Demolition Man
Williams, 1994yes, that is likely to happen ... lol ... there are many ways to enforce things without filing lawsuits, in fact i'm kindof proud that we have avoided that thus far, never said we filed a lawsuit that's about the most expensive way to enforce things ... we permit IPDB to carry the content that it has and we are just fine with that ...
Hope this is not turning into a bash Rick thread.
Anyway, I started a thread on the NGG code project.
http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/ngg-new-rules-new-code#post-1301785
I can see wanting to protect something you've paid for, but I don't see any damage by i.e. the CCC project: the game is regarded more valuable because of it and I think maybe some owner will spend more money on parts for it because the game has gone up a level, so I'd say it's a good thing for PPS with no real downsides. The only downside I can think of is a 'sliding scale': if this is ok, than what other projects are not and where to draw the line? (not saying there aren't any others, I just can't think of any).
there is copyright on the entire game, which includes all of it's content, this has been discussed and enforced with wms legal for years. kvan .. hang it up.
Burned and installed my new code yesterday. Cool stuff. Thanks for the effort. I'm just curious if anyone else had an issue with balls becoming stuck in the computer hole during multi ball? The game would just sit in multiball after I drained my last ball, then after awhile the ball search kicks in
and two balls come out of the computer hole. I've never had this problem before.
Quoted from Deez:Burned and installed my new code yesterday. Cool stuff. Thanks for the effort. I'm just curious if anyone else had an issue with balls becoming stuck in the computer hole during multi ball? The game would just sit in multiball after I drained my last ball, then after awhile the ball search kicks in
and two balls come out of the computer hole. I've never had this problem before.
No, but I did have a problem with the ball getting stuck at the claw. Ball search found it, but forced it to go to the AC-MAG award.
One other thing I'm noticing is that my right top inline (the L one) does not seem to register. I haven't played with the switch test yet, but I know for sure it was working before I swapped the ROM this morning. Anyone else seeing the same thing?
None of this takes away from how amazing this achievement is. It's a whole new game! With balanced scoring, new rules, and making much more use of the playfield!
Quoted from stevevt:None of this takes away from how amazing this achievement is. It's a whole new game! With balanced scoring, new rules, and making much more use of the playfield!
I agree, one question that I had was why my machine would beep about 10 times upon startup, then play fine after that? Another Pinsider said his only made a single beep on startup.
Quoted from Deez:Burned and installed my new code yesterday. Cool stuff. Thanks for the effort. I'm just curious if anyone else had an issue with balls becoming stuck in the computer hole during multi ball? The game would just sit in multiball after I drained my last ball, then after awhile the ball search kicks in
and two balls come out of the computer hole. I've never had this problem before.
which rev of code using?
One of the things that happens I have seen is that if a multiball gets pretty crazy, some of the coils can get locked out. This is a protection/timing thing in freewpc. I think there is a bug there but haven't tracked it down yet. Because I knew this was there, I reset all the coil states during ball search so that clears this problem out. This is really a work around though.
One question though, wen the 2 balls kicked, your flippers weren't locked right? You kept playing those 2 balls correct?
Quoted from JesseB:I agree, one question that I had was why my machine would beep about 10 times upon startup, then play fine after that? Another Pinsider said his only made a single beep on startup.
could you send me a video of this please? not sure exactly what you are describing
Quoted from stevevt:No, but I did have a problem with the ball getting stuck at the claw. Ball search found it, but forced it to go to the AC-MAG award.
what exactly do you mean by stuck? what was happening around that time?
Quoted from jamescardona:what exactly do you mean by stuck? what was happening around that time?
I've only played 3 games since installing the ROM, so I still have no idea what's going on. Not to mention that we're talking about at least a couple hours ago. 
I was in some mode (sorry, not sure what), and the claw was lit. I hit the claw shot, the mode ended (I think, sorry, maybe not), and rather than a regular claw award selection, I had to wait until ball search for the claw to move the ball to AC-MAG on its own.
I guess no one is having the upper right inlane switch problem. I'll investigate that one further on my end. I'll also try to provide better details when I see any claw or other significant potential bugs.
Thanks!
Great work on the code! Thanks. PS.....threatening a hobbyist over 20 year old code and bragging about it is lame. No PPS for me, thanks
Quoted from jamescardona:which rev of code using?
One of the things that happens I have seen is that if a multiball gets pretty crazy, some of the coils can get locked out. This is a protection/timing thing in freewpc. I think there is a bug there but haven't tracked it down yet. Because I knew this was there, I reset all the coil states during ball search so that clears this problem out. This is really a work around though.
One question though, wen the 2 balls kicked, your flippers weren't locked right? You kept playing those 2 balls correct?
Using Rev .91. The flippers weren't locked and the multi ball continued to play and ended as it should.
Quoted from Deez:One of the things that happens I have seen is that if a multiball gets pretty crazy, some of the coils can get locked out. This is a protection/timing thing in freewpc. I think there is a bug there but haven't tracked it down yet. Because I knew this was there, I reset all the coil states during ball search so that clears this problem out. This is really a work around though.
