master- Genie - Gottlieb
Speed King - Sharpshooter - Game Plan
Click to expand...

Keen eye, spotting all of these. I had no idea that the tables in the Art of Pinball series were such blatant ripoffs.
 

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