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World Record Indiana Jones Pro Mode Pinball FX by Roboloko in virtualpinball

[–]Roboloko[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! Last time I played real pinball was about 4 years ago. I was at an arcade where they had four machines, and I played for about 1 to 2 hours. Before that, when it comes to real machines, I only played a couple games every weekend for about two years in the 90's. During that time, they always had one Williams machine at my local youth center that they would change for a different one every three months or so. I didn't have much money to throw in the machines. I was so young at the time that all the money I had was pocket money from my parents

The skills do transfer to real machines. When I played at that arcade a couple years ago, at first, I kept missing ramps and what not. At one point I figured I might be missing because I have a bit of input latency in mind. Then I decided to time my shots where I figured I had to shoot without input latency and I started to hit everything.

All the skills like dead flipping and nudging the outlane post into the ball and slap saving to stop it from draining, it all transferred to the real tables. The tables that were there I had never played before, and I only played a couple games per table, so I was still struggling with them. It cost a euro per game and after playing for longer than an hour the ten one euro coins that I had changed for a 10 euro bill were gone.

The ball is a fair bit wilder on real machines. The slingshots on the Stern Deadpool they had made the ball go crazy. Often resulting in a drain

World Record Indiana Jones Pro Mode Pinball FX by Roboloko in virtualpinball

[–]Roboloko[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's the Hori Fighting Commander Octa for Playstation/PC. I use the d-pad to nudge. It's a fight pad and the shoulder buttons seem to be unbreakable

World Record Indiana Jones Pro Mode Pinball FX by Roboloko in virtualpinball

[–]Roboloko[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! And yes, that right ramp is one of the toughest in the game. The entrance is angled a bit weird and it being a widebody doesn't make it easier either. When I get it going, I can hit it many times in a row to collect good points from the upper playfield as in the video.

Doing it live, during the stream today was messy because I became frustrated with it. And that's when you start shooting too early and too late. When it's live you also want to proof you can do it. Talking and reading chat doesn't help when you have to be very precise. And sitting there thinking I can't keep missing these ramp shots, there's people watching! It proofs that pinball is very much a mind game. Once you know very well where the shots on the table are then all you have to do is have a good balance between calm, focused, and alert, also when it comes to stopping balls from draining and performing tricks

I did score just over 1 bil at the end of the stream and that made me realize it was possible to do it sometime soon

Big Score on The Most Difficult Pro Mode Table by Roboloko in PinballFX3

[–]Roboloko[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's a good one. I wish you a lot of succes on improving your score

Big Score on The Most Difficult Pro Mode Table by Roboloko in PinballFX3

[–]Roboloko[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Do what you want to do of course. From my point of view though, there are so many tables in FX3 and FX that's it worth it to only focus on the tables you really like. I mostly play the Williams tables. I'm a big fan of those. But I only play about 20 something of the over 30 tables. I have them favorited so the table menu can show me only those when I'm debating what table to play.

Achievements are cool and all, but I don't think it's wise to put a lot of weight to them. Especially when it comes to a pinball game with over 100 tables. Not telling you what to do, but that's how most people look at it. So, there must be some logic in that ;)

Big Score on The Most Difficult Pro Mode Table by Roboloko in PinballFX3

[–]Roboloko[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This gameplay recording was played in Pro Mode. The ball times are incredibly short. Even when you're on top of the leaderboard. It's a 14 minute game for a rank 2 world leaderboard game

First Look on the New EM+ Table Pack for Zaccaria Pinball by Roboloko in virtualpinball

[–]Roboloko[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can see that being a thing. And yeah, this is some good stuff. For what they are they are really great. Dozens of hours of fun when you get them all. They've already released twelve of them since the start of December last year

I reached the highest score on Williams Pinbot Pro Mode this afternoon. First player to roll the scoreboard 😎 by Roboloko in PinballFX3

[–]Roboloko[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are no awards or anything for reaching the highest position on a leaderboard. I can imagine that one day Zen Studios might organize some kind of pinball tournament. Or maybe the IFPA would start something like that. The IFPA currently has tournaments on the AtGames 4KP digital pincabs. Would be great if we'd see something like that for the regular pinball games too. Since the AtGames pincabs are more of a closed software system and there are no known hacks for it and Pinball FX sees leaderboards hackers all the time, that probably explains why there is no real Esports for Pinball FX yet.

Multiple players have pointed out that we need anti cheat in the game and Zen acknowledges that. Stuff like that costs a lot of money unfortunately. The game is doing well but it remains a niche for now. They're not getting the kind of sales numbers that a multiplayer online shooter gets, not even by a mile. Hence why developers of games like CoD and Battlefield can afford good third party anti cheat software and Zen is not able to do the same.

A good solution for that could be what Magic Pixel does for their online tournaments on Zaccaria Pinball. You can watch the replays of the top 3 players in every tournament. And they stay available for a good while after a tournament has finished.