One question though, wen the 2 balls kicked, your flippers weren't locked right? You kept playing those 2 balls correct?
Using Rev .91. The flippers weren't locked and the multi ball continued to play and ended as it should.
yes, so that was what I thought it was.
There is a protection algorithm built into freewpc to prevent multiple coils from firing at the same time. I think this was done to prevent dragging down bus voltage which tends to cause bad things such as soft reboots. So what I have seen a few times is that if there are too many coil fire requests in the queue then things sometimes become bogged down and the queue "forgets" if a coil has been fired. It then prevents a refire because it thinks it is still firing. Only seen these a few times and it was always during a fairly engaging multiball. I put in a little chunk of code in ball search to reset the coil fire loop just in case this happens. Will investigate further when I get the chance.
I know it kind of sux to have to wait for search to clear things out but I have really only seen these pretty rarely. Hopefully I can eliminate it all together.
It only happened once and I just wanted to notify you of it. I did notice the one coil at a time firing because when the ramp was feeding the crane I also noticed that the crane pauses as the ramp diverter resets. This explains it all.
Quoted from stevevt:I've only played 3 games since installing the ROM, so I still have no idea what's going on. Not to mention that we're talking about at least a couple hours ago.
I was in some mode (sorry, not sure what), and the claw was lit. I hit the claw shot, the mode ended (I think, sorry, maybe not), and rather than a regular claw award selection, I had to wait until ball search for the claw to move the ball to AC-MAG on its own.
I guess no one is having the upper right inlane switch problem. I'll investigate that one further on my end. I'll also try to provide better details when I see any claw or other significant potential bugs.
Thanks!
This is happening on mine also, a couple of minor issues regarding the car crash ball save, it appears not to work in some modes, however hitting the retina scan does activates the ball save feature, was this by design James? I also have a problem with the game ending multiball with still 2 balls left in the game. Lastly the claw was activated several times in one mode, in other words I hit the claw and drop it in the 2nd hole which is the "Frenzy" mode and then immediately the claw was activated again, so I hit it and drop the ball in ACMAG and then it activated again.,,not sure if it's supposed to happen. Maybe different ROM versions have some kind of an effect on the game play.
Quoted from kvan99:This is happening on mine also, a couple of minor issues regarding the car crash ball save, it appears not to work in some modes, however hitting the retina scan does activates the ball save feature, was this by design James? I also have a problem with the game ending multiball with still 2 balls left in the game. Lastly the claw was activated several times in one mode, in other words I hit the claw and drop it in the 2nd hole which is the "Frenzy" mode and then immediately the claw was activated again, so I hit it and drop the ball in ACMAG and then it activated again.,,not sure if it's supposed to happen. Maybe different ROM versions have some kind of an effect on the game play.
car crash ball save - yeah I know about that. most times it doesn't work but that is a timing thing - maybe I can fix it but I just play like its not there.
retina scan ball save is there because when the game was in beta some people complained that the ball doesn't always go straight down so we threw in a ball save there. so that is supposed to be there.
you can stack claw modes and multiballs with this code so what you describe with the claw sounds feasible. If you had done the required things to lit the claw you can keep hitting it even before one mode is done.
not sure what you mean by "game ending multiball with still 2 balls left in the game" - do you mean that MB ended but still 2 balls on playfield (but bonus didn't start right?)
Yes James..twice the frenzy music reverted to the regular music with two balls on the table...maybe it's a trough issue, not sure, I did not notice any trough issue with the original rom. I wil check into it.
Quoted from kvan99:Yes James..twice the frenzy music reverted to the regular music with two balls on the table...maybe it's a trough issue, not sure, I did not notice any trough issue with the original rom. I wil check into it.
yes sound like trough issue. are you running .90 or .91? if .90, try .91 - the trough timing is one of the tweaks for .91
So I played about 20 games with the new rom last night and I love it. The video modes are way cool. Kaboom is pretty much impossible to do with the handles for me. Playing simon says makes me realize how bad my memory is because I have yet to beat it. I just lose all the past sequences after about 2 rounds.
I'm just curious, what rom set do you need to have for the swear sounds to work? I was running the H-6 roms, but I burned a chip for my buddy and I was curious if there was a certain revision the new code would work with.
Quoted from foureyedcharlie:Great work on the code! Thanks. PS.....threatening a hobbyist over 20 year old code and bragging about it is lame. No PPS for me, thanks
To be fair the law states you must make some efforts to actively protect your copyrighted material or you may lose that copyright. That's really all a copyright holder needs to say about the issue.
Doesn't make people happy and I suppose you could offer limited exceptions but that may lead you down a slippery legal slope also...
Quoted from Jwjsr:Who would burn this freewpc for me for ?$
PM the OP - he will burn a chip for you.
Quoted from Jwjsr:How many balls should My DM have? Mine has 3.
DM is a 5 ball game.
