Actually less than $100

Heighway fixed the file. You should be all set of you download it now. It’s a great update too.

It wouldn't have to do with the file format that the drive is formatted in, would it?

That is possible. The stick should be formatted as FAT32... which is noted in the installation directions, and is how USB sticks are most commonly formatted, as it's a pretty universally-supported format. But yeah, if anyone is having problems with the update and it doesn't help to pause between inserting the USB stick and starting the update, then verify on your computer that the stick is formatted as FAT32, and that the "hpa11.upd" file is in the root directory, not some sub-directory.

Update was smooth sailing here with no issues. It is great to see the game code moving forward, great update. Thanks to the Alien team and keep up the good work.

BTW, the 1.1 code does not attempt to resolve this issue. That's still being worked on and may, hopefully, be mitigated in some future release.

It‘s there. The blue looks marvelous (and way darker than expected). Fits perfect to the colors of TL, E-Blades and Side Blades plus PF colors. My best decision

E0892B73-8B33-4320-BE9E-9D7652BFBD0F (resized).jpeg
12DF07B5-299B-4C00-972E-31B5FE1BC30E (resized).jpeg
88A301B7-6F45-4701-8127-3CFFF53F8E18 (resized).jpeg

Game plays much smoother and the changes made are noticeable improvements. 1.1 code update is a major win for HP. Ferret for Supreme Leader of Pinside!

Did the code fix the bug around raising in game lights brightness causing side lights on cab turning off? Sorry haven't installed yet back at work

That is fixed according to the readme file. I haven't personally tested it out yet.

Did MightyGrave get his pin un-bricked yet?

Makes me happy to see some great progress on all fronts for Alien

Games getting delivered
Code updates happening
Quicker/better support
LEs going out

and some good news personally...

We have a resolution in place for prototype game #2. I am not going to get into specifics as our situation is unique to start with (bought the game direct, had specifics in place with Andrew before he left, etc...), but safe to say that assuming the agreement pans out with the new team as is agreed then I am happy and thankful for the new team.

In particular, communication from Helmut has been fantastic throughout, Morgan has stepped in to be a big help also since the new team came on, and it really does seem as things are all moving in the positive direction.

I will follow back up once things are final with our particular resolution just so people know all is resolved.

Just wanted to share now since it is another sign of things in the right direction.

I am hopeful that those wanting refunds will get paid back as more games go out (new money) to new buyers. I genuinely love this game and think it shoots beautifully, has an amazing code team (lights, sounds, and ruleset), and it is some of the best theme immersion ever. Glad things are turning the corner and once the business stuff gets ironed out completely, this will possibly be a success story of concerning the takeover/bail out.

That blue does appear a bit darker than the Facebook pictures. Could be your lower lighting? Please post more pictures when you get it put together.

He's saying it looks way darker in person then the pictures that had been posted. So it can't be his lighting.

My problem is still alive. The machine will not boot and showing the linux error message
So i can't do any update. I think the bootloader is not able to mount the file system

I had the same leds go out, plus two Aliens mode inserts, A-PC, and Combat Drop.

I was playing a game, and all was good. Next game, they were all out.

HP said they were waiting for new led boards to arrive, to send replacements. But not sure if the problem isn't something else, since they all failed together.

Anyone else experience this, and/ or have a solution?

(Unrelated to code update. I haven't done it yet)

Does your game use an SDcard or a SSD drive? If its an SD card maybe you can get an image and image it to a new SDcard.

Ask Helmut for a code base image versus an update file. You can load it by using a Ubuntu bootable flash drive. He can help you out.

[email protected]

The file system is mostly fine. All of those messages on your screenshot are coming from the file system and appear OK. Just the game code isn't starting for some reason.

What version did you have before? Was it 1.02? Anything pre-1.02 (including 1.0) has known issues.

The team is still trying to figure out what happened and to come up with a solution for you.

Update was from 1.02 - hope they'll find a solution.

Well that's what he says, but I just would like to see some pictures in better lighting to see for myself. Dim lighting will make it appear darker. The HP pictures were in a brightly lit warehouse.

Yes as mentioned above, maybe they have a way to fix it, or could just send you a drive image file and you could flash the drive.

Re: "they", I also work for Heighway, just so you know.

Can you take another screenshot after trying the update again? The messages ought to be slightly different than the first one you posted. There should be some indication that the update is starting and (hopefully) what went wrong.

Hi bcd,

good to know then will we hope that you can help us. Picture comes in a few hours.

Is it ok to use shaker at full power now with updated code?

If upgrading from 1.02, go into the Alien adjustments and change "Shaker Power" and "Shaker Frequency" both to 50. That's the factory default now for new installs and seems to work well. I do not recommend anything higher than that. There is a Shaker Test in which you can try it out.

There's still not a lot of use of the shaker, but that's on the list for the next release.

wow - update was really fast! Literally took 3 seconds to update and it's 1.1. Off to play.

EDIT - impressions:

My fav game has gotten even better. Really - I just love this game and the sound - wow. I love the new sound effects. Chestbuster shot is working a lot better and the orbit shots do dump into the pops MUCH more. That leads to my first question - anyway to let the orbit shots go past the pops b/c I love hat shot from left orbit all around, dead bounce to mid left flipper and up to mid right. I can't tell why it goes into the pops only sometimes and not others.

