Cool!

What does the normal tournament mode do?

Does this game have problems in tourneys?

I saw that PAPA was going to use this game this year.

Wow. Super cool. I just got a BSD and was curious if there were any different ROMs for it. Any chance features like flipper hold (a la TZ home) could be added?

Really cool! Did you create it yourself? (I suppose you did)

What glitches do you plan to fix? In any case; Great work!

not really a glitch but I have thought it would be cool if Bats (left ramp) required 6 shots to start on ball 1 and then went down by 1 each ball. So on ball 2 if you already have 4 shots then 1 more will start Bats.

To me right now bats must be started on ball 1 for competitive play to have a good game. It would be nice to modify that to be more difficult to achieve in some way.

The game becomes too dependant on left ramp shots and favors flow players that can hit that over and over on the fly. As of now it is not a good competitive game in my opinion, but I do look forward to seeing/hearing how the pros attack it at PAPA.

Would be nice to fix the, tilt warning while draining prevents your bonus from actually adding to your score, bug.

Another nice feature would be:
- setting to turn off mystery all together. Right now people either have to disconnect the right inlane switch or reduce the timer on it
- set a progression on the mystery. Same for all players but gets better as you progress. Set this with a short mystery timer and it could take some of the focus away from the dominance of the left ramp shot.

Same here. My assumption is it will look like this:

- 3 shots to the right ramp to get coffin lock ready.
- then 3 shots to left ramp to get bats started.
- if bats is not collected off the plunge, shoot the right ramp to collect a coffin lock and have it feed back to the pops.
- left ramp all day to get mist ready and to collect a castle lock or two.
- start coffin MB and then go to stack mist
- while in stacked coffin and mist use right flipper to collect ramps to try and get the 3 way stack (adding castle in) and using the left filler to collect some jackpots.

This was my strategy at TPF and got me 508 million. That left ramp was a b*&^% when I played it as it took a near perfect shot to make the full ramp. Curious to see if I had the right strategy or if the pro's have a better one.

I think your strategy is spot on. I am guessing they will tighten up the left ramp a bit to make it really tough.

My general strategy at TPF was Bats on ball 1 and make it count, then carry over a big bonus and dont tilt. I think I may have caught you if the game have not reset on my ball 3 and flippers went dead/no bonus/no nothing. I was on the way to a full stack.

I'm rather intrigued as to how this patch was made. I thought code was all closed source?

I have a BSD tourney ROM and it also eliminates the bonus kill bug which doesn't award your bonus if you get a tilt warning as you drain. If yours doesn't have that it would be worth adding.

Funny, I seem to be the only one thinking this is a nice thing: don't get warnings before loosing the ball, so nudging is not risk free: nudging too hard when you can't save the ball is punishment (and a tilt warning with keeping the ball is extra nice), nudging way too hard (tilt) even if the ball is saved you don't have anything. So nudging 'just over the edge' should only be done when you have a good chance to save the ball by it. I think that is fun.

I've gotta disagree with this one. I know several people are on your side though.

Just think of tournament games. Most BSD's are set up with stupid tight tilts so even the slightest nudge can give you a warning. This bug really takes away a players ability to try and make a decent save and IMHO takes some of the skill out of the game (skill from working a game). Games are meant to be moved a little otherwise they would all be set like EM's with no warnings and them going straight to a tilt.

agreed. a full "tilt" already looses your bonus and ends the ball.

A warning is supposed to be ... well... a warning.

It's like getting a "warning" for speeding and you still have to pay the fine or go to court.

People love to moan about the bugginess and unbalanced modes of Dracula (beyond what you fix here).

Have you looked at or would you be interested in going further than this?

accident

It's been used previously. Here's a great video on how they attack it:

http://pinballvideos.com/?v=531

I like what I'm hearing! Agreed: the tilt warning vs bonus bug needs to be fixed as well. Hope you can find the time and patience for it.

Keep up the good work! Good software is what makes a game.

The biggest bug I'd like to see fixed is the following scenario that I come across a lot.

