I hope we get an option to not stand back and stare at the plunger/coin mechs every time we go to launch a ball as well.
I don't think they should get rid of the multiball view switch entirely, but they ought to offer multiple camera angles for multiball as well. I seem to recall that Pinball Hall of Fame had that. I think you do need a different angle for multiball, there should just be options. There's no harm in one of the options being to not switch at all, of course. Looking low at the plunger, though, I could certainly do without that.
Can anyone give me some tips for nudging please? I've tried 'shake' and touchscreen but not getting anywhere. Please describe how you hold your ipad ( preferred device ) and how you go about trying to stop that ball coming centrally down the screen at 100 mph from draining. Also how to stop the ball from darting sideways straight into the side drains before you've even had time to think about it.
I'm having a hard time with the nudging too. One of the things I really liked about the PS3 Williams game was that nudging was really effective and easy to use. On the iphone and ipad its not the case. I find the shake option hardly seems to work at all. It needs to be way more sensitive. I think if it was sensitive enough, you could sit with the Ipad on your lap, using thumbs or index fingers for the flippers, and actually just give one side or the other of the pad a tap and get a nudge. As it is, it seems you have to really shake the thing a lot to get the nudge to register. Touch works better, but I find I often miss the area of the screen where the nudge is activated. On the Ipad its just too far to make a quick move to nudge and then get back on the flipper...
I've had the opposite happen for nudging on my ipad. I litterally tap the screen for the flipper and I get the tilt message. I didn't see an option for sensativity, but I will have a look later.
I've found that the sensitivity for nudging is all over the place. Sometimes I'll do a slight nudge and end up getting a tilt while other times I need to straight up shake my iPad like one a those dumb glass ketchup bottles at a diner. Hope they stabilize the sensitivity and add a slider to make it adjustable. That and fix the dumb leaderboards.
I hold my iPad in portrait and find I have to give it a pretty sharp jerk to get a nudge. Definitely could stand to be a little more sensitive on the big screen, but it's obviously a fine balancing act between making it easy to nudge intentionally, and hard to nudge accidentally. Would love a sensitivity slider here. As for how to use, if you're trying to avoid a center drain, jerk your iPad to the side as if you were trying to move the closest flipper closer to the ball. In other words, if the right flipper is closest, jerk your iPad to the left. Timing is key here. You not only have to make sure the nudge is processed at the right moment, you'll need to fire the flipper at the right moment or it will just deflect the ball to one side as it drains. I recommend tapping the screen and jerking the iPad to the side when the ball is just above the arc of your flipper. Avoiding outlanes is trickier. If the ball is heading directly into the outlane at a 45 degree angle, there isn't a lot you can do without lightspeed reflexes. If the ball is rolling around loosely between the outlane and the flipper return lane, then you have a chance, but you have to be careful. A lot of tables are designed so that the rubber on the bumper will tend to bounce the ball towards the outlane while hard wood or metal near the outlane will tend not to bounce the ball back, so a bad nudge can easily send a ball from the flipper return lane towards the outlane. Try to nudge only if you're sure things are going bad. If you know you're doomed, it won't hurt if you give it a nudge and the ball just bounces back off the bumper and into the outlane. I find what works best on a real table is a well-timed forward nudge to settle the ball into the flipper return lane or bounce it off the rail/post between lanes and out of the outlane area, but Farsight only seems to support left and right, so that's not an option. If you're very familiar with a table, you can figure out how the ball tends to bounce around, and you can try to give it a nudge to add or remove lateral energy to prevent it from heading towards the outlane area. This is pretty tricky even on a real table, so all I can say is try to learn the bounce patterns, and if you see a pattern you recognize as fatal, try to alter it with a nudge.
Black hole... just evolved into a time sink! Love the table design and the simple yet satisfying scoring mechanics. I still can't get past the eerie BGM though
I've had cases where I try to play a game and it tilts immediately. I'm pretty sure that's a bug. I force quit the app and relaunch it and it seems to then be fine. Maybe it's a calibration issue, but I'm not sure. Also, yesterday suddenly I was able to shoot the left loop from a caught ball on the right flipper in ToM. Well, I did it once. So it appears that is doable in spite of what I thought before. Perhaps the reason it feels so impossible is due to the impreciseness of a touch screen interface (fingers a different distance from the screen each time), but I don't know. So while this is a great game to have for iOS, I'm looking forward even more to the XBLA version. I'd prefer the PSN version due to motion bumping, but I don't have a PS3, and not sure I'd buy one just for PA. LOL.
Regarding nudging: I agree with what everyone has said so far. There is no reason why the nudging needs to be designated to the top half of the screen. It's much easier to do the swipe for nudging but I miss almost 100% of the time. Developers: for the love of god, just use Gesture Recognizers. If I swipe left or right anywhere on the screen, that's a nudge. If it's not a swipe then I am trying to trigger a flipper.
Facebook? Play as guest? WTF?! Its ridiculous. We are on iOS. We pay for tables. And we can only play as "guest" because they do not use the social gaming platform of our choice but only Facebook? Get rid of this crap and add Game Center to this game. I feel betrayed when I'm playing as guest in a game where I payed for the tables!
Whenever any app asks for my facebook/twitter details i always decline it, half the time it'll be tons of spammy updates about their game. Hopefully GameCentre will be used in the future, i'm not worried or 'betrayed' when i press 'play as guest' in the app at all. Still loving it, hope they do add a table a month as they mentioned before. Apart from high scores on Facebook i'm loving this app
Anyone know how to pre-select the illusion before launching the ball on TOM? according to the instructions you can pre-select the illusion by tapping the left flipper before lauching the ball but I can't get this to work, before lauching the ball the camera is in the launch pluger position with no access to the flippers. I guess I'm mis-understanding something here
Pinball Arcade is the exception to the spammy FB rule. The only time it'll post something to your site is if you hit #1 on your local high scores (meaning you've just beat your previous scores), and then it asks if you want to do it, it doesn't do it automatically. Like others have said, Game Center support is coming.
Wow, this reminds of my childhood. Because I have not touched a single pinball machine for over 10 years. Definitely getting this app
It's okay now, but in the future when there is 12, 14, 16 etc tables purchased, then table selection will need to be looked at. As it is now, it's not a chore to select but later the swipe swipe or click click will be a pain to navigate. Probably needs to change to more of a zen or pinball hd selection style.
Is there any word on when we'll get the first new DLC table? I can't wait. If I have to swipe, swipe to select it, that's OK.
