Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ender's Game Reveal | Multimorphic P3
1 Playsin 14 hours
Josh Kugler, Brad Albright, and Glenn Waechter join us to talk about their new game based off the highly acclaimed Ender's Game novel.
Support Us Via Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/LoserKidPinball
Buy Merch - silverballswag.com/loserkid
Socials:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/LoserKidPinball/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/loserkidpinball/#
Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@loserkidpinball
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Pinball Enthusiasm
00:00:07
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Lizard Kid Pinball Podcast. I am Josh Roop. With me, my co-captain... Scott Larson. ah Not only is it Pinball Reveal Day, it is double Pinball Reveal Day. Are you excited? I got double the action right now. And yes, if you're looking for a pinball machine, go check out Flippin' Out Pinball. They have always been good to us to help out. However, on this one, ah go ahead and go to Multimorphic because they are the distributor
Ender's Game Pinball Adaptation Begins
00:00:30
Speaker
for this one. so and if you're looking for dungeon crawler carl the link is here and you should go to that because right now we're going to talk about ender's game and we have glenn wechter on josh kugler and brad albright you might know brad from his work on portal or if you knew way back when if you're early lizard kid fan he was on talking about led zeppelin
00:00:53
Speaker
and also early loser kid stuff josh cooler was on talking about hot wheels back in 2020 before the big covet crap and glenn wechter coming at us with his sound design on this game i'm excited to have all three of you on how are you guys doing doing awesome yeah Yes.
00:01:11
Speaker
And this is like Ender's Game. I don't think anyone was expecting this. It fits well into pinball, the space theme, along with the battles. And this just lends very well into pinball.
00:01:24
Speaker
Can you explain to me why Ender's Game for Multimorphic? Really one very simple reason why. This is Jerry's dream theme. Of course, we're all very passionate about any of the projects that we agree to work on. um Absolutely. We wouldn't do it otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. that's that That's a given, but it's still worth saying right off the bat when he presented the potential of working on Ender's Game, it struck me as a very ambitious thing to try to do to adapt a book, right?
00:01:56
Speaker
Something that doesn't have existing content to use. You know, it's well, for, for my role, I'm inventing a whole visual language to try to, capture you know what you're reading in the text but also to convey all the emotional aspects of this particular story like that's a really challenging and ambitious thing for the whole team to take on and I think that really captured everyone's imagination you guys have opted to go the book route um which personally I think that is the better idea the movie I didn't feel did justice to the book
00:02:29
Speaker
i'm going to ah ask each of you when you're taking a book and you're translating it to pinball, how did you get into the material and decide to translate it?
Crafting the Sound and Visuals
00:02:38
Speaker
Glen, you might start starting for us. There's a component to the storyline that does tie into emotion with the personalities of each character. And they're all trying to figure out who they are at a very young age, dealing with much, much older consequences than they should be for their age, but they're going to space. And with the technology and all the things I knew that I'd have to channel a lot of synthesizer, a lot of technological sound effects, a lot of futuristic type of things. So I was excited that this game was going to sound different from the homebrews that I'd already made. So that was my first thought. I need to figure out how to capture a lot of sci-fi sounds that have energy and excitement. How about you, Brad? How did you take a very dark theme of a book and translate it into this, the artwork that you did?
00:03:25
Speaker
Well, just looking at it in like the broadest terms, I knew that it was going to involve characters first and foremost, character designs, ah environments. The battle room is a significant part of this story, and that's what a lot of people remember, doing this skirmishes essentially in a zero-gravity space. That's a really interesting, compelling environment. So there's the space station.
00:03:50
Speaker
um the technology that's around them. There's the creatures of the buggers, there's vehicles and props and wardrobe, you know logo treatment, all of these things. it's It was a ah really broad spectrum of things for me to to tackle and create a cohesive package for. So right off the bat, I knew that that was going to be compelling challenge that I hadn't really had to do before.
00:04:14
Speaker
The technology spoke to me as as a fan of science fiction, and then the character art spoke to me as a fan of illustration and cartooning. And then you know the emotional aspects of it sort of steered me in a way where it's like, you don't want to be too exaggerated and cartoony. You want to be able to have the players connect with these these characters and how you experience them through the gameplay.
00:04:41
Speaker
Now, you, Josh, how did you translate this into design and and storyboarding for this? Well, obviously, theme integration is first and foremost in any game we do. And we really spend a tremendous amount of time, um not just on the visual, as Brad's talking about, who did an incredible job in doing that. ah But yeah how do you bring that story and how do you bring true to that story when, as you're also developing the rules and and bringing it all together?
00:05:05
Speaker
It is interesting. You made the point of, you know love the book, did not like the movie. And that's actually a a pretty common thread when you talk to people have Ender's Game, they'll say, oh, you know, liked the book. I didn't like the movie. So, you know the nice thing about that is they say, let's all forget about the movie. Don't watch the movie. That's not where we're focused on. We're focused on the, on the book and how to bring that story to life. Price- Whether it was both from the play field design as well as we started to develop the rules, you really try and pull yourself into the characters and what are those key elements that we're trying to bring. Price- Through and it's that that struggle that he's going through that continuing of his development developing his skills developing those relationships.
