Already done! Skill shot: plunge to left inlane, then hit right ramp repeatedly for big points until you miss.

Of course, that ramp also feeds the inlane (the only shot that's always immediately available to do so) to award progress on T-E-N-T letters for either starting a tent or adding time to the current tent... and it's an award shot in multiballs and several tent modes.

Not gonna lie, that inlane skill shot is hard. But it's worth some points just for the inlane, and then if you can get a few hits on that right ramp, you can have a few hundred thousand points right off the bat, so definitely fast point potential if you make it.

And yes, if you have a lot of calories, they can massively boost jackpot values in Beer Barrel and Corkscrew multiballs (even more so with the "Higher Jackpots" steins, of course!). Also note that you can bring a Food Stand mode into a multiball -- the base jackpot is locked in when you start the multiball, but playing a multiball with a Food Stand is a great way to rack up calories for upcoming multiballs.

OK, sorry about the Oktoberfest detour, y'all get back to speculation and hype...

If I may suggest, if y'all see Casey Butler hanging around the show, please give him an attaboy, buy him a beer, whatever -- this is his first pin, and he has done a killer job.

Later enemy tanks have shields -- while fighting those, the tank magnet can actually deflect the ball before it reaches the targets. Doesn't always happen (thankfully, else you could never defeat those tanks ) but when it does, it's kind of a "WTH?" moment wondering what just happened.

Sure, happy to help: yes, you like this game so far.

Seriously, I'm glad to answer any questions about the game itself, but I have no idea where/when HD gameplay videos will be available.

Rules-wise, the strong majority of the code is there now. Where we still need to make progress is in the choreography. As you may have heard, this game has a HUMONGOUS number of assets, and doing a really pleasing job with A/V/L is actually quite a bit harder than implementing game rules. We'll be continuing to refine the presentation -- and of course polishing everything, notably including score balancing.

As far as depth... in keeping with Dennis' vision for the game, this is not a game where you need encyclopedic knowledge of the rules to understand what's going on. This game is about a bunch of relatively simple things that weave together to bring you deeper and deeper into the environment that Dennis has envisioned ... some of those things even happening on their own, not in response to anything you've done, which gives an element of surprise. (Cow-abducting UFOs keep to their schedule, not yours! ) So the effect is that you start off thinking you're playing a relatively simple game, and next thing you know, bunches of things are moving and flashing and zapping all around the playfield, so much that you don't even know what to focus on. It's depth created by the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. The nice thing about this approach is that players of many skill levels should have a shot at getting that everything-going-wild experience -- not only players who know how to and are good enough to set up the multi-feature stack.

Folks who've gotten some plays on the game will know what I'm talking about.

The center up-post was working fine on the game. I’m sure it was not easy to see on the stream, since it just moves vertically, and the camera was directly overhead.

Also, I don’t know if there were any airballs off the tank targets… perhaps, but it was certainly not an ongoing problem if there were any.

Thanks to One iPod One Pinball, and Ocelot Brewing Company for hosting the stream tonight, and thanks to all of you who watched. If you’re near Dulles, VA, the game is on the floor there, stop by and check it out. If you have any questions about anything, feel free to ask, I’ll do my best to answer.

Thanks!

There is an adult mode, but it’s nothing earth shattering. If turned off, some of the risqué quotes get omitted. Someone in tonight’s stream described it as PG-13, which is probably realistic.

Ummmm... they did no such thing.

There are two game situations in particular -- Berries mission, and during the Victory Laps phase of Air Strike Multiball -- where it is immensely valuable to use the diverter to keep sending the ball to the right flipper, so you can loop the ramp as quickly / as often as possible.

There are plenty of other situations that aren't as time-critical, but where diverting the ball properly is helpful. For example, if the ball is on the right flipper, and you need the left inlane to qualify a mission, you shoot the ramp and use the diverter button to ensure the ball will flow to the left side, so you can light the inlane and then immediately shoot the right VUK to start the mission.

