And just to clarify that quote.
What part of the quote was the joke?

Ok been answered.
Thanks

I'm looking foward to playing this game and am interested in the platform.
--Subscribed--

Too bad. But...

An IMDb search for quotes by Ripley from the Alien and Aliens movies reveals we aren't missing anything save for her only popular line: Get away from her you bitch.

I'm relieved. It appears all the great lines from the movies are from the other characters.

Seeing how it runs on Linux I'm sure someone could change the call outs and create a .diff file.

I'd like to see a clip of her blowing up those pods

You know what though, it's still 1000 times better than a POS DMD

And maybe somebody will figure out how to add it after the fact like pinball browser

Agreed. I bet we'll still see eggs bursting. We'll have to just be satisfied that the player is acting as the main character in this one.

I've always wanted a pin based on this theme and I'm still happy as a kid it's going to happen by a hard working team that seem passionate and enamoured with the movies.

Ripley callouts would be neat, though like someone else said I'm not sure that she has any really quippable lines beyond "you bitch". IDK, I'd rather have a game that's immersive, clever, and fun than a playable clip show. If I want to watch the movie, I'll do that!

I recall seeing a full screen picture of the Space Jockey on the LCD, ...this is going to be good.

Bill Paxton is in there!

Look at TWDLE. It has nothing in there and is my favorite pin of all time

Same thing for GBLE. Ernie Hudson and a pos DMD. Still love it

Ok, I'm over the no SW deal. The clips and sound by Thiel is phenomenal immersion

Being played tons at expo today and responses were VERY positive from all i spoke to

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I couldn't get too close due to the mob around the game, did anyone post a game play vid?

-removed-

Wow, that's some bad ass ninja action right there. Geez.

I'd be confounded too if a random came up and started shouting at me randomly, especially if I was mid conversation with a friend.

Uh oh, the virtual reality of Pinside is spilling over into real life - if you die on the forums you die for real!

Oh yea, forgot you have an axe to grind. Like a kid who has a tantrum, do ya feel better?

Well... You showed him!
Get over yourself.

Kim, Kim, Kim......

speechless ....

I don't really care about if i hear ripley or not and am confounded by how important it seems to some.

BUT, does the Alien software have any capabilities to be able to change out sounds if the collector chooses to do so.

Would be nice if the callout thing wasn't a dealbreaker and we could all enjoy this pin.

the playfield art looks awesome Aurich, really come together nicely - well done

nice work on the game Heighway, hope to play one day.

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you come off sounding (and apparently) acting like an asshole. Nobody here cares. Seriously you are sounding crazy--you realize that don't you? It's just pinball man.

Ehh........we don,t believe you

I'm not sure what this has to do with you having concerns about Aliens, some of which are definitely legitimate.

If true, this is an absolutely bizarre thing to do in the first place, and even more bizarre to brag about. Apart from anything else, you'll end up getting yourself barred from events.

Full Throttle bro, Alien bro...

For some reason I am reminded of this....."The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of those of low ability to recognize their ineptitude and evaluate their ability accurately."

He's obsessed with Aurich and wants everyone to know. I was sick of it months ago. Reported for broken record.

Let's talk about the game.

I'm on my flight home now, and have plenty of captive seat time to try and answer people's questions. If you've PM'd me then give me some time to catch up to my messages.

I'll break this up into separate posts so it's not a wall of text.

First off, the Ripley situation. She's not directly in the game. From the very start we planned all of the modes and animations etc around playing from Ripley's perspective, with the player as the hero. There's really only a few places we really wanted her, and if we could have gotten permission to use her we would have. Most specifically of course the "Get away from her you bitch!" line.

Obviously we're all disappointed we don't have that, but it's just one callout, and we're dripping in great ones already. The power loader battle is still in the game (Aliens mini wizard mode), we even have a full shot of "Ripley" tackling the Queen, but it's not her, it's the stop motion puppet, and since Fox approved all our animations I guess that's cool to use.

Her flamethrower still torches the Queen's eggs, there's really nothing we couldn't work around.

Here's the word we got from Fox on actors: First, you have to ask Sigourney Weaver directly, she's not automatic. She declined. I don't know anything about Stern's Ghostbuster contract being part of that, that sounds like speculation to me, but I don't know the reason.

The other rule was we couldn't use any English or Canadian actors. They have different equity rules or something, we only had permission for the American actors. That of course includes every line from Hudson, and yes "game over man!" is in the game. Most of the other actors were fair game too.