00:05:45
Speaker
And we knew we wanted to craft things in the story and in the rules to bring that to life, that you're you're going through this process, you're growing, you're developing, you're trying to find that balance in order to succeed.
00:05:58
Speaker
And to succeed in playing the game, you have to do those things. You have to you know find your aggressive side, you have to find your compassionate side, and then you ultimately have to find a way to balance those things if you're going to succeed.
00:06:11
Speaker
So you mentioned Orson Scott Card. What did he think about making this into a
Author Involvement and Theme Fidelity
00:06:15
Speaker
pinball machine? And does he have much of a connection with pinball? I don't know if he has much of a connection to pinball. I think he was excited about it i think he likes to see it brought to life. um I think when Jerry made the pitch and shared with him things we had done in other games, that the way we approach theme integration, I think is what resonated with him, that we could bring it to life in the way he wanted. He had some very particular requirements of things he wanted to see or things he didn't want to see and how it was presented.
00:06:45
Speaker
um But they he yeah he's been great to work with as we've gone through it. He's pretty much loved everything we've done. There really has been any, i don't think any time he's come back and said, oh, I'm not crazy about this. I think they've been really excited to see it brought to life in this way. and i think he really felt...
00:07:03
Speaker
ah that we captured the characters. I know he he loved Brad's artwork because one of the big issues was you know the age of these kids and being true to what the book is where these are six and seven and eight-year-olds. In the movie, they're much older than that. and That's part of what takes away from it a little bit. so I think he was pretty pleased with with how it's come together.
00:07:22
Speaker
With the Portal, you really brought that down and you made it feel the geometry very similar to any other pinball machine. Now, with this one, you even... brought it up another level when you have this giant rotisserie mechanism that basically takes up the middle third of the play field. So I want you to talk about the development of this theme and with this play field, how that play field works into it, because this ah this thing looks enormous.
Designing the Playfield and Gameplay Mechanics
00:07:56
Speaker
So then we we had our first kickoff meeting to start working on it. And I actually had probably a month or two to think about a lot of this from the time yeah I said to Jerry, I'm going to, I'm going to come on board to do the project. And we actually launched because we were, the rest of the company was focused on portal at the time. And I'm chomping at the bit to get going. And Jerry's like, just, know, chill out. You know, we got to get portal out. We're working on portal stuff.
00:08:19
Speaker
Um, and then the team finally got together start and it's, uh, was Steven Silver, Jerry, Colin McElpine, Brad, and myself. And, um,
00:08:30
Speaker
Jerry started off by saying, we want to bring this in ah cheaper than Portal. yeah Portal came out a little more expensive than we wanted. We want to come in at a lower price point. And I proceeded to say, great. Well, what I want to do is put this big disc on the play field.
00:08:45
Speaker
And I thought for sure that Jerry was going to immediately just shoot that down. And, know, I could tell he was a little like, I don't know about this. And I kind of had actually literally had a 3D mock-up here of it. and And it was, by the way, doesn't look anything like the disc we have today, obviously. um It was a much more basic concept of of the flat rail being able to move to move to different positions. And I think Jerry in his mind said, okay, you know, that might be, you know, too bad price-wise. We can probably afford to do that.
00:09:14
Speaker
And then the next day Jerry messaged me. He said, what do you think about if we put a cannon in that? And what cannon? Who's going to say no to a cannon, right? Yeah, let's put a cannon in there. And then i think at our next meeting, Stephen said, well, can we use the top to divert the ball? Well, sure, we can use the top. And so it it kind of blossomed and grew from there ah to really be this incredibly flexible and capable thing. And then, of course, Jerry had to take that to TJ and say, TJ, can you make this work?
00:09:43
Speaker
And the first iteration we went through of it, because Jerry's like, all right, how do we do this economically? he said, maybe we can find something off the shelf we can use. And for the very first iteration, we actually used a Lazy Susan ah mechanism that we got. So it's you know two so you know two metal bands with ball bearings between it. And we we we found one the right size based on the geometry, which is another whole thing for us figuring out what the geometry needed to be so that the shots would work.
00:10:11
Speaker
And that was our first iteration was that, and we spun it and we shot it and we're like, wow, this is really going to work. And ultimately through multiple revisions, we got to where we are now, where it's this clear plastic moves a lot faster, a lot quicker. So it was a really interesting evolutionary process that we went through and TJ just amazing what he was able to do with that.
00:10:35
Speaker
Um, So the question Jerry said was, well, how does this fit with the theme? And I had to stretch a little bit on that part. The other mech in the game, that was easy to to match up with the theme. But I think what I said, Brad, I think what I said was, that well, the space station turns.
00:10:50
Speaker
um Well, I think ah one of the major tenets that we were going for from the beginning was how can we change the geometry the way that in the battle room, the stars reconfigure for the different battles to come completely block armies from hitting each other in the same way. and so It's like, how do we, how can we change the whole geometry, but also have it be like very flowy. Right.
