Thanks Erik! Oktoberfest festivals start next week around Cincinnati and go till first week of October so I'm going to be busy schuhplattlering. I'm setting a date for everyone to come over for brats and beer to play this pin.Oktoberfest is my favorite seasonal event, even over Christmas!

One more thing this game could use that owners with kids would love. The chicken dance song! Maybe the knocker or shaker kicks in during the clapping part? That would be something.Hahaha

Just want to shout out Ferret and rosh for the great continued code support/polish for Oktoberfest - finally got a chance to download the latest release, very solid.

Will play a few rounds and see if I notice anything odd or have any small suggestions.

And we are most certainly not done yet. Enjoy!

Any love for Houdini?
Just sayin'...

That would not work. Facebook tracks you by IP address and everything you've done on FB or anywhere else on the internet with browser cache/cookies. Facebook does not obey the rules protecting privacy because when you use Facebook (or Instagram, or Oculus, or any company they own), YOU are the product. It's not free to use. You're trading your personal information for access - ALL of it, even if they say they have limits, they don't. They've been caught many, MANY times breaking the rules, and they just pay the pittance of a fine and move on to more rule-breaking.

Just got it all set up. Plays awesome, that beer barrel ramp shot is tough. Much better than the Wonka I sold to fund it.

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Just a few things I noticed with the code and some questions/suggestions

- no sound FX for hitting bar
- If the player misses the right ramp from the left inlane super skill shot, sometimes the light on the ramp won’t go out until a major light show happens. Pretty minor
- would like to know hits remaining to open bar (maybe use the Collect Stein insert: red for 3 hits, yellow for 2, and flashing when the bar is open
- When you collect the “Easier to spell tent” stein and you complete the tent lanes, there is usually 2 callouts that the tent mode is ready. I’m assuming it should be just 1.
- would be nice to have a “Food Stand ready!” callout
- If you’re in Looper, for example, and you shoot into the bar for a stein, and you choose the “More time in tents” stein, is that supposed to affect the current tent mode running or does it wait for the next one? Right now it doesn’t effect the current mode.
- Let’s also say I’m in Looper and I collect the stein that boosts that mode, is my mode value supposed to be 2x now, or do I have to wait to play it again for the booster to come into play?
- I’m a pretty good player, but I’ve never gotten anything higher than a 3x playfield (and that’s with a couple steins that increase playfield x time). Would be cool if the 3rd collection of the “more playfield x time” stein would activate the magnet on every orbit shot while the player had a multiplier running. And it could be set to only do it up to a certain x value, then the player would have to use magnabs. Just an idea, but would certainly be an interesting strategy. (Of course scoring execution would still be needed )
- Secret skill shot for short plunging and hitting the center drop target to immediately start a food mode??
- I know it’s still in the works, but how will the final wizard mode be qualified?

Thanks!

I have never play a game as much as my fest and I have owned a lot of games.

Yep, we've requested a sound effect for that.

Sitting on my to-do list right now. Perhaps get to it this weekend.

We've kinda gone back and forth about how to communicate "hits remaining" to the player. (This applies to the outlane save targets also.) It can be confusing, especially to casual players, to illuminate an insert, especially one labeled something seemingly obvious like "Collect Stein", but then you shoot that thing and it doesn't actually collect a stein. "The game screwed me!" Add to the mix the complexity of the Ish Pale Ale stein that reduces the hit count required, and the fact that hits to the bar during multiball don't count, and we wound up feeling it'd be a better experience to use the insert to guide the player when they can actually collect a stein.

As a compromise, we might add a blurb to the Pinfo status screens explicitly counting hits required, for those who wish to plan their strategy.

Yep, on my list.

Already added for the next version, along with an accompanying fanfare. (Yay, something that's in a better place than "on a list"! )

It does affect the current tent mode. It does not immediately add time to the clock, but if you add time via the T-E-N-T rollovers, you'll get more time added than you would've without the stein.

Yes, the tent scoring multiplier takes effect immediately.

Personally I don't think it's a bad thing that it's very difficult to get high playfield X. It's part of the strategic choices offered by the steins, and the need to keep the game scoring balanced. Players who want to focus on a playfield X strategy can decide if they want to collect Baker Street Ale for more playfield X time, and/or Buschbrau for more MagNabs to make it easier to put the ball in the TAP lanes, or some combination thereof... each of these approaches has pluses and minuses, certainly. And all the steins provide tent scoring X, and the Freakshow Rooster and Frosty Ferret steins give multiball jackpot X, and those all stack on any playfield X... basically there are "X" opportunities all over the place in this game. (Haven't even mentioned how Tent Win Bonus and its X and the bonus X can be an absolutely huge factor.)

Nice idea.

Excellent question!

