Be Excellent To Each Other

Uturns for zen pinball switch...but it is getting updated now http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018- ... erformance

My wife sent me a video anouncing that my favourite ice cream store opened another not far from where i work.

Midway through the video i noticed that there was a creature of the blue lagoon pinball machine there and i didn't care about the ice creams any more. I really need to go there as soon as possible and spend every coin in my wallet.

MOVE YOUR CAR!

Ha, someone's videoed it all.

Certainly deserves a 'well that escalated quickly'.

Pinball Arcade will be losing its licenses for all the Bally/Williams stuff on June 30th, meaning it'll go from 95 tables down to 33. If there was a final sale on them all before the licenses were lost, I'd probably scoop up a few, but there's a condition of the agreement preventing it.

Absolute turd-buckets!

This is of course the problem with 'commercial digital preservation' as shit like licensing can fuck things up royally. (Another one that springs nimbly to mind is the OutRun games which you haven't been able to buy for a while now as Sega lost the Ferrari licences.)

I expressed concern earlier in this thread about how secure and permanent something like Pinball Arcade would turn out to be in the long term, and now we know the answer.

I'm pretty sure I've already got all the Williams/Bally tables in my collection, but I'll log into Pinball Arcade just to make sure.

One wonders if the game will simply stop working completely if Farsight turn their servers off.

Just logged in to check, I have the full seasons for Seasons 1-6, but have just bought selected tables out of Season 7. There are quite a few Williams/Bally tables in there I'm missing but they're all horseshit 80s tables before they started putting proper sound and music on them.

From The Pinball Arcade's official Facebook page, looks like it was forced upon them.

WMS Licensing FAQ's

1. Why has the license not been renewed? Whose decision was it?

The company that controls the WMS IP chose not to renew our agreement.

2. When will the Williams/Bally tables stop being sold?

June 30th

3. Will there be discounts on the tables before the contract expires? If not, why?

No, our agreement with WMS prohibits there being any sales on their tables before we have to take them off the market.

4. Will there be any updates/bug fixes for the tables before/after the contract expires?

Yes, we will continue to support all of the tables in Pinball Arcade.

5. What will happen to the tables that are already owned (or unlocked, as with the Kickstarter rewards) once the contract expires?

Everyone who owns a WMS table will still own it, and have full access to it. We will modify the game via updates before June 30th on each platform so that players can no longer buy WMS tables if they haven’t already. In most cases, if you don’t own a WMS you won’t be able to see that table in the game at all.

6. Would future hardware (iPhones/iPads, Android devices) be updated to allow the Williams/Bally tables to work correctly, or will there be a time when these are completely unplayable?

We will continue to support all of the tables in Pinball Arcade for customers who bought them. This includes support for users who need to re-download tables they’ve already bought.

7. With the loss of the Williams/Bally tables, what's the future of the app? Will we see it continued with new non-Williams/Bally tables?

Our “Season 8” release will include all of the Stern tables that we’ve done to date for SPA plus a couple more. We will continue to develop and release non-WMS tables. Once the WMS tables are removed from sale, the remaining tables for sale in the game (Stern, Gottlieb, and Alvin G) will be restructured into different packs based primarily on the table manufacture.

8. What's happening with the staff at FarSight? Will there be layoffs?

There are no plans to lay off any FarSight staff.

9. Is FarSight working on other projects?

Yes, in addition to developing many more digital versions of Stern tables, more Gottlieb tables, possibly more tables from other manufactures, and an awesome 2D pinball experience for mobile, we’re working on a couple new cross-platform games that are yet to be officially announced – primarily for console.

10This sucks, right?

We are very disappointed by the WMS license holder’s decision – so it’s not great. But we’ll be working to enhance the players’ enjoyment of all of the tables in Pinball Arcade for years to come.

It's a shame really, as a Nintendo Switch version of all the tables would have been nice, but I guess we're just stuck with the Stern stuff.

Well, DATA EAST/SEGA and GOTTLIEB tables too, of which there are quite a few good ones still to do, but without Williams/Bally licences they've basically been holed below the waterline and the Pinball Arcade ship is well and truly sinking.

