You are very awesome LTG, the one thing I inquired about and you jumped in (lockdown bar, brass screws was your advice), it took forever to find the sweet spot but all is great now.

I hope pinside pays you? You are awesome!

Kind words are my reward.

Thank you my friend !

LTG : )

Maybe this will help from Rosh on the Houdini thread :

* Note: code Updates will not work if there is more than one update package on the USB drive. A message indicating this will appear.
* When update code, there is a 10 second countdown, this lets you power down if you did not mean to do a code update (e.g went to pull logs/audits but had a code package on the USB stick)

LTG : )
Disclaimer : Sorry I don't have a game to check.

Page 9 - 179 in the Houdini Manual.

LTG : )

Page 55 in the manual : http://s4.american-pinball.com/img/support/2019-7/Oktoberfest-Manual-new.pdf

My other two posts might help.

LTG : )

Sorry, I'm not quite understanding your description... OK, so you started Sky Slide, and then tilted, and the machine cycled to the next ball normally? Then on the next ball, you shot the tent scoop twice and then you tilted again, at which point it went into the funky state you describe? Is that all correct? Was the ball actually in the tent scoop at the time of the second tilt? Did it eject the ball from the tent scoop before it started feeding balls from the trough?

And thanks LTG for the manual reference... and yes, for consistently being an incredibly helpful and friendly member of the community, ever since the RGP days!! You rock, brother.

Ummmmm... posts #3610 or #3621 or #3623 or #3625 or #3630 or #3632, just on the last page? C'mon, y'all don't want me TOTALLY hogging the thread...

I don’t think there is currently, but they are working on a major wizard mode for getting all the mini wizard modes done.

I stand corrected!

Ferrett,

The more I think about it, I didnt tilt out. It locked up in a tilt warning. I had the 3 plunges to make the scoop to restart the slide mode, made the second shot of the 3 and it didnt go any further in the game. Just sat there, kicked out the ball out in ball search and never restarted the mode. Here are some pics I took...probably not much help.

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This helps, I was able to replicate it, looks like an issue with tilt warnings and the two outlane modes (rosh hears Ferret mumble 'josh and his damn outlane modes'). We will get a fix into the upcoming release.

game went silent on me then rebooted........

gmanrulz46 : Sorry you experienced a problem. Log file, or at least more details about what was going on in the game around the time of the reboot, would be essential to helping diagnose the issue.

sent logs in to josh s email.....

Good deal! Thanks for the open dialog here with you guys. Keep making this game great!

I'm installing pinstadium lights and wonder what you recommend for the flasher connection 4v-24v? Apparently the shaker is the most common for these but it rarely goes off except for roller coaster. Is there anything for beer barrel lock or vox?

I just received my Oktoberfest yesterday (while Oktoberfest is happening in real life !) and I must say it is a great game. Cannot stop playing it !

But I do have one problem and I could not find an answer in this thread. As soon as the game is playing for more than 10 minutes, the fan in the PSU comes on and the noise that makes is really bad. I looked at the PSU and found the sides of the metall housing rattle a lot so I used some tape to keep them quiet. But that only helped marginally.

I also tightened all the screws, but they were alreasy as tight as can be. Also looked for things in the cabinet that resonate with it but that also was not the case. The whole cabinet humms like crazy when that fan is on, my wifde even came looking from inside the house to see what was wrong.

I know it is the fan in the PSU because when the playfield is up I can clearly hear it coming from there. Any tips on what I could do about this ?

Replace it with a better fan. The one in your game has an issue.

LTG : )

We continue to look at and adjust shaker usage as we refine things. It does go off during beer battle locks (pretty sure that is in the current production release), however, it can depend on your shaker settings. There are settings around shaker usage, and shaker intensity. So, if you have not done so already, set your usage level to High, and seee if that gets your more action. Also play with the intensity settings, but keep in mind that changing the intensity by one notch may often do nothing, since it depends on how we implemented the effect.

Replace it! Usually the fan spindle itself is wearing against the housing, or it is not lubricated properly. You can use some “gun oil” or “sewing machine oil” (same thing) to oil it

Remove the sticker which covers the spindle hole, and add some of the oil. It may be on the underside of the fan. Or just replace it with a better fan

Ok, need to get a fan. I saw there is a warranty sticker on the PSU so when I open it, it will be void I guess ?

