LOL. Expand on what you *think*, and provide meaningful data on why you *think* it was lower "than usual."
What is the baseline, "usual?" What was this pins music set at? Once you have hard data, revisit question #1.

Did the ramp change get implemented yet?

And on the games shipping now? Thanks and great job guys

This i was not aware of, and sounds unprofessional and disappointing.

There is a middleground between that and dead flip's "yes man" attitude with stern.

Now I need to go watch and be nauseated by that review....

Has anyone been talking about the ridiculous shit Franci did with his "joke" to his Stern cohort/compatriot Yeti? Man, I'm so glad no one else in this industry behaves like that. It was embarrassing and truly unfunny, and so many other artists might have valued that TWIPY.

Umm, you might want to read this:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-twipy-pinball-awards-a-celebration-of-the-hobby-coming-soon/page/7#post-4902002

And this:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-twipy-pinball-awards-a-celebration-of-the-hobby-coming-soon/page/7#post-4902128

Well thank goodness for this. Frickin' hilarious! It didn't smell right that Franchi would do this maliciously

Thank you for the clarification. I definitely bought into it thinking it was an inside joke between the two of them, and a real trophy.

Doesn't mean it was funny though, at least to me anyway. Andy Kaufman, he is not.

Still rings to me of the overall "attitude" I feel from anyone representing Stern, smug and arrogant. Anyone not in on this inside "joke", would see this as a slight, and this is a small enough industry where more class than hijinks would do it well.

Oh well.

Assuming no?

Yes the change to the right ramp has been made, and was changed out on all games that had already left the factory, except for possibly the one at Pacman, as well as Ferret's and my development games. From the game play I saw, the right ramp performed great.

For those who like numbers, I pulled audits from the four games that were in our booth, a few highlights . . .

Avg game time was 4:38
Avg score was 168,366

The most played tent modes were:
juggling 21%
Duck Hunt 13%
Target Shooting 10%

Least played were:
Rotor 3%
Tap It 4%
Stein Race 5%

BTW, while you can continue to play a tent mode you have not yet won, starting Juggling to have a 2 ball multiball is not really going to score much unless you advance through it by adding the balls and getting to the win and re-lighting the shots

Most popular Steins:
Sloshed Rosh Lager -- easier to spell OKTOBERFEST 13%
Engler Pale Ale -- more time in tents 12%
Frosty Ferret -- Higher Beer Barrel MB jackpots 11%

Least Popular Steins:
Reclab Redrum Stout -- Easier to increase bonus 2%
Pin Wiz Pale Ale -- Increases pop bumper values 2%
Master Mystery Dark -- Increases spinner values 3%

Game Time Distribution
game times (resized).png

Scoring distribution
scoring breakdown (resized).png

How many plays per game average ...?

Agreed, After a long weekend curious the count on each machine and how many machines.

About the general illumination:

On friday night at TPF when the lights were down low, it seemed that Oktoberfest needed more general illumination.

It was pretty dark in the room for awhile.

A lot of games were dark and hard to see/play, including Munsters pro, not just Oktoberfest.

Much better when the room lights were up.

Might need to add some spot lights.

The monkey stein was not popular?

one of the machine had the back panel turned off since we were streaming it at times, which certainly made that one darker. But since we do a lot with mood lighting that can make it a bit darker at times.

the monkey stein has been moved to only be seen when the family friendly setting is set to "Off"

around 375 games, so at 4:38 means each machine had a ball in play for about 29 hours

Impressive

How has this never been done before?

Or has it, and I just overlooked it?

Screen Shot 2019-03-28 at 4.25.59 AM (resized).png

Whoa! Great idea!

Got a nice gift from a friend that went to TPF

20190328_061533 (resized).jpg

Does the topper come with the game or is it extra?

If it's like Houdini, it's extra.

https://www.pingraffix.com/ Joe had side blades and topper stuff for Octoberfest. Some that have the light show. At TPF. Looked great.

No idea if any come with game or not.

LTG : )

The lighted topper they had set up on that one game, looked really nice.

We got one out on route in Madison! Great game so far!

IMG_20190331_105729 (resized).jpg

Cool! Let us know your thoughts on its gameplay please.

Great idea!

Hilton and I sought out this game last night.

