Like I already posted in this thread, if I was allowed to write code outside the company that pays me I would happily help a pinball company interested in this for free. I'm still about 10 years from retirement though so can't happen anytime soon.

P.S. I have never worked on pinball so I don't know how hard that is to do. I'm fairly confident I could handle it. I have however implemented all of the stuff we are talking about in video games so adding it in to a pin would not be difficult at all.

Its an interesting thought and I know what you mean (Call of Duty fan here).

My only issue with connecting online with these machines is that they are all slightly different and then you have those who simply cheat. So not sure what would be done for connecting online?

And how do you stop people from cheating and messing up those statistics? That is the number one issue with gaming in general.

If its for personal achievements, then ok but then you dont really need online connectivity as it could be just something added to the stats.

I think you design around it. The barrier to cheat is so low that you have to accept that in the design of any online features. It pretty much makes public high score boards meaningless without adding a lot of unnecessary hardware. But people could still have a "friend's list" to compare their scores with other friends that they have some level of trust with. Personal achievements and the ability to continue progress forward would still be meaningful for people that want to engage with it. The serious competitive players and any TD that has organized a large event would love games that could automatically report scores back to the software running the tournament.

Cheating could easily be handled by the community in pinball. Player rating and DNF (Pinball equivalent of DNF) would weed them out so quickly. Everyone knows who the legit players are in pinball, if complete nobodies start dominating leaderboards its not going to be hard to figure out if its legit.

Ok i see.

I dont know if I agree about that. And even worse, if a newbie does start doing well and is called a cheater...

As much as I love comparing my scores to others, cant help but think its best to keep these machines offline.

I just think for pinball, there are too many variables. Each machine plays different, people setup angles different, people change settings, people add things to playfield to make things play differently... The list goes on.

Yeah, sorry for going so far off topic.

Of all the new features that have been discussed, co-op is by far one of the easiest. At best it sells some more games and increases coin drop on location. At worst it wastes a couple of days of a coder's and tester's time. I don't know how Stern has designed their code base, but I'd think it could be able to be implemented in multiple games fairly quickly.

Well I am a pinball coder and you're talking maybe an hour of work tops to add this feature to ANY pinball game. Child's play really.

I like the idea.

Ok so have a large caveat when comparing scores to scores of different machines. Still plenty of other benefits to going online. I think any operator that wouldn't be interested in being able to remotely update the game, check status reports, check audits and coin drop, and remotely adjust pricing and game features is lying. (Digital security of course has to be on point)

Who needs testing, right?!?

Oh, for those aspects it would be great!

Im really just talking about comparing scores with others online.

Its simple: we have to 2 types of pinball buyers/players to keep happy in 2019

-the old players who’ve been in the hobby for years and don’t want/don’t like change. They don’t want online connectivity, cameras and WiFi on pinball

-newer players who grew up with modern video games, who want deeper games with more objectives and enjoy online connectivity and playing options, co op/online play.

There is a way to keep both happy. You develop new pins with code that can do both- short, quick and simple code for operators and an option for home mode that has more depth. Yes, it will require more programming and code work, but it’s possible. Co-op mode and things like online connectivity are coming soon. Can the manufacturers make everyone happy, no, but the more options the better

I did mention testers in my message. But even then, it's not like they're testing an all new game with multiple features happening at once. Plus Stern has gotten pretty good at getting people in the community to beta test their software for free.

Stern has versus Co-op for years now. Its in the settings and called team scoring and has been available since the Sega days. Not sure if it lasted past the SAM system.

Did that mode do anything besides add up the scores of player 1 and 3 vs player 2 and 4? Like if player 1 locks 2 balls, would player 3 be able to use the help of player 1 to start a multiball quicker?

TNA co-op is everyone is working together on the same game progression. If player 1 takes out 2 reactors and drains, then player 2 starts on reactor 3 and not reactor 1.

It simply adds the scores together. No game progress synced.

