Wow, lots to answer here today.

I'm seeing a lot of concerns about this, so we will be looking into it. Since most of you are pointing at XM for the example fix, I'd really appreciate if an XM owner could send me a pic of what it is you're all talking about so I can at least get an idea of what it is.

No, I don't. "Programmer's hours" is what I call it

No, you're not the only one, but it has been fixed as of a few minutes ago. Anyone who was having troubles before can now use it without a problem.

Newest deposits are necessary ASAP to start the build process.

While I did say earlier that I don't particularly like the idea because of the heavy amount of waitlisters we have, I would be lying if I said it wasn't at least mildly flattering. We can control it to a certain extent, but people will be able to get around it with some mild effort and it would be too taxing to attempt to police it. I don't mean to point fingers or call attention to Kaneda, but he started a thread offering $6k for one and a matter of days later he was in the Info Thread stating that he, in fact, had a horse in the race. That kind of interest in our game shows that we are definitely doing something right, and I hope Kaneda loves the game he's getting (welcome to the party, btw). Seeing it listed in the price guide for a measly $250 over cost was cool to see last year, so if they start moving on PinSide for 7k or 8k after they're out there would be a huge compliment to the machine, in my eyes.

I'd also like to point out that in the video, that clip is shown at like 25% speed (slo-mo), so the effect is visually heightened by quite a bit. The mild flexing of the ramp is intentional to save the ramp from cracking at the impact zone, and we have had zero issues with it in the past. Granted the most use we've seen out of any set of ramps we've had has been about 1500~2000 plays, so we will be testing it in-house in a controlled environment for a while to see if we can get it to break.

The video was meant to be more of an announcement than a gameplay run, so by those definitions it did its job by bringing attention to all of the changes and fixes that were made. I'm going back to the workshop in a day or two to button up a few things on some other projects before we hit the road for Louisville, so doing a more gameplay-centered video shouldn't be too much to ask. I'll see if I can get the camera we used to shoot the UV playfield a few months ago, as well, to better capture that effect while in play.

The deposit call is something of a "soft" now. We've done a TON of logistics to make sure that everything can be achieved by giving everyone as large of a window as possible, but July or August is definitely a ways off. We haven't set an exact cutoff date for it yet, but it won't be long at all before it becomes absolutely necessary to continue with the build. If you were waiting for something of a heads-up to start making room and such, that is definitely upon us.

I hear eating an ice cream cone helps in this department

I may have mentioned this before, but I'm pretty sure a lot of these questions are coming up from the recent ACDC Luci and WoZ 75th announcements. As blondetall stated pretty succinctly, this will not happen with any Predator of any kind.

Glow-in-the-dark surfaces use certain types of phosphors to glow by storing the energy given off by light's lower wavelengths usually around the 320nm-405nm range. Most light gives off this range along with much higher ranges that are visible to a naked eye, but the UV lights in the machine emit at 365nm, which is pretty much the middle of that window. What this means for glow-in-the-dark stuff is they immediately emit their brightest when exposed to the UV light instead of requiring a charge. As a nice side-effect, the UV light charges glow-in-the-dark objects extremely quickly compared to normal, say, fluorescent light, so after a few hunts you see a visible difference in their effect when the UV lights aren't active. (IFLS)

Looking into the skull drop as I mentioned, and I honestly haven't noticed much bounce-back from the ramp exits. I'll have to take a closer look at that, as well, as you mentioned, that is a big pet-peeve of mine.

There's a lot to be taken on faith in this project for sure, but with Hopper in that position he ALWAYS has a very slight movement due to the mechanics of the machine, almost like a light sway, and when the game is nudged he has almost like a bouncing movement and it works out very well for the effect when you are the one nudging the game. It have also just now, at this exact moment, realized the irony that General Hopper actually "hops" in this game. That's pretty funny.

I didn't even know that video was taken, but I certainly wouldn't have made the owner of it keep it to himself. I don't know who CraZ4Pin is, but he referred to me by my non-professional name and was in Brighton, so we surely know each other. Going on just the high-score initials, I'm going to guess it's my boy Tim Fife. Did I get it right?

Booya! Can't wait for the show and the weather

These posts are coming in quicker than I can reply, so I'll come back in a bit to finish up.