Layout is pretty fun, does feel a bit like Alien meets WOZ. The rollercoaster ball lock and release is awesome, the magnet that holds ball for upper right flipper is cool (should have an option for English voice countdown though). Playfield art looks fine in person. It feels properly packed like a JJP game or older Stern/BW.

LCD still awful. It's ugly, the text is small and the art style is a complete mishmash. Photorealistic people, then hand drawn people, then a badly animated CGI guy eating a sausage. Side view of rollercoaster cars with their fronts visible?

It's disappointing to see so much effort go into a playfield but so very little into animation and art.

I never thought about the alien reference but you're absolutely right. Flip ramp to the right, left ramp next to it, pop bumpers top right.....yes i know many pinballs are similar but alien is pretty unique - this seems to lend some from that. Interesting - never noticed. I always thought it looked interesting shot wise but a bummer to hear about the presentation still being so weak.

Great to see so many people out last night! There seemed to be a logic issue with the locks holding balls in-between games. Either Code or a flaky switch under an extremely specific circumstance. Will keep an eye on that, but in the meantime we just turned off holding balls in-between games in the settings. Some tweaking will be done on coil strengths and some settings to dial everything in, but the API setting suite makes all that a breeze.

So far the less hard core pinballers really love the machine, with the more serious players being more up in the air. Ben was musing the initial WOZ response was similar, and that makes alot of sense. It is definitely a complete 180 degrees difference in vibe and play than Alice Cooper, which is great in a route lineup.

We have some fun stuff in the works to promote both the ACNC and the Oktoberfest... Just have to survive MGC next weekend!

Those adjustments were last-minute additions, so it’s possible that there’s a lurking bug. If you’re able to provide any more specific info about what you saw, please let me know and I’ll try to repro and fix.

Thanks!

Oh, and I’ll be very interested to hear further feedback from those “more serious players” as they get more time on the game. The strategy of the steins provides SO many ways to approach the game, but most people aren’t gonna fully grok the possibilities in just a few plays.

We have our league tomorrow night. Ill keep an eye and see what happens. Unfortunately I was working away from the machines when the issue happened.

The combining Steins with Tent Modes is where the action will be for the more serious players. Our league and locations are much more geared to the social side, so I don't I don't expect to see too many people dive too deep right away.

Other than that one issue under that specific set of circumstances the game is playing great!

What was the issue with holding locks between games?

Make sure the clock on the system is accurately set, if an issue of note happens, note the precise time, and then pull logs at the end of the night and send them to us. Just plug in a USB stick with no game code on it into the USB extension cable on the right side of the cabinet inside the coin door. The logs will be dumped, takes just a few seconds.

I'll triple check everything today and set the game to hold locks in-between games and we will beat it up in warm-up before league proper. Shoot me a PM with an email address and we can take it off the forum if you would like.

my email is all over pinside . . .

[email protected]

Also in a 3 player game it skipped player three during one of the balls. Not sure if that was lock related.

One handed stein race could use an audio cue telling you to use the dual buttons. Maybe hold the mode until player has tapped second button so they realize what it does? Mode was cool!

Played one of these at cidercade in dallas. The shots are alright, but man those animations are terrible. I assume its beta software. I may be back there tonight, Ill put in a few more games.

yup, was a bad miss on the last round of voice call recording not to get that one done. I like the idea of 'confirming' you understand.

I haven't heard any indication they will be fixing the amateurish animations all over the game. It's really the main thing holding us back from bringing one in for the route. Just don't cut the mustard in the age of JJP and even Stern animation quality levels.

I'm a Houdini owner and have been eagerly awaiting the final Oktoberfest to see if I wanted to go in on one. I even sold a machine to fund a potential Oktoberfest purchase. However, I'm disappointed in the lack of response from API on the animations. It's clearly is a big issue for many potential buyers and yet there is no indication that API is going to listen to the feedback. There's really no excuse for the poor quality animations. I hate to be one of those "I'm out" people but I think I'm out. There's simply too many options out there competing for my money.

Back at cidercade this evening for some quality time with Oktoberfest.

The game shoots well. I like the flow. I get a WOZ feel from it a little.

The center shot for the vuk and the upper flipper to the ramp shot were kicking my ass. I was not able to start a barrel or corkskrew multiball....I set them both up multiple times and failed. Grr.

Im glad i saw ben’s comment about stein race. Thats a fun mode and i agree it needs a notice that its both buttons on the right.