This is enabled on my local Starship Troopers and makes the game significantly more appealing when I'm at the bar playing with friends. After playing SST my buddies were very disappointed with the (much nicer) lineup at another location cause none of the games had 2v2 scoring turned on.

Completely anecdotal, none of those friends own games, but just want to put out that people do appreciate and enjoy this stuff.

Sorry, I agree with a lot of your posts, but you seem to not understand much about software. Adding a co-op mode would take very little time to develop.

I will say that a co-op mode lends itself very well to a game like TNA that has a very clear common objective. I don't know how fun the mode would be on any random game. It couldn't hurt, but might not help much either.

Getting to particular wizard modes would be great for co-op. The idea of easily playing a co-op Valinor run on location is tantalizing.

That said, part of the appeal of TNA co-op is the ease of explaining the gameplay loop. It’s a great game for showing people to new pinball that there’s more to it than keeping the ball alive.

We have

I agree. Plus, code is so deep these days....I think co-op would be a lot of fun in the home, trying to get to wizard modes. Some of us, thats the only way we will get there.

TNA co-op is very fun- everyone is working together towards the same goal. But at the same time you can tell who has destroyed the most reactors- so there is still a little competition.
It will be cool to start seeing it in more pins.

I bet even Levi shakes his head at most of his posts.

I did a fair bit of work on how to prevent cheating by removing the glass. Best way I came up with is to use sound and analyse the return (basically sonar). You can quickly determine if the glass is on or off.

I owned a TNA and I didn't know until reading this thread what co-op mode was. It sounds like a good idea to me, although I personally never would've played it even if I cared to figure out what it was (I saw the splash for it in attract mode). I can definitely understand the appeal and I think it'd be nice to see in more games.

In the team play mode do the players on the same team also share progress? Based on what I read in this thread I'm guessing they do, but just want to make sure. When I saw the splash for that I figured that it would just be team scoring like in Segas/Sterns.

Yes. In team mode they share progress.

I love this idea. I grew up playing co-op with my brother in video games. We still play pins and video games every week and it would be a refreshing to play pins as a team.

I've just added co-operative code to my update of The Addams Family. It only took a few minutes, very simple. Pretty cool to tour the mansion with a friend.

Of course I work in the virtual pinball world where anything is possible. But this should be a feature used in all modern pinball games.

You’re a slave? I mean, someone with zero free time and whose every move is dictated by an owner?

Because I’m pretty sure it’s illegal for a company to prevent you from doing things in your free time.

Not if it is something associated with the current job or poses a threat somehow.

You haven't seen a lot of modern employee contracts then. Typically the employer gets first rights to whatever you make even if it's on your off time, but especially if you ever do anything remotely related to the project during company time or on company equipment (which can be as innocuous as replying to an project-related personal email on your work issued phone)

There seems to be the opinion that you can't play against someone while still playing co-op mode.
The game tracks the scores of both players individually, while not resetting the game progress made.
So you can still determine who got the most points and thus 'won' a particular game, but it also allows each player to make progress towards the same goal.

Lock stealing on older games is surely an unintentional co-op?

I would suggest that the main benefit/use of co-op wouldn't be multiple players playing together, rather than the same player playing a multi-player game in co-op mode. If you set the number of balls per game to 10 beforehand, then played a 4 player co-op game you'd be playing at least 40 balls (without extras) making progress to the wizard mode. I'm guessing more people would see Encore that way.

To the minority here, I would say just because a game has the option for co-op doesn't mean you have to use it. If you really hate playing with friends(if you have any) instead of against them, then just play the regular way. If stern decided to make this a standard feature, which i hope they do, just don't use it... enough said... onto speculating the next game.

"Why is Co-op Mode not in every modern game?"

That's the name of the thread. People were invited to point out that Co-op is dumb, won't sell any games, and would be a general waste of time like other novelty formats like "supergame" and "timed play" have proven to be over the years.

I hardly ever start threads. But if someone invites participation I'm duty-bound as a good pinsider to contribute. So if you don't like it take it up with the OP!

