They should just admit they're not going to update the code. At this point it's kind of insulting.
(Topic ID: 226036)
Linked Games
Ghostbusters (LE)
Stern, 2016-
Ghostbusters (Premium)
Stern, 2016
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Ghostbusters (Pro)
Stern, 2016
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Quoted from johnny77:I called stern today about my playfield issue they were pretty rude. My distributor seem to be draggin his feet on issue so i called them, and the way they acted was not cool.
I've emailed them a few times over the list couple years and they've never been helpful. No wonder they need distributors. They have no idea what customer service is.
Other than Stern said they would, why should we think they'll update the code for a game out of production? What do they have to gain?
Quoted from RJW:Future customers confidence, that if they buy a game, it will be completed at some point.
Still looks pretty bad to have delayed it this long even if they do come through. Hard to see the investment being worthwhile when they already look bad.
1 month later
I'm glad other companies are popping up because there's no reason to buy another stem after this disgraceful treatment.
I just played a game where I got Gozer champion at 109 million but my total score was only 48 million... But the code is fine... No need for an update.
Quoted from ZEN:I emailed stern,and I got a response. I'll paraphrase..
I told them I have not purchased a NIB game since, I let them know that I was frustrated and that I would not consider additional business as such until my prior products I purchased are complete I also told them thanks for making some great stuff over the years and I enjoy it, but I cant do business this way. I also said "please".
They responded saying thanks, we know, and we are planning to do an update...
That is about it.
It remains on their schedule... 
3 weeks later
Quoted from pipes:Thought I'd drop this here since this is the official code laziness thread. It has since been deleted. Friend sent it to me but by the time I checked it was gone.
Gracias Stern.
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Your sure your friend wasn't just messing with you by editing the page?
Quoted from PanzerFreak:Guess we will hear if this is real or fake come tomorrow with Sterns June Stern of the Union.
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Everyone's going to block Canadian arcade tomorrow for this nonsense.
I sympathize with the people holding out hope that it's real, but don't build yourself up for more disappointment. It's clearly fake.
Quoted from Willy39:Stern you better be looking at these posts and finally end the crap and give a well overdue update.
"Ghostbusters remains on our schedule."
Quoted from Yoko2una:What boggles my mind is that pinball is such a fun product, and a cool one at that. Stern should be embracing the fact they are the leader in this recreational hobby and be engaging with their customers and fans in a manner that reflects the industry they are in. This isn't something as boring as washing machines... or even Dunder Mifflin paper. This is a colorful, vibrant industry that deals with freggin GAMES.
Yet despite all that, these overly scripted blurbs from their marketing (and probably legal) group sound so forced... so prepared... so corporate... the opposite of how one would imagine a company in this industry to operate. They don't need to be wildly unprofessional, but hell, stop acting so robotic with this all.
Something like "Regarding GB code, we hear you and apologize for the delays. Our programming staff is currently tied down with our next two games, and here's a peak at one of them (insert zoomed in teaser pic of something small). We aim to have GB code completed by the end of this year, and if we don't meet that deadline, Gary will take a shot of raw goat milk during the next DeadFlip gameplay stream of our latest title (insert second teaser pic)."
Boom. It's an update, something to generate hype for an upcoming game, and something fun. Obviously I swung the pendulum a bit far in the opposite direction with the raw goat milk, but I think somewhere between goat milk and their shitty canned responses, there's opportunity for much better and EFFECTIVE communication.
That would make sense if they had any intention of doing the code update.
Stern could get rid of angry customers wanting a code update by just releasing the source code, but they're probably worried it would reveal just how sloppy their code is underneath the hood.
How big is the operator market compared to the home use market? I think there are a handful of places in the Los Angeles area where you can play Gb on route, but my impression is that there are more of these machines in private homes with owners waiting for promised updates.
I didn't buy my gb until well after the game had come out, but I was initially considering buying it nib at launch and I remember Stern regularly making comments about being "dedicated to quality code." Whether operators care or not, Stern has been promising an update for years at this point and shows no signs of actually intending to deliver. If they don't want to provide quality code, that's one thing. Operators can enjoy having coin-eating flawed games on route, but if you make a promise to customers, you should deliver, and in a timely manner. It's absolutely pathetic to promise features, never deliver them, and then say "operators don't care." I know Stern doesn't say it themselves, but that seems to be the argument here lately in their defense, with the other half I see on Facebook saying that Trudeau's legal issues give them an out despite the fact that they keep promising it every month.