00:11:18
Speaker
I think that was the the core basis of the disc, right. Initially. And then it was just like all these other cool things that it could do. And for people who do want things closer to the flippers, as as you've seen, there's one of the modes, we move those targets and they're right above the slingshot. So if you want something close to the flippers, we have delivered on that. And it's actually one of my favorite modes is when we do that. It's actually a pretty cool thing. It's so comically close to the flippers.
00:11:45
Speaker
It's an experience. And you do get a good ball save so to kind of protect you for the first for the first training where you have to attack that. yeah It seemed like it was more of a timed mode, right? Where you're you're trying to shoot the targets, but you have a generous ball save. And then if you if you drain at the end of that, is is that the end of the ball or is that just the end of the mode?
00:12:09
Speaker
No, it would be the end of the ball if you've drained after the ball save ends. There is also an extra ball save if you complete it, and which is you have to actually complete all seven targets. David Price- it's fairly generous um it's ah the on the first level it's relatively easy to accomplish and survive, maybe not relatively easy but doable it gets harder, so there are. David Price- The base part of the game or or there's nine trainings ah each with three levels so naturally the first levels are a little bit easier. and they to get more complicated.
00:12:40
Speaker
And I think four of the trainings incorporate the disc in one way, whether it's the targets facing the player, the targets facing, there's actually two cannons in the game. um so at one point the targets are facing the cannons the other way, which is actually a completely safe mode.
00:12:55
Speaker
You're guaranteed not to lose your ball during that mode. so you know So we we give you a little bit. We make it hard over here. we make it a little easier over there as far as ah keeping you safe.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yeah, in that other in that other mode, you're using the flipper buttons to turn the disc into the ball firing from the cannon. Oh, that's way cool. like So you can actually control the disc.
00:13:17
Speaker
that's that's that's I like that. so At different times, right? So the yeah the other canon is the other mechanism in the game is it the captive ball mech. We also refer to it as the balance mech because it's about that balance I was talking about earlier with Ender. and load balls into it by completing some shots, and they're able to move the balls back and do the balls back and forth um to change the balance and work the balance. And on one side, there's an ability for it to fire the balls back out of the balance right back at the player, or when the disc is turned there, you're hitting the targets on the disc. So as Glenn said, you move it with the flipper while the balls are firing at it.
00:14:02
Speaker
Like top down, you can really see through this disc and everything like that. But from a player's point of view, how did you guys make it so that way it looks easy to see what's going on on the on that lower play field and it's not as ah as obstructed?
00:14:17
Speaker
he Jerry made a big change in that disc recently where it's a lot lower profile, blocking less of the view than the original. Well, i don't know how many iterations of the disc were there, Josh.
00:14:27
Speaker
ah You know, well, there are a lot of little iterations, but the bigger iteration the biggest iteration where we went from that lazy Susan to a completely clear disk where there's a groove in the disk and there are basically wheels that mount that the disk spins in and that allowed us to really improve the visibility. At one point in the project, you know, the question was could we live with it if we couldn't make it any better?
00:14:52
Speaker
And in general, we felt, yeah, but if we can make it better, let's really try. And we carved out the time. And and to be honest, I think the decision to dual theme, which happened, Florian was well underway when we made the decision to du a fle dual theme, probably bought us a little extra time ah of TJ's time in order to really take the disc to that next level.
00:15:16
Speaker
um And we really were happy with the ability to do that. It made it faster. ah more clear it gave more time to really fine tune some of the things we do with the diverter on the top um so that you know it was was sort of a benefit uh for both games that we had little extra time that we were able to do ah a fourth revision of the disc to take it up one more notch if you were to play dungeon crawler carl Versus Ender's Game, they're completely different games. The rules don't resemble themselves at all.
00:15:53
Speaker
Brad and I were involved in in both projects. I was pretty much just an advisor on Dungeon Crawler Carl because of my knowledge of the play field and having listened to all the the books. And part of my job is to make sure that the rules didn't end up being the same.
00:16:08
Speaker
And that was a non-issue. By the time we had our second or third meeting, it was clear that the direction um that that Wesley and Ian really wanted to take Dungeon Crawler Carl was completely different than what Colin and our team did with with Ender's Game.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah. And not, not just the rules, but the, like the visual implementation and and not just speaking about like my, my role, but the way that the way that the information is communicated is very different.
00:16:37
Speaker
um So like within Ender's game, you've got sort of like a holographic projection across the playfield that's indicating your shot lines and your objectives and ah your progress.
00:16:51
Speaker
Versus DCC has more of like a traditional insert style design, sort of like how Portal did the the hub mode in a more traditional you know, insert presentation, and then you would go into test chambers and it completely changes the context of your screen to give you three-dimensional environments. So Glenn, you've done a lot of other things. you did that You helped work out the Saw game. You did the the Monster League hockey. You've worked on these other themes going on.
00:17:23
Speaker
How is it when you're doing a futuristic sci-fi dystopian theme How do you choose the music and the modes and how it's going to make the the role, you know each mode feel a little different? Because I'm, it enters, it's, it's not necessarily a happy story. It's a, it's a little bit more of a challenging story, like ah a lot of sci-fi books are. So what did what was your approach to the music for this game?