Thanks very much for the feedback, really appreciate it. Have fun!!

You definitely made the right trade.

Any suggestions on making the beer barrel ramp easier? Well not easier but more reliable. Seems like I'll hit a good one and it'll stop at the top and roll back. I've upped the flipper strength to 40 and doesn't seem to have helped. Seems like there isn't enough momentum especially when being dropped from the magnet.

IMHO 40 is way too strong and makes it unshootable. Try the default strength or just a touch higher. It’s really not too much about strength, it’s just that there’s a narrow sweet spot, and it’s pretty close to the tip of the flipper.

What he said...what's your pitch on the game? Maybe too steep?

I haven't measured but all the leg levelers are in all the way.

Finally getting a chance to take one for a spin at ClePin in a couple of weeks.

Any chance that AP will have some of the team there?

I leveled it side to side, it was .3 degrees left and is currently 6 degrees vertically. Also reduced the flipper power back to normal and its more consistent. I made beer barrel multi ball in 2 of probably 15 games tonight. Wife loves the game so far, never seen her put so many games in a row into a pin before.

Great, Jake, glad that you got it set up to be more reasonable for Beer Barrel MB. If you haven't already, also consider setting the adjustment "Release Beer Barrel Locks at Game End" to NO -- this should make it easier to start BBMB when you're playing a bunch of games, and add to the chaos and fun of stealing locks from other players (even across games).

Also glad that your wife loves the game! We tried really hard to make a game that would be pure fun for everyone.

Barry and I will be there

[family friendly off]

even more when sometimes, the pinball is not used to play pinball...

[family friendly on]

Have not played one yet. Putting it on my to do list.

Be careful what you wish for. I predict you're gonna want one.

Ferret Found a small text bug. As you can tell in the pics, the duck count is off by 15 between the UI and the status report. I believe this was because I finished Looper at the last second. The status report had the correct number.

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Nice catch! I'll take a look.

Anybody try restarting a bad game with the start button,any resets?

The screen art is looking much better. Are there any streams of the latest code?

see link below from southern fried, which was beta code, which now looks "off" to me, since we have since updated several things, including the 'timer', stein count indicators, mystery award sequence, added another main music track, more voice calls, improved extra ball, replay and shoot again screens, new light shows, improvements to animations for rotor, rockin' express, food stand and ring toss . . . we will likely have a beta on this updated code in a couple of weeks.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/oktoberfest-with-josh-kugler-sfge-2019#post-5100618

Looking forward to the another code drop! I'm hoping for some kind of callout or fanfare if you successfully clobber the high striker while "Super Striker" (Eins... Zwei... Drei... Strike) is qualified. Right now it plays something like this... the player is challenged to make the shot... and manages to make the difficult shot... and the game quietly adds a few points.

The new knocker + shaker effects in Beer Barrel multiball are great! Nice to have clever integration like that

There have been a few posts lately discussing the absence of the bumper car drivers. I too was disappointed that they had to be removed because of wire form issues. I thought they were great toys and I kind of subscribe to the 'more toys, the better ' school of thought. Any way, I want to share with you an idea my wife came up with. Using double sided tape we mounted a very inexpensive rubber duck bath toy in our game. It's durable, cheap, widely available and they come in many different styles as you can see. Maybe not as much fun as the originally planned bumper car drivers but we like the look. Just our contribution to this forum.
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for all your duck needs . . .

https://ducksinthewindow.com

They look great! Maybe they can be modified to fit in the cars, or are they too big? I'd love it if AP do a version of the original car drivers that bypass the issues they had... the cars don't look right empty.

They are too big. I am not sure anything could fit in one of the 3 bumper cars.

Apart from what AP made in the prototypes... maybe, if enough people were interested, they could be persuaded to make tweaked versions of the superb models they made initially as an after-market product... they can certainly count me in as a customer!

Contact Matt at Back Alley Creations. If enough interest, maybe he can make something.

LTG : )

Thanks for the tip LTG! I do feel the interest will be there for them!

I'm only back to take care of my game issues etc.

My game is DOA. Zero coil firing and Switch testing is not possible either.

Just trying to get a response from somebody for some help on my game.

I reached out to Barry E., he reached out to me and then AWOL after calls and emails.

I have a local guy coming to look at in 2 weeks but it would be nice to be able to play this game again.

Any ideas from the gallery?

I can't like this enough. Including just the concept of "for all your duck needs".

I just sent you Barry's contact info in response to your PM. He's great at support so I'm sure he's not ditching you, but being a holiday weekend in the US, don't know his whereabouts over the next few days.

That said, we can try our best to help. Since you say that neither coil firing nor switch testing is possible... does this mean that absolutely no switch inputs are working on your game? No start button, no coin door 4-button panel, nothing?