I think all the modes need to have more explanation on the tent pages. I do not like how choppy the tent pages are to select between modes. Theyre slow and blurry when they move. Hurt my eyes to look at and they take forever to move.

The game started kicking two balls out and auto launching them at ball start if i rushed the bonus collect screen.

Again, the mode start pic is awful. I really hope this is a placeholder. It all needs a lot of love from a talented artist.

I had fun playing it, but nothing stood out.
A257E423-77B4-415B-B8D0-BC1464442642 (resized).jpeg511C7B99-962F-4362-9978-E8F9EA960CE5 (resized).jpeg02941BA4-7993-4439-B2E2-97FA2BC96773 (resized).jpeg

Couldn’t agree more....

Oktoberfest was my favorite game at TPF. I sure hope they fix this screen (copied from the previous post). It came up frequently (mode start, I think). It's one of the ugliest things I've ever seen in pinball (and I've seen a lot).

Image1.jpg

Looks like a bad youtube home video that was converted from 8mm to VHS to streaming content, all very badly.

If anyone sees any obvious bugs like this, please send as many details as possible to rosh and/or myself. If you own or operate the game, capture a log (Josh sent info about how to do this earlier in this thread), note the exact time of the problem (please set your machine's time in the service menu!), and send us the log. If you don't have access to the logs, no problem, just send us as much contextual information as possible to help us isolate the issue. I've played lots of 1, 2, 3, 4 player games and never seen that sort of bug, but certainly we are very concerned about any bugs and will eagerly fix them ASAP if we can reproduce them.

We're actively improving stuff like start-of-mode instructions with both on-screen text and callouts. (Even compared to the software at TPF last weekend, there have been tons of software improvements... TPF was 10 days ago, that's an eternity in software dev time. ) We've tried to be very consistent with shot lighting... tent mode shots are blue. Multiball jackpots are red. Food Stand features are pinkish-purple... etc. Also: during tent selection and tent intro animation, playfield lights will flash blue to indicate the selected tent's shots, letting you get a general idea of what a tent wants you to do even before you start it. Also also: for all tent modes, there is consistently an info bar on the bottom of the screen that tells you what to shoot for, and how many more thingies (usually "shots" but sometimes things like "spinner spins") are needed to win the tent. Once you win the tent, that strip disappears and is replaced by bursts of confetti signifying that you won the tent and are now collecting victory shots.

Ditto what I said to Ben above about logs and such. I double-flip to accelerate the bonus screen all the time and have never experienced the problem you describe, but we take bug reports seriously and will get them fixed if possible. (Although I'll be honest, I really like and am proud of the bonus screen and usually prefer to let it do its thing. )

Note that you do not need to wait for the animations to select modes, you can flipper-select as fast as you can. Personally, when I'm just playing and I'm choosing a tent, I watch the tent insert lights in the center of the playfield... the selected tent (the "cursor" if you will) flashes white, the left flipper moves counter-clockwise, and the right flipper moves clockwise. Strategic players will also note that tents you haven't played but for which you have that tent's stein will light in beer-amber (and the stein's logo will also show up on-screen during tent select)... since steins multiply tent scoring, that's often a good choice, but choose what works for you.

All of the screens shown by Chitownpinball and Paul_from_Gilroy are still being updated... the skill shot screen has already been improved, and the "zooming over the crowds in the tent" scene will be improved soon. We're certainly aware of areas that are not up to par. But just keeping it real... the entire animation package is not going to be scrapped and redone. We hope people will appreciate the overall game for what it's meant to be, which is playful, silly, fun... y'know, a festival. With a playful, silly, fun art style. And with lots of interesting shots and interesting rules to keep players coming back for more.

It reminds me of bad windows games from the 90’s where you would have to put a new disc in every 20 minutes to keep playing.

As for the animation style. I see what you guys are going for, but I dont think youve quite gotten there yet.

I think the flat people and animations would look a lot better if you adopted a monty python style of animating. Stiff people and objects with anchor points at the joints to make all the characters like puppets might spice up the scheme of things. Even if the lady and man holding the beer had a little movement to them, something to spice up those scenes. A jolly rocking or swaying to the music.

The fonts are a bit small as well, and I thought the bonus screen looked like powerpoint. The art scheme just needs polish. You guys went for max gameplay on this one. The digital art needs to catch up.