00:17:50
Speaker
So first off um I did sound effects and some call outs. um and then And then I kind of helped with the music direction with Steven Silver and with Jerry. um They were communicating with our our composers. We have ah we have ah Paul Ferrer and Aaron Williams that that did the composing of all the tracks in the game. um And we kind of took a unique approach to...
00:18:14
Speaker
the base mode of the game. So when you're not in a battle, you're kind of in what a hub mode would be, I guess you'd call it. um Based on the balance mech, however many balls are stacked on either Valentine or Peter, so Peter being aggressive, Valentine being compassionate, the music was going to change emotion. it was going to have more, it's going have more compassionate tones. It's going to more legato, more, more tied together, you know, friendly, happy, loving types of, of, of musical interpretations. But when it's on Peter's side, it was going to be more aggressive and harsh and, and fit that emotion. And so as the game changes and you're now able to make friends, if you're more compassionate or if you're more,
00:19:00
Speaker
aggressive, you're able to win battles and and win fights more. um The music is also changing by itself. Yeah. and And this, this book is a very, it's got very heavy source material. So we kind of felt like, yes, pinball needs to have some high energy and uptempo, but it probably does lend itself a little bit more to having more of a full, um,
00:19:22
Speaker
symphony type of sound or, you know, almost like a movie, a movie so ah movie um score.
Dynamic Music and Emotional Gameplay
00:19:28
Speaker
And so it it is, it it's, i don't want to say it's cinematic, but it's definitely more emotional um than it is this like driving game of pinball that you're going tap your feet to. Now you might tap your feet to it, but you're going to feel a little bit more of a symphonic experience with that beat as well. Cause it's, it's there to convey the emotions.
00:19:50
Speaker
Do you have to lean heavily on Valentin at at points and lean heavily on Peter at some points and try to be more of a balanced, maybe an ender at some point? Yeah, if if you want to make friends with the other students in battle school, you have to be compassionate.
00:20:05
Speaker
So you're going to have to make sure that the ball lock is stacked on the Valentin side. And if you want to go into a fight, you're going to need them stacked on Peter's side to make it quicker to get through a fight and win.
00:20:17
Speaker
But if you're compassionate, you're never going to probably finish that fight. You're going to end up losing. And these are all objectives that you have to complete in the game to progress. And how do you balance that? do you Is there a target that you're hitting that will ah shoot the balls back and forth because you're loading them, but they they do interchange from each side?
00:20:34
Speaker
So the you know the original vision for the mech was to be able to shoot balls in and lock them in and then newton them across. And in our testing, we realized that the ability to move the number of balls back and forth wasn't going to really work very well off the flipper. you know You'd have to have a really super clean hit. um So what we actually do is we newton the balls, but we actually newton them from balls in the trough.
00:21:01
Speaker
So for those familiar with the P3, know there's an infinity trough that actually has six bucks in it. What we actually do to newton the balls is we fire balls from underneath to the bottom of that mech to move the balls back and forth. And there's a stand-up target in front of each side that then triggers that ball from underneath to move it across. Between those is a scoop that you shoot into when it's lit to then load a ball into that mech.
00:21:29
Speaker
And each side of that mech has the ability to kick a ball out. One kicks the ball out at the player and the other can just drop it gently onto the play field or can actually just remove it from the play field. And scoring, and as Glenn talked about, the difficulty is based on in some things you can't do if you're balanced. around You're not going be able to make friends if you're balanced to the Peter side. If you go into a battle, which is ultimately what you're trying to get to, you need to be balanced.
00:21:57
Speaker
And if you're not balanced in a battle, if you're too much like Peter, you're going to lose your troops faster because you're being overly aggressive. And if you're too much like Val and you're compassionate, you're not as effective in your battle and you're going to need more shots to get through the battle.
00:22:13
Speaker
If you're balanced, you're going to be optimized to be most efficient in getting through it. So is the basic rule structure, is there modes? And then those, because it sounds like you do have battle training and stuff like that, and there's multi-balls and stuff.
00:22:27
Speaker
But how am I progressing through the game and what is the end game? Well, the end game is to save the earth, right? But short-term goal, where you're trying to get to command school, which I guess you could say is the wizard mode and it's a multi-stage piece to get to. So you start off in hub and you're doing trainings and trainings qualify you for battles. And trainings you can think of as really mini modes because most of them are two or three shot types of modes. They're timed. I think they're typically 40 seconds where you have to make a couple of shots. There are nine trainings, three we call always active. So they're always running. The ability to do that one is maneuvers.
00:23:06
Speaker
which is a fancy word for combos. One is no G, which is a P3 pass for those who own a P3. No, there's a kind of a technique you can use for moving the ball from one side to the other. And this actually tracks that and awards you for doing that. And then six of the trainings are standalone. So you're only playing one at a time, typically because some of them use the disk. So we try to yeah keep you focused on that. And then each of those have three levels that your that get more and more difficult. Completing trainings then opens the battle room, which are then, you know, I guess you can think of their their modes, but they're obviously more complex modes that are typically playing more shots on and different things to be executed to get through. If you can play through all the battles, collect your friends, win the fights, you can make it to command school.
