The ball...

[superballs]

Thank you Serenseven.

Regarding slap saves though...i think this is one of the worst things right now in this game...this is where the "through the flippers" thing seems to get me the most.

I've had so many slap saves that should have went well just drop through a flipper on me. Now this "bug" isn't just a detriment, i've had it work in my favour too. Not sure about ratio of favorable to unfavorable but at this point if i see that i'm going to have to do one, i just react and pray the ball goes up instead of down.
It's almost as if there's a certain point in the flipper's animation with a certain ball speed where it almost becomes an intangible object.

And yes live catches are indeed possible. Hard as hell (to me anyway) to pull off in this game. And believe me, this is the ONE "advanced" technique that I would really consider myself good at IRL, mainly because I've always thought that a live trap and flipping the ball right on target is one of the sweetest moments in a game of pin, the way it just seems to defy physics as it comes to a dead stop on your flipper for that brief moment.

This brings me to my next point when it comes to some of the flipper physics issues i percieve. I think i'm noticing that it's not a question of dodgy physics but the programming of flipper behaviour.

On a real table...i'm not quite sure how it works and i'm hoping someone can step in and explain the actual details, but i know the "feel" of it when playing a real pin. There are times when you can just really quickly tap the flipper button and release it as quick as you've pressed it and it seems that the flipper will either only go up halfway or finish it's arc with less "oomph". This is important in multiball when you're tossing one around, you have two on your other flipper and just let the flipper give a light "flick" up the kicker allowing you to perform a post transfer. With the flipper behaviour as it is, I don't think it is possible in TPA.

I'm not too picky on how the ball reacts to the table vis a vis the real table (so far the only table released that I've actually played IRL is ToM). But I've played a good share of tables and I think the biggest tweaks need to be done to the flippers. Mainly not having them always fully return (or mostly return) to a rest position, allowing for those little flicks and taps.

Check out 1:54 or so of this video (by RipleYYY no less):

 

[DrainoBraino]

Nudging is a very big part of pinball. If you are only nudging at the last second trying to save a ball from draining down the center, you are dong it wrong. You have to predict the path of the ball and "correct" it to do what you want it to do. I nudge way in advance so the ball will always go to the flipper, or bounce off what I know will send it to the flipper. But not just send it toward the flipper, I send it in a way that I can now trap and hold the ball. Another trick is to nudge so the ball doesn't hit the slingshots because this can bounce the ball to the opposite outlane. A popular technique when the ball hits the slingshot is to nudge the table forward to change its momentum and reduce the chance of it bouncing to the outlanes. If you see that ball going toward the outlane, nudge it so it doesn't make it there. Don't wait until the last second when its already over there teetering. There are many techniques to nudge so that the ball does what you want.

Always watch for patterns. It sounds so simple but it's a huge part of pinball. The ball is very predictable. Well designed pinball tables are predictable. Use this always to your advantage. Watch what the ball does when it exit ramps, loops, and is reintroduced. For example, in TOTAN, when the ball comes out of the bazaar, it can be easily trapped.

On a real table...i'm not quite sure how it works and i'm hoping someone can step in and explain the actual details, but i know the "feel" of it when playing a real pin. There are times when you can just really quickly tap the flipper button and release it as quick as you've pressed it and it seems that the flipper will either only go up halfway or finish it's arc with less "oomph". This is important in multiball when you're tossing one around, you have two on your other flipper and just let the flipper give a light "flick" up the kicker allowing you to perform a post transfer. With the flipper behaviour as it is, I don't think it is possible in TPA.

I'm not too picky on how the ball reacts to the table vis a vis the real table (so far the only table released that I've actually played IRL is ToM). But I've played a good share of tables and I think the biggest tweaks need to be done to the flippers. Mainly not having them always fully return (or mostly return) to a rest position, allowing for those little flicks and taps.

EXACTLY. This is the most important aspect of recreating real pinball as a video game. I wish FS would focus on this part of the game, rather than concern about making all the fancy tables. This is my big disappointment with PA. I would rather have one great old EM game with good flippers, than all these new machines with bad flippers.

 

[superballs]

Nudging is a very big part of pinball. If you are only nudging at the last second trying to save a ball from draining down the center, you are dong it wrong. You have to predict the path of the ball and "correct" it to do what you want it to do. I nudge way in advance so the ball will always go to the flipper, or bounce off what I know will send it to the flipper. But not just send it toward the flipper, I send it in a way that I can now trap and hold the ball. Another trick is to nudge so the ball doesn't hit the slingshots because this can bounce the ball to the opposite outlane. A popular technique when the ball hits the slingshot is to nudge the table forward to change its momentum and reduce the chance of it bouncing to the outlanes. If you see that ball going toward the outlane, nudge it so it doesn't make it there. Don't wait until the last second when its already over there teetering. There are many techniques to nudge so that the ball does what you want.

