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Pinball Arcade - the ultimate pinball simulator! - Page 2

post #31 of 275
4/11/12 at 10:21am
Thread Starter 
I had to force myself to go to sleep I was playing this so much. What a great game this is. As expected, the physics are top noth, and when you compare it to their Williams Collection release, they did a beautiful job improving the graphics. The new lighting engine in particular looks really good, and it flies at a smooth 60 fps. To top it off, the controls are spot on perfect. I hope they sell a gazillion copies.

The user-interface is pretty barebones though. Not too many options at all, especially when compared to the Marvel Pinball tables. I wish there was a 3D mode as well as a way to manually "fly over" the tables to see them in greater detail.

Quote:
Originally Posted by brakel View Post

The tables look and play great! I do have two problems with the game though. First is that when playing a game with more than one person you have to pass the controller. You can't have more than one controller. Lame. The other is that there is a slight bit of lag in the flippers.

Nope, the flipper lag is a result of the lag in your display and not the game. I've played it on a lag free monitor that I use to play frame-sensitive fighting games with my buddies and there is no lag in the flippers at all. When I play on the big screen, I can feel the slight delay difference.
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post #32 of 275
4/11/12 at 11:40am
Quote:
Originally Posted by joeblow View Post

I had to force myself to go to sleep I was playing this so much. What a great game this is. As expected, the physics are top noth, and when you compare it to their Williams Collection release, they did a beautiful job improving the graphics. The new lighting engine in particular looks really good, and it flies at a smooth 60 fps. To top it off, the controls are spot on perfect. I hope they sell a gazillion copies.

The user-interface is pretty barebones though. Not too many options at all, especially when compared to the Marvel Pinball tables. I wish there was a 3D mode as well as a way to manually "fly over" the tables to see them in greater detail.



Nope, the flipper lag is a result of the lag in your display and not the game. I've played it on a lag free monitor that I use to play frame-sensitive fighting games with my buddies and there is no lag in the flippers at all. When I play on the big screen, I can feel the slight delay difference.

I don't think that's what I'm seeing since I don't experience the same flipper lag in Williams pinball hall of fame.
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post #33 of 275
4/11/12 at 11:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by brakel View Post

I don't think that's what I'm seeing since I don't experience the same flipper lag in Williams pinball hall of fame.

Same here.
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post #34 of 275
4/11/12 at 1:51pm
This makes that rubbish Zen Pinball games put to shame. I still play Pinball Hall of Fame because it seems more real and it is actually real tables. Zen Pinball and Marvel Pinball are made up tables and you can tell they are fake also the psychics is not real either.

As for this game I bought it the day it came out on the PSN. I love it that it actually runs in 1080p like Pinball Hall of Fame but I am annoyed that there are only four tables and I have to wait a entire month for two new ones but I will be buying all the new tables when they are released as DLC on the PSN.
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post #35 of 275
4/11/12 at 1:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by brakel View Post

I don't think that's what I'm seeing since I don't experience the same flipper lag in Williams pinball hall of fame.

At least this game will be patched so I see it will most likely be fixed soon. Pinball hall of fame has no patches.
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post #36 of 275
4/11/12 at 2:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by reddice View Post

At least this game will be patched so I see it will most likely be fixed soon. Pinball hall of fame has no patches.

I hope it will get patched. I'm not as convinced as you that they will patch it.

Does anyone have a contact for them? I looked on the game's web page and on the dev's site but neither had a contact email address. I'd like to give them some feed back...but they're being all stealthy.

I wanted to edit this to add that the flipper lag is not as bad as Zen pinball and I was able to adjust to it. For $10 even if they don't patch it, it is still a good value. I look forward to many great tables to come!
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post #37 of 275
4/11/12 at 3:48pm
played for 6 hours last night and had to force myself to go to bed at 330 lol. i havent had any bugs with it, other than flipper issue. im pretty impressed with it and will buying more tables.
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post #38 of 275
4/11/12 at 4:25pm
I just spent about 2 hours on it. There is flipper lag. I set my TV on Game Mode, which I never do for any other games, and it made no difference. I'm currently playing on a Samsung LN-T4671F, but either tomorrow or Friday my new Panasonic 60ST50 will be here. It should have no lag at all, and we can see if the lag is in the TV or the game.

