Zaccaria Pinball

[night]

The nudging is also bad. I'm not sure it was even working but you hardly need it.

Does it nudge at all? I can't..!?

 

[Heretic]

Does it nudge at all? I can't..!?

Flip your ipad tward you itll stop a moving ball in its taracks at any speed

 

[Behnam]

Flip your ipad tward you itll stop a moving ball in its taracks at any speed

They actually bothered to bring back the same tilting they used in the Art of Pinball series... What a... Eh... Good decision? Not!

 

[Jeff Strong]

That "night mode" seriously needs some GI around the lower slings.

 

[SilverBalls]

Some people commented on their Facebook page on the ball bounciness (or lack of) and they responded saying they will tweak it in the next update. If you look at their 3D engine, the lighting, etc. if they can develop that hopefully they can tweak the physics too.

If anyone has any other suggestions might be worth posting over there as it seems they are open to suggestions.

http://m.facebook.com/askhomework?i...wend=1364799599&ustart&__user=100003401899742

 

[tripleplonq]

I hope they make it not as bouncy as in TPA. (Ball bouncing off the flippers when coming through the inlane, for example)
Their previous games had pretty good ball spin which added some nice surprises during the otherwise rather stale gaming experience.
Is this still noticeable in the new game?

 

[Clawhammer]

Picked this up. If they tweak it to have bounce off the flipper rubbers, the game has potential, in my opinion. Visually, I think it looks quite nice. My biggest issue is the physics, which is much more important to me than looks. It just doesn't feel right. A big part of that is the lack of bounce off the rubbers; a pinball simulation that doesn't allow for dead bounces doesn't feel authentic to me. Trapping, and some kind of butchered form of live catches, are far too easy. Honestly, as the game stands now, if they weren't reproducing Zaccaria machines, I wouldn't recommend it at all. However, its cool that these hard to find pins are in digital form- until the physics are changed, I'd say pick it up for the novelty, but don't expect a TPA-like experience.

I only got TM so far (even though I love Devil Riders). Anyone whose played that: How does the game handle the outlane save flippers?

EDIT: The game also seems to lack any form of leaderboards/Gamecenter support. It desperately needs to this to hold my attention or to compete with any of the other pinball games on the market.

 

[night]

I only got TM so far (even though I love Devil Riders). Anyone whose played that: How does the game handle the outlane save flippers?

Works well.

Can someone inform me about the game rules? I don't understand why the game starts with a time countdown and then stops.

 

[Kolchak357]

Here is a rule sheet for time machine with tips.

http://www.zaccaria-pinball.com/rulesheets/index.html

Click on Time Machine on the left side. This website has a ton of Zaccaria info. Hope it helps.

 

[SKILL_SHOT]

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/tag/3711154997.html
Looks clean.

 

[Kolchak357]

That "night mode" seriously needs some GI around the lower slings.

Some look better. I think Devil Riders look and plays the best of the three.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Man, it's too bad the physics are so bad. That looks pretty fun. Hopefully they will improve things.

 

[Kolchak357]

Man, it's too bad the physics are so bad. That looks pretty fun. Hopefully they will improve things.

It's a neatly designed table. You have to get the drop targets underneath the ramps in order to drop the ramp. Then you can shoot the ramps and get to the upper flippers.

 

[night]

Here is a rule sheet for time machine with tips.

http://www.zaccaria-pinball.com/rulesheets/index.html

Click on Time Machine on the left side. This website has a ton of Zaccaria info. Hope it helps.

Thanks!

 

[night]

I see this link has been posted on FB, I don't have an account.

Suggestions for the developpers:

1. Camera view option 2: the camera moves with the ball, good. BUT, it is very annoying when the camera moves with the ball at the bumpers! The camera-view shakes all over the place, you get drunk! Keep the view steady when the ball gets hit by the bumpers.

2. Physics improvement, already mentioned.

3. Night modus. Good, but too dark on Time Machine, lower playfield is too dark, all colors on the playfield are just blue..

4. The extra 4 balls with different textures is nonsense, you hardly can tell the difference! Make just one 'Pro-Pack' like TPA and put there all the options, like night modus/extra balls and flippers. Who is going to buy extra flippers??? Put it together in 1 pack and you have something nice to offer.

5. Make the default ball more chrome, like the TPA-ball. Ball shadow is too black, make it less apparent.

6. Add table rules!

 

[Kolchak357]

Totally agree with everything you said night. This has potential to be pretty darn good, but they have some work to do.

 

[shimoda]

The app is 50% off now so I guess it's worth a try.

 

[Kolchak357]

The app is 50% off now so I guess it's worth a try.

Definitely, go for it.

 

[Kolchak357]

The following was posted by askhomework on their Facebook page.

Thank you for your feedback!
Rulesheets will be posted next week here on facebook. If everything goes on our plan the first update will be sent to Apple for review next week, so it should be available the week after next week. The first update fixes 4th ball issue, some speed optimization and may include a new pinball table. We would like to release a pinball table 3-4 weekly.

 

[jhamdotme]

Zaccaria Pinball notes

It’s always a little sad to see an app discounted this quickly, but hopefully this move will help this app to find a wider audience. Also, I’m glad that “night” seems to have turned around the mood around here. Pretty early on, everyone was being pretty unforgiving, but now, it seems like everyone is starting to see the potential in this collection.