I don't much fancy my chances of being able to reinstall the game with all my tables intact five years down the line.

When i saw the news my thought was: "Poor Hearthly, how will he deal with this tragedy?"

I'm tempted to buy some select tables before they go down, but i'm not sure i can trust Farsight to keep them bug free, since Pinball Arcade seems to be getting worse with each update.

I hope someone else more competent, like the developers of Zaccaria Pinball, or even Zen Studios, can get those licenses someday.

I thought about buying the pack that The Addams Family comes in, but it's £28.99 for ten tables. Sod that.

Ten days left to buy Williams/Bally tables on Pinball Arcade.

I think you could definitely make a case for buying the 'Top Ten Tables' if you're missing a load, as getting full seasons could get very expensive.

The thing we don't know is what the plans are for the licences once they're available again, will they sit on a shelf somewhere for years, or are there active plans to sell them again and get another developer on the case? i.e. If you miss out now, will it be a decade before officially licensed tables are available again? Will they ever be available again?

Even if a new developer takes them on, will their recreations be as good as Farsight's? Pinball Arcade had its problems but the physics engine was pretty good and the DX11 graphics upgrade was great. There was definitely room for improvement though.

Tough one!

Again though if you like pinball and found a decent table in an arcade or a pub would you have any problem sticking 3 or 4 quid in for a few games ? - on Android and iOS you can still just buy the individual tables you want (although steam now seems to be stuck with season passes?)

I'm just back from a few days at the seaside and played a few aging and getting worse tables (every single one had something wrong it was just a question of how bad) and most of them your paying £1 for 3 balls

Oh for sure I think (most) of the Season Passes are very good value, but for those who'd find them a bit on the expensive side to buy them all this late in the day, I was just suggesting it might be worthwhile investing £30-£40 in the best-of-the-best on an individual table basis, as there's no way of knowing when, or if (!), they'll ever be available again.

I've bought the full seasons of 1-6, I might even get 7 just 'because', despite the fact the Williams/Bally tables in there aren't ones I'm fussed about.

What would give me some confidence at this point is a commitment from Farsight to patch the game so that it'll work independently of their login servers in perpetuity, so if they go bang, the game can always be reinstalled via Steam, with all your purchased content, and be playable.

https://twitter.com/nintendolife/status ... 3215963138

Zen Studios Acquires Bally And Williams Pinball Licence, Tables Headed To Pinball FX3 https://t.co/kBXjsv5oUi #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/BEz1Bk8b9t

— Nintendo Life (@nintendolife) September 4, 2018

This sounds interesting.

Very interesting

Zen studios games are often 'fun' but did feel more 'video game' like than real tables (which was always the advantage that TPA had)

The question is will they re-do them / use the license to make their own creations / or what ?

Well I'm not buying them all again. *


* Except I probably will if they do a better job than Farsight, who were a bit inconsistent, truth be told.

I installed Steam and Pinball Arcade on the media centre PC last night, to give it a go on the big 4K telly.

It's actually Mrs Hearthly's old PC, so it's not really 'media centre' style specs, but it is a few years old now.

Specs are i5-4690 (3.5GHz quad core, no hyper threading), 2GB GTX960, 8GB RAM and a couple of SATA SSDs.

Anyway, it runs Pinball Arcade beautifully at 1080p with plenty of anti-aliasing, so it looks peachy on the 4K telly in DX11 mode.

Obviously native 4K is off the cards but I was very impressed with how it looked, solid 60FPS which of course you really want for a fast game like pinball.

Not exactly earth shattering news but it does demonstrate that even a slightly older PC can run it all maxed out and perform perfectly well.

(I played MAME, Pinball Arcade and Hearthstone all night. The XB1X, PS4 Pro, Switch and my main gaming PC aren't really getting a look in at the moment. Apart from Peggle 2 on the XB1X. I think this may be the beginning of the end of my love affair with big, modern style games.)

So you’ll probably never buy a new console or PC again

I certainly don't think I'll buy a new PC this year, which I was intending to do, and factored into my Wongawatch prediction for 2019.