Frome
Quoted from Rdoyle1978:Oof. Those are some long odds... chance of new game 1:10000. Chance of lots of smoke & mirrors? 100%
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Alice in Wonderland
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Celts
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Zidware Pinball USA, 2012
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Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland (Arcade Edition)
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Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland (Xtra Edition)
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Quoted from chad:With all the hype, will it include self cleaning playfield??
Joking aside, there are such things as self-repairing "smart coatings" that can also repel dirt. It poses some questions like; How expensive would it be to coat an entire playfield in it? Would it offer protection against pitting as opposed to just scratches? etc
It's something that hasn't been done in pinball yet... but it might prove to be too expensive to implement regardless of it being a new "innovation".
1 week later
Quoted from Shapeshifter:And getting used to scoring Millions on the woodrails!
On a serious note, I think it is basic psychology that higher scores make people feel better, so they play more.
AFM, looking at you
It's quite easy to fix "low score" games by simply adding a decimal to the existing point value and then multiplying up. That avoids "high" scores with loads of 000s at the end.
Quoted from Drewscruis:Looking closer at this build. I hope the 3d printed parts (Ferris wheel,atomic shop sign) are replaced with injection molded parts. This machine seems like it was rushed.
It's too expensive and time-consuming to mass-produce 3d printed parts. Almost certainly this was just for fast prototyping.
2 months later
Did someone mention Battlestar Galactica?....
In all seriousness though I'm not sure if that's a theme with enough of a fanbase anymore. Then depending on if you're an original series or RDM remake fan the mythology and therefor gameplay would be vastly different.
A772108B-9E5F-40A2-978C-60EC306A0A3C (resized).jpegQuoted from ufotofu:I'll give this "launch event" a 75% chance of being either cancelled, or massively scaled down. Deeproot isn't going to happen.
Are you just fishing for an argument or do you genuinely believe this? I don't think you really appreciate the level of investment, recruitment, research and development that's been going on behind closed doors. DR is more than just a small-scale boutique pinball manufacturer like Team Pinball or, to some extent, Homepin, they are gearing up to be the next Stern. Don't underestimate the likelihood of a surprise massive license announcement. Who would have thought a tiny company in Wales could have snagged the licence for Alien (Heighway) and produced what they did which, despite its many faults, is an incredible machine.
I've got no money in the "game", I'm not an early investor, I have no connection to any employees and I'm unlikely to be able to afford a NIB machine from them. But I am following with great interest. I think they are going to be a huge disruptor in the industry.
1 week later
I'm sure this has been discussed before but the thread is getting quite large now...
With regards to the Deeproot Launch (now less than 2 months away) surely we must assume at least announcements of more than one machine, if not a full reveal?
If we assume that JPop is leading on RAZA and AIW then surely there are additional machines each by the following designers, Dennis Nordman, Jon Norris and Barry Oursler right? So that's at least five machines in development all at the same time. There is only actual time within the schedule for a playthrough demo of RAZA and even that is only 10minutes. No manufacturer is going to want to reveal the playfield before the official announcement, especially if its a licenced theme but we may need some teasers?
Of course, this isn't just a pinball event. It's also the launch of Deeproot Studios, will we see a surprise feature film announcement or Netflix (other streaming services are available) series? They were quite active last year with sketches and concept art being shared but they've gone very quiet in recent months. They cannot surely be only working on RAZA 2D animation given the talent they've employed.
1 week later
Quoted from LTG:Yes he is. Great guy too.
The party coming up at Deeproot is going to be exciting. That is for sure.
I hope parts of it can be posted after the fact.
LTG : )
Some of the workshops and presentations are planned to be live-streamed (which is a bit of a misnomer as it will technically be on delay and not actually live), other bits will be recorded and viewable at a later time.
Presentations which will be streamed:
-Launch presentation
-Launch Q&A
-RAZA playthrough by Steven Bowden
Presentations which will be recorded and uploaded to view at a later date
-Mechanical Engineering Panel and Q&A
-Game Design panel and Q&A
-Sales & Distribution Panel
-Electrical Engineering panel and Q&A
-deeproot Studios panel and Q&A
2 weeks later
Ok so 33 days to go until Deeproot launch (of DR Studios as well as DR Pinball)... we're all focussing on pinball, which is fair enough as this is a pinball forum, but can we expect a launch of something else from the animation side? A feature-length animated film perhaps? Or a RAZA universe set animation series for example.
Quoted from razorsedge:Wouldn't adding Pinball to your equation mean possibly different outcomes?
After all the video games market is much tougher than competition in the Pinball market?
I know they are doing video in studios etc... but that seems to be supporting the pinball alot.
One thing is certain I think.... it will be interesting to watch unfold
Indeed it is much tougher in a saturated market, but if you're lucky enough to go "viral" even one-man operations can make megabucks from mobile gaming.