I still like it, but the lag causes me to lose some balls that I should not. Adjusting for the lag, I just scored almost 10,000,000 on Arabian Nights, but I promise I can do a lot better if I had proper control of the flippers.

One other complaint, I wish they had a brightness or gamma adjustment. On a properly calibrated TV, it's way too dark. Luckily I can set several different settings on my TV, so I can adjust for this game, and not lose my calibration for movies... not that movie calibration matters much longer, this TV is getting moved to my other living room for strictly gaming functionality for kids.
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post #39 of 275
4/11/12 at 10:22pm
I've verified the top left red light goes off on the PS3 version of Blackhole, but stays on constantly on the vita.

And man, does Blackhole look 100x different on the PS3 versus the vita.
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post #40 of 275
4/12/12 at 8:23am
Question, I've played the real black hole table before but obviously it's been a long time. Should the red lights move when the flipper is pressed?

I almost hit 12 million on Arabian Nights before I quit last night. That lag is extremely aggrevating though. When the ball is captured over the left flipper, the lag causes me to miss the release about 90% of the time. I hit the button but by the time the flipper reacts the ball is already gone.
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post #41 of 275
4/12/12 at 9:23am
Thread Starter 
I spent most of time playing Black Hole the night it was released, but after trying out Arabian Knights yesterday I can see that the flippers aren't as snappy on that table. Next time I get to my machine, I'm going to go back and play the Arabian table on PHoF and compare it to this new release as suggested above.
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post #42 of 275
4/12/12 at 12:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by joeblow View Post

As expected, the physics are top notch

Can't say that I agree. . .the ball physics are not right. Very little weight or at least inconsistent weight and strange momentum for the balls which is really noticeable on a simpler table like Black Hole.

On a real table (with decent flippers) if you capture the ball and then let it rip towards the end of the flipper it would just fly up the table. On these tables that doesn't happen and the only time I saw any speed of note was on Black Hole somewhat randomly when the ball bounced off something higher up on the table. That felt like a real table but the rest of the time it was like ball was floating around or made of wood. On a real table the ball will bounce off the glass sometimes it is travelling so fast. . .here they are weirdly slow a lot of the time, like the table is at a really low incline on a boat at sea.

Another thing that is way off is the sound. The physical sounds are not intense enough . . . it sounds more like a line out from the sound board than standing in front of a real machine. They also do not appear to show the video display on the machine itself which affects believability.

An important gameplay issue is the lame plunger cam which makes skill shots impossible (whomever thought that was a good idea should get no dessert for a month). They also missed a chance for realism with the physics of the plunger in that on a real machine you can slam the plunger directly to set of the ball (i.e. slap the plunger with the palm of your hand instead of pulling it back). On the PS3 that could easily be simulated by pushing up on the right stick.

My major complaint though is with the cameras since that affects every game you play. They flat out suck. . .more camera angles are needed with different wide angle lenses to try to show more of the table. It is also sad that they do not show off more of the tables since the intros suggest that the models are good enough to support it.

On the plus side the load times are awesome!

I do like the game, I just expected more when they started going off about realism. Hopefully "Black Knight" is in the first set of DLC.

Chees
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post #43 of 275
4/12/12 at 1:13pm
CALLING ALL CARS!

The flipper lag ruins this game for me. Multiball is just about impossible to handle with the lag. It's like a real pinball game with weak flipper buttons. It was nice to be able to play these games (Ripley's was the only pinball game I ever purchased NIB) but what gives with the flippers. I hope the lag is fixable. Are there any unlockable tables in this game?
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post #44 of 275
4/12/12 at 1:25pm
I've got a relatively low lag 60Hz LCD and I did not find the flipper lag any different than Zen Pinball and probably better than Battlefield 3. I have no scientific proof of course but I bet most of the lag is in people's TVs as opposed to the game itself.