00:23:58
Speaker
Now, there's also there's also an extra layer of depth for each of these things. um If you complete a battle and you have enough of your soldiers left, you can do what's called the victory formation, and you can go into hook multiball by completing four shots. um You can lock four balls into physical ball locks on the playfield, including the brand new sling locks. So there's that element of choosing to risk for more. um Also with Val and Peter, the mech, if you ever stack six balls on one side, you'll start that multi ball as well. So that's two more additional multi balls on top of the main multi ball the game.
00:24:36
Speaker
That's ah one more multi ball. Brad, you want take it? Yeah, there's the there's bugger multiball buggers and astronauts is a ah game. It's, you know, I guess you can compare it to like cowboys and Indians.
00:24:49
Speaker
How do you to describe that in the context of the book? It's where you jump on your brother and you kick the crap out of him. and So bugger multiball is sort of almost like a standalone multiball. You the in lanes and the outlines to spawn buggers on the play field that you then need to shoot to collect. And once you've collected the the five or six that are needed for that level, it triggers the the bugger multivall, which is just a great moment in the game. I do want to hit on something that Glenn talked about, which were the what we call the slinglocks.
00:25:24
Speaker
Glenn talked about the victory ritual, which is a key part of the books. In the books, to actually win the battle, you have to have four of your soldiers lock their helmets in two spots on the gate, and then a fifth soldier needs to go through the gate.
00:25:38
Speaker
And that was something and that from the start, Jerry wanted in the game. He wanted to have a way that we could lock four balls on the play field, have the player make that shoot and start a multi-ball. It was one of his, you know, kind of must have in the game.
00:25:52
Speaker
And it' so we were doing the layout. We were trying to figure out where do we do that. And Jerry's, his first sketch is he had, you know, saucers and then those became magnets. So we have a magnet that's what's now what we call the fight ring. and There's a magnet on the jump. So there's ah a jump ramp that flings the ball off with a magnet.
00:26:12
Speaker
But we needed to have a couple other places to lock balls. And Steven Silver said, well, it'd be nice if we could lock them in the in lanes like some other games do where they lock balls there to start modes. and With up posts. Yeah. Up posts, right? He said, couldn't we do something like that with...
00:26:27
Speaker
the struts on the sling lock. And we later learned that Steven had a much more complicated idea in mind, but Jerry's like, that's an interesting idea. And literally the next day he took some tape and kind of wrapped it around and programmed it. And when we engage that to fire the sling, if we realize that we just hold that engage, we can actually, with a little extra piece on there, hold a ball right there in the in lane, which is actually how we start the training modes. Typically start from either one in lane or the other.
00:26:57
Speaker
So basically we added two locks to the game for the for a few pennies. And that gave us our four locks. so we have the two magnet locks and we actually can lock the balls in the in lanes using our existing slingshot mechanisms. And nice thing is all future games can now leverage this and have this extra place on the play field where you can hold the ball basically indefinitely.
00:27:22
Speaker
Talk more about the mechanism on the right side. It looks more like a ah physical ball lock and it it dumps out, seems like it opens up and dumps them out during multi-ball. So the fight ring, which is a has a shield in front, right? So it sort of has that AFM style um that you hit and then it actually opens up and inside of there is a set of or ring with drop targets and a magnet.
00:27:46
Speaker
So um the the fight mode in in the game is you first have to open that by completing that target bank. Then you're shooting in there, hitting the targets. At some point you shoot in there, we grab the ball on the magnet, we lower the shield, and then you use the magnet like a flipper to hit the various targets in there. so Josh mentioned the shield on the front and that reminded me about these new targets that TJ and Jerry basically invented for these games. And it it completely changes the presentation of the P3. They're very brightly lit, transi translucent injection molded targets that have PCBs with like an optical sensor in them and LEDs. It's creating a ah huge addition to the light show that you'll see there on the
00:28:35
Speaker
on the shield of the fight ring, you know, along the disc. Right. So what it does is it's basically, in a sense, a standup light-up stand-up target that works with the display because it's all above the display. So it's actually pretty cool. I'm sure you'll see that used in other games going forward. We have a couple of different sizes. um So you can make them whatever you want.
00:28:56
Speaker
It's actually pretty cool the one on the ring because the whole circuit board is a flexible board to go around the curve. How do they feel, Because I know like the stand-ups on the side feel a little rigid versus what a stand-up target does. How do these feel when you hit them?
00:29:10
Speaker
The stand-ups on the side are rigid because they're actually not targets. when When you hit the side targets on a P3, we're actually detecting from the screen. So as you know, the whole play field has an infrared grid over it.
00:29:23
Speaker
So in lanes, out lanes, and the side targets are really detected by the ball being there. And it is a pretty solid. These are actual targets that move and have give when they're hit.
00:29:35
Speaker
So a very different type of a thing. So much more like a traditional stand-up target. When you hit it, it moves to complete the circuit. There is this like left ramp, but it's not really a ramp.