I also saw somewhere that internally there is just a normal psu with a small fan, but I need to open those all up. Not a big problem just a shame that I need to do that before I know which fan to get.

You can contact BarryJ here or https://www.american-pinball.com/support/service/ for information. Barry is very helpful.

Best email them and ask - americanpinball.com, or PM Rosh, Ferret, or BarryJ here on Pinside.

LTG : )

Beat me by seconds.

LTG : )

DanDanDan & Co. too.

LTG : )

Thanks for all the suggestions. I just made a service request on the site, do not want to bother people personally. But this is exactly why I like API and also why I have both of their machines. Also the fact that these are some of the best games around has got something to do with that

Understood.

Contact them however you like.

You are both in the same boat. You want to enjoy your game and they want you to enjoy it too. It's a win win.

LTG : )

contact Barry [email protected]

Thanks!
(and I will get even with you sir!)

We all take this business personally it isn't only our job it is something we feel strongly about!

And they love what they are doing. Talk to any of them. You'll see that.

LTG : )

For Rockin Express have you tried the shaker for that mode in the next code? I was thinking it would make sense plus people who have pinstadiums hooked up to it for the flasher it would be a favorite tent to enter!

How does the PinStadium interact with that tent? Or with the game overall, for that matter?

Loving this game the more I play it, but I am having a couple of issues:

Ball search: I was playing a game last night and started Chuggin mode and somehow shot the ball into the bar, which then closed, and then... nothing. Chuggin mode continued to count down from like 50 seconds or so all the way to zero and the end of the mode, and I had no ball. Finally, after the mode timed out, so about a full minute later, the machine did a short ball search, which did nothing. Then the machine idled for what seemed like a further minute or two, and then did what appeared to be a longer ball search, resulting in the ball being ejected from the bar successfully and the game continuing.

It seems to me that this is far too long to wait before a ball search starts? If you are in a mode (or even not in a mode) and there is no switch activity then surely a ball search should start far sooner. It's quite annoying (and quite boring) to watch a mode time out without a ball being available to play! Can a ball search be triggered sooner? Or set to trigger sooner in the settings?

Weird lights: Also yesterday I changed some settings and then started a game and immediately launched a ball, and noticed that there was no pink skill shot lights showing. In fact every insert on the playfield, every tent, everything was lit yellow. Even the tent scoop was yellow. I shot the tent scoop and started a mode at which point all the inserts and gi went out except for the tent and mystery inserts which were red. This continued till the ball drained, and then the gi and inserts went back to normal. Very odd.

Also, I got a mystery award of 50k, but it did not register immediately in my score. I think this has been mentioned before?

I still had fun with the game though...

Isn't there a switch in the bar that tells the game that the ball's there? There must be, otherwise how would the game know you're 'at the bar'? This should therefore be enough to tell the game to kick the ball out immediately...

Pinstadium has a feature for a flash uv/glow. Although its not ideal for this game since there is nothing to glow it is a flashing effect that this game lacks to Metallica or Attack from Mars. I dont think it needs a flasher but would be nice to use it since its there. Rollercoaster, rockin express, or quak targets. To trigger it everyone is connecting to the shaker or connector since there isn't any flashers on the game. I heard 3 pinstadiums were installed by customers this week on Oktoberfest so its a popular mod. I bought it to cut off the glare and brighten the field.

The PS kit includes a flasher trigger which is two wires on alligator clips, these can be connected to anything like a motor or flasher but cannot be connected to a coil as the voltage is too high. This is a challenge for games like OKT, Houdini, WOZ / maybe all JJPs, all Capcoms and others that don't actually have Flashers. The shaker motor is a good alternative in general but it depends on when / how often it's used. I haven't played enough OKT while thinking of where it would be good to activate the PS flasher to give any better insight into integration with the game. It's one of those things you really need to balance out, you definitely don't want it going off too much. I was thinking the knocker may be cool since it's integrated well into the game but you'd have to connect to the control for that transistor on the driver board since it's high voltage coil.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, since all the driver boards are mounted under the PF you could connect to one of the coil drive transistor inputs which should work. Maybe the pop bumpers would be good or the knocker since it's integrated pretty well? Viggin900 I'll give you a call to discuss how this would be done after taking a look at the boards in Houdini a little closer and see if it's something you might want to try. I don't have them on Houdini but it does give me an idea for the ones I have on Pinball Magic.