I also did have a Sentry gun nonstop MB - had to reset my machine and when I did my sling lights stopped working (they still don't - maybe an LED although weird how the bug happened and now those lights are out

I noticed the new sounds right after the first ball plunge and I thought they were tied to a skill shot notification but that doesn't appear to be it. Love that sound though. There is a new 2x sound that lets you know when that's ending. Very nice touch

Ambush MB - the targets seem to pop up more randomly and I thought after you hit them all it would reset as opposed to making you hit that super jackpot shot as the only way to continue - didn't see that but I also might have missed it.

I ended up getting my highest score playing with this code - shots just seems to hit better hard to describe but I fat fingered my own damn initials so now my own machine has a high score that's not even my correct initials!

Changed the coil for the auto launch to as weak as it would get but didn't see a difference. Hyperchamber MB lighting is awesome now!

Not sure what Chestburter combo on med vs easy is. I know the shot itself diff on easy vs hard (latter has only the target count, switch is ignored).

Thanks for the bleep on acid mode.

Super job guys. This machine rocks.

This happens when we boot the machine with the USB stick plugged in.

IMG-20180113-WA0002 (resized).jpg

Helped update a friends Alien to v1.1, took about 5 seconds to update and is a huge improvement over the previous version.

I just updated and am not sure why the two drop ship inserts on the ramps are lit at start?also my left flipper beeps when it flips,can't hear it most of the time because of the everything else but it is there.

Enjoying game very much

Generally, the game will divert orbit shots to the top lanes/pops if it thinks it's desirable for the ball to be up there, because the pops themselves are currently valuable, and/or because there's a juicy upper-right flipper shot available.

Nooooooo.....
I can't say anything about lights being out, but if you (or anyone) encounters a non-ending multiball of any sort, please promptly capture a Debug Log and send the resulting pinprog.log file to "alien <at> joe.tater.org". We thought we had this issue squashed in 1.1, but if not, we'll try again.

What you're probably hearing is the new sound effects associated with the ball saver... while you'll have a ball saver most often right at the start of the ball, you'll also hear this if, for example, Mother grants you a ball saver. And of course the sounds are awesome, because David Thiel.

The current rule (unchanged in 1.1) is that when you complete an Ambush attack wave, you must collect Super Jackpot (at the Vent 3 shot) to unleash the next attack wave. (Nothing crazy here, it's a pretty common multiball rule that you collect all the jackpots to light Super, and collect Super to relight the jackpots.) The dev team has discussed tweaking the rule so the next wave of Xenos will start their attack after some amount of time without collecting the Super Jackpot... if that happens, it will probably incur some scoring penalty on the value of the Super. Stay tuned.

(Misc hint: got a tough Super Jackpot shot lit? That's a great opportunity to use your Smart Gun weapon if you've got it!)

Chestburster Combo Diff = how many Chestburster combos are required to get a "hold value" award. A Chestburster Combo is a Chestburster -> { upper ramp, upper loop } combo. Every X such combos will hold some accumulating value that would normally reset at end of ball (bonus, bonus X, combo value, spinner value, egg value, etc ... there's actually a lot of these). The screen and Mother callouts provide more details when this happens.

Very glad you're enjoying!

Hopefully you've been contacted by your distributor (Stefan) with code and info to help us help you get your machine back on its feet. We don't know exactly what happened here, but we're certainly committed to getting your machine healthy again ASAP!

The Drop Ship inserts are lit on the ramps if shooting that ramp will spot you a letter towards "DROP SHIP" (left ramp = "DROP" letters, right ramp = "SHIP" letters... upper ramp = both!). Completing DROP SHIP starts 2X Playfield scoring. So in short, if you want to progress towards double scoring, shoot a ramp with a lit "Drop Ship" insert, or the upper ramp.

We're aware of this and will try to improve it in future code revisions.

Yay, we're very glad to hear that!

I've also the beeping left flipper. I can hear it clearly and it's really annoying.
But it was also on 1.02

So tried a new usb stick.
Looks like the machine will find the stick

IMG-20180113-WA0003 (resized).jpg

Thanks Ferret. I forgot to mention that the flashing lights when I would hold my left flipper is completely fixed and it's reduced on my right flipper!

Looks like it wants the tar file not the upd one according to the message.

Yes but which tar file? And how we get zhe tat file ?

You have the patience of a Saint dude. Can't wait to hear you have finally received your game! (And I'll be on my way down to play it quickity-split!!!) LOL.

Not sure. Maybe try downloading the upd file again from the website?

Have downloaded the file before i used the now stick - maybe it's possbile to convert the file in an gzip or tar file?

How large is your file? It seems you have the 16MB which is not zipped.
Just redownload from the website. Should be 10MB.

I look here https://www.heighwaypinball.com/documents/
and use this download http://files.heighwaypinball.com/hpa11.upd

Is your file 10mb? If not re-download.

it's 10.4 MB

Ain't that the truth.

Hopefully to clarify some of the file confusion, I did some short research. The file you download from the Heighway site currently is a tar file, they just renamed it to .upd instead of .tar.gz. They also have a bit of unfortunate naming going on.

The downloadable file is named hpa11.upd and is 10,897,267 bytes. This may show as 10,642KB or 10.3MB depending on how your system is displaying file sizes.

If you crack open the tar/gz file, there is a file inside of it also named hpa11.upd. If you extract it, it weighs in at 16,640,000 bytes. This may show as 16,250KB or 15.8MB depending on how your system is displaying file sizes.

I think it would be more user friendly if Heighway would change the name of the tar file to retain it's proper file type, and also give it a filename that is different than the file inside of the package.

hopefully an early spring get together with the crew!

How long have you been in for?

almost 2 years. asked to send my final money in april 2017 for my le to be shipped.
still waiting. kinda think those that paid are old money and are gonna be last.