I think the layout is fine. After getting mine dialed in I've found cheap drains to be pretty rare. The code really shows its weakness when you have it at home and you play it a lot. I think it could be a top 5 game, but I would have a hard time recommending it just because it feels unfinished with the code.
Quoted from Deez:Maybe it lights during wizard mode? Have you beat the game?
Are you talking about the advertised wizard mode they never coded? 
Since we're wishing for things that will never happen, I'd love to be able to skip some of the video animations like ball lock and extra ball.
Quoted from tpir:You can do that now by going into the menus and turning on "Abbreviated Choreography."
A lot of mode animations can be cancelled the old school way of hitting both flipper buttons as well.
Quoted from tpir:You can do that now by going into the menus and turning on "Abbreviated Choreography."
A lot of mode animations can be cancelled the old school way of hitting both flipper buttons as well.
I mean with the flipper buttons. I want it to be on for other people but to be able to skip it without having to go into the settings every game.
Quoted from CrazyLevi:The same reason it's a "big secret" when the rollercoaster is going to be running again. It makes zero sense to make promises you aren't sure you can keep, even if you have an idea.
After 29 months of promising an update, it's time to give a release date and keep it. If they had never promised another update it would be one thing and we could all just consider the game to have permanent flaws, but 29 months of empty promises is even worse in my opinion. It's adding insult to injury.
1 week later
Quoted from PanzerFreak:Theres a huge, some would even say epic, 30th month anniversary coming up for Ghostbusters code! This is going to be big.
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This year is also the 30th anniversary of Ghostbusters 2. Code update confirmed! 
I'm getting to that point where I'm starting to think about what to get for my next game, but I want to see how this code situation pans out. I still can't believe Stern has let a game as big as Ghostbusters end production with unfinished code. I feel like I'd have to be crazy to buy another Stern if they don't deliver after all this time.
Quoted from BrewersArcade:This is promising. Cmon Stern knock it out of the park![quoted image]
That sounds like good news. I wish they would give more details though.
Quoted from captainadam_21:Hopefully it just isn't verbal gymnastics to stall. Technically if you have $0 allocated and then allocated a can of Shasta, it is an increase of resources.
Yeah... I'm hoping for the best but I work for a software company and I feel like if we told this to customers it wouldn't mean anything other than stop bothering us. I never take anything seriously unless there are actual details.
Quoted from desertT1:If it were me I would not want that public. Some of these guys go to shows and the last thing I'd want is to be asked "how's that GB update going?" every time I enter a room. I would also like to know, but it would not likely be a good thing for that to be known until after it's done.
I saw a guy giving Lyman some bug fixes and suggestions at Pinburgh one year. Day 2 and he's trying to get his A division bank started. The other guys in his group had to ask the guy to let them get started. Time and place is something that is lost on some. Not talking about you Jeff, just a general statement.
I'm not sure I agree with this assessment but even so, Stern could say "We have X people on it full time and anticipate a release in X month with the following major fixes and features..."
Every software company has at least that much information on any project, even if it's just tentative.
1 week later
Quoted from JodyG:Game of thrones is getting an update released. Un-fucking-real.[quoted image]
Gotta make Bran king...
Regardless of what they were doing and when behind the scenes, you don't promise a code update for 30 months, finally say there are people working on it, and then have the same coder release code for a different game out of the blue.
Quoted from DNO:This IS the place to bitch about this code.
I respect all the comments and understand the complaints.
What I get bothered by is the people that feel the need to blast on EVERY post Stern makes about code. (GoT code, any other code update)
Duck YOU!!
You guys ruin any fun or excitement about anything else.
Like pissy children in the back seat, “are we there yet!, are we there yet!, are we there yet!!!!!”
Give it a fucking rest, I get it, you want to annoy Stern. But all you do now is annoy fellow pinball lovers, and look petty.
They have conceded and communicated that it is happening, stop shitting on everything, you point has been made.
Peace, I feel better.
Look at this guy with PTSD over GB code comments...
Quoted from chuckwurt:Dwight mentioned in the GOT stream tonight that GB code is being worked on by him and top men. Said it was an even bigger update than GOT. And if you watched the GOT stream, that update is massive.
So expect massiver. Haha
That sounds great but then I remember how they've been lying about the update for 2 and a half years, so I'm not believing anything until I see it.