1 week later
Quoted from flynnibus:Probably just some exercise. But did you just find that posted randomly? It's really distorted... the base doesn't match the perspective of the fountain... the dispenser tabs are out of perspective..
It’s a 3D render so perhaps just a quirky angle. I got it from a portfolio of a visual artist in Sandy, Utah (where deeproot are based). There are some other renders as well such as a kebab A drain cover and a really fat man Wearing a unicorn tshirt in a cartoon style (think Wall-E)
Some more deeproot artwork. The Kebab looks fairly well proportioned with some nice charring on the onion etc. The man, however... well I think that's on purpose. Perhaps he's been printing out all the negative posts about DR on pinside and then eating them?
jeremy-wood-kebab2 (resized).jpgjeremy-wood-eatershy (resized).jpgQuoted from Brijam:No, that’s absolutely not how it works. You need one thing and one thing only to license: money.
The agreement will stipulate other things like creative control and use of elements of course.
I would expect DR to easily have the money to license something like BSG.
I'm a huge BSG fan; I was the administrator for the Battlestar Wiki for a long time and I cosplay as Galen Tyrol with a screen accurate BDU. However, I'm not sure that the property has that wide an appeal now. I appreciate that there's a new series in the works for the Peacock streaming service but it could turn out to be a turd it's been more than a decade since the finale of the re-imagined series, Daybreak PtIII and ultimately ends in harmony with the discarding of all the Colonial and Cylon tech. There's also a complex mythology around the Cylons and their genetic link to modern humans it's not as simple as goodies vs baddies / Autobots vs Decepticons that could translate into a pinball machine very easy. Happy to be proven wrong but I'm quite a big BSG fan and I don't envision a BSG pin at home.
4 months later
2 months later
1 week later
Quoted from Napoleon:Deeproot should have only showed the things they didn't mind the podcasters speaking about, and not shown them the things they wanted to keep secret at this point. That puts the podcasters in a position of freely speaking about the entire experience. Telling them something cool, then forbidding them to discuss is counter-productive.
I'm sure you could file my post under "Mr. Obvious", but it's true none the less.
I believe the plan was to do an online launch that weekend at which point the guests would have been able to be the first to talk about it in videos, podcasts and blog posts. It would have been real scoops for them... but that didnt happen. So we have an awkward situation where an NDA that probably would only have (majoritively) been in effect until the weekend ends up being for an indeterminable length of time. It's not the ideal situation for anyone. As Cary said in his latest video... "it sucks".
Quoted from CLEllison:In the beginning it was about offering great fun for an affordable price. The fact they added the pinbar and if they're using a PC instead of an MCU likely put it up at the same price of a Stern Pro model? Sorry I don't mean to sound negative but I "was" super excited about having a pin company with an affordable product for the average Joe. I fear the "Ferrari at a Kia price" isn't going to happen. Even if the DR model is "feature rich" it still misses the original quote just stated.
Pinball is either for the rich or incredibly dumb. I'm not rich
That’s a matter of terminology. Raspberry Pi is a PC and costs about £30.
Quoted from djd9617:https://www.thisweekinpinball.com/deeproot-pinball-platform-pinbar-pinarmor-ecosystem-future-games-and-future-plans/
Under the "Features of PINBAR" section, 24th bullet down: "News, Ads, Custom Content".
I'm in the same boat; if there are ads on DR machines, I would never touch any of them. Wouldn't buy one. Wouldn't play one on location.
Pls, DR, no ads. Crediting partner companies by showing their logo, fine, but I don't want ads to buy toppers, rubbers, mods, etc for the machine. And I especially don't want targeted ads like those that the internet is infested with.
That's not the take i took away from that. I assumed it would be more for locations like "Milkshakes $1.50" and "Check out our new Mr Whippy machine" when the machine isnt being played. It's also worth bearing in mind that this isnt a new concept and old DMD games advertise stuff as well.
2 months later
Quoted from toyotaboy:so what happens if deeproot doesnt get the minimum orders they were hoping for? do they just never invest in manufacturing because the ROI isnt there? do they move onto the next title? do they close shop?
What do you think their minimum orders would be? There’s an interesting “home brew” page on their website where they say there is a minimum of 25. Obviously that’s designed for small runs but it’s quite interesting. You could design a game yourself using Deeproots platform they will build it and sell it and give you between 10-20% of sales income.
As someone who only owns one machine (that's 26 years old) I'm not in the market for a NIB machine and not likely to be a DR customer. That said, I think DR have created an incredible platform, of course there's been a little bit of wheel re-inventing, but other bits look great. As a fan of 90s pinball machines I particularly like the widescreen DMD-like screen as opposed to the large ones that appear on Stern and JJP pins.
