Simulated ball physics: A thread for digital pinball.

I'm not sure how many votes it takes to make waves on greenlight, but its still sitting at dead 0% this morning, even with people all over their FB page and various forum threads saying they voted.

Page doesn't even let me vote in Greenlight, never fully loads. Greenlight seems kind of busted right now.

That is super impressive.

I read somewhere that Greenlight requires something crazy like 140k votes to work - I think it was on a Pinball Arcade forum from a couple weeks back when folks were speculating on whether Farsight would try to go that route.

Yeah, I'm not expecting Pinball Arcade to be greenlit any time soon. Farsight needs to at least have a PC demo available on their own website (they should really have the first 4 tables available to buy for $10 with the promise of a Steam key) to point people to and they need to find a way to get all the people playing on iOS and consoles to vote for it on GreenLight. I don't see any of those things happening though, so I will continue to play the 3 tables I've bought on my 3GS and not give them any more money, even though I really like pinball and think they're doing a fantastic job at making digital versions of the old tables.

New release on Steam:



I don't really understand why Pinball Arcade has to go thru greenlight while this one slid right into the storefront, though.

What the hell, Valve? What the hell?

I still really like Blade.

While I'm not a fan of FX2 overall, I would consider X-Men, Blade, Paranormal, Epic Quest and Thor to be the best of the lot.

If Zen and Farsight can't get their games up there now that's some bullshit.

I'm hopeful, but I agree with this position. For me whether or not this system let's something that's as quality of Pinball Arcade through (which is a complete game released on multiple other platforms) is my measuring stick for whether this process is even remotely functional in practice.

Listen up, you primitive screwheads. Crystal Caliburn 2 is available on the app store! It's $3.99 but it's awesome. And if you don't know what Crystal Caliburn is Lum should probably ban you.

Screwheads? I can't possibly take advice from someone quoting the censored version.

Although if it ends up on an Android platform instead of the "i'm made of money" platform, I'll give it a go.

It's a great implementation, too. I love Caliburn so so much.

Since Crystal Caliburn was so good I got LittleWing's Pinball Tristan, too. Much simpler table but still surprisingly entertaining, also a great implementation and extremely fair. The simpler table is also a great fit for the small iPhone screen. Plus, the original ugly 1990s Mac font!

So.

Twilight Zone: botched Kickstarter launch or REALLY botched Kickstarter launch?

Explain?

Worked for me on Android with no problems. Cool table.

Kickstarter backers paid $10 for a table that now retails for $5, and the update thread on KS is full of people having problems with the app suddenly deciding to lock the new table out.

That's what's happening to me -- if I log out of my Farsight account and then back in I can play Twilight Zone and no other tables. If I restore purchases, I can play every table except TZ.

So basically if I hadn't pledged for the Kickstarter I'd have paid half as much and ended up with a working product.

It's extra frustrating because as Reldan notes it's a really good table.

Oh yeah, and then there's the other unfortunate detail: they took money for PC version of the tables, and currently those backers get nothing because Farsight still doesn't have a PC distribution channel.

Kickstarter isn't a preorder, but everything else I can remember pledging for that involved the product as a backer reward was at least competitive with retail price.

Otherwise you really hurt the incentive to pledge -- why bother if you'll get a much better deal by waiting?

One individual pledge is not likely to make that difference.

Anyway, I disagree that the rewards are 'incidental'. Kickstarter isn't a charity system. You pledge, and the backers are obligated to provide the promised rewards. No, they're not prohibited from making the rewards a bad deal, but I continue to believe it's a lousy idea to do so.

Actually, you're wrong. It IS a charity system. The rewards are just incentives and tough titty if you don't get one. You're helping to KICKSTART a project, not pre-order. You may notice that Kickstarter now specifically has that language due to shit like the Ouya.

A lot of software devs try to give away a copy, but the point is that thing may not happen at ALL without the Kickstarter, and there's no obligation, otherwise the many which have failed or will fail would be in heaps of legal trouble. Moreover, they're delivering what they said they would to the best of their ability. Bear that in mind when you whine about it in that this whole thing may not have existed AT ALL.

Kickstarter says differently:

As far as Ouya goes, they definitely clarified that Kickstarter isn't a store after that project, but they did not back off from the reward being an important part of the pledge -- they differentiate it from a "traditional retail experience", but it's still not a donation. For example, their rules specifically prohibit charity causes. You're pledging to help a thing get made, and if the terms of your pledge included a reward, the creator must provide that reward to you if possible.

As I said above, this is at odds with how Kickstarter describes themselves.

Whine? Really? Dude, this isn't the Sanctum. You can disagree with me without being a dick about it.

I guess my deal is that I never expected them to retail the TZ table (nor the ST:TNG table) for $10. They actually kicked in the Pro Menu and special ball rewards for the $10 backers, so you do get a little something extra.

If I weren't prepared to pay $10 to see the TZ table made and get my copy of it to play, I wouldn't have given them $10. It's as simple as that to me.

Now, the issues with the technical implementation of the rewards are something I feel sorry about. I know I'd be pissed if they couldn't get it working right for me.

Yeah, I'm primarily upset about the thing not friggin' working. If my copy worked fine, I wouldn't particularly care about what price they were selling it at, because the $5 difference just isn't that big a deal.

It's just in combination with the brokenness that it's a bit irritating.

Also, when I log out / log in to re-unlock TZ today, I don't actually get the Pro Menu anymore, so that's a bit extra annoying.

Just pretend your extra money is going into a fund to get Addams Family.

If you hadn't noticed, ST:TNG is now live. It's a sweet, sweet table made even cooler by all the actual VA they snagged.

"The sensors indicate... Extra Ball."
"Thank you, Mr. Data"

*squee*

On which platform?

Android, iOS and Mac.

Well, fuck.

The new version on android is a buggy mess if it's any consolation.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=95907686

Just 3 more days to go in Pinball Arcade's current Greenlight campaign. If you haven't yet, please take a second to vote this up. It really is pretty good stuff and ought to get a proper PC release.

By "pretty good stuff," he means "best commercial pinball sim ever made," by the way. Vote that shit up.