00:29:48
Speaker
You shoot, like it comes up around and a magnet catches it. It's got stand-ups beneath it. What is that and how do you involve that into the gameplay? So we we call that the jump ramp.
00:29:58
Speaker
So it's a center shot ramp and it is a little ramp that that moves up with the magnet there. We either can grab the ball on the magnet or we just accelerate the shot as it comes through and it throws it to the upper flipper.
00:30:13
Speaker
And once it gets to the upper flipper, there's basically three different shots you can play off of that flipper, really four, the left orbit. There are the two targets underneath that little ramp that you shoot at. And then there's the what we call the left ramp, which is the side ramp that goes up and around and feeds back to the right. And you can actually also shoot the reverse-o-matic ramp, we call it the center ramp, from that flipper. If you hit it cleanly, you can actually get that ramp to fire from there as well. Another, another really satisfying shot in the game. And it's kind of hard to explain, but underneath the disc on the left side in a certain position, the ball will actually change course underneath it and fired up around that fight ring and set up for a shot with the right upper right flipper. And, and just based on the position of the disc, it will change where that feeds.
00:31:04
Speaker
Now for owners of this, they know that they're going to be swapping out different modules. So this appears to be two large modules that you're going to be storing. is that Is that a correct assessment?
00:31:18
Speaker
So you have your standard module in the front and then you have the know the plus part, which is just four screws and one connector to take out. So if you wanted, to if you're going to swap out for a different game,
00:31:33
Speaker
and Four screws, unhook the one connector, that whole lower that lower part comes off, it's just one big piece. And then you would just put back in, again, with four screws to put back in the normal side rails.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah. So the the typical module box, you can fit two of them under the cabinet, like like the Princess Bride that's behind Josh there. um And then the L2, we call it like the second level that goes down, extends over the screen. That's in a ah much shallower box.
00:32:04
Speaker
So you're not you're not like doubling your storage space for the box. for dust Yeah. and About the same ah overall dimensions of the the module box. And I have to say shipping on these are very nice. ah It is super annoying to buy a brand new pinball machine and it show up and there's been a forklift that's been stuck through the side of it. I mean, these ship pretty quick. I think I spent like $150 on shipping. Like it was nothing compared to what I pay for. i mean, obviously there's some people that offer free shipping. it's included in the price. I mean, come on. Yeah, yeah. You're you're still paying for it. There's no yeah free lunch. yeah There's a lot of companies that aren' including that anymore. so yeah
00:32:44
Speaker
Well, it's nice when my white wood was shipped up. I was actually at my league when that was delivered and my wife was able to just go out and pick it up and bring it into the house.
00:32:55
Speaker
You know, she certainly wouldn't be doing that with her. It's Amazon, like the Amazon delivery driver. yeah It was UPS. It comes UPS, right? The UPS guy comes, he puts it on the port. Heaven forbid the like the game and the module goes down and you have to repackage it and ship it back. like it's just It blows my mind. like If you have an issue with a play field on ah on another manufacturer's game, it's like, I don't want to ship back this whole thing. you might have to pay for a service technician to come out.
00:33:22
Speaker
With this, it's like I literally click two things into place. There's a handle. i pull it out. I unplug the two harnesses or the three harnesses that are in there. I put it back in the box. Nick Baldridge, who's your technician, is fantastic on telling you how to package these things to protect them so they come to them very well done.
Shipping, Maintenance, and User Experience
00:33:41
Speaker
And they they fix it, they put it back in the box and they ship it back to you. And it's, I think it was like a two week process. I had some issues with with Princess Bride and it was insanely quick how you guys got taken care of and shipped back and no other company can offer that. It's amazing.
00:33:56
Speaker
I only made this because I did it this morning just for fun. But the way you're talking about how you disconnect the module and and pull it out, I'm pulling out my flipper mechanism just because I wanted to try fiddling with my outlanes just to like see how it feels different because there's there's several ways that you can adjust your outlanes. I don't know if you bothered playing with it.
00:34:20
Speaker
So you've got these like little swivels, right? um and they kind of close up or open up the outlane, but then there's also the posts. And i was curious how it would feel to move the posts with or without the swivel to see how ah how it felt to me like control-wise on outlay nudge safes.
00:34:42
Speaker
um And it's just it's so fun to to fiddle with the flip flipper mechanism on this because it it just slides out. you know Your flippers are mounted on this polycarb assembly. You just unplug that, slide it out the front, and you can do all of your like maintenance or or changing your you know your preferences. This game is awesome. You guys have really outdone yourself with this one.
00:35:08
Speaker
I think it is very innovative. I know that we've seen turntables before, but nothing like this, a double decker turntable with a cannon in the middle of it and changes the whole trajectory of the game.
00:35:22
Speaker
insane this is really really cool seriously this looks fantastic brad you outdid yourself again on art it's amazing how much you can go from the different flow of of different themes that you've done over the years and how they just look very well put together for each one of your themes that you do Thanks. i mean I owe a lot to the team for putting trust in me to to capture this and Jerry, of course, for capturing his dream theme.
