Ben,

Sorry to now bump three AMH threads (and then back to work, yay ), but were the strange features with the modes that I identified to Charlie addressed? At first I thought they were hardware, so I sent them there and he confirmed it was software.

A recap if you don't have it...

If you start Hospital mode (and there is another one I forget) where you have a locked ball, if you lose the ball, restart the mode, and then lose the ball again, upon the next ball being served, the game will immediately send a second ball into play after you plunge the first. It is not in multiball mode, and when one ball drains, the game will do the bonus and make the other ball drain.

Also, I suggested that you warn the player on a restart that if you don't make it, you drain your ball. I am cool with that working like that, but it would be nice to know when it's coming.

Finally on this one, I think (hope?) this is a bug, but if I start Hospital, don't complete it, time out the restart purposely (because I know I'm not good enough to do the six shots to start it), when I requalify it after hitting the shots, if I fail it, it acts now like the restart and forces the locked ball to be drained. To me, while I get what you're going for with the risk / reward of restarting the mode, I hope that this isn't your actual goal here, as if you kind of suck at hitting those six shots (as I do), there is no way to play defensively to maximize the chance you can pull it off.

A couple times I have had it where the minion targets lower and the game tells me to hit them, although I can't isolate what is triggering this. It hadn't happened to me in like a month, and then it happened yesterday. I know it said something like 'All Minion Now Worth Double for Rest of Ball' and I immediately started a mode after it (I think Theater Ghost?), and it lowered the minion bank and hits inside the target area stopped registering.

My game has software V.19 on it according to boot up.

I'll explain again, hopefully clearer. This week has been psycho. Hell, Rob Zombie was in town last night and I missed it, and I didn't even care because this week is so crazy. Anyway, that doesn't have anything to do with pinball, so anyway on topic...

If I qualify Doc and then shoot it, door closes and the mode starts and the game shoots in another ball. If you drain that ball, the game will kick out the ball from the saucer, flip the left flipper to warn you it's coming, and the game plays on. If after this occurs, if you shoot the ball back into the saucer behind the door quickly, it restarts the mode. Another ball is served, and everything is normal... but, if you drain that new ball that is in play while you are trying to start Doc multiball, the game will kick out the ball in the saucer and you will not be allowed to save it.

From what I understand, this is NOT a bug, it's a feature of Ben wanting to do a risk / reward for trying it again. I'm fine with that. My one suggestion is to make that risk / reward known by a DMD message or something, as it was quite shocking the first time it happened to me.

The bug comes in where after the kick out and drain occurs, the next ball (so long as the above didn't happen on your last ball) served when you plunge it into play, the game will immediately auto-plunge a second ball into play.

Charlie was able to replicate, so I would assume it needs some sort of update. If it wasn't referenced only because of V19 not being "public", that's fine, I just want to know that it was fixed.

The second error is that I, since I suck at starting Doc multi, took to the strategy of avoiding the restart of the Doc mode so that I could backhand the door and re-qualify it without it being a restart. I assumed that if you do that, I would still have the chance when I started it to lose the ball in play but then keep the ball that was in the saucer waiting to be freed. Unfortunately, the game acts like a restart, and auto-drains the ball that was behind the door. I assume that this isn't supposed to work that way, as I feel like it's rather unfair to force drain off a non-completed mode like that every time after the first. If that is the way it is meant to be, I just want to know, as then there is never a want to time-out the Doc restart.

Upon the second time starting it, the same double ball serve issue happens as after the restart if it wasn't ball three.

There is a second mode that does the same thing, maybe the Bar ghost, where it holds a ball and has the same sort of issues.