Cheers
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post #45 of 275
4/12/12 at 1:30pm
I've never experienced any lag whatsoever besides the Williams Hall of Fame and this game on my Samsung PDPs.
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post #46 of 275
4/12/12 at 7:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by deathindustrial View Post

Can't say that I agree. . .the ball physics are not right. Very little weight or at least inconsistent weight and strange momentum for the balls which is really noticeable on a simpler table like Black Hole.

On a real table (with decent flippers) if you capture the ball and then let it rip towards the end of the flipper it would just fly up the table. On these tables that doesn't happen and the only time I saw any speed of note was on Black Hole somewhat randomly when the ball bounced off something higher up on the table. That felt like a real table but the rest of the time it was like ball was floating around or made of wood. On a real table the ball will bounce off the glass sometimes it is travelling so fast. . .here they are weirdly slow a lot of the time, like the table is at a really low incline on a boat at sea.

Another thing that is way off is the sound. The physical sounds are not intense enough . . . it sounds more like a line out from the sound board than standing in front of a real machine. They also do not appear to show the video display on the machine itself which affects believability.

An important gameplay issue is the lame plunger cam which makes skill shots impossible (whomever thought that was a good idea should get no dessert for a month). They also missed a chance for realism with the physics of the plunger in that on a real machine you can slam the plunger directly to set of the ball (i.e. slap the plunger with the palm of your hand instead of pulling it back). On the PS3 that could easily be simulated by pushing up on the right stick.

My major complaint though is with the cameras since that affects every game you play. They flat out suck. . .more camera angles are needed with different wide angle lenses to try to show more of the table. It is also sad that they do not show off more of the tables since the intros suggest that the models are good enough to support it.

On the plus side the load times are awesome!

I do like the game, I just expected more when they started going off about realism. Hopefully "Black Knight" is in the first set of DLC.

Chees

Have you tried setting the camera to any of the static views? That shows the whole table. Hit square to toggle between static camera and follow the ball. Circle cycles through the angles. I always use the static cameras because I like to see the whole table.
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post #47 of 275
4/13/12 at 7:48am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbug View Post

It's like a real pinball game with weak flipper buttons.

I feel that as well. My new plasma was delivered this morning, so I will be able to test the game later today on the new set.

EDIT: just tried a game of Arabian Nights on the new Panasonic 60VT50. Lag is still there. Shadow detail is much improved, but the pic is still too dark.
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post #48 of 275
4/13/12 at 8:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbug View Post

CALLING ALL CARS!

The flipper lag ruins this game for me. Multiball is just about impossible to handle with the lag. It's like a real pinball game with weak flipper buttons. It was nice to be able to play these games (Ripley's was the only pinball game I ever purchased NIB) but what gives with the flippers. I hope the lag is fixable. Are there any unlockable tables in this game?

I agree. I lose my ball more often during multiball. It seems that during mulitball the flippers get very stiff. PBHF they feel looser. I am not worried though because I know as they add new tables they will also release patches that will make the flippers more responsive.
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post #49 of 275
4/13/12 at 9:58pm
well thats pretty cool. On the vita before you start the game, rotate it vertical and you can play it that way. Whole table fits on the screen great.
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post #50 of 275
4/14/12 at 11:57am
Some tables appear to be buggy.

On Black Hole, the top targets do not always trigger, mainly when shooting a fast ball from the flippers straight up. I suppose there is chance this is emulating sluggish target behaviour on the real table but it feels more like poor hit detection. Whatever it is, it is super frustrating since it makes getting the targets in order harder than it should be. I have also had some odd flipper behaviour where the ball has basically gone through the flipper. This happened on the bottom reverse level where the ball was clearly lost but somehow magically reset itself on the other side of the flipper when I hit super fast. I am also not confident that bonus scores for the lower level are working properly. The game shuts off control very early during the tallying and more than once the lower bonus value will not fully count down before the popup screen happens.