I'm playing and hit enough right orbit/loop shots to be 1 shot away from video mode.
I start mist multiball.
As I shoot for the mist ball, I miss and end up shooting the right orbit/loop and start video mode while mist ball is still floating.

3 things can happen now.

1. You can hope to get killed by the dogs and shake the mist ball off the magnet to get mist multi started.

2. Ignore mist and just play the video mode.

3. Get confused about what is happening and lose both.

Also, if you add anything that needs dots, I'd love to help.

I'm not so sure that'd qualify as a bug. It's weird, but not necessarily wrong. What's bad is if you hit the mist ball and carom it into the video hole, then you have a loose mist ball with no flippers. But should video mode just cancel after starting? It's kinda weird.

Maybe put the drop target up when the mist motor starts?

Popping the drop target seems like the easiest fix

The most important improvement (IMO) would be if the video-mode wouldn't be the same all the time, but in random order. Easy, medium, hard: it's always the same order. Not sure if random can be programmed? (I'm sure it can, but not sure it can be changed in the existing rom).

Same with DrWho: why wouldn't they have programmed it randomly? That shouldn't be that hard to do when they did it back in the day?

not for tournament play to have it randomly.

Also what about a video mode on / off setting?

Any game with a video mode or make a choice or upper/lower level that kills the flippers needs to have some kind of ball saver and or run both in a multi ball. Later games do have that.

Why not? If i can have it in settings that there are i.e. 4 wolves in a wave, and they appear randomly left or right, that's not an issue for tournament play, is it? It's 'new' for every player that plays the videogame, it's not like one has an easy one and the other a harder one.

About the videomode when starting mist: I think that's frustrating, but I do think it's my own fault if I miss the ball the first time. Having said that, pop the drop in an up-position is a nice way to give the player a second chance. If you really want to make it easier, you can also disable the pop-bumpers while the ball is 'floating' over the playfield. Not sure I'd like that though.

Soren, I'm excited that you're working on finetuning Drac's software!

A question: is the mystery-award always 500.000 on your revision? Or just in tournament mode?

When the ball is in the mystery hole and you get the mist ball, there is a bug that the ball comes back to the left flipper too fast, before the screen says it is starting.

ok as long as one does not get easy one and the other a harder one

If you collect consolation mist. You cant reenter mist on ball 3. Sux

This is true. I think a few times I've gotten a MB mode going with a following werewolf video mode, only to later get a one ball drain to cancel the whole turn entirely.

Ah, I wasn't clear in my first post: I indeed meant left and right randomly (not easy or hard).

What does one need to implement this new ROM?

The Tom thread has a good discussion on applying the patch:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/new-theatre-of-magic-custom-competition-rom#post-3074717

@Soren ... did you make any investigations into or make any further progress with fixing the additional issues highlighted in this thread?

I would love to see the additional fixes if you find the time!

Did you ever get the chance to come back to this?

Also, you should put up a simple site like ChadH has done, and a donation link - I'm sure people would like to thank you for your work.

If this does get revisited, I think this is pertinent, particularly for tournaments. Nasty bug:

Getting GC means you don't get rats and bats bonus on the final ball.

Thought it was just me, but the attached post corroborates it. In fact, I think it may not just be on the final ball, but ball 3 full stop (even if you have EBs waiting). Can't be sure on the latter detail until it happens again though.

Another thing:

If ball save is on non-default setting, if it's activated whilst it's ending (i.e. at the end of the time limit), it will play the ball save animation and call out, and then immediately the bonus / score screen and move on to the next game.

Beginning to understand why BSD has the reputation it does for bugs.

Possibility this is general rather than non-default. But not seen it on default - possibly because it's so short it's unlikely to get hit anyway.

Thanks for the update.

I thought it worth posting any other issues here. Things do occasionally get posted in the owner thread, but get buried. Easier to keep track of here.

Useful if you or others come back to the game to fix it.

The link is broken. Can you please repost?

In the meantime, what is the best current patched ROM?