It is 100% legal and common, a company has every right to restrict you from using the knowledge and resources attained from them at anything they consider related or competitive. So long as I work where I do they are perfectly justified in firing me if I write any kind of software that is gaming related. Also any software I was to write on my own time they have rights to ownership. So if I was to write code for say Stern the company I work for would claim ownership. I did get legal release to color a title for ColorDMD but it was very clear that I was not to so much as look at a line of code or make any code related suggestions to them. Lots of guys at work get released to write code for hobby projects but those projects must be completely unrelated to anything they do at work. It's the same in any business if an employees takes money away from the business they are completely justified in firing them. Lots of working guys do side jobs that are to small or inconvenient for the company but they sure as shit do not under bid their employer.

Just have a flipper each - simple CO-OP mode

Keith and Zach do it all the time on streams.

It's fun!

You think it’s dumb*
I like it

Most people here know the difference between a fact and a value judgment.

I always think it's silly when people get upset that "you didn't state that it's YOUR OPINION!" or "stop presenting your opinion as fact!!!"

That disclaimer is completely unnecessary and is not required to communicate with others.

So you won’t be programming it into that game you’re making?

Stern Jurassic Park is another game ripe for co-op play. Everyone trying to get to the end of the map? Perfect. (Still a bit too obtuse to explain to novice players, but the core gameplay loop lends itself well)

An interesting challenge would be how could a programmer spread around "the love" of a game. ie giving the players who are clearly performing worse better rewards, easier multiball starts, rebalanced scoring and mode progression, etc... Some sort of dynamic difficulty level to make sure everyone is getting to do something fun, see the ball do neat things, and finish a ball feeling like they contributed to the team more than weighed it down. Of course, this would actually be challenging to design and require a lot more thought and resources. (Or at the very least at the beginning of the game, assign a difficulty level to each player)

I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them. People aren't clamoring for co-op and other new ways to play because the implementations are so few and far between.

I know some co-op play options would go over well with most of my non pin-head friends and most of the friends my son brings home.

I love pinball but I am not a competitive player. I rarely play for score. I like objective or mode based games. I love TWD because I start every game with a single objective in mind (most kills or Siege or Horde). It keeps the game fresh. Probably the most competitive fun my friends and I used to have was to score the most goals in WCS.

The younger generation are much better versed in co-op style games. The ability to save a games progress and restart a game at a certain point would be welcome by many for sure.

I am (ok was) competitive playing sports (hockey, baseball) but I also play for fun and entertainment purposes. I play in a pinball league but thankfully (in my opinion) it is not super competitive in spirit. Different strokes for different folks. I do think that offering newer and fresher elements that have clearly worked in the video game industry (which someday may even surpass the $value of pinball sales - sarcasm here) should be attempted and not poo-pood.

I am also a software developer and it is not difficult and once you have your code library done it can simply be re-used on every game. Yes, of course there is a cost but it isn't a majorly cost prohibitive venture. Yes you would have to dedicate some development resource time to the effort but I think the bigger cost and effort would be promoting/marketing the feature. How do you explain to potential new players about your wonderful feature when it isn't obvious to many that you push the blinky button to start a game. If the game had a nice touchpad on the lockdown bar people would figure things out quickly.

To Stern's credit, they did a great job of making attract videos that explain the most basic aspects of operation. A few games, most notably Elwin's, take it further by explaining a few of a particular game's core objectives. They used to have the QR codes for getting cheat sheets for rules and need to bring it back.

Baywatch also has it built right in!! If you go to 4 player it becomes 2 v 2, this was already done back in '94. I like that for my non-pinhead buddies that suck at pinball, they enjoy it.
I also suck at pinball, I just suck less than them!!

This isn’t co op mode. Just team scoring. You don’t share progress with your partner.

I like co-op idea. Casuals that come over don’t wanna play against me.... neither does my wife. I believe co-op play would be a hit!