Getting a nib will I have to down load and install ver 2.00 ISO and delta and then do the same with ver 3.00. No good with computers any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry for double posting not having much luck tonight

Depends what version is installed with your NIB, but I would guess the simple (smaller) package called "The Hobbit Delta Upgrade 2.00 to 2.96 *NEW* [USA]" is enough.

Do you know how to unzip files and copy them to a USB stick?

New games from JJP will have the latest code unless it was sitting for awhile at a distro.

Just update to new delta versions as they come out.

But it's best to check it when it arrives any way.

Thanks a lot guys the wife is going to take it into work and get the i t guys to have a go fingers crossed it all works out thanks a lot

She's going to take the whole machine into work?

Ha Ha just the laptop

So your wife is going to take a laptop in to work just to have the IT guys use it to download the code file from JJP, extract its contents and put it on a USB drive for you to bring home to update your game with?

The IT guys will never let your wife live that down!! LOL

Na. Not everybody knows how to do that...

The IT guys will be surprised you can update pinball code via USB. And you may get lucky and find someone at work that is also into pinball

Yeah but he doesn’t want his -wife- to get lucky at work..

Just an IT joke, nothing serious. You may think that people in IT don't make lists... but they do

Seriously hoping that screaminr doesn't actually mean he is going to pull the computer out of the pinball and bring it to work If that is what he meant we need to pool together and help him out!

nevermind

I just installed 2.96 on my game. When I start a game the ball trough VUK doesn't seem to have enough power to kick up a ball. The ball trough works in test mode, any ideas?

Go into Settings - Coils - make it stronger.

LTG : )

When ever I update a JJP pin. Full install or delta. I take a memory stick with nothing else on it. Go into Utilities - back up settings. Then remove the memory stick. After update I put the memory stick back in, go to Utilities - settings restore, and restore my settings. Then remove the memory stick.

That way just in case the update changed any of my settings, they are back in.

LTG : )

All good now, thank you!

Anybody knows when the 3.0 will be available?

It was supposed to be at the beginning of the month, now they seem to be working on something else. Too bad, they are so close to the finish line! Ted says they're still working on it, at least that's a good sign...

Looking forward to the updated drop target report. I would like to know which one the system check failed on. I only get the error after playing a few games and not when I start the machine or even every time

Hey JJP, do you realize how much more awesome this game would be if I could save my game and come back to it later? There's been several times where I only had about 15 minutes to play a game and decided not to. Imagine if you could play those 15 minutes, save your game by holding down the ring button for 5 seconds, shut the game off, then come back later and load a saved game and continue...

sounds like an upgraded version of the Twilight Zone ball hold

Ok I finally got around to playing with 2.96...

My background on the Hobbit... I agree with most people that from a pure physics perspective, the ramps on the hobbit don't feel great, especially with the way it clunks the ball over to start a mode. However, the orbits feel great, and the vuks do too, and the drop target setup is really where this game shines imo, allowing it to be one of the absolute best sharpshooting pins ever. The main issue with that though, is that almost all of this good sharp shooting is in the modes, which the game at stock settings seems determined to not let you enjoy by constantly interrupting them with multiballs and beast mech pop ups.

Anyways, the new setting to not allow beast frenzy during smaug is GREAT. I also find a like Smaug ball lock difficulty and frenzy at the max. With this I find I am doing around three modes before multiball madness starts, which feels good.

One change I would LOVE to see them add... if anyone is listening:

Please add a setting to disable beast mode hurry ups for any beast whose hurry up has already been collected towards frenzy.
- This would result in less beast interference while still allowing it to be a main part of the game and just as important for arkenstone.
- You will still get beasts all over the place from the modes that utilize them directly (outside of the hurry up).
- Yes this makes some modes easier, but when a mode was harder because your timing for the beast mode hurry up was unlucky for the shot you needed, that really sucks, especially in the situation where you didn't even need that beast anymore.

