Great Falls, VA
Quoted from rosh:being locked away working on game 2
Rosh! It's been two hours since you've checked in code for game 2! Get back to work!
(Topic ID: 183206)
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Houdini
American Pinball, 2017
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1 month later
1 month later
Quoted from MMP:Well think of it this way... how could this game be used for any tournament given this limitation?
Why not? Total Nuclear Annihilation has a similar rule (game ends after destroying reactor 9); like Houdini, that has also been used in a lot of tournaments.
In practice, it's pretty unlikely to come up... these are achievements that will rarely be reached by even strong players. But if they are... then yes, best score wins, as usual.
1 month later
2 months later
Quoted from Hdmike444:Really wish it came with a manual though.
http://s4.american-pinball.com/img/support/2018-10/AP_Houdini-Service-Manual_091018.pdf
2 months later
Just speaking for myself: nope. Love pinball as much as ever. But I admit the other machines in my collection don’t get nearly the play they should, it’s always Oktoberfest getting “tested”. 
Same effect when I was working on Alien.
Quoted from konjurer:But I would assume that there are worse ways to earn a living than coding new features and testing them out, correct? I would love to do that for a living. I wrote new code for my KISS Pro and it was a blast to implement my own rules, light shows, animations and sound effects!
It's a total blast! I have plenty of local job opportunities -- and frankly, pretty much all of them pay considerably better -- but when you're a lifelong pinball fan, growing up playing with Pinball Construction Set on the Apple II... yeah, this is pretty damn cool.
2 weeks later
3 weeks later
3 weeks later
Quoted from Rdoyle1978:Thinking about Josh’s post where he said he can only work on the game during his free time.. does that mean AP is done supporting it?
Josh is supporting the game, and he's part of AP, you know?
Really, it means exactly the opposite of what you're suggesting. It means you're dealing with a company that is admittedly smaller than Stern or JJP, so yeah, when there's another game in the pipeline it demands time from employees... but it also means those employees are giving everything they can to keep improving the products in the field, even if it means the work day extends past 8 hours. But sometimes it's nice to go home and have dinner with the family before starting the evening shift.
Oktoberfest is the same way. Josh and I will keep refining it until we're satisfied with it. Definitely a "yeah, it's a job, but it's also a passion" situation. And I'm quite sure it'll be the same for Game #3 and beyond.
2 months later
Quoted from mbwalker:Ferret: Are you allowed to tinker with the Houdini code or is that Rosh's baby?
I suppose I’m “allowed”, but it wouldn’t make much sense... I’ve never touched it, so the vision and code is all Josh.
3 weeks later
A little blurb from the slide deck from the American Pinball seminar at Pinball Expo two weeks ago:
Houdini - Code update in progress - Beta testing later this year
7 months later
Sorry, folks, I wouldn’t hold my breath for the fast boot to come to Houdini or Oktoberfest. We completely rewrote the American Pinball A/V system, and Hot Wheels is the first game to use that... unfortunately it’s not just a drop-in replacement for the old A/V, so the previous games would more or less have to be rewritten from scratch to use it.
2 weeks later
Folks, please rest assured that American Pinball is committed to making all of our customers happy. Not gonna lie, rosh and I have been intently focused on Hot Wheels for the past few months, but we appreciate the bug reports on the active Houdini (and Oktoberfest!) betas, and will have new code updates coming soon!
4 weeks later
4 months later
3 weeks later
Quoted from Rdoyle1978:WHOA MAJOR CRAZINESS!!! This is too awesome !! I can't wait for the "King of Cars" mode!!
It's the Houdini / Hot Wheels crossover feature.
3 months later
Quoted from zahner:Is this just my typical computer ineptitude, or is there an Apple thing?
American Pinball software updates use the file extension .pkg, which is, unfortunately, the same extension that Macs use for installation packages for Mac software... so your computer may be trying to open/install this file itself after downloading it, which won't work.
Your browser may have a preference to auto-open files after downloading... for example, if you use Safari, go to Safari > Preferences on the menu bar, then click the General tab and turn off the "Open 'safe' files after downloading" option, and see if that helps things.
Additionally or alternatively, the downloaded update package should be left in your Downloads folder or, worst case, in the Trash, even if the Mac complains that it doesn't want to install the package.
Hope this helps!
