Finally decided to stop lurking

Hello I am PHDrawde. I've been playing Farsight's pinball games since I found the Gottlieb and Williams collections on PS2 about 3 years ago. It's funny in retrospect because the reason I bought them is they were like $5 for the both of them and I used to like pinball more then video games (back when real arcades were common) so I figured it would be something fun to play every now and then. I had no clue those games would rekindle a lost love and start an obsession. It didn't take too long until what I thought would be a momentary diversion from time to time was what I spent most of my time playing. When I found out the PS3 version of the Williams Collection had TOTAN and MM I felt very left out. I eventually tracked down a copy that I had to drive half way across the state to buy so I could play it at my friend's house since he had a PS3. I had been following what tables were being made on Pinball Arcade since it first came out but it wasn't until last September I was finally able to get a PS3 of my own and start playing it. I've been lurking around here for a while to get news about things but I'm fairly shy and antisocial in both real life and online so I never worked up the nerve to post anything. But after listening to the new Barcade podcast earlier I decided I wanted to join in on some conversations. As far as general introduction things aside from my history with Farside's pinball games, I'm into playing music, I like to watch old 'B' and 'Z' movies, I love cats, and I'm a computer programmer. I'm currently back in school working on finishing my undergrad so I can finally start my formal studies of Artificial Intelligence after which I plan on going into research science in that field.

very welcome dude

i hope youll post more in threads tgat interest you

Welcome to the forum and out of the lurk!

Hi

Glad to meet you. If your location of NC is North Carolina that's my favorite place to go. Mostly in the western part of the state.

Welcome! This is a great forum to be in. I lurked for awhile then jumped in. If you've the time, explore all the threads. There are a few posters that should have their own comedy shows. Again, welcome!

Hello and welcome.

Naildriver74 said:

Glad to meet you. If your location of NC is North Carolina that's my favorite place to go. Mostly in the western part of the state.

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Yes, I'm currently in Charlotte. By western part do you mean like up in the mountains? It is very nice up there but I don't get the chance to go too often.

Yes I like to spend time around Dillsboro and Cashiers I find it to be relaxing.

Welcome to the fold.

PHDrawde said:

.....and I'm a computer programmer. I'm currently back in school working on finishing my undergrad so I can finally start my formal studies of Artificial Intelligence after which I plan on going into research science in that field.

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Are you going back to school so you can program some AI to get the top score in TPA on all the tables? If not why not?

Dumpstar said:

Are you going back to school so you can program some AI to get the top score in TPA on all the tables? If not why not?

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No, although based off some work I've read about with video game playing programs something like that might be possible on the PC version. Being a steam game would probably complicate this but a wrapper program could be made to run the game and handle input; the hard part would be knowing what was going on in the game. Anything relying on using some form of vision recognition would be too slow with how it would need to be implemented. The best way to do it would be a violation of the EULA; run it through a decompiler and sort through the assembly to figure out the parts of memory to monitor to know what the ball is doing and the state of the table in near perfect time. From that point it could be given a bit of starting pinball knowledge and a genetic algorithm could be developed so the program could "learn" how to play the tables. Something tells me the games would be very dull to watch since once it figured out a repeatable shot that scored anything it would probably do that forever. The first thing that comes to mind is the ramps on Scared Stiff. So I guess the answer to why not now that I've thought it out a little is that the process of making it would be unethical (if not illegal) and the end result would likely be an endless shot spammer that would be vary unfair to the players who are good enough to get the top score. Game playing is the domain I'm most interested in though, especially since there's been relatively little academic work done in non-perfect information games compared to perfect information games.

Welcome!