On Ripley's Believe It Or Not I hit a major bug where the ball was simply lost but the game would not fully register this. The table knew it was out of play and started doing the "trigger everything" countdown to reset it but even after getting to zero and stating the ball was lost, it would not spit out a new one nor would it let me call the attendant. It would just wait a bit and then start the countdown again. The game said the ball was not stuck when I tried calling the attendant and there was no way out of this mode other than quitting the table. I ended up tilting the table seeing if I could dislodge the lost ball and that made the game act like it was going to crash (super sluggish).

Hopefully some new tables show up soon.

Cheers
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post #51 of 275
4/14/12 at 2:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by deathindustrial View Post

Some tables appear to be buggy.

On Black Hole, the top targets do not always trigger, mainly when shooting a fast ball from the flippers straight up. I suppose there is chance this is emulating sluggish target behaviour on the real table but it feels more like poor hit detection. Whatever it is, it is super frustrating since it makes getting the targets in order harder than it should be. I have also had some odd flipper behaviour where the ball has basically gone through the flipper. This happened on the bottom reverse level where the ball was clearly lost but somehow magically reset itself on the other side of the flipper when I hit super fast. I am also not confident that bonus scores for the lower level are working properly. The game shuts off control very early during the tallying and more than once the lower bonus value will not fully count down before the popup screen happens.

On Ripley's Believe It Or Not I hit a major bug where the ball was simply lost but the game would not fully register this. The table knew it was out of play and started doing the "trigger everything" countdown to reset it but even after getting to zero and stating the ball was lost, it would not spit out a new one nor would it let me call the attendant. It would just wait a bit and then start the countdown again. The game said the ball was not stuck when I tried calling the attendant and there was no way out of this mode other than quitting the table. I ended up tilting the table seeing if I could dislodge the lost ball and that made the game act like it was going to crash (super sluggish).

Hopefully some new tables show up soon.

Cheers

I also had the Ripley's lost ball bug, on the 360 version.

For the Black Hole, I also noticed what you reported - but I thought I read in the rules that the targets have to be hit in a certain order, indicated by lights. I assumed that the ones that didn't register weren't the next one in the series to be eliminated. Was this a wrong assumption?
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post #52 of 275
4/14/12 at 5:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaverJ View Post

For the Black Hole, I also noticed what you reported - but I thought I read in the rules that the targets have to be hit in a certain order, indicated by lights. I assumed that the ones that didn't register weren't the next one in the series to be eliminated. Was this a wrong assumption?

You have to hit them in order if you want the special multipliers but otherwise you can knock them down in any order. They always seem to register properly when hit by the ball bouncing off of the bumpers, it is just when the ball is sent via the flippers that they do not seem to trigger (from my experience).

Cheers
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post #53 of 275
4/15/12 at 1:07pm
Woo Hoo! Just got high score (19 million plus) on Arabian Nights, look for JAD on the leaderboard.
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post #54 of 275
4/23/12 at 10:38am
I spent some time on the Vita version this weekend. I only played Arabian Nights. There is little to zero lag in the flippers. If I could have the response of the Vita version along with the big screen my TV has, I'd be a happy camper. I'm 46 and even with helper glasses I have a hard time seeing what I'm doing on the Vita. For example, getting the super bonus shot after charming the snake is really difficult as I can't as accurately see what I am doing compared to my PS3/TV setup.

I'm at almost 12 million on the PS3 version, I just can't get past the lag! Is 19 mil enough to get on the leaderboard? Maybe I should try some more!
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post #55 of 275
4/23/12 at 11:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by TornadoTJ View Post

I spent some time on the Vita version this weekend. I only played Arabian Nights. There is little to zero lag in the flippers. If I could have the response of the Vita version along with the big screen my TV has, I'd be a happy camper. I'm 46 and even with helper glasses I have a hard time seeing what I'm doing on the Vita. For example, getting the super bonus shot after charming the snake is really difficult as I can't as accurately see what I am doing compared to my PS3/TV setup.