I’ve got a few notes that I’ve jotted down, while playing through the first table, and a lot of these notes can also be appled to all of the other A.S.K. Homework tables. There’s a decent foundation here, and from their Facebook comments, it sounds like they’re acknowledging some of their shortcomings. Here are some of the things that I’ve noticed:

• 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 shamelessly copied from what I wrote earlier about “The Art of Pinball”.)
• 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. (Again, recycled but still applicable commentary.)
• If you're on view 1 and you don't plunge the ball hard enough to get it into the playfield, the camera doesn't always return to the plunger view. Sometimes, the camera remains on the playfield and the ball is automatically re-plunged. This doesn’t seem to be the case with either of the two "follow the ball" views.
• It’s not mentioned whether or not these tables are emulated or if they’re scripted. I’d be curious to know this.
• In the preferences, it should be possible to change to touch-based nudging.
• Farsight will soon be deploying an update with iCade support. It would be great if A.S.K. would do the same, preferably with the same key mapping. I’m guessing that there are going to be people that are going to make custom iPad cabinets, and it would be great if we could have an adopted standard for pinball tables.
• Each of these tables seem to support up to four players, but in the app, it only seems possible to play with one player at a time.
• Others have already mentioned this, but there isn’t really any bounce to the flippers. It’s not possible to do dead-flipper passes, for instance. Usually, the ball will just completely deaden as soon as it hits the flipper, and it’ll just roll right down and drain in the center.
• There’s the obvious ball 4 bug, where the flippers will just stop responding. It seems like A.S.K. has already acknowledged this bug.
• I’ve also experienced a ball 3 bug. On several occasions, I’ve drained my third ball and the game simply stalls there. The app doesn’t crash or anything, it just never lets me plunge the next ball. It doesn’t even tally my points, actually, so I’m not sure that it’s even recognizing that I’ve drained.
• Camera views 2 & 3 need to be tweaked. As it is, whenever a ball hits a pop bumper, the screen violently shakes. There should be a dead zone in the middle of the screen, so that the camera doesn't move constantly while the ball is moving.
• Personally, I don’t like that they’ve added the A.S.K. branding on the pricing card. This seems tacky to me.
• The Gold and Silver subscriptions seems a little pricey. Sure, if you’re planning on buying everything, this’ll likely save you some money. But the game has been out for less than a week and they’ve already discounted it. This doesn’t really install much confidence that they’re going to keep going. So, to pledge $30 or $35 up front seems a little risky.
• I’m not a fan of the music or the background sounds, but I appreciate that this is something that’s adjustable. I think it would be better to have these set, by default, to off. (Another nice thing is that you can play backgrounded audio from another app while you’re playing with these tables.)
• Previously, they had online leaderboards with OpenFeint. Now, they don’t have anything. This is what Game Center is for. There’s no excuse to not use it.
• There’s a short blurb about the history of Zaccaria, in general, but there’s nothing specific about the tables. This is a great feature in The Pinball Arcade, and A.S.K. would do well to emulate it.
• In the History section, the margins are wrong. The text renders off of the screen on both sides, making a lot of it illegible.
• In the History section, there's a "Back" button that’s centered and at the bottom of the screen. Usually, back buttons like this are at the top and to the left. Also, the button is a very small touch target.
• Put the display to sleep while you’re looking at the History section. When you awaken the screen, the history text will be overlaid on top of the settings screen.
• The instructions for each table should be included within the app.
• There's an in-app restore button, but it's labeled as "inapp", with this written as a single word. This is not a word.
• On the table selection screen, there are nine tables shown. We can also see from here that this is only page one of three. But there’s no way to get to any of the other pages, not by swiping or by pressing on the not-really buttons that appear at the bottom. If there’s only one page so far, don’t show us that there are three. But if you want to show that there are lots of tables coming, then actually create these other pages and make them accessible.
• There aren’t any previews for any of the in-app purchases. Sure, you can see some of this stuff from the App Store screenshots, but there’s nothing that’s shown from within the app. It’s all kind of a leap of faith. Instead, we should be shown what each purchase gets us. What are the extra balls that you’re getting? What will the extra flippers look like? What will it look like to play in “Dark Mode” with each of the tables?
• It doesn't seem possible to preview the in-app tables before purchasing them.
• There should be an “explore the table” feature like there is in the pro versions of The Pinball Arcade’s tables. You can see some of the details during the pre-game flyovers, but it would also be nice to be able to manually inspect the table, with a user-controlled camera.
• I hate that the ugly icons for the camera and the settings are left on the screen during play. I suppose the camera icon probably needs to stay on screen, Pinball Arcade does this as well. (Although I'd like to be able to hide it, optionally.) But the settings icon is just obnoxious. It should just be a pause button, and from the pause menu we should be able to access the settings. Or, better yet, we should be able to get to the pause menu by simply tapping at the top of the screen. The more clutter we can hide, the better. Ideally, we’d see the pinball table and nothing more. This should at least be an option.
• The mechanical sounds are pretty great. This is par for the course for A.S.K., since the sounds on their "Art of Pinball" tables are also very nice. But we don't seem to get as much of a "rolling ball" sound here as we get with some of those tables. I miss that. Perhaps that sound could be intensified a bit in this collection.
• I love that A.S.K. now has drop targets. They were famously missing from all of their previous efforts. They seem to work well, and they sound really satisfying.
• When entering initials, the text field that they’re using doesn’t limit “keyboard shortcuts“. So even though I’m limited to only three characters here and I’m not trying to invoke a text snippet, when I type my initials, I’m triggering a 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. (Shamelessly stolen from here.)
• The name for the app should be changed. Since it's overly long, the name is truncated on the springboard, into the very ugly "Zaccar…nball". I think it'd probably be best if it was just "Zaccaria".

Hopefully, they’ll fix a bunch of these things, and the community around here will start to embrace this collection. I’d certainly like to see them release all of the tables that they’re promising. So… good start. Now get to work!