91 replies to this topic

[german]

thanks for understanding me subi robO46 photos because translation is not very good congratulations mystic MYSTIC LOVE would you give to a recreation of the Argentine fan SKATEBALL??? GREETINGS FROM THE SOUTH!

Thank you! Hey you need to post this stuff into the original Mystic thread. You keep making new threads for each comment.
Can a mod please add his comments to the proper thread & delete these so that there isn't 4 Mystic threads going at once?

I actually have worked on Skateball in the past, but it was just a light mod. It was years ago. I'm not sure it ever got uploaded here, it was a VP6 or 7 table, but I do think its newer than the version available here. I would love to work on a new one though, but the issue with that table I think has always been lack of resources (pics). I was just at a place with dozens & dozens of old Bally's, & none of them were Skateball. I still have yet to play it in real life.

Forgiveness is I've written a few times in the forums

[CaptainNeo]

btw, I have a very nice hi rez pic of this backglass if you guys need it. Trying to figure out how to screw the image slightly so it's nice and square. can't find the option in my photoshop.

[kiwi]

As I tried to figure out why the ball collision not working properly (You can hear the sound collision, even if there is no collision between the two balls or collision and no sound), I have seen these ramps are not in the right place.
When you play the table did not see any difference, you see only in the Editor.



......And looks very good.

Thanks

Max

[Sabbat]

If you nudge the table with X and > instead of ? and Z you wont tilt on your first shot. It seems like hard/soft nudge got switched around.

I was gonna slap a monk approved logon on this thing but I havent played the update, was it just an nvram change because I can set that on my own...

Yes grab the update, I just uploaded v1.2 . I think I explained all the changes in the v1.1 update notes found earlier in this thread & also in the original post. The nudge/tilt stuff is fixed & improved.
So yeah, definitely make sure you have v1.2, which I just now uploaded. I'll post the changes, but definitely grab it whether you have 1.0 or 1.1. No major changes, but enough little things that add up. I'll post some of the v1.2 changes shortly, but definitely update.

cool, thanks

[Ezepov]

Thanks for v1.2
The new physics is better.

[rob046]

UPDATE! (hopefully the last one or close to it! FS will maybe be out tomorrow)
v1.3 - Improved shot aiming & a few other adjustments & fixes. Also includes all the changes from v1.1 & v1.2. I think everyone will like the aiming improvements, especially those who couldn't find any "flow" with the game in prior versions.
Hoping this table is starting to feel as similar to the real thing as VP can achieve.

Edited by rob046, 24 August 2012 - 04:10 AM.

[maceman]

WOW!!! That plays absolutely fantastic now. No more super bounce!!

This is a masterpiece now! Congrats!!

Maceman

[Bob5453]

There you go Rob! You went from a pretty table that was no fun to play to a pretty table that is fun to play. The game now has a nice ball flow and I have enough control of the ball to make it a fun game. Of course, this is just my opinion, I have no idea how the real table would play, but to me it is more important to create a fun VP game than a boring one. Excellent job! Also an excellent job of listening to the comments in this thread and not getting discouraged, I hope you think it plays better now, because you shouldn't make changes that you don't believe in. Totally awesome!

[bolt]

Thank you rob for your hard work on Mystic.

[serpiko]

thanks rob for updates.

[rob046]

There you go Rob! You went from a pretty table that was no fun to play to a pretty table that is fun to play. The game now has a nice ball flow and I have enough control of the ball to make it a fun game. Of course, this is just my opinion, I have no idea how the real table would play, but to me it is more important to create a fun VP game than a boring one. Excellent job! Also an excellent job of listening to the comments in this thread and not getting discouraged, I hope you think it plays better now, because you shouldn't make changes that you don't believe in. Totally awesome!

I only just noticed what you might of been talking about before this update, & I was thinking about what you said as soon as I noticed it, it made sense. I think I had it good like this at one point before release, then may have over-tweaked & didn't test properly before releasing. But it was weird, because I was pretty happy with the strength & feel of the flippers, & the flips felt OK, but somewhere I lost the aiming. Also, I won't go into details but I'd advise against increasing flipper speed/strength because it will throw off some of the shots. I would explain in more detail what I'm talking about here, but it would be a very long post. Maybe later.

Yes I do keep in mind that out of anybody on these forums, I've probably played this game in real life more recently than anybody, so of course I always go by that first. Then I just use the feedback to help polish some things because my brain was getting pretty fried on this table so it helps to hear what other people think who are playing it for the first time instead of 100 times. & at the end of the day, I won't release a table if I'm not satisfied with how it plays. Though I almost do treat the v1.0 as sort of a beta. Because I know there will be feedback & bugs & I'll be updating it right away anyhow, & for that reason maybe it isn't as polished as it should of been on the 1st try. Really not any major changes anyhow other than reworking the flippers a bit, but rather a number of smaller tweaks that start to add up.

WOW!!! That plays absolutely fantastic now. No more super bounce!!

This is a masterpiece now! Congrats!!

Maceman

Thank you. I really didn't decrease the bounce much though. But I'm thinking it might be a lot of little tweaks combining to just give the table a better feel, & maybe that is what you are getting now. I was worried some people might think the flippers were a little weak because people are used to playing JP's & others tables who often use strong flippers on these types of tables. But here you can still make all the shots you need to make, so these should do the trick. In real life the Mystic I just played might even have just slightly stronger flippers. But as I said before, I'm dealing with VP here which isn't perfect, & this was the best I could do while making them feel like I wanted to.

Now, hopefully people aren't tired up the few updates so far & are still interested enough to give this one a try. But if the end result of the updates results in a better table, then I'll do them every time!