I'm at almost 12 million on the PS3 version, I just can't get past the lag! Is 19 mil enough to get on the leaderboard? Maybe I should try some more!

Speaking of leaderboard, have you noticed how many people listed have "(Vita)" next to the name? I don't know if it's because this game has been more popular with Vita owners or because it's easier to do well because of the lack of lag.

At any rate, I wish they would offer a way to filter for PS3 and Vita scores in the leaderboards, as it seems it could make a difference regardless in how the game plays. (I don't have a Vita so I can't speak from experience). I did however manage a score of 52+ million on "Tales" the other day, which blows away my top score on that table in "Hall of Fame Pinball" (which I believe is in the 30 million range). But of course I still can't get the Harem Multiball table goal.
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post #56 of 275
4/23/12 at 12:45pm
I haven't even looked at the leaderboard. I should have because I got that near 12 mil on the day after release day (I think that's right, I would have to go back through this thread).

On one hand the Vita version is better because there's no lag. But, it's a helluva lot harder to see!

I did find out the lag on my new TV is 18ms. It's not the cause of the PS3 version lag.
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post #57 of 275
4/23/12 at 12:46pm
Awesome! Well done.

Quote:
Originally Posted by 60SXRD View Post

Woo Hoo! Just got high score (19 million plus) on Arabian Nights, look for JAD on the leaderboard.
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post #58 of 275
4/23/12 at 9:03pm
Thread Starter 
My top score in Pinball Arcade Arabian Nights is 33 million. In the Williams Arcade version it is around 60 million.

~~~

OK, I've finished my testing. There is no inherent lag in the PS3 game. At least, not any moreso than was in their Williams Arcade release that received universal praise.

In fact, looking at places like NeoGAF where you'd expect an avalanche of complaints, most who have commented said they don't sense any lag. There is one guy there writing non-stop that the PS3 and Vita version is full of lag (but also says sometimes it is barely detectable ), but it isn't some epidemic of complaints by any means.

~~~~

Here's what I tested...

For one, remember when I said above I didn't notice lag in Black Hole but noticed delay in Arabian Knights after two nights of owning the game? I figured out why. When I played the AN table on the second night for the first time, it was right after watching a Bluray movie and my set was still on 'Cinema' mode which adds lag. I've played in 'Game' mode since then as well as on my lag-free monitor - there is no added lag from the game.

I went back and played the Arabian Knights table on the Williams Arcade release for two straight hours. I noticed the table is on less of an incline than Pinball Arcade because the ball moves slower, and the lighting is worse as is the compressed audio, but playing gave me a feel for the earlier release. I immediately went to the AN table in Pinball Arcade and my combos were spot on.

Who knows why a few out there are saying they experience lag, and I definitely notice it when I play action games in general. But whatever is going on (tech problems or something else), the game itself has no issues.

About the physics of the game... I agree they still aren't "real life' perfect, but of all the video pinball games I've played this engine is the best. I noticed a few quirks since my last post, like sometimes the ball taking off faster from a soft flipper hit than it should, but all in all they did a great job with this release. I do hate the new plunger camera though. I can't get a strong feel for it yet.
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post #59 of 275
4/23/12 at 10:13pm
Read your post and just got 100Mil. Almost saved the princess twice.

The secret is to fill up the sword asap.
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post #60 of 275
4/24/12 at 7:51am
I've finished my testing and there is definitely detectable flipper lag in the ps3 game. I compared it to the Williams game using Arabian table and exactly the same TV settings. Test one was done by trapping the ball on one flipper and then flipping the other flipper. All I was doing was looking for any perceptible amount of time between when I hit the flipper button and then when the flipper started to move. I do not see any lag in the Williams game but I do see some lag in the arcade game. I don't think it is lag in the actual video though. I only base this on that I don't see any lag with the plunger control. I did realize that some of my earlier perceived lag was due to the faster ball movement. We're talking about just the most slightest amount of lag that I think it can be compensated for after only playing a few games.
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