Jerickso77 : I agree with the illustrious LTG
.
Go into the service mode, Tests > Switch, and thump the playfield gently with the side of your fist to vibrate the playfield a little bit, and observe if any of the Seance switches pop up on screen as activating. If so, check that physical switch... you'll probably find that the two blades are a tad too close to each other. Gently bend the blades a tiny bit to separate them... this is a little finicky, since you want them close enough so a modest ball strike triggers the switch, but not so close that they trigger from random game action. Takes a little getting used to, perhaps a little trial and error, but I'm sure you'll get the hang of it quickly.
Let us know how it goes!
2 weeks later
2 months later
wiredoug - don't know about Facebook, but the American Pinball team is pretty active here on Pinside. You can also fill out a service request ticket here:
https://www.american-pinball.com/support/service/
...or e-mail: [email protected]
You can jump from any version directly to the latest... all update packages are "full", not "delta".
Quoted from LTG:rosh - Josh Kugler, ferret - Joe Schober, vegas98 - Michael Grant who is sales and marketing.
Thanks, LTG!
And of course, a very important member of the team: brenna98 - Dave Brennan, API Customer Service Manager.
3 weeks later
Quoted from chewiec:Also, I have a random pulsing coil on the bottom right pop bumper. It goes away when the game starts but fires in 2 second intervals when in attract mode.
I might be misremembering things, but could this be caused by missing termination on the driver bus?
1 week later
Thanks for the love! At American Pinball, we work hard to provide great value in our games, long after you've purchased them.
6 months later
Quoted from scbill88:My Machine is at a 14degree angle, is that to steep?
WAY too steep. In fact, I'd check your inclinometer because it might be messed up. Houdini wants to be at a 6 degree slope by default. Most modern pinball machines want a slope of 6-7 degrees. 14 would be unplayable.
10 months later
Quoted from Damonator:How do you upgrade the code? I put the newest code on a usb and it says copying for a brief second, then it just has a message that the update succeeded (even though it didn't).
Congrats on your new game!
Not having the update "take" is usually a problem with the filename. Since you're coming from a very old build (that maybe has original software?), make sure the name of the update package on the USB stick is "houdini-gamecode.pkg" -- with no date or "(1)" or other such oddities in the name.
If you're still having problems, refer to this document to verify that your USB stick is formatted the way the game expects:
http://s4.american-pinball.com/img/support/2021-2/USB-drive-formatting-procedure.pdf
Hope this helps!
Settings > Replay (looks like a starburst) > Replay Levels -- keep it less than 4, and you should be OK.
Quoted from Damonator:That was it! The version I downloaded from API had the version appended to the file name. Renaming it to houdini-gamecode.pkg worked great. Thank you!
Great, glad I could help!
FYI, that was just an anomaly when upgrading from very early software. You shouldn't have the same problem again if/when we release any future code updates.
Replay Boost is a feature that ratchets up the replay score by the specified amount when a replay was achieved on the previous game. The intention is that if the replay score was set way too low, this helps protect against giving a nearly infinite stream of replays. (Particularly important in commercial operation trying to earn coin drop.)
Correct, the level 4 replay will not be awarded when Replay Levels is set to 3. The attract mode screen provides the correct info.
Replay Percentage is usually an alternate method of automatically adjusting replay values -- for example, a 10% replay percentage would mean that the game would try to dynamically adjust the replay score to award a replay about 10% of the time, based on a rolling average of recent game scores. This would usually be enabled by setting Replay Type to "Auto", but apparently that's disabled in Houdini... not sure why.
Applying the Replay Boost when Replay Type is set to Fixed appears to be a bug. You should be able to largely mitigate this by setting Replay Boost to the lowest possible value.
Hope this helps.
3 months later
Hi folks -- if you need help with your machine, your best bet is to submit a service request ticket here: <https://www.american-pinball.com/support/service/>. That gives you a ticket number that can be used to track your issue.
If any of you have a ticket that has gone unanswered for more than a couple business days, feel free to ping me directly with the ticket number and a quick description of the problem, and I'll try to poke the bears on your behalf.
Sorry for any inconvenience!
1 week later
It may be easier to order parts from the online store instead of via email -- here's the link to the Houdini parts store:
https://store.american-pinball.com/collections/houdini?p=1
If you're still having issues and need email support, try [email protected]
5 months later
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