The thing with the P3 it has always a bit of a chicken and the egg conundrum. You need a large enough embedded base of titles to attract designer/developers or other companies to develop games for the platform and you need enough game content to get buyers to see the full benefits of the P3 and to fully understand the model.

It certainly seems that Weird Al might be the tipping point. Not because it as a licensed title, although that certainly helped bring more eyeballs, but because we have now seen multiple fully developed feature rich games. We know that Scott Danesi dis music on a game for the P3 platform, that speaks volumes. Given these recent advancements, I am now on the wait list for a P3. The fact they now have a pretty big backlog is indicative of this tipping point. Could other companies turn to the P3 to develop games, would not shock me.

I mis-spoke, it was music on Weird Al that he was doing, with Michael on code on that game. Guess I should drink coffee before I post.

This would be great theme, just not sure it is well known enough. Always enjoyed watching it with my daughter and heard they are new episodes on the way.

One of the reasons I got on the list, was not because of weird Al, but because of what might be next or next after that. I've been watching p3 for years, it is clear it has reached that tipping point where more and more 'content' is being created, heck, you now have a second company making modules, so I am confident they will have games I want. While I have not been a NIB buyer, the modular approach would make it more affordable to add new titles and I figured I better get in line now, since even if they beef up production, that line is probably going to grow as they announce more titles. If they are doing two modules in 2023, seems like I will have more choices for modules when my machine is finally being built.

Glad i got in line for my base unit a few months ago, before all you double dippers started jumping back in and before the haunted house party 2 tease.

If a P4 every happened, I suspect Gerry would do what ever he could that existing P3s could upgrade to a P4. You see that now with other improvements they have done. I would say that is probably part of the whole modular nature of it. Time will tell, meanwhile I still have probably six months before I get mine -- Gerry said they were beefing up the production team, but does not seem they have reduced the wait time, but that is likely due to people getting in line faster than they can add staff.

Very true, It is pretty wild how there were no rumors of Weird Al coming or Final resistance, where every other game in the industry is talked about for months before release. Although maybe this is backwards, maybe rumors get those games made, so, if that is the case, I heard the next P3 is Seinfeld, but my buddy said he heard it is Shawshank redemption (can you say "Andy escapes Multiball"), but his wife said she heard it is Golden Girls.

Somehow we had an oversized ball at AP that got mixed in with the rest, must have been some left over jpop thing, that we first discovered when working on the first Houdini prototype and balls were getting stuck in trough. Took a while to realize what was going on as we first assumed a trough issue. I kept the ball and when new lab people would come on board, at some point I would drop it in a game just to mess with them.

I came up with that button positioning as I felt it was easier as it does not require you to move your hands or change your normal hand and finger position. But some felt the more “traditional” front and back would be better. I hated the extra button WCS for the magnet grab, as it was too far apart and rarely used and did not work well so it became not used. Regardless, stand by the decision.

With all extra button games, it does not take some time to train the brain and fingers to use them, they do give more control. It would be interesting to see alternative boxes with different placement and/or single button staged for those whose can’t or refuse to adjust. Of course that will result in dozens of new posts to debate each designs pros and cons, because that is what we do.

Someone needs to head over to the 3D printing thread …

I do 99% of my development on a Mac. and 1% on windows, reason being that the version of unity the platform prefers, does not run on my Mac, so I use a slightly different version and then use the windows machine to be sure things work correctly.

On princess Bride I did most of game development in the simulator.

The most important thing to me when working on a game is balance. There are so many aspects of the game play you need to balance whether it is for skill level, scoring, energy, etc and that also applies to how you use the playfield features. We always want to leverage everything a module and the platform offer, but that also means finding the right balance and not over using things. Ball detection on screen is really cool, but the p3 is not a one trick pony so not like we have to do a ton with it on every game, sometimes less is more.

But if you want a lot of screen interaction then as MOcean points out there are a few games that use it extensively. I like to play DDD for exactly that reason

Check that your End of stroke switches are working.