Like I said, the game shoots pretty well. The shots arent redicilously hard. The only gameplay/flow gripe I have is that when the roller games magnet grabs the ball (which seemed like a lot) it looks like a hang up under the spinner. I kept checking the first couple games to see what was going on before I noticed the magnet. I also tried rushing the release of the ball multiple times by pressing both flippers but it didnt always work.

More suggestions:

Have both the right-side buttons activate both flippers at all times (so you could always play one handed if you wish) Add some art/text calling this a feature "Drink while you play!" Maybe the first time player hits the lower button have a callout "Hey, I could use my other hand to drink!" to really reinforce the idea before Stein mode. But just once per game so it doesn't become "SHOOT THE PYRAMID!"

In addition to voice callouts saying "hit both of the right hand buttons!" show a photo of it onscreen (like JJP does with the Start button) and a flashing arrow EXTRA FLIPPER BUTTON. Remember many people can't even find the Start button let alone this.

Add "negative reinforcement" if player presses left button during mode. "No, only use the buttons on the right!" That way they don't think the button/flipper is broken (as I first did)

In "Tapper" video mode, use the right hand buttons for the movement and the left for pour action.

I’m just frustrated by the tone deafness on the animations. API has gotten a ton of feedback going back to Houdini on the perceived deficiencies in the cohesiveness of the art and animation. I’m okay with the art but the animations are really terrible and yet there appears to be no recognition of the problem.

I can’t help but feel if Spooky can bring terrific animation to ACNC that it could be within the the development budget to contract with an up and coming animator to bring your animations into the modern era.

If you are going to put a large LCD screen on a pin you should be prepared to put something on it to make the game shine and bring the game to life. You’d be better off getting rid of the animations and focus on high quality still images otherwise they’re a distraction from the quality of the package. I’m being critical because I’m a fan of API and want to see you succeed. Everyone is bitching about the quality of the animations so listen.

The extra button on the right is for the player controlled magnets, so can't always be the left flipper. However, there is a setting to be able to play the entire game one handed. We are evaluation an option where at start of game you could hold in both buttons for a couple of seconds before pressing start to put the game into one handed mode vs via settings. My gut says that it would be unlikely for someone to do that by mistake, but would likely be a setting to disable that feature as well.

We have discussed that on Tap-It, but felt that moving left and right is more intuitive with the flippers on either side. Like most video modes, takes a few times to get the feel for what you need to do.

Btw, you can also use the extra button when doing high score entry to move and down through the letters.

While I am sure I will get blasted for what I am about to say, I don't feel that is a fair statement. As you know we listen to all feedback and have demonstrated that we will adjust what we are doing. We continue to strive to make our animations better. While not all will agree, I think what we have done on Oktoberfest is better than what we did on Houdini. I think each company is finding ways to get better with each release. I'm confident that we will do on our next game will be even better. As Ferret indicated, we are still actively working on the Oktoberfest animations and will continue to do so (game logic is in the home stretch). I've had animators from multiple companies comment to me that they feel the criticism of our animations is out of line with what we have done, there is a lot of good stuff on our display, but I get there is a desire to criticize and our animations are not yet where we would like them to be, so I'm not surprised by the hate. The general consensus is we provide a lot of game for the money. There are always tradeoffs, we are not selling machines at 9k or 11K, we try to allocate resources to get our buyers the most game for the money and at the same time build a profitable company. Regardless, we will continue to improve everything we do, so we can provide loaded games, with a great experience for the lowest price we can. As many of you have experienced, our games are extremely well built, have fun and challenging rules, have unique layouts, and give you a lot for the money. I'm pretty pleased with what we have produced, I understand not everyone will be.

Again, we do listen to all feedback, and we do take it to heart. I'm sure my comments will not sit well with some, I've got my flame retardant suit on, so, keyboard warriors, ready, set, go . . .

I am surprised by it.

I am also surprised by the haters hate for Houdini.

I find the animations campy, fun and very game-like.

Hate on. Haters!

"Haters gotta hate..." lol

I really like what you guys are doing. I get it.

I love Houdini. It's an amazing game, getting better and better with all the updates.

I can see that Oktoberfest will be even more amazing!

The non-stop long lines at TPF for Oktoberfest tells me it's a hit!

Great job API