Quoted from PorkChopExpress:DM is a 5 ball game.
Quoted from Jwjsr:How many balls should My DM have? Mine has 3.
for future reference, on all pins, just under the lockbar there should be a little label that says "install XX balls"
Ive been playing the new Demolition Time code for a week now, all I can say AMAZING.
the work that John had to put into this is just mind blowing and the finished product is nothing short of incredible. I almost sold my DM about a year ago, and then I heard of this ongoing project and decided to keep it in the line up.
The new code breathes a new life in this game and finally makes it a balanced game that utilizes the playfield properly.
I cannot say thank you enough for the time and effort that went into this undertaking.
Hope others out there are inspired and rewrite code for other games as well.
I finally got around to installing mine last night. It's going to take me a while to absorb everything but so far, looks really good.
I like how you park and 'yozzle' the claw over that problematic switch that always seems to cause a ball hang up so you whip the ball down that ramp.
Quoted from HighProtein:I tried it for a moment, I applaud the effort and the work so far, long way to go,
once it gets to the point where people think it's closer to complete,
I'm willing to throw it in my DM once it's back on route then.
I think he's moved on to other things. It's probably as done as it's going to be....
Has anyone had problems with there ball lanch? Mine puts ball in the shooter lane, then does a ball serch over and over. It makes the ball lanch sounds but no ball lanch, so I have to pop the glass and lanch it manualy. Looks like it will be fun to play if this is fixed. I had to put factory chip back in and all is fine.
Quoted from HighProtein:I tried it for a moment, I applaud the effort and the work so far, long way to go,
once it gets to the point where people think it's closer to complete,
I'm willing to throw it in my DM once it's back on route then.
could you be more specific about "long way to go". We had about 30 beta testors - most of them pinsiders, and their were hardly any comments as far as improvement requests over the last few revs. Please either post here or PM me on any problems or suggested improvements.
Quoted from GRUMPY:Has anyone had problems with there ball lanch?
Sorry I have not seen that issue.
Quoted from Patofnaud:Sorry I have not seen that issue.
grumpy and I are emailing back and forth to try to figure this out. Pretty sure one of the switches may be bad on his cab.
For the rest of you this brings up something you should know. Freewpc does not have as robust error checking as far as switch errors etc than the original code. Freewpc pretty much assumes everything is working properly on your machine. The original code was a little more forgiving and would let you play on if it only saw 3 or 4 balls in the trough for example (bad trough switch). For freewpc, I was pretty much assuming that the majority if not all of these machines were in homes and that home owners usually kept their games in good working order so I didn't write the additional code to take into account all these different situations where something could be broke.
So far I think I have only had 3 people say things didn't work right and every time it was a bad switch somewhere (opto on claw, bad trough switch, etc.).
oh and one other thing.
On demolition time, you will probably notice that the pop bumpers fire a lot harder than the original. That is intentional, I wanted to make the game stronger and more aggressive and that is one physical change you will see. The only downside is that you may have to adjust the sensitivity on your pop bumper spoons. I had some people report that they were getting phantom pop hits when the ball was in the pops since they were firing so hard.
Quoted from tamoore:I think he's moved on to other things. It's probably as done as it's going to be....
I do not plan on writing new modes or making any more changes to this code. I am now working on NGG. Having said that, if there is something major that is wrong in the code that you find, please let me know, I will fix it.
Quoted from Kmolo:James,
Installed the new rom this morning. Game plays great, but was wondering if you used quite a bit of audio from the swear roms? I don't have them installed currently and it seems like there are some call-outs missing?
There are more call outs in my code than the original - but I may have used them in different places than original. so that is what you are probably noticing.
Swear roms add maybe 50 or so new sounds and about 25 of those actually do not swear, but are not located in the original code. Some have installed the swear roms and selected "additional sounds" in the option menu which then adds about 25 new sounds but not the swearing ones. That is how mine is set up. you could also add all the sounds as you like.
HI Everyone,
I am currently having a DM shopped, just picked it up a few days ago. The game was on route years ago then went right into someones home where it sat, so it has never really had any updates to the code. Wanted to get some opinions on what sort of roms I should install to get it up to par. This project sounds awesome by the way!
I just installed freewpc Rom and it will not load a ball from the ball trough so I haven't been able to start a game. It does what i think is a ball search, if that is what it is doing when all the solenoids fire after pressing start but it does not load a ball. Would having 4 balls in the machine instead of 5 cause this?
Quoted from Jwjsr:Would having 4 balls in the machine instead of 5 cause this?
Is it supposed to have 5? (Don't have a DM) Because that's pretty standard behavior if the game thinks it's missing a ball, yes.
Quoted from Jwjsr:I just installed freewpc Rom and it will not load a ball from the ball trough so I haven't been able to start a game. It does what i think is a ball search, if that is what it is doing when all the solenoids fire after pressing start but it does not load a ball. Would having 4 balls in the machine instead of 5 cause this?
should have 5 balls.
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