Always watch for patterns. It sounds so simple but it's a huge part of pinball. The ball is very predictable. Well designed pinball tables are predictable. Use this always to your advantage. Watch what the ball does when it exit ramps, loops, and is reintroduced. For example, in TOTAN, when the ball comes out of the bazaar, it can be easily trapped.




EXACTLY. This is the most important aspect of recreating real pinball as a video game. I wish FS would focus on this part of the game, rather than concern about making all the fancy tables. This is my big disappointment with PA. I would rather have one great old EM game with good flippers, than all these new machines with bad flippers.

I think it is in fact in the works.

I've been playin MM on the iphone and the improvement there was astounding.

While i was posting that thread last night, i had even loaded up ToM for the 360 just to try some of the techniques specifically and found them to not work because the flippers are always firing off at full strenght. But i think this comes down to a forum sig i saw on VPForums saying "each pinball table is it's own little universe with its own rules" or something to that effect. IRL, even the same table will behave differently...I've never played on a factory new table so maybe a little wear is needed before you can do these little flicks, though i would have to assume that if you if you can release and hit the button again before it returns to the switch open position (fully down) you should be able to achieve that technique.

The basic thought is, regardless of what you are familiar with, the leaderboards show what is possible, it's a question of learning the tendancies of each table as it's own little universe.

PS. I'm at work and I'm sorry my thoughts are rather disorganized

 

[Brian Clark]

I hope Farsight gets some help before they tweak the physics. They did great work with Pinball Arcade, but thinking about Action 52 on the Genesis and how their previous collections have bugs makes me hope they get some help from other companies with working on bugs and some help from pinball designers like Steve Ritchie or John Popadiuk.

 

[Jeff Strong]

I hope Farsight gets some help before they tweak the physics. They did great work with Pinball Arcade, but thinking about Action 52 on the Genesis and how their previous collections have bugs makes me hope they get some help from other companies with working on bugs and some help from pinball designers like Steve Ritchie or John Popadiuk.

JPop said on FB that he's willing to help out, so they should take him up on that.

 

[Jan Duin]

I thought he was already involved in this project?

 

[Jeff Strong]

I thought he was already involved in this project?

JPop made this comment a few weeks ago: "maybe they will hire some of use folks who made the real games...as consultants to do the final tweaks....??"

https://www.facebook.com/pinballarcade/posts/382095278478205
(you have to hit "view previous comments" to see it)

 

[Shaneus]

JPop made this comment a few weeks ago: "maybe they will hire some of use folks who made the real games...as consultants to do the final tweaks....??"

https://www.facebook.com/pinballarcade/posts/382095278478205
(you have to hit "view previous comments" to see it)

Man, I'd be very surprised if they haven't taken him/them up on that offer. Might even make some licenses easier to obtain if they have the backing of the original designer.

PS. Moar Ritchie games thanks! That's including Mark for Indy
PPS. OT, but any word on Steve's tinnitus? Would be a shame if he lost his hearing completely by next year as per his Wiki

 

[Kaoru]

So I allowed a little more nudging into my gameplay... et voilá, my scores have been improving a lot lately. I even got myself a #150something-spot on "Black Hole", really really neat.

However it still doesn't change my feelings towards the ball, nor does it remove the problem that I have with it. Nudging or no nudging, the ball remains too bouncy and too speedy. In a lot of cases there is no, I reapeat, no time to react. The ball isn't going "Bounce - Bounce - Bounce", what it does instead is this: "Wham!Wham!Wham!DRAIN!!!". It's like watching a DVD on 2x- or even 3x-fast forward speed.

Playing TOTAN still is a chore most of the time. Recently I was just one skeleton short of rescuing the princess when the ball suddenly went into hyperspeedy "Wham!Wham!Wham!"-mode just so it could drain with grim determinedness. And of course it was the last ball of the game. It really took me A LOT of effort not to throw the pad through the room in that moment. *lol* Bah.

What I DO like about the ball though how you can literally feel the weight of it due to the rumble feature. It really like you have it in your hands sometimes. And the angles it comes off from are generally pretty fine and are always comprehensible. But both the speed and the bounciness needs to be toned down severely. I know that the guys at FarSight said that they would work on tweaking the physics, I know that there will be updates... but it doesn't change anything from how the ball is at this very moment. Grumble grumble snarl sigh.