Sidenote... flashing red inserts outside of a mode appear to mean "Qualify that mode". What does solid red insert mean? Is that for cycling which mode is selected?

G'day Ted the F light on elf turns green when smaug blows fire over the playfield at the end of a game and it is also inconsistent during attract mode is this due to a code update or would you have any idea why this is.

IMG20180830224010 (resized).jpg

I would do an LED test on that target and see if your red LED is working. The test allows you to turn all LEDs red, green, blue or white. A full intensity red with a medium intensity green makes orange on a RGB LED. The fact that you are only seeing green when it should be orange leads me to believe the red is faulty.

I had a similar issue on my Dialed in and they had to send me a new light board.

check_switch_26 - I think I found a bug that most wont encounter. I had a real good game going and then during a smaug multiball one of the balls go stuck up by the upper right flipper. I didn't want to mess with the game and loose the ball by going and getting it, so I let it do a few ball searches and it sent out a chaser ball. No big deal there. (I followed other's instructions and turned the wire tie so the big "knot" was inboard and the wire tie raised, but the wire still caught it - I fixed it by wrapping the wire on the other side of the post and securing it. Not the software issue … keep reading.)
20180906_200822 (resized).jpg
That chaser ball drained rather quickly under normal play. On to the next ball. I got "Into the Fire" started and going and that mode did not stop once I was back down to 1 ball. I made some more shots for a few minutes and then it eventually drained under normal game play while still in that mode. Guessing that is a bug. A ball or two later, I got into "Barrel Escape", didn't do too well and only lasted a few minutes in that one. But once I got down to one ball in that mode, it did close down the mode as normal and went on to try to move on. I got my #8 high score (after owning it for about 21 months) so did pretty good for me. Probably should not count because of the possible bug encountered.

You are correct I did the test and yep the red wasn't working , it's nice to know why your machine isn't working , thank you very much

Please don't. It's always been shocking to me how some people are against 4 of the game's main interactive toys actually being used. They're cool and fun to hit! Enjoy!

FYI I wasn't able to duplicate this.

Okay - Thanks for looking into it. I doubt that similar sequence would happen again, but if it does, I'll try to pay closer attention to what things are going on and maybe take a pic of the screen (with the ball trapped on the flipper) to know what other things could be going on. The reserve ball option for number of balls remaining is activated (we love that by the way), but probably had nothing to do with it. I'll keep an eye out, but hopefully a ball wont get stuck again. Thanks!

I turned on the attract sounds for a party and "I think" those changed from before the last update and have some "dramatic" content in them now. (I could be wrong.) When all the machines were silent as the party was winding down and drunk people were talking, the attract music came on and it was pretty funny that their topic of discussion just stepped up to be dramatic with the background music. Anyway, point is that the attract music catches your attention as designed.

I was playing 2.96 this weekend and I lit up all the gems to trigger Into the Fire Arkenstone mode. I immediately sunk the ball into the Radagast VUK just as the qualifying animation started. The animation cut out but didn't kick off the Into the Fire mode. Seems like a timing bug.

No longer a Hobbit owner, but still follow development. For my Hobbit friends, 2.97 is in final testing and Ted said 3.0 should be out in several weeks. Here are the 2.97 release notes.

==============================================================================
== Legend ==
==============================================================================

+ Addition * Change/bugfix - Note

==============================================================================
== Version 2.97 October 12, 2018 ==
==============================================================================

- NOTE: This version is a "delta update" only. It can be installed on top of
version 2.00 and later.