It's never "required" to use it, but it certainly can help.

If you're wondering how to know where the ball will go: as soon as you shoot the ramp entry, either the left or right side backplane flasher will start flashing: this tells you which side the ball will return to. Pressing the diverter button switches to the other side.

We've also discussed some other potential uses of the extra button which may appear in later code releases.

Friends, just keeping it real: "any semblance of safety" is really not the motto of the Galactic Tank Force. If your idea of a good time in pinball is every shot returning for a clean feed and clean trap on a flipper, GTF is probably not the game for you.

On GTF, to make real progress in the game, you'll need to make dangerous shots. Attacking the tank can be lucrative, and quite fun, but those rebounds can be vicious. Protecting the cows from UFO abductions can be lucrative, and quite fun, but those rebounds can be chaotic. The side target banks (Flank Advance) boost features all around the playfield for the duration of the game, but you're not getting a clean feed from those shots either.

Dennis Nordman was very clear from day 1 that he did not want this to be a game dominated by encyclopedic rules knowledge and wood-chopping ball control. He wanted it to be about crazy and fun pinball. I think we've delivered on his desires. The knowledgable and skilled player is still going to have an edge, of course, but players will be reacting to chaos much more than in many other modern games. This also means that when you fire this machine up for a game, it's not going to be a predictable and methodical progression. Sometimes you'll kick the game's butt, but sometimes -- perhaps a lot of times -- the game will kick your butt. And that's pretty fun.

I'm sorry that I was unable to participate in tonight's Dead Flip stream -- it was league night for me! -- but huge thanks to Jack Danger for hosting... he is a great guy and a true ambassador for the game of pinball, and I'm delighted to give him props for Foo Fighters, which is a super fun game. Hope y'all enjoyed the stream, and please fire away with any questions!

Nope, no one knows.

Completing the central left and right "Flank Advance" target banks award a bunch of good stuff, including advancing the Missile Strike awards on the outlanes and under-flipper lanes. As you keep making progress on those target banks, the outlane/under-flipper lane awards advance from point awards to ball save + feature awards to ball save + feature + multiball. Some of this code is "coming soon". Observant fans of The Walking Dead should see hints of how this will be going down ... I think people will be happy with the final results.

We are aware that there are currently some score balancing issues. These will be fixed.

American Pinball is fortunate to have several people on staff who really, really care about competitive pinball, including Steve Bowden, Ryan McQuaid, and myself. We won't finalize games if we're not happy with the risk/reward.

(I don't even wanna talk about whatever happened towards the end of the stream with Cow-a-Bongo ... it's basically a mini-wiz, it's meant to be valuable, but I have no idea where the sudden eruption of billions of points came from. That's not the plan. We will figure that out. Sorry.)

(Oh, right, I should be saying: ALL SCORES 10X TO CELEBRATE NATIONAL FERRET DAY THIS PAST WEEKEND!)

Score balancing: yes, we're focusing on that.

Center save pop up: already works. It's a fine line between "helping you out" and "almost no risk attacking the tank"... and I think we're already pretty good there, though we will still tune more.

Dubstep or not: not my universe. Rock on, Dennis...

Hi folks... Just some general feedback on the comments du jour...

- Yep, shooting the tank can be dangerous, but there's no reason to avoid it, just play it smart. Y'all know how angles work in pinball: it'll be safer to aim for the outer targets to reduce the chance of the ball rocketing back SDTM. The scores for attacking the tank keep increasing the more shots you make on it in a ball, so it can get quite lucrative. You also have the option to shoot the "Charge Methane" shots around the playfield to charge up your Methane Blaster for a do-or-die insta-kill shot!

- The game's shots aren't really overloaded to one side or the other, because there are so many options for playing the game. You can focus on tank battles. You can focus on ice cream missions. You can go for Air Strike Multiball. You can be Defender of the Cows and fight UFOs every chance you get. You can work on advancing your flank units to power up features all around the game. Heck, you could even just shoot the pops to go for Meltdown and Quantum Accelerator. Go for a different approach every game, have fun with it!