This isn't a "Walking Dead situation", the game is full of actor callouts that David Thiel mined from the films.

Bottom line: if it's some kind of deal breaker for you to not hear a couple Ripley callouts then it is, but to be honest when we got the word she was out recently we kinda shrugged, we didn't build the game around her. We filed it under "would have been nice" and got back to work, it didn't disrupt our plans.

Who you calling inept? My junk is huge Bro.

Next issue: the LE art. This is related the previous post too actually, in that I was waiting to work on the art until I heard the word about Ripley. If she was in I wanted to know before doing anything. It took a long time to get the rejection, but it seemed worth waiting, can't do anything with art before the game is shipping anyways.

Now that I know she's not there's nothing holding me back, so I'll start on the LE package.

A lot of people have asked me about the green trim, will it still be green, etc. My answer to that is I'll get the LE art done and approved, and then we'll do something cool with the armor to match it. Picking the color first is pointless. If it's still green it's because that's what's right.

Happy to answer questions, but that's the scoop there. Shout out to Jared, and stay tuned.

Really kind of sucks that Ripley won't be in the pin. But it seems that there are always disappointments one way or the other with licensed themes. I love my TWD to death, but that is definitely a borked license, more so than Alien not having Ripley.

Very impressed with the few sound effects that I've heard so far. Not surprised, Thiel is awesome. I expect that the pin will do a great job in immersing the player in the theme. Looking forward to seeing and hearing more as things progress.

Let's talk about the games that are at Expo: one is the prototype from the promo video, with some minor tweaks after that (if you were at the show you might have noticed them missing decals were there for instance, I printed them out before I flew to Expo and packed double sided tape).

The other is a game built just in time to ship for Expo, and it had some issues that more play testing would have caught, but the timeline was too tight. We decided two games was better than one, but that's why one game seemed to have more issues if you hung out at the booth for a while. It's all temporary.

I mentioned this before, but this the first time the US team was able to flip these games. If you were at the party you might have seen the mode scoop go down. That was a software problem, easily fixed, just didn't get caught until the party when it was too late to compile and test a new version. Was fixed later that night.

There's a lot of little stuff like that. The ball is pausing too long in the scoops and saucers for instance, that's an easy software fix too. Just need to tweak some internal rules for waiting on animations. Joe just needs a little time with the game to tune all of that stuff, the simulator is great, but it doesn't tell the whole story with the physical ball.

The light shows are still basic, we haven't really started taking true advantage of the full RGB lighting. That will come too.

This is the speech I ended up giving a lot: if you like the game you're going to love it when we're done. We've come a long way, we just need to start polishing and cleaning up some things. If there are ball traps we'll fix them, if something isn't integrated right with the software it will be soon. The animations need some transitions still, there are some placeholders during bonus count up screens etc. All will be finished. This is the game, but while Andrew is starting to ramp up ordering cabinets and playfields etc we're going to use that time to get everything slick and bulletproof.

If you don't like the game, well we can't make everyone happy; we'd love for you try it again, but don't expect the vision to change. It will simply be a better version of what you see now.

This game will have "finished" code at launch. Not modes missing. No inserts that don't do anything. Post launch we'll keep improving it as seems needed too of course.

Happy to answer questions about any of that as best I can, but I'm not on the hardware team, so I might not know all the answers.

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I want to tell an anecdote from the Alien seminar on Friday, just a little thing but I really liked how it summed up our approach.

There was a question from the audience (sorry don't know who you were) that I'll paraphrase:

"During Ambush Multiball the LCD screen turns into the motion tracker, and the dots appear in 4 quadrants, and you have to shoot 4 parts of the playfield to kill them before they reach the center of the tracker. Are the dot patterns random or the same every time?"

Our rule programmer Joe had the answer: "When the game is in tournament mode the dots will be the same every time, otherwise they're random". And I loved seeing people's faces when he answered that, great response.

Both Joe and Brian are tournament players. And not to take anything away from Brian, but Joe is a killer. We were playing 4 player games in the free play area and he was beating all of our scores combined! Man can flip a pin.

They both understand that this game needs to be fun for everyone, first time players will dig what they can do, but if you're looking to learn scoring strategies and really blow up the machine they're ready for that too. And if you put it in tournament mode it will have everything you'd expect to keep the game fair from player to player. That's all being thought through.

And these guys are good. Joe is going to make sure the rules are fun to flip, and if something isn't right he'll adjust it. I had total confidence in them before Expo, but I have even more now that I've played with them. We're sweating the details.