2 weeks later
Quoted from ArcadiusMaximus:So over in the JP2 thread there has been a lot of talk about GB and the flipper gap. Apparently Stern has come out and said not only is there the Treudeau gap, but apparently an additional 1/8" was added be accident. Can anyone confirm this? I know a lot of people switched to carrot flippers and that seems to work just fine, however, IMO, the only thing more ridiculous than the look of that gap is the look of goofy carrot flippers.
I've been kicking around the idea of making a router template to lay over the playfield and elongate the flipper holes which would allow the flipper mechs to be mounted lower closing the gap. In doing this the in lane ball guides may need to be stretched too, but those need addressed for air balls anyways. It would be semi reversible as I would just need to move the flipper mechs back to the original holes.
The gap sucks but it's part of the game. I wouldn't alter the playfield. You just have to work around it when playing.
Quoted from lpeters82:Sweet, after a few months of allocating additional resources we should have the whole company working on the Ghostbusters update.
Gary Stern himself is said to be debugging a stack overflow.
1 week later
Quoted from PinLen83:Rarehero: So salty brah!!
Not like the down-votes from you means much, especially in this thread.
Carry on
He's a closet GB fan. Change my mind.
Quoted from seenev:He's a closet GB fan. Change my mind.
He sent me a message and said that he has upvote/downvote dyslexia and that he thinks everyone here is doing great work and to keep it up.
1 week later
Quoted from desertT1:Add another row so the text isn't so wide. It'll be too hard to read as-is. Otherwise, best of luck. May we all be so lucky that code drops before Expo.
I'm pretty sure there are still some NIBs out there.
2 weeks later
Do we really need to wait for a dead flip stream? If it's done then why not just release it? I'm not going to watch a stream.
Quoted from ruralcollector:Purely speculation, but I suspect that they will be announcing more than just a code update by bringing Ernie in.
I honestly think they just paid for an Ernie Hudson cameo video and cropped out the cameo logo.
No new ecto goggles animations. No additional topper support. No new features exclusive to premium/le game... Better than nothing but I have to admit I'm a little disappointed
All I'm saying is I'm glad that they finally did an update, but after 33 months and hyping it as a huge update, I thought they would find a few ways to further utilize the signature features of the game, like the ecto goggles and the Magna slings. Vigo on the ecto goggles seems like a no brainer to me. Maybe a few new sling tricks. The fact that they treated pro and premium models the same is surprising to me. But there's some cool new stuff. Not sure how I feel about them nerfing a lot of it but I think they said you can undo some of that in the menu.
Quoted from KozMckPinball:Vigo is GBII isn't it? Thought Stern said no GBII way back when because of the GBII storyline.
There's gb 2 content all over this game...
Quoted from PanzerFreak:Just another note, no new Ecto Goggles animations as Dwight said it would "involve the movie license people". Understandable. Hope they at least remove the cat animation from it considering who's cat its referencing.
There aren't enough animations in the ecto goggles to start removing some. I wish Stern made their code open source. So much potential...
Quoted from hawkmoon77:That would be amazing. I love all the code, but this is a huge source of confusion for people new to the game, and a big incongruity for me that is noticeable in literally every game I play!
Expectation: Green, then red, then siren
Reality: Red, then green, then siren!
I don't get the confusion here. You're lighting the lights left to right and the colors are based on the lights in the movie...
Quoted from hawkmoon77:I just re-watched this scene:
It looks like there is an opportunity in code to better match this effect.
1st ball lights the red light, and with a sound effect, it then changes to green to indicate it is safely stored.
2nd ball lights the red light, but that light stays on, and the green light can stay on too, but a sound effect indicates a looming problem.
3rd ball lights the siren and the green light turn off.
Did they change the dmd animations for locked balls? It still bugs me that you see 2 traps for the first ball and 1 trap for the second ball...
Quoted from hawkmoon77:I just re-watched this scene:
It looks like there is an opportunity in code to better match this effect.
1st ball lights the red light, and with a sound effect, it then changes to green to indicate it is safely stored.
2nd ball lights the red light, but that light stays on, and the green light can stay on too, but a sound effect indicates a looming problem.
3rd ball lights the siren and the green light turn off.
I never noticed how exaggerated the sound effects are in this scene.
Quoted from Bearcat:Was there any mention of a vault edition?
I think the said there were no plans for vault at the moment.
Quoted from shaub:He did say that he'd like to see one made. I wonder if that would sell enough to be worth it to stern. Unless this code update blows this game wide open and everyone wants one, but as excited as I am for this code, I don't see it boosting this games value and profile enough to warrant it.