I think the thing for me that makes DR so interesting as a new manufacturer is NOT things like the PinBar, or the playfield lifting mech or the wraparound headbox etc. it's that the "game" is still the same across the three models. Whether you buy the basic Arcade edition or go for the Xtra X edition with all the bells & whistles... the actual ball-game experience is the same. Of course you get better "toys" or different "mechs", rumble motors and anti-glare glass but they don't directly interact with the ball so in theory they should play the same. In the podcast Mueller mentioned that while the Goonies XE has a unique centrepiece mech it doesn't actually interact with the ball so the gameplay should still be the same. This is a stark contrast to Stern in which the Pro often plays vastly different to the Prem/LE editions. This can result in a broken or disappointing experience, when you play a JP3 Pro isn't it immensely disappointing that Rexy doesn't munch that ball?
My only disappointment at the moment (other than the theme which doesn't really do too much for me, I'd be more into Goonies) is the base price. Yes, you get a lot of "bang for your buck" with the basic model but I was truly hoping the starting price would rival sterns "The Pin" series of home models. I thought that by bringing a base model to around $4,500 would really cement deeproot as the "go to" pinball manufacturer for home arcades. It would also force Stern to up their game as well. I like the options to bolt on the bits you like from the Xtra without having to invest in the whole hog, I just wish it started at $1000 less.
Quoted from o-din:If you don't pony up for the pinpod, what happens if your game gets damaged during shipping? Will they replace it no hassle?
Of course they would. That’s standard warranty. If that happened then DR would be able to claim against the courier.
Quoted from Tomass:You seem very bitter. It's not healthy.
I don’t know what Bens connection (and beef) is with Deeproot but he seems even more disgruntled against them than Homepin who, from what I gather, “stole” some of his code (at least during the prototyping stage).
Quoted from TheFamilyArcade:That’s right. You don’t know. There’s quite a history there.
That’s an unnecessarily passive aggressive response to my observation. I openly admitted that I did not know the history between Ben Heck and Deeproot/Zidware/JPOP.
Quoted from benheck:I ran away from John's purple shit show and helped found Spooky, which has shipped thousands of ACTUAL GAMES, employs 30 people and generates millions for vendors.
I'm soooooo awful.
I didn’t know until this thread you had any prior connection to Deeproot, even if that is more via JPOP, I watched a few of your old YouTube videos when you were building a machine years ago (I think the one that morphed into American Horror or some sort of haunted house, I can’t remember) I presumed (obviously incorrectly) that you launched Spooky straight from that 
I guess a lot of people on Pinside probably knew all that already, but some of us don’t... they just see a new manufacturer which has created something quite cool looking weirdly getting a lot of negative attention.
Quoted from TreyBo69:I wonder if on location I could order up a fresh pint of Haterade from the PinBar
Lol, I appreciate that you’re taking the piss but let’s think for a moment of some potential other uses for the pin bar for operators. Once you’ve got something like this that could tap into a Wi-fi network on location then in theory yes there are lots of possibilities.
From simple things like advertising drinks or food deals during attract mode or potentially it would be possible for a player to order things from an operator. Alternatively perhaps points that can be spent at the atomic shop could also be redeemed for prizes in real life. Like how some ticket machines you can trade 10,000 tickets in return for a lollipop.
I do love that every possible “scenario” concocted by people in this thread seems to exclude the possibility that Deeproot might... just might... have a production line set up and will be building and shipping to customers from January. Without it being a scam and without it being a conspiracy or ponzi scheme.
And maybe... maybe he really does just want to keep the manufacturing a trade secret. There’s two ways you can go about protecting how you do stuff from competitors, you can either register patents (of which DR have for some bits) this protects direct copying of an invention or method but can allow people to understand how you’ve done something and create an alternative way to bypass the patent. Magicians for example will often not patent their magic trick inventions to prevent anyone else from working it out or copying the act by slightly changing the method. Alternatively you can do it through obscurity which is what DR seem to be going for certainly with regards to the manufacturing process. This might work in the short term but could be “leaky” as employees leave.
For everyone on pinsides sake I hope that RAZA can be done and dusted in the first quarter of the year. The bad blood spilled over the last 8 years can then be cast aside and DR can move onto the other machines in the timeline. Perhaps, although unlikely, pinsiders can finally move on from droning on and on about Jpop’s poor history and actually be positive that there’s a new manufacturer in the game which will help speed innovation and quality everywhere else too. Im excited to see some of Ourslers work... is no one else?
Quoted from YeOldPinPlayer:The kind of volume they will be shipping doesn’t need a line like Stern or any other large factory. It’s do-able with a half dozen people in the space they have.
And by printing the part numbers and placements underneath the play field then staff can be hired fairly easily without an absolute ton of training in order to memorise mech and switch placement. This could be part of their trade “secret”... maybe they have come up with a novel way of actually putting together these machines.
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