Can't believe I had the chance to enjoy this game tonight. One of the best new games I have played.
Thanks to Andreas at SilverBall City here in Johnson City. What a great guy and a great place to enjoy some pins.

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I was too busy with work to turn the game on the last 4 nights and man tonight I could not even make the bar skill shot most of the time. I rarely could even hit the tent. After 15 games I never once made it more than halfway up the beer barrel ramp. But I was still hitting the rollercoaster ramp fine, and having those multiballs and decent scores. Best score tonight was 822k.

This game is hard, this game is awesome. Unless there is ever a bug that needs a update to fix I am not going to ever update code, it is perfect the way it is.

And here I was thinking I had a really neat idea for a code update that I think would be not TOO hard to implement, but would add another level of strategy to the tent mode selection and link it to game play.

I think everyone who's played this game would agree that it is awesome... but the slight snag about the gameplay from my view as it stands is that once you've played it a few hundred times and basically sussed out what steins to get first and which modes to start and complete first in order to make your path through the game the easiest/most lucrative... once you have finely tuned that path... then it might turn into a kind of linear game... my idea would change that... and also increase the feeling of being IN the festival...

I learned young, if it is not broke, don't break it.

The code is totally awesome, now if they could just replace the beer barrel ramp with one I could make it up...lol

I'm guessing you haven't yet played several 100 games in order to fine tune you path through the game yet...

I don't think my idea would break anything... it would attempt to solve a kind of linearity issue that you may not have encountered yet... I'm planning to play this game for several years in the home environment you see, seeing as it's so awesome in many many ways... and I want to try and keep the game more varied by giving the player a 'ball-play' related choice linked to the mode selections that would add another level of strategy and kill the potential linearity... in a player engrosing yet relatively easy to code in kinda way...

So if anyone from American Pinball or any players are interested in knowing what this idea is, I'd like to share it... but obviously if there's no interest, then it would be pretty pointless I suppose writing a lengthy description... I personally think it would improve the game's long-term play appeal a lot... I'm talking 2 yeras down the road when players have established their ideal stein/mode choice strategy...

I don't know how they could ever fix that but apparently on the list is a game play option that Otto randomly selects a stein for you changing it up everytime you play. I don't think there is much of a linear path as far as steins because if I change it up from the norm I find my self scoring other stuff that helps out in a situation. A random pick tent option also would change it up for home users.

There is no "one path" People are coming up with new paths and strategies all the time, people base their choices based on their experience and game play and then may discover another strategy they hadn't thought of before and it changes the "path".

One of the amazing things our programmers did was create a near infinite number of choices on how you can optimize YOUR particular play style and then change it if you discover a better method.

When I go to pick a stein that I’ve already chosen, I think I can get it up to three times. What does subsequent choices of the same stein do for me?

anathematize is correct. If you choose multiples of the same stein, you get multiples of the power-ups that it gives you. So for example, Abby Nirmal Cider boosts Bumper Cars and makes it easier to collect ducks. If you have one of these steins, Bumper Cars scores at 2X, and each unlit duck target gives you an extra duck (2 ducks total). If you have two Abby Nirmal Ciders, Bumper Cars scores at 3X, and you get 3 ducks per unlit duck target. And three Abby Nirmal Ciders gives you 4X Bumper Cars scoring and 4 ducks per target.

All of the steins generally work in the same way. The tent boosts are totally consistent, +1X to that tent's scoring. The "global" power-ups can vary a bit in how they work... for example, Engler Pale Ale "gives more time in tents", but each one of these only gives +0.5X time. Or Sloshed Rosh Lager makes it "easier to collect OKTOBERFEST letters"... what that actually does is widen the shot tolerance: for example, if the "T" in OKTOBER is the only unlit target and you don't have a Sloshed Rosh Lager, you must hit the T directly to light that target. If you have one Sloshed Rosh Lager, you can hit any of the K, T, or second O to collect the T. And if you have two Sloshed Rosh Lagers, any of "OKTOB" will spot the T.

Hope this helps!

Damn, this game is awesome anyway, but with that info it is even 10 times more awesome!

Thanks Ferret!

Awesome thanks. So my thinking of getting to stein level 3 right before a cork screw MB or Beer Barrel Mb was sound. Now I’m thinking that pop bumper mode with a level three stein might be good money too. I’ll have to experiment more.

Thanks again!