Quoted from Rdoyle1978:Funny - I just came to post about a similar issue. I must have shut the game off before it released all the balls yesterday.
Start the game with one ball locked in the upper left lock (where the ball stops if lock is not lit and you hit the inner loop)
The game does one, maybe 2 ball searches before starting -the first game- on boot. It does not appear to drop the post which locks the ball during ball search. Then it basically never does another ball search.
The game at this point knows the ball is missing (it shows a “ball missing” message in the menu), but never lets it out via ball search, and appears to ignore the fact that a ball is missing when dealing with drains, e.g. multiballs.
I started a game 38 minutes ago as above, drained after maybe 8 minutes, and the game is -still waiting for the ball-. Yes, after 30 minutes. I have drained, there is no ball in play, and I have no way to fix this save pulling the glass. I restarted the game even, by going into the menu, and this did not help. It’s just sitting as if I’m supposed to be plunging the ball, but none of the plunge Callouts are playing.
I am on the beta 9.18.18 code, so maybe this is specific to that code, but I’d really love to see this addressed. I am certain this sort of bug also appears elsewhere in the game, e.g. man from beyond seems to lose track of the ball sometimes.
It’s been quite a while (ok, not in Stern code update months), hoping for another update soon?
This is rather odd behavior and it would be interesting to see if it is reproducible on other machines, I'd try it but I won't be near my game for another week or so . Does the left lock switch show as closed in the switch test? What if you go into the clear Houdini's balls utility, does it release it then?