They would have to add an lcd and get movie clip rights and create new animations, etc for people to be interested. I don't see it happening.
Quoted from PanzerFreak:Looks like it could be from the TWIP podcast posted today? Zach references the Dead Flip live stream from last week while talking with Dwight. Good listen, more GB code discussion from Dwight.
https://www.thisweekinpinball.com/this-week-in-pinball-podcast-episode-63-with-dwight-sullivan/
If that's the case then Dwight better go work for JJP where it's normal to have a big reveal and then delay release.
Quoted from brainmegaphone:If I was Dwight I’d add a funny but well said Easter egg... during the attract mode trivia he could have one that says “did you know we rewrote the entire code and half of pinside still complained about our work before it was ever even released!”
This type of behavior by the way is why we can’t have nice things around here.
I've said several times that I'm happy for the code update and that it's an improvement, but I think it's fair to express some disappointment when things you expected to be included were not. It has been almost three years and they promised a huge update, so you can't blame people for having certain expectations.
I've been averaging lower scores on the new code. I'm so used to the old code that my strategies don't work. I did get to stay puft, though, which was nice to see.
1 week later
Anyone else having problems with the download failing before completing? Seems like Stern's server keep getting interrupted or something.
Quoted from focusmediagroup:I have the same issue. Same USB as last week. Tried another USB. It freezes for about 15 seconds when you hit update then it says it has completed. I remove the USB and reboot and it still says 1.16. This is on an LE machine.
Not sure what to try.
I also have this problem.
Quoted from HighVoltage:I also found it strange that the same USB stick I used previously was fine, and now gave that error. Other things to try:
Reformat the USB stick to start fresh and then try
The next step I was going to try before it succeeded for me, was to downgrade to the previous version and then upgrade from there directly to 1.17, wondering if something in 1.16 is more finicky about the USB stick?
I just tried it again after reformatting the disk and it still doesn't work.
Quoted from focusmediagroup:I think I made a dogs dinner of my explanations. Here are the steps I took that worked. Maybe they will work for someone, or it could have been luck of the draw.
1. Boot with up USB stick in. 1.17 recognized. You can't navigate but you can hit enter to update. Once you hit enter it sits for 15 seconds or so then gives the message Update complete, remove flash and power cycle. You NEVER get an option to do quick or full update.
2. Remove flash and reboot. It boots up as normal in 1.16 still. Ugh. power down.
3. Put USB stick back in and boot machine. It has a mini update message as it boots up and it boots back into 1.17 update screen. Here is where instead of trying the update again I decided I didn't like that update message on this boot and instead of trying the update again I shut it down.
4. Boot machine again leaving the USB in place. It should NOT give that mini update message and it should take you back to update screen again for 1.17.
5. Hit enter and this time you should get the option for quick or full. I chose quick with no verify and it was fast to update but it worked this time. I removed usb and rebooted and it was running 1.17 with all my settings and high scores in place.
This sequence isn't working for me. I don't know if I'm seeing a mini update message or what that's supposed to look like. I never get the quick or full option.
I finally got the update to work with a different flash drive. I don't understand why the other one didn't work. I used it last time...
Quoted from embryon:I get the same. Between stern logo and update screen I quickly get numbers displayed like v 1.33 0 or something like on the video. Tried a dozen updates and no go. Even downloaded the prem one on stern in case it was better but no change
Nothing worked for me except using a different flash drive. The first one I used I had used before to install 1.16, so it's not like the flash drive was the problem. I don't know what they did but I'm guessing it's a bug introduced in 1.16. Quite frustrating really...
Quoted from ecto1a2003:I emailed Stern about the topper. They no longer have the license so they can't make anymore. What we got is all there is. So if anyone has one for sale......
I guess that means no vault edition either.
I think I found a bug in 1.17. During the Ballroom mode, near the end of the mode, I shot into the right scoop and it didn't read that the ball was in there. It went into ball find mode, but never hit the right scoop coil, so it was just stuck until I had to stop the game. I confirmed afterwards that the switch and coil were working.
1 week later
Quoted from BrewersArcade:I played a game tonight and had two balls shoot into the trough on code 1.17. Never had that happen before
I've had it happen once as well.
4 weeks later
I keep getting stuck in the ballroom when the ball goes into the right scoop. The game can't find the ball. This is a game breaking bug in my opinion.
Quoted from toddsolus:Never had this issue. Could it be a malfunctioning switch or opto?
Naw. The scoop works fine the rest of the time.
3 weeks later
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