- Re: the ball lock issues on the Dead Flip stream ... the machine was examined this morning, and they found something was out of alignment on the lock mech. Sounds like something probably got whacked while transporting the game to Jack's studio, since it was working fine right before leaving the API factory. Really unfortunate that the Demo Gods decided to throw lightning bolts at the game, but certainly not normal, as people know from games at the shows or on location.

- I saw a few comments about "placeholders"... not sure where that's coming from. I think the only "placeholders" in the game right now are A/V for some of the final wizard modes, and I didn't think anyone made it to those on the stream.

- The overhead light bars do NOT need to be removed to lift the playfield.

I appreciate all the kind words from folks, and (believe it or not) even appreciate constructive criticism. (True story: at shows and tournaments, sometimes people come up to me and say "Hey, you worked on Game X, right? That's so cool, I love that game!" I'll often respond like: "Thank you so much, I appreciate it! Hey, what is your least favorite feature of Game X?" Definitely catches them off guard, which is kind of the point -- it can be a great start to a really insightful conversation.)

Thanks!

Any scenes playing while the ball is being held should be double-flippable if you don't want to watch them.

We do have a bunch of these callouts, including time-remaining alerts when your mission timer is running low. As TPF approached, there were a few instances where multiple speech clips were stepping on each other, so rather than debut that lousy experience, we turned off some of these callouts temporarily. They'll be back soon.

I'm very sorry you feel that way. If you can spare a moment, I would welcome a DM letting me know how my messages are a huge turn-off, and how I can improve.

Yep, there is a secret skill shot that uses this (full plunge around the orbit -> bottom pop bumper) and there may be a couple other similar situations lurking.

Thanks to RobertWinter and La4s for the thoughtful reviews from actual gameplay!

LOL... that's not supposed to be a visible setting. You can ignore it. It's part of calibrating the physical tank mechanism that rocks the tank and operates the robot figure. If it's misadjusted, the tank mech might make an annoying noise. Nothing more exciting than that, I'm afraid.

Rookie, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Colonel, General, Major General

Right?! But who knows, it's still early days, sometimes fun little extras get added later...

I get it. Not gonna lie -- some of the things over the past couple weeks have left me shaking my head, too. None of us can do anything about the missteps, what's done is done. Fortunately, none of those things affect how the pinball machine plays. I encourage people to just clear your head, find the game at a show or on location, and play it for awhile. There's a good chance you'll have a fun time!

Yes, the software defaults to Audio knocker, because it does not know if a knocker is physically connected, so defaulting to Audio ensures people will hear something.

Currently the knocker is only used for replay, but we'll add in some of the other uses of the knocker during gameplay that American Pinball is known for.

ESPECIALLY not Oktoberfest!

Some other pins celebrate a media property's 20th or 50th anniversary. The 200 year old Oktoberfest says "hold my beer".

And this Fall, when Oktoberfest festivals pop up near you as they do every year (in a brilliant bit of marketing by American Pinball), you'll find beer and food and music and rides and midway games -- just like the Oktoberfest pin.

Damn nice collection, @Gribbs, even if it's imaginary.

This makes me sad to hear. I'm taking your entire note and passing it along to the production team. No idea why there were so many problems, but clearly that is not what is intended -- hopefully they can use this as a checklist to tighten up QC.

A few remarks on things that I can speak to:

Yes, we're aware that there are still some of these -- cleaning them up as quickly as we can.

There is.

We examined this after there were some crazy high Cow-a-Bongo scores on the Dead Flip stream a couple weeks ago. At least on that machine, it turned out that the swinging target was gapped too tightly, so it was triggering itself repeatedly while swinging ... that does result in scores that wildly exceed expectations. I believe production has been made aware of that, so hopefully they'll test that switch adjustment better on the line.

