"Pro Menu"...Am I missing something?

[philt80]

I purchased the season one table pack and paid the additional funds for "Pro Menu" options included. I have been a bit dismayed to see that only 7 of the 22 tables actually have the pro menu features. Am I missing something?

The following tables have the pro menu:
Attack from Mars
Medieval Madness
Scared Stiff
Star Trek The Next Generation
Tales of the Arabian Nights
Twilight Zone

The remaining 16 listed below, however, do not:
Big Shot
Black Hole
Black Knight
Bride of Pin-Bot
Circus Voltaire
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Elvira and the Party Monsters
Funhouse
Genie
Gorgar
Harley Davidson
Monster Bash
No Good Gofers
Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Taxi
Theatre of Magic

I sent a message to farsight support asking if something may have gone wrong with my order, but have yet to receive a response.

Just wanted to post here to see if the 7 listed really are the only ones offering the pro mode options. If so, it's a bit misleading when purchasing the packs as it's implied that the pro options will be there for all of the tables.

[William Shatner]

Only a few tables in season 1 have the pro menu. Here is reasons from them about it:

"Not every table in season 1 has a pro pack. The pro packs were introduced at Table Pack 8 but we retroactively went pack and added Tales of the Arabian Nights and Medieval Madness. When we release only the lead table has a pro menu.

Tables with Pro Menu
Attack From Mars
Star Trek
Twilight Zone
Scared Stiff
Medieval Madness
Tales of the Arabian Nights"

[philt80]

Thanks for that info. :)
Still definitely worth the additional $10 even for those few tables...I just wanted to ensure I wasn't alone in not seeing the pro menus in the other 16 tables. Maybe at some point in the future they will revisit the season 1 tables that don't already feature the additional menu.

[Fire Walk With Me]

Can someone tell me what the pro version does? Does the season purchase get all of the available pro tables?

Thanks guys and sorry for piggybacking this thread.

[Axlsgolden]

Can I play the tables in night environment with the pro version? I apologize if there is still an information about that. But, that would be the only thing for me, why I should buy "pro".
I miss playing in the dark. Thx for your answers.

[philt80]

Originally posted by Fire Walk With Me:

Can someone tell me what the pro version does? Does the season purchase get all of the available pro tables?

Thanks guys and sorry for piggybacking this thread.

The Pro menu allows you access to the following additional options:

"Operator Mode" allows you to make changes to table settings in the same way a coin op would...changing ball count and various features of the table itself.

"Ball Control" allows you to control the ball directly. This helps in learning how certain goals are triggered within the table and to see how they work.

"Tilt Meter" allows you to turn off tilt.

"Table Exploration" gives you a top down flyover of the table so you can explore it up close in it's entirety.

"IFPA Pro Tips" is similar to the "Instructions" in the basic menu, but provides extra gameplay tips on how to increase your score from IFPA pro players.

There are two pricing tiers for season 1. Currently $29.99 is the "Standard" version without the Pro features enabled in the 7 tables mentioned in an earlier post...The "Pro" version of the season 1 pack currently costs $39.99 and includes the Pro menu in those 7 tables. As described above, the other 16 tables do not have this menu(yet?), so those tables will play in standard mode without additional options in both versions.

[Fire Walk With Me]

Thank you. Too expensive.

[MagnumXL]

I still don't understand why they cannot go back and update the older tables like Circus Voltaire to have the Pro features. It just sounds like laziness to me. I paid the same "Pro" price difference in Season 1 as other seasons so they should go back and add operator menu options, at least for the newer tables.

Some of the Pro controls aren't useful due to missing key controls. Namely, I would like to play for CREDITS and switching to credit mode WOULD work if they simply had a key to insert virtual credits (like VPinmame has). You can win credits on high score boards, but they are meaningless if you are stuck in FREE PLAY mode all the time. You need an Insert Credit key and a start key and it would work fine in that mode.

I also don't see why the table exploration mode has no controls to change the VIEW of the camera in 3 dimensions. Some toys and labels you might want to examine from a different view. This should not be hard to implement on a true 3D simulator.

As for "dark modes" this seems to be dependent on which version you buy more than anything. The iOS and Mac versions are lit like they are in a bright room. The Windows DX9 version are lit like a medium room and DX11 mode offers a DARK room. I see no reason the Mac and Windows versions couldn't offer both daylight/bright and medium modes. Based on my monitor's gamma settings, it's clearly just a gamma/brightness/contrast issue on most of the tables between the bright and medium perceptions (i.e. change to gamma 2 on monitor and increase contrast and decrease brightness and it looks 90% the same as the Windows versions on the Mac. All the GI lights and flashers are there, they are just overwhelmed by bright ambient lighting. I've brought this up on their own forums, but their go-between never seems to get it across to the Mac programmer and originally there was no Windows version (could only compare to the PS3 and XBox versions back then).

The keys are different between the Windows and Mac versions as well. Both use shift keys for the flippers, but the Mac versions uses z and / for left/right nudging and has no "up" nudge. The Windows version uses W/A/X/D (like a first person shooter) for nudging, but then that leaves your pinky to operate the shift flipper. In both I'd prefer the "F" and "J" keys to operate the flippers (it could do both) and that would let you leave your hands in the traditional typing and first person shooter position to play the game and let you use your index finger for the flippers. Even Pro Pinball back in the late 1990s let you reassign your keys. This seems like it's designed for the Playstation/XBox controllers and any keyboard/PC/Mac features are an after-thought, but it would be SO SIMPLE to add keyboard controls to assign. "back" keys on the Windows version work with backspace, but not on the Mac. The "V" key locks the camera view on the Windows version, but the Mac version uses the Spacebar, but it also uses the spacebar for the plunger but even though the lock view doesn't work when a ball is in the plunger lane, you can still end up easily switching it on/off inadvertently (at least you can tell by the lock icon on the screen).

It just seems like a bit of communication and comparison between the Mac/Windows versions could easily get them at parity for key controls and lighting (at least DX9 lighting). "Metal" comes out in September for OSX (equivalent of DX12) and at that point, they really could/should be identical looking, but I don't think they will. Twilight Zone on the Mac still has a bug on startup years later whereby the Powerball looks like a regular ball until you change the custom ball setting to something else and then it magically appears (at least now it stays there when you switch back whereas it used to turn back into the regular ball again and only showed up white when you used a custom ball). Reporting these bugs do little good on their forums. Often someone from the company responds as having read it and says he'll let them know, but then nothing changes or gets fixed. They're too busy making new tables to fix old ones, it seems.