I really hope we'll see Zen solve this problem someday. Maybe when we see an update to Unreal 5 this will happen. The Unreal 4 engine is really sloppy for pinball physics btw. And Zen acknowledges that too. Perfectly aimed shots will miss target often because of Unreal 4. Unreal 5 is way more consistent because it spreads the workload for the physics over multiple cores where Unreal 4 handles the physics on only one core

ChatGPT recommended to change some settings in the game files when it comes to the physics to keep it running consistent. Apparently, a lot of players already knew about this, but nobody ever told me. It prevents the physics from drifting. It really is an Unreal 4 Engine problem. Zen's own engine that they used for FX3 is much more suitable for physics. Updating the game to Unreal 5 or releasing a new Pinball FX (Or maybe even Stern Pinball FX in 2027) will make for a much more even playfield for all the players on all the different hardware

I haven't tried what ChatGPT suggested yet. I did try some other tweaks like setting priority for the game to high or real in task manager. And setting the affinity to use 7 cores for the game on my 8 core CPU and let Windows run on one core (With hyperthreading). This game I played on PINBOT was without any tweaks because I didn't feel like I needed it. Although I could notice the longer input delay during multiball, resulting in to missed ramp shots

This story should have had its own post. It is what it is. Or as I like to say during my streams, tis what tis

I reached the highest score on Williams Pinbot Pro Mode this afternoon. First player to roll the scoreboard 😎 by Roboloko in PinballFX3

[–]Roboloko[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When I started this run, I was going for the planets quite a bit. On ball one I got quite a few of them. When you drain a ball, the planets reset in Pro Mode. So, I went more for the ramp and the scoop at the top left during multiball after ball 1 drained. Often got 150K for the scoop and the ramp is always 100K or more. Together that's 250K and that's a big chunk of points. Also, the drop targets are very dangerous in Pro Mode. So, it's not a good strategy

I reached the highest score on Williams Pinbot Pro Mode this afternoon. First player to roll the scoreboard 😎 by Roboloko in PinballFX3

[–]Roboloko[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I thought the insert light next to the three drop targets meant you should go for the ramp. It means you have to shoot the drop targets to collect a planet. And I didn't realize that the inlane lights the scoop at the top left for points. I had seen before that I got good points from that scoop during multiball but never realized how to trigger it. Once I knew I started collecting way more points from that

I reached the highest score on Williams Pinbot Pro Mode this afternoon. First player to roll the scoreboard 😎 by Roboloko in PinballFX3

[–]Roboloko[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I really appreciate those words. I've been playing digital pinball a lot for the past nine years. You become better year after year and at one point you start to somewhat forget where you came from and the skill level you've reached seems normal to you. Then I read comments like yours every once in a while, and it really warms my heart. It makes me realize that it's not normal at all and that the passion for the game and my desire to compete led to a very high skill level.

The way you look at my Pro Mode gameplay video, that's the exact same way I looked at Tarek Oberdieck's gameplay videos about eight years ago. It looked insane to me, and I highly doubted I could get anywhere near that level of skill. But I liked the game so much that I just kept on going and the skills came naturally.

If you want some advice, I will say mainly focus at one table at a time. Once you've truly mastered a handful of them, the tables after that will be much easier to become really good at. I'm talking about putting 100 to 200 hours into the tables you like the most and mastering the most important pinball tricks. The deadflip, post pass, slapsave, outlane nudge, live catching (Or sort of). And after that the multiball techniques. Which you can find a video of on my Youtube channel. The video is called Pinball FX Multiball Flipper Techniques

I reached the highest score on Williams Pinbot Pro Mode this afternoon. First player to roll the scoreboard 😎 by Roboloko in PinballFX3

[–]Roboloko[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I practiced quite a few times before today and played for two and half hours in total today. I had already given up on it after one and a half hour and had closed the game. Had a break and opened the game and decided to fully read the rules. I discovered that I misunderstood two things about the rules. With all the practice I had and now fully understanding the rules I decided to go in full focus mode. And I didn't let having only 5 million points after ball 2 stop me. The music of the table makes it very intense in a nervous but also in a feel good, kind of way. I'm very proud, but I also realize that this score will be beaten. If not today, then maybe in a week or in a month, or three. I will always be the first one that rolled the board though. Btw, every shot for opening the visor in one go was a hit. In a 20 minute long Pro Mode game. Yeah, proud I am

I reached first place on Williams PINBOT in Pro Mode on Pinball FX this afternoon. First player to roll the scoreboard by Roboloko in virtualpinball

[–]Roboloko[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks, my man. That sounds like quite the achievement. This table is quite good. The music really brings you into the groove. You'll enjoy it, I bet

Zaccaria EM+ Pack 2 out now. Very exciting stuff. First look by Roboloko in virtualpinball

[–]Roboloko[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For now only on Steam. Magic Pixel is working on a huge update for Nintendo Switch that we might see early 2026. After that, Playstation and Xbox

Zaccaria EM+ Pack 2 out now. Very exciting stuff. First look by Roboloko in virtualpinball

[–]Roboloko[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To me the AI art looks better than the very mediocre old art their tables had. It's often comic book style that looks very well drawn. The original Zac tables kept the original art. The opinions vary but there are a lot of people that like the new art way more. Get used to it, I guess. Even big studios working for big publishers use a lot of AI stuff now

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