I wasn't following Alien too much before expo. Out of all the games I've seen, I'm most excited about Alien. Keep up the good work.

ahhh Bay78 has an alien shirt now !

This next week in particular is going to be a busy one in Wales as we start making those revisions; taking on board the feedback, making improvements and fixing things that aren't 100-percent right yet. The airlock is going to constructed differently from the more plasticy demonstration version, with a metal endoskeleton; the orbit diverter will be implemented and secondary magnet made fully functional, which will improve flow to the upper right flipper; and the platforms will be reworked for rigidity, easier construction and the inclusion of fibre-optic lighting and potential flashers and spotlights. As far as the shots go, the game is complete; we had one or two minor issues there related to the playfield, but were able to solve them before the show and get the overall feel of the game as solid as a rock.

this game looks fantastic! I passed on a 2 b/w games for a Full Trottle trade a couple of months back...I am starting to regret that after seeing these pics and hearing more about Alien

I also give kudos and props to those in the industry, especially guys on the heighway team, TBL team, the Spooky guys, etc for putting themselves out there to design and produce the next generation of pinballs. Bringing games still in development to allow the pinball community to give open suggestions and criticisms of their work takes great courage.

I wasn't around in the late 80s and 90s during the last pinball heyday..but did those companies and designers share their works with the world while they were working on them, or did they just do it and release when they thought it was done?

Aliens has caught my eye and the HP platform is one that may make me a customer at some point down the road...if not sooner!

I've noticed in some of the pictures from the show it looks like the LCD is showing a basic schematic of the Playfield with certain areas highlighted as if it were trying to tell you what you should be trying to accomplish next. Is that happening during play or part of a tutorial?

Is there a lot of that and how is that working out? Does it just flash for a brief moment or stay for a few seconds so you can recognize a strategy? Having that kind of information presented right above the flippers on an LCD has me excited.

I'll admit playing pins I'm unfamiliar with I often feel overwhelmed with what Im supposed to be doing to get deeper and end up draining while I'm searching for clues during play.

Was asked earlier in the thread, but how is the blade art attached? My plan is to go for an Alien Standard and add some options. Think the blade art looks cool, but if it is stuck to the sides it makes re-using the cabinet for future or FT game kits more problematic.

and happier I could not be. I'm loving the playfield, no bad drawings or pictures of the cast is a real bonus here, would have made the pin look childish.

I can't be happier with how the reveal went. Game looks spectacular and complaints are minor and, to be honest look like they are being manufactured by a few people who were ready to complain no matter what.
I don't drink the cliche beverage about anything, I am a small scale manufacturer myself, and am often wrong about a lot of things. I see no issues with the way things are unfolding, and continue to be impressed with the drip feed of information as things that are relevant are available to be made public. I also see absolutely no issue with things popping up unexpectedly that need to be addressed and the delays that are caused by that. I have experienced it too many times myself, while in a position of trying to do my best with little outside help, that when I see it happen to others I just think, "well good for them, the product is going to be better because of this".
My Alien order with FTH playfield attached is solid at this point, and now just counting down the days till it arrives. Good luck Heighway, with what I think will be an exciting 2017.

So, in life, sometimes it is best to live by the adage: "It is done when it is done." That being said, here's the question:

When does the game begin to actually ship (projected date now that Fox has given Heighway the "cleared hot" go ahead) ?

Also, can Standard Edition purchasers add optional hardware? For example, can someone purchasing an SE get the beacon lights and shaker motor if they want at an additional cost, or is it an "all or none" by buying an LE?

I looked all over the official page, but I could not find a clear answer.

Alien has been quite off my radar until now, so I'm sorry, but I'm not going to read 160+ pages at 50 posts each if the Heighway team is here to answer questions.

Thanks!

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I'm not an expert on the options, but I can answer this one, as far as I know you can buy any upgrades to the Standard that exist except the exclusive LE art package. You can add the toys like the beacons for sure.

Again, not an expert, not sure exactly how it works, but Andrew did say that the blade art is meant to be swappable exactly for the reason you mentioned. I don't think it's a concern at all, but someone else will have to mention the mechanical explanation when it comes to attaching.

That's the skill shot screen you saw. So you plunge, the ball drops to the right flipper, and there are 5 (I think) skill shots you can make. The schematic screen is showing you the skill shot location.

I have to agree..a minor piece, imho.....the game was immersive even with glitches, and a 70" LED sports screen glowing over the top of it. Imagine a weaker version, fully unfit, in a dark gameroom...shit!!!...the real deal here....I like the monsters !!!