=== Game Code

* Fixed Arkenstone Mode champs to not reset to default at power up
+ Added some audits that were missing from Arkenstone modes
+ Added music for "Super Spinner"
* Fixed "Feast Frenzy" to include a grace period for scoring
+ Added "Feast Frenzy" and "Super Spinner" champs
* Changed colors used for Ring Button to make them more distinct
+ Added adjustment to inhibit Beast Hurry-up during Book Modes
* Changed Book Mode "hide beast" to inhibit Beast Hurry-up on inlane
+ Added backstab double scoring for Beast Hurry-up
+ Added a few display effects in various places
* Made a bunch of small changes to existing display effects
+ Added game number display to Smaug LE logo movie in attract mode
+ Added a bunch of lamp effects
* Adjusted gain and ducking parameters on fanfares and speech
+ Added some new speech callouts
* Suppressed Book Mode callouts during any multiball
* Changed mode timer to pause on "Gollum save" and trough kicking
* Turned on ball saver at start of "There and Back Again"
* Fixed "There and Back Again" so that it cannot start during a Book Mode
* Changed "There and Back Again" so that final shot does not time out
* Fixed dragon behavior in "Flashback" mode
* Changed "Riddles in the Dark" to be a 5-star tier for Arkenstone scoring
* Fixed ramp U-turn shot behavior when loading Windlance in Smaug Multiball
* Changed all use of kickback to honor "Kickback Strength" adjustment
* Changed "Bait" mode so that beast stays hidden longer on left loop shot
* Changed D-W-A-R-F skill shot to stop updating drop targets after a while

=== Core Code

* Fixed Status Report Start/Display adjustments
* Changed Status Report adjustment to allow up to 20 seconds per page
* Drop target bank error reporting now provides individual target information

Link to the test code is on the JJP newsgroup. I'm not going to distribute that link...

I can confirm this bug; have had it happen on barrels as well

Omg I just saw the code update! This is awesome; how did we get so lucky. I’m curious why so many updates lately?

Yes! It's awesome that JJP delivered on the code for The Hobbit and listened to owners concerns. The last update was huge and took things to a new level. 2.97 / 3.0 looks like it will really help polish things off. Also heard a pretty substantial update for Dialed In is coming too. Thank you JJP

Also, from an owners and potential customers perspective it looks really good going into Expo with code updates for your games and having very polished release code for your latest game.

How did people get into the beta testers' group? I know what to do if an update bricks my game. Would love to verify some stuff!

On rare occasion like today, test updates may be posted on the WOZ forum. Otherwise it's usually employees.

LTG : )

Gotcha, i was under the impression it was a formalized thing. Well Good! I hope they find NOTHING! so it can be released ASAP!

It sounds like they may be ready to release 3.00 in "about a couple weeks".

In the meantime, having played this new release for a couple hours today, I will say that I find the update to be quite brilliant. I encountered none of the issues I have previously reported on or read about, and there are some extra goodies thrown in as well, for both the ears and the eyes.

I kept seeing info for DI and thought we were on the back burner again, NOPE! Thanks Ted and Co! This is awesome news headed into the weekend!

Is it possible to change it so you can see how many balls are remaining even when you're not in Balls in Reserve mode.

Why wouldn't you just want to change it to Balls in Reserve and leave it at that?

Because when you're playing with other people it keeps them interested in the game until the end otherwise I'm left there by myself playing the last few balls and people get bored

I haven't been able to recreate this behavior. If someone wants to make a video of it happening, I'll look into it further.

--Ted

Cool! will install tonight!!

Ted any more tweaks to Smaug/Beast multiballs and book modes clashing? I know you mentioned implementing an option to stop Beast MB from starting. Book modes starting during Smaug MB is the biggest problem as constantly postponing it doesn't work very well at all.

Also I still hope there is scope for expanded portcullis loop scoring, a 1000 points is arbitrary given that this is never intentional. Better to have something to do to gain points after the shot e.g. make flashing shot, hot drop target, etc.

Agree on the 1000 points, that’s too high. I would cut it down to 100 and / or only awarded when not in a mode or a MB

Where is this code update, WOZ/JJP forum that everyone speaks of?

I wouldn't award any points for the loop as it's a fluke thing to happen. I would have it trigger another timed shot which has it's own reward.

Make it a random flashing ramp or loop shot to cash it in or ring