After it fails to eject a few times, it switches to a chaos mode of attempting ejects, trying different timing and strengths until it works. I've never seen it completely unable to succeed, but it can take a bunch of attempts. (If someone DOES experience it getting into a situation where it never frees the balls, I'd welcome a photo, so I can try to reproduce the exact situation -- thanks!)

Tommy-dog — I can’t PM you, but if you or your buddy email me at ferret (at) americanpinball.com with the details of the problem, including the ticket number, I’ll try to find out what’s going on.

Thanks!

Thanks for the update, @tommy-dog.

I hope you and your friend both love the game. Thanks for your support.

If you're going to talk about objective data, use the correct objective data.

AFM's "force field" bank is several inches farther from the flippers than GTF's tank targets, no question.

However, the width of AFM's 3-bank of "force field" targets is almost exactly the same width as GTF's 5 tank targets. I just measured them both -- about 3.75" wide. A quick look at playfield pictures immediately shows why this is: AFM's force field uses 3 square targets, while GTF's tank uses 5 narrow rectangular targets. Works out to be the same overall width.

If you include AFM's "T" and "I" targets as part of that "wall" (which is reasonable since they're in a line with the "force field"), then AFM's "wall" is much wider than GTF's.

We continue to tune the score balance (i.e. the risk/reward factor) to make sure that attacking the tank is a fun and rewarding thing to do.

It's true, there's no real point in measuring dimensions of playfield elements. PLAY THE GAME. Learn the angles. GTF will feel fast and furious. If you like a fast and furious style of play, great, please enjoy! If you'd rather play it safer -- you can charge up your Methane Blaster by making other shots in the game. When the Methane Blaster is charged, you can shoot for a one-shot insta-kill on the tank. Obviously still not "risk free", but what is in pinball? (Pro tip: a Methane Blaster kill is more valuable than a kill by attrition ... so the big risk, big reward strategy is to pummel the tank targets until it's close to death, and then Methane Blast it for bigger points.)

And if you've played GTF and it's just not for you... we're sorry to hear that. Hopefully you'll enjoy American Pinball's other games, past and future.

GTF Owners Club thread:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/galactic-tank-force-owners-club-get-your-ice-cream-here

None of the new releases of the past several months are on IPDB. No GTF, no Foo Fighters, no Godfather, no Scooby Doo, etc. The managers of that site don't put much energy into it anymore.

The most recent GTF code release should be more aggressive about trying to eject balls from the right VUK when a couple get jammed in there ... if you're not finding that to be the case, please let me know.

The upcoming GTF code release (expected in a week or so) will allow more power on the center post, to help push it up on machines where there might be some friction between the post and the playfield wood.

As for code lockups -- the only reset or lockup I'm currently aware of is if Tournament Mode is turned on; this will be fixed in the upcoming release. If anyone has other resets or lockups on their GTF, please DM with as many details as you can -- include logs with date/time info if that's available to you -- and we'll try to get 'em fixed!

Thanks.

As I believe has been mentioned before: something changed with the production parts that were received. I've had a whitewood GTF since August, with who knows how many hundreds or thousands of plays in that time, and my tank targets are nice and straight. Same is true with other test machines in the American Pinball factory. It is not clear what is different with the targets that were received for production games, but that is exactly what the production team is trying to figure out, to hopefully avoid a repeat of the problem.

The "stadium" lights are single color for the whole strip, not a bunch of individually controllable LEDs, so there won't be any chase effects.

That said, for all of the controversy around this game, I don't think I've seen anyone complain that the light shows aren't spiffy enough.

Your daughter does great work BallyKISS1978 !!

Hey, @tommy-dog, if you (or anyone else) are having any lockups or serious bugs, please capture logs and send them to me at ferret <at> americanpinball.com. I don't believe anyone else has reported what you describe, so we need to figure out what's going on with your game.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

AFAIK, no parts are "lower quality" in the Deluxe vs the LE or Signature. Same playfields, same pinball components. Just more "bling" on the higher trims, obviously including the tank cabinet.