 

[Daniel Osborne]

I haven't played a real table in over 20 years, but i like the speed as it is. Watching totan and tom videos on YouTube really shows how fast and how the ball really has a real zip to it. Maybe tone the bounce back a tad, but for me at least the speed is what makes it a mile apart from the Williams collection.

 

[Richard B]

I just played a real table earlier today (a Striker Xtreme), the first in almost 5 years. The ball was fast, and 2 of the 3 balls I had to take ballsavers on. All 5 balls went down the outlanes, and I think the ball made contact with the flippers once in the whole game. This isn't the first time I had a bad run on a real machine.
The ball speed and slingshot behavior seemed roughly on par with TPA. You can also see this in the Pinball Archive - they have videos from tournaments, and the ball speed is pretty fast, just like the table I played today. If the TPA ball speed is too fast, it isn't obscenely so, and it's closer than any other simulation I've played (except maybe Pro Pinball, but it's been so long since I've played one of those I can't say for sure).
As for the flippers - yes, there isn't as much control over strength in TPA. You can't pull off flipper passes, and the ball does seem to bounce higher off flippers and other flat surfaces as compared with a real machine. I've not been able to pull off a drop stop, either, a maneuver easily performed on VP and Zen.

 

[Jeff Strong]

I think the ball speed is fine for the most part. Sometimes though it seems to accelerate too fast down the outlanes and other places. I'd also like to see Farsight tone the flipper bounciness down just a bit in general, but it seems improved in Bride of Pinbot.

 

[DrainoBraino]

You can't pull off flipper passes, and the ball does seem to bounce higher off flippers and other flat surfaces as compared with a real machine. I've not been able to pull off a drop stop, either, a maneuver easily performed on VP and Zen.

I can easily pull off flipper passes in PA.

It is impossible to do drop stops or quick grabs on PA though.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Flipper passes and post transfers are quite possible (assuming the table in question has suitable slingshot geometry - not all tables are equally conducive to post transfers), although they're riskier than they should be and they're not always very aesthetically pleasing due to the excess bounciness.

Live catching is just barely possible, but it takes precision timing (far more precise than required on a real table) and you may get some residual bouncing anyway. I have not yet been able to successfully drop catch on TPA, but I'm not stellar at it on the real tables, either.

What is not possible as far as I can tell are the little flick passes used when managing multiple trapped balls, which is pretty bloody annoying considering I prefer to trap my multiballs instead of juggling them. (That sounded vaguely dirty... ) Any attempt at a flick pass seems to launch the ball into the stratosphere.

 

[PiN WiZ]

The bottom line is, the slight lag between the controller and what you see on your screen will always force you to adjust the way you play. This is one of the reasons why video pinball will never play as accurately as a real machine because there's no way around the slight lag. You can't program a game to predict when you're going to hit the flippers to compensate for this slight lag. I'm able to do just about everything on TPA that I can do on a real machine, but I had to adjust the way I play to do so. Sorry, but there's no way around this.

 

[Richard B]

The bottom line is, the slight lag between the controller and what you see on your screen will always force you to adjust the way you play. This one of the reasons why video pinball will never play as accurately as a real machine because there's no way around the slight lag. You can't program a game to predict when you're going to hit the flippers to compensate for this slight lag. I'm able to do just about everything on TPA that I can do on a real machine, but I had to adjust the way I play to do so. Sorry, but there's no way around this.

While it's true they will never get it 100% perfect, they can improve on what they currently have.

 

[PiN WiZ]

While it's true they will never get it 100% perfect, they can improve on what they currently have.

Yes, they can improve the current physics, but some people are wanting to go from playing a real table to playing TPA and expecting the physics and flippers to react the exact same way and that's never going to happen.

 

[Jeff Strong]

I think just making the flipper rubber a little less bouncy would go a long way to making it feel more realistic. That's almost certainly easier said than done though, as tweaking anything with the flippers has got to be a delicate process.

 

[xNiCeGuYx]

Yes Jeff you are right about the bouncing. I've played some Adams Family today and it was't that bouncy but I had a lot of drains

 

[DrainoBraino]

YES the three main issues with PA are flipper lag (PS3), flipper/ball bounciness, and subtle flipper control. IF this was improved, I would be skipping to my lou and singing the praises of this awesome game.

The people complaining about drains have never played much real pinball. Real pinball will drain like a ...er...um...drain. ^_^