00:35:50
Speaker
um I mean, I talked a lot about the the breadth of things that I had to figure out in this. you know You're not just You're not just drawing something that's been established over here. Like this is what it looks like. I purposefully avoided watching the movie because I just didn't want that to inform what I was doing. I wanted to come at it fresh.
00:36:12
Speaker
um But, you know, working with the team from, you know, the very first meetings, like Josh said, And we do a lot of kind of like rapid iteration where all'll I'll share my screen and and kind of scribble things be like, is this is this what you guys like imagine this this stuff looks like? Or you know is this kind of touching on the the vibe the right way? you know i i do my best to not apply a style of to everything that I do. Like inevitably people generally will recognize that it's my work and there's common threads because there's a certain sense of things looking balanced to my eyes and that I think
00:36:55
Speaker
leads things to look a certain way just based on my my taste and what appears correct but um i like to try and approach each new game with an open mind to find what it is that that game needs to look like to be successful right and have to say brad has incredible patience uh when he does it and i absolutely love in our meetings when brad takes over the screen and starts drawing something but it was actually on on sodium on dungeon crawler car at one point we were working on the apron and this was probably had been our third or fourth conversation on the apron and and brad had this incredible apron and then we still proceeded to spend like 45 minutes to think little color changes and maybe that's not the right character and brad just in real time changing stuff flipping it around until we came to agreement and It we became a little bit of a running joke. There's some comment on Pinside like, do these guys ever think about these things? And you would be shocked at how often we will spend an hour or two debating the most minute little detail of something, whether it's a rule, whether it's something in the art, whether it's about the mech. but the amount of time that we will spend on every little detail dissecting. And then the next week it comes around again. We had over two meetings, had a long discussion about the color of Ender's hair.
00:38:13
Speaker
It's too blonde. got it And it was blonde, but it's just the right blonde. And okay, Brad, in this image, it looks a little less blonde. Well, no, that's because it was this. And we we literally had one point for Ed to pull up. Here's the four versions. Okay. Yeah, they're really the same color, but this is that. And so for people who think like we like, don't we skip through stuff?
00:38:32
Speaker
yeah we we Every single detail is debated and argued back and forth in hopes of really coming up with and getting the best possible solution out of it.
00:38:45
Speaker
And that applies to the mechanisms in the game, the layout. Well, most of us are remote. And so we meet up twice a week and Brad's in every single meeting. I make the ones I can.
00:38:56
Speaker
um i make a lot of them, but I don't make all of them, but I will have had a new bank or a new batch of, of sounds that Jerry will put in the game or sorry, Josh will put in the game and Jerry will play test. And then they'll end up on a video we all watch and we'll all discuss, well, this worked, this didn't work. Glenn, I know this is your eighth try at this. I don't have any feedback on what I want, but not that.
00:39:15
Speaker
So try again. And so like things, things just kept hitting the drawing room floor and and it can be frustrating, but it's also super rewarding to finally land on the thing that
Voice Acting and Sound Design
00:39:25
Speaker
works. um we were trying to do, we were all trying to do kids' voices. I think I can tell the story because we don't have the type of budget to hire child actors, like for every single role. So we're like, well, what are we going to do? Well, I'm going to download this, this plugin called little altar boy, and we're all going to try our own voices. And we're going to let little altar boy change our adult voices to sound like, you know,
00:39:52
Speaker
eight-year-olds and it it didn't didn't sound terrible but it didn't work it wasn't close enough so we ended up all finding people that were close to us that would be willing to record a handful of lines for the game so we've got actual kids voices recorded um for the characters and the kids in the game and lucas pepke and glenn oh that is one of the key voices in the game glenn does the voice for colonel graf It's a major voice in the game. um you wouldn't necessarily realize it's Glenn when you listen to the game because it doesn't sound like he sounds now. And he did an ah amazing job ah with the voice work on that as well as coaching the kids. And I'm looking forward to we've got some a few more kids to get into the game right now. and But the the speech stuff has really come together really well using the actual kids and finding kids who could you know be all the different characters.
00:40:44
Speaker
The sound package is my favorite part of this game. like When you step up to it it, it's really immersive and it captures you. And it's also just really satisfying for me to kind of vicariously experience this game release through Glenn.
00:41:02
Speaker
like We worked together on Monster League Hockey last year, and I knew that that he was just really eager to do some industry work. And it's not long ago that that was me and Portal was my first opportunity. And so I was really excited for Glenn to some be able to have this opportunity.
00:41:22
Speaker
we don no No idea of my own like what what the game was going to sound like. But now when I walk up to it, I'm like, this game sounds incredible. And I'm so excited that it's incredible because Glenn got to do this with us and that we just all had such a good collaborative experience.
00:41:40
Speaker
Well, Glenn's enthusiasm on this game it was second to none. And, you know, it participated. He does every aspect of it. He he was just such a, I don't want to say a cheerleader, but such great enthusiasm as things progressed. Anytime something new is released, you know, you always count on Glenn really, you know, being really excited about and really pumping everybody up with, with his excitement over the things we were doing. And sometimes you get lost in the weeds and it's great when you have somebody like Glenn who's watching the videos and saying, oh, I saw this. I really loved how that came together. And it helps you bring you out and see it from another perspective. and the the other feedback on the sound that we got from the the reveal is people really comment about the emotional feel of the game and the music and the sound effects and how that really made them feel when they were playing the game. And, you know that shows how that sound package really came together with the voices, the music and and the sound effects.