[luvthatapex]

I like this update Rob. You did a great job on this tables. It looks great and now PLAYS great! Well done!
Looking forward to the FS version to put it on my cab. WooHoo!

[Pin-Pete]

Thank you for the update,rob.I appreciate your hard work on this and take my hat off.

[thewool]

Hi Rob,

I haven't had much chance to really check this out until today. Firstly, wow on the visuals... epthegeek's redraw is gorgeous and you did a great job with the lighting and overall appearance. Just tried this with antialiasing (JF's post) and it looks photo realistic. Great job.

When the initial version was released did download on my laptop, it played well but I generally agreed with the feedback that followed. This latest version however after all the tweaks is amazing. Many congrats on a quality build!

edit: just something to watch for on the FS conversion... I just did a quick test to see what it would look like (looks ace). When the ball passes over the top of the bumpers you can see the ball through the blue flecks on the bumper caps. This also happens to me on JP's Dolly table and I could never figure out why (flipbook animation was ticked on all relevant items). Anyway just thought I'd give you a heads up so you can look out for it.

Edited by thewool, 24 August 2012 - 03:48 PM.

[Sabbat]

If it aint broken, dont fix it

i liked the aiming before... debating on getting 1.3 personally

[rob046]

If it aint broken, dont fix it

i liked the aiming before... debating on getting 1.3 personally

I thought there might be people who felt this way, in which case I wanted to try to explain what was going on. Obviously, I didn't even notice a problem at first either. Like I'm happy with v1.2, with 1 exception with this aiming thing which I only noticed after the fact. OK, so on v1.2, here is where I caught this issue...

Often times, a lot of shots on this game you will probably shoot from a cradled ball. A "set" shot. On v1.2, have the ball completely settled & cradled on the left flippers. Try to hit the captive ball with this shot. It may be impossible. But in real life this is one of the easier shots in the game. Then there may be another shot that is too easy to hit. It seems like, if VP had a set number of paths the ball could travel (think Pro Pinball), then on v1.2 the number of possible paths is decreased, even though the flippers still feel good as far as speed/strength.

Go to v1.3, & you maybe even think the flippers don't feel quite as good, which I'd understand & maybe even agree with. But since aiming & flow are such an important part of pinball, that gets priority. I'm not saying this table needs to be easy to play, but in general you want to hit what you aim for, or close to it.
So yeah, when I had such a hard time hitting the captive ball from a set left flipper shot, this is an issue I've seen before & wanted to sort it out.

& I think I've mentioned this before, but if you are playing v1.3, then avoid messing with flipper speed/strength. It throws some things off a bit. I am continuing to look into why all this stuff is the way it is, & its not the 1st time I've run into this stuff when trying to make realistic flippers. & I'd rather not "cave in" to VP & use flippers stronger than I want in order to avoid this issue. But if I do that, it means users maybe can't increase flipper speed/strength without issues. Hopefully I can find a solution.

Some people may also find it interesting that I gave JF's flipper tap code a pretty good tweak here on v1.3, & I may continue to mess with this. I actually doubled a couple of the settings. So if you look at the flipper settings, you may notice they seem pretty high considering how tame the flippers are. That is why. So if somebody took my table settings (without code) & put them on another table, they would have super flippers. Gotta have JF's code with my settings.
I hate to throw in sort of a "hack" like that unless I need to. But in this case I like what that effect does, has a couple benefits. I'll continue to try to optimize my VP physics though. I'm never totally satisfied & remain open to thoughts or suggestions, so please keep them coming.
& there are more setting & things I can try that could make me happier, I'll continue to test & try things out. I do think things like flipper action can one way or another be improved in VP, its just a PITA to achieve, it seems.

[Sabbat]

right on, i wasnt trying to be rude. You did such a good job on it that i am just afraid of change

[rob046]

right on, i wasnt trying to be rude. You did such a good job on it that i am just afraid of change

That wasn't rude at all. I want people to share any thoughts like this. Hopefully you see what I'm talking about as the reason for the 1.3 change. But if you don't, let me know. For all I know, people might even experience slightly different physics on different systems. I don't think so, but sometimes I wonder. So in the example above, if you are able to nail that captive ball consistently, or even at all, from a cradled ball on left flipper... that what I might want to do is have you take a video of it so that I can see exactly how it is happening.

Then I'd look into why things are different on my machine & others, & maybe something good would come out of it all.
Want to see what people think of the FS version. Things aren't set in stone with any version, so any continuing thoughts on the game, please post them.
If you did compare v1.2 & v1.3 after my comments (assuming I made sense in what I was saying), then please let me know if you feel the same as before or if you see what I'm saying or not.

edit: just something to watch for on the FS conversion... I just did a quick test to see what it would look like (looks ace). When the ball passes over the top of the bumpers you can see the ball through the blue flecks on the bumper caps. This also happens to me on JP's Dolly table and I could never figure out why (flipbook animation was ticked on all relevant items). Anyway just thought I'd give you a heads up so you can look out for it.

I think I may know why that happens. Its just the way the bumpers are made. It is hard to create bumpers like that in VP, & so it is a little bit hacky, but at least it looks good & is angle independent. I think much of this may simply be a glitch, because the wall in question on each bumper does cover most of the ball most of the time. Just occasionally a little peeks through. There are a couple things I can try to see if it helps.
This actually might not be as bad on the FS version since it won't be as angled.

[oldskoolgamer]

Stunning recreation Rob! Very excited for FS for the cab Thanks for everyone involved in this. Just stunning!

[Pintrepid]

Thanks for the updates, Rob! Still having powerful flashbacks to when I played this table IRL at the geeduk whenever my ship was in homeport. Memories ... like the corner of my mind ...

Looking forward to the FS B2S version!

-PeterMac