If you give as much detail as you can about your symptoms and what you've already tried, hopefully we can get you rolling again ASAP.

Very sorry that you're having trouble with the game.

You may have already done it. Just in case I'd plug something into the service outlet, see if you have power that far. Unplug the gamne. Then follow the wires along from there and any connector you run into, reseat, push together hard, make sure no wires/pins popped out of a connector.

Then I'd plug it in, and grab a meter and see where you have power and where you don't. That might help figure out the issue. You can download the manual from american-pinball.com if it will help you.

LTG : )

I'll try to get a hold of Barry on his person cell I am not sure if he is getting service on his work cell

i was actually having a blast on old code but finally decided to update code last night.

I'm not sure if it's code or a switch problem....i think it's losing count of the balls in the barrel lock (I end up with multiball in non multi ball modes after second ball lock). I'm very good at working on games but never dove into a AP game. wish me luck.

I am having some weird stuff with beer barrel also ,I understand it will be fixed in next code

@McPin54, @rockrand: please provide as much detail as you can about what problems you're experiencing, if you think they are code issues. We are certainly happy to fix any problems we know about, but gotta make sure we actually know about them.

Man your scoup looks a bit used,we need cliffy to make a protector,I asked him a few months ago and nothing yet,he needs s Playfield

Nope, it's fine. What you are seeing is a bit of "router burn" in the wood. There is no damage to the play field itself whatsoever. I only have about 200 plays on the game and all is good.

Well I received my Oktoberfest here in England a couple of days ago, and just wanted to say congrats to AP: I have had NIB Sterns and one NIB JJP before now and none of them have worked out of the box as well as this machine does.

Secondly, I had an operation on shoulder a week back and have been unable to play any of my games, but thanks to the one handed play option I got up and running with Oktoberfest with two flippers! Brilliant. Now back to two handed play which is even better though...

I have read through most of this thread but there are a couple of things that I don't quite get though: firstly, if the ball escapes from the right outlane and goes back into the shooter lane, it seems like the game thinks that there is a new ball in play complete with skill shot options, rather than just launching the ball back into play. Is that intentional?

And the other thing is that I have never ever managed to get the ball into the barrel lock - it can get half way up the ramp at most. I realise this is supposed to be a hard shot off the tip of the flipper, similar perhaps to the warp ramp in Star Trek, but it doesn't seem physically possible. The leg levellers on all legs are completely screwed in, and I have tried increasing the power of the upper right flipper up to 40 but no luck. Any suggestions?

Final question: any reason by the leg bolts are fastened using hex wrench/allen keys rather than the traditional style that can be more easily fastened with a power tool?

Thanks again for a splendid game AP peeps!

Outstanding! So happy to hear that.

Sorry to hear about your shoulder, but at least that's a pretty cool consolation.

Yes.

Do NOT set the upper flipper power so high. I don't know the actual physics, but my guess is that when the power is too high, the ball basically slams perpendicular into the ramp instead of being able to follow the curve. Whatever the explanation, it doesn't work well if the power is too high. Set the flipper power back to default, or maybe one or two notches higher. Then it's just a matter of finding the shot. Personally I find it much easier to make from a MagNab, but it's certainly possible from an orbit or pop bumper feed too.

Don't know the answer, but personally I liked this... I always tighten leg bolts by hand, not with a power tool, and with this design, I was able to use the tool that secures the backbox to also secure the leg bolts, instead of fetching a separate wrench.

Hope the game gives you many years of joy!

Congrats on getting the game! I also had mine arrive on Friday last week, got to see it today but no time to un-box due to crazy workload So is it possible to adjust the setting so that the game plays one-handed permanently? If so, I guess you can chose which hand you play with and the mag-nab feature is disabled...?

I'm a bit worried about my barrel-lock shot...

Never heard of anyone using a power tool to tighten leg bolts before

Yes, via adjustments, you can set up one-handed play to be at player request (hold both right-side buttons before starting a game) or always one-handed. Can't really choose which hand to play with because the dual buttons are only on the right side, so unless you do some contortions, you'll be using your right hand. MagNab is in fact still available on the left flipper button during one-handed play.

(Also: regardless of the overall game one-handed mode, Stein Race is always one-handed.)

Enjoy your new game, @pinballslave!

Hmmm, I wonder if your machine is the closest to the real Oktoberfest? Congrats, glad it arrived safely.

As for the barrel-lock. I was able to hit it 2 times at Allentown, didn't use the mag lock, maybe a little bit of extra speed helps. Only played 2 or 3 games. I suspect it's similar timing to the Rocket shot in RCT that I'm used to, either that or I just got lucky.

Time to get back to working on a woodrail (Kings). I figure if I make it nice enough somebody might be willing to trade me an Oktoberfest straight up.