00:42:36
Speaker
And that's such a critical aspect of a game. When you work on a game for a long time before there's music and sound effects, it's, it's dull. And then the, You put music in, you start putting sound effects in, and it really is what brings the the game to life. And and Jerry's tough.
00:42:52
Speaker
You know, if Jerry doesn't like a sound, if it's not working, it's not registering for him, he tells you and he wants it fixed. He wants it changed. You ever hear Jerry go, oh, it's okay. No, it's either it's works or it doesn't work. And there were a couple of times I like tweaked one of Glenn's sounds just to, because I knew what what Jerry was looking for. And I like, this what you're looking for? I'm like, great. Okay, Glenn, here's what I did. So now you know like what he's looking for because of the iterative process around that. He's like, Glenn's just not getting it on this sound.
00:43:21
Speaker
like, okay, trial we got it. Don't worry about it. Okay. Oh, that's much better now. i Okay, great. Yeah, my feelings weren't heard at all. I appreciated that. Right. So he's got to interpret what he's looking for. no I want a dull sound. That's not a dull sound. That's a, like, well, it is a dull sound, but not the one you want. So yeah I think that the sound package, I agree is is great. The art package is great. I think the the rules are are really good. and really happy with how the rules have come together. um you know, where some work still to do there to make sure we get some elements in there for the the competitive player.
00:43:54
Speaker
make sure we have a few more things. And that's why we have a mutant
Balancing for Skill Levels
00:43:57
Speaker
on our team. Yeah. Colin and and mutin is a a term of affection. I use for those players who have a skill level that is far and above the rest of us. They're like inhuman. When I watch him play, it's like in three seconds, he's completed something. I'm like, I'm still trying to figure out what the shot was supposed to be. um,
00:44:19
Speaker
So having Colin on board is great with rules to really help make sure that we're putting things in the game for the competitive player and looking at those kind of opportunities for the risk reward stuff, while also maintaining that important balance for the right things in there for the enthusiast and for the novice to make sure that somebody who isn't mutant, who's somebody who's a below average player, to be able to step up, enjoy the game, make something happen, get to a multiball and finding that right balance. And that's one of the things I like when Brad got to go play the game, long before I got to play the game and Brad got to play it. And his feedback was so valuable to understand what was making sense to him, what wasn't. Not to criticize Brad's playing, but Brad is not a mutant.
00:45:08
Speaker
No, I'm not. I'm not a great player, but i'll I will know in the development, like if if something doesn't feel right, if the the timing of, you know, a mode start or whatever, like I can be sensitive to some of those things, even if I'm not like incredibly accurate with my shots.
00:45:27
Speaker
Well, and Jerry is a really good player. He's not quite a mutant, but he's a very good player. And since Jerry does a lot of the playing that we didn't watch the video, we've learned we have to also recognize here's his skill level. And let's make sure that, oh, he's making it look easy. Well, that doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be easy.
00:45:45
Speaker
you know Brad goes in or somebody else plays and that really helps to say, you know what, that's probably a little too difficult. We need to adjust the rules on that or we got to tweak that a little bit to make sure that you don't have to be a great player to progress through the game, that there's something there. But if you are a great player, we're to make sure there's things there to challenge you or at least give you that opportunity to score more by using your skills to do more complex things.
00:46:11
Speaker
and And that's the one of the keys. That's why i said balance is one of my favorite words. It's important to Ender and it's important to delivering a game that's going to be you work for every, you know, it's going to appeal to
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:46:23
Speaker
everyone.
00:46:23
Speaker
Well, I appreciate you guys taking time out of your busy schedule to come join us today and to discuss Ender's game. This game looks fantastic. if If someone wants to get ahold of you guys, what is the best way to get ahold of you?
00:46:35
Speaker
You can find me on Messenger. My last name is easy to find, but W-A-E-C-H-T-E-R. It's my last name. so I am not on Facebook. I never go on Facebook. I prefer to never be on Facebook. But if somebody really wants to reach me, it's jadegoogler at gmail.com. I'm happy to give out my email address.
00:46:54
Speaker
If I don't like you, I'll block you. Yeah, I admire Josh being off of the social media, but I am not off the social media. So you can find me on ah on Facebook Messenger or on Instagram at Brad Albright. And if you want to get a hold of us, we are LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com. We have some sweet swag at silverballswag.com slash Loserkid. And Brad Albright did our shoes. That's why they look amazing. We love it. Also, Losers.
00:47:24
Speaker
The Losers, yes. And if you want to get ahold of us on any of the socials at loser kid pinball, Scott, give us our last words. You know, a friend of the show, Doug Porta stopped by today and we had a good time and just want to give him a shout out. And thanks for coming up to Utah to hang out and go and play Ender's game. And we'd love to hear from you.
00:47:54
Speaker
you