Can’t upvote the previous post enough. We’re all here to have fun. Hopefully people are having fun with GTF, whether it’s your game of choice for the next month, year, or decade. And if you’re not having fun with it, I’m truly sorry, hope there’s another game that rocks your world, and maybe we’ll catch ya next time.

Seriously, y'all, now you're just generating drama. I don't speak on Dennis' behalf, but I'd guess that it just may not be as appealing as it once was to hit the road and spend days standing on the concrete floors of noisy convention centers. I suspect you'll see him at Pinball Expo in Chicago in October.

It was due this week... and should still happen this week, assuming nothing blows up that isn't supposed to blow up.

Hmmm, I thought those alternate fighter scenes were only in the upcoming code... are you playing a test game?

No, sorry, for now we’re continuing with standard USB thumb drive for updates.

What code issue questions have we dodged?

Unfortunately, questions like "what percent complete is the code?" or "when will the code be completed?" really aren't very useful.

Take the "percent complete" question -- what metric would one use to measure that? Lines of code? For a lot of reasons, that's pretty meaningless to players and game owners (pretty meaningless to developers, too). So maybe you base the percentage on a feature list? That's not very meaningful either -- for example, "implement bonus X rule" and "implement final wizard mode" might both be line items on a high-level feature list of a game, but those features probably have very different impacts on dev time and effort, and very different impacts on players' day to day experience with the game.

You also have to think about the modern evolution of games. Let's say that yesterday the dev team for Game X announced "the code is currently 90% complete" (based on whatever metric they decided to use). Today, that team decides "you know, we should really add a bonus feature when the player collects 10 Thingies". Oops... that changes the denominator of the percentage -- the measurement of "what is completeness?" -- and now the code is only, say, "85% complete". Is the code somehow worse than it was yesterday? No; it's literally the same code. The team just decided to enhance the product spec based on their observations, or customer feedback, or whatever. I suspect most people would prefer their games to evolve and improve over time, not be static because they're beholden to some arbitrary "X% complete" number.

None of this is unique to this company, or this industry. I can't remember ever seeing a "code completeness percentage" reported to customers for iOS, or for Microsoft Word, for example.

My belief is that people should buy games that they enjoy at the present time. Even if a company tells you "the code is 80% done, and it should be completed on December 31"... well, you might not even like the future changes. Or maybe that last 20% of unfinished code is a wizard mode that you seldom if ever reach, so it doesn't affect you much anyway. But if you like the game today, then buy it, enjoy it, and maybe it'll keep improving for months and years to come... and if not, at least you already have a game that you like!

[As always, I am not an official corporate spokesman for American Pinball or any other pinball company -- what I write is only my opinions.]

That was absolutely not what was intended, and if you or anyone took it that way, I apologize. I actually reviewed the wording of my post a few times specifically to avoid that perception, but I guess I still didn't succeed at that.

The point of my post was not to critique the question, but to explain why it's a very difficult question to answer in a useful way, which is why we (and other companies) are reluctant to give an answer. Not trying to be evasive or dismissive, just that almost any answer could be misinterpreted. It's really a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

Very relevant point, I think. It was pretty unusual prior to, say, 2005 for pins to get major field updates, except for critical bugs that could impede a game's ability to make money on location. There were a few isolated exceptions -- TZ 9.x and CV 2.0 come to mind -- that were done as passion projects, and are generally loved by owners and players. Nowadays, updates like that are more common, and usually built into the product lifecycle by the manufacturer.

Also, my job description at American Pinball is all about "rules design" and "code implementation and debugging" and stuff like that -- not "marketing", not "public relations", not "corporate communications" -- which is why I put the disclaimer that I really do not speak for the company. Realistically, if I was smart, I would just keep my mouth shut on forums... but far more people have told me they appreciate the interaction, than have told me they don't want me to participate. And I'm proud of the games we've produced, so it's fun for me to talk about them.

Will you be exhibiting your homebrews at Pinball Expo next month, @MrBigg? I would love to check out your work and talk shop.