I always thought Police Force could have been greatly improved with some simple adjustments added to the setting. I would have liked an option to only be able to collect the criminals 1 at a time. This would have made hitting the jackpot a bit more challenging.

Turning off the "steal the score" feature would have also been nice in competitive play.

It would be great for a solution to be made available for Sys11s however it would take some dedicated programmers to do it so that roms could be programmed and just replaced. Would like to see tournament friendly code for Bad Cats as well.

this reminds me of what Dutch Pinball is doing with Bride of Pinbot, and Funhouse (I heard that's next).

They are completely rewriting the game code, and adding a colour DMD. If you had one of those games, you could get their kit, and have a whole new machine. I believe you can also still play the original rules. Looks very cool to me.

http://www.dutchpinball.com/project-bride

This has been asked for before but how it will get implemented will likely be more involved than what you'd be willing to pay for.

The BoP2.0 is a complete rewrite which also will require a new P-ROC controller board.

The FH remake has been discussed being made using WPC 2.0 which uses the Fast controller board and is different controller from P-ROC.

Rick from PPS has hinted at doing a System 11 2.0 - https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/wpc-20tm-extensions-to-wpc-20-games-from-tpf-pps-seminar#post-1558347 - which from the suggestion would likely involve new hardware as well.

To do what you suggest would involve releasing source code for older games. And that won't happen for any B/W games per this post from Rick:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/question-regarding-pps-and-williams-license#post-1272185

Now to be fair, Rick did say he was thinking of a system of vetted volunteers who could help with updating and fixing old WPC code:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/wpc-20tm-extensions-to-wpc-20-games-from-tpf-pps-seminar/page/7#post-1565674

But this is all moot for System 11 (and I have to assume earlier) since Rick said he doesn't believe he has System 11 game code (and he even asked the community if it had good code he could have):
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/wish-list-of-bugs-in-wmsbly-wpcwpc95-code-to-fix#post-1302427

So for someone to do what you want would require them to disassemble the existing code, make updates and then create a derivative work, which is against the Williams license:

http://www.planetarypinball.com/mm5/Williams/tech/rom7a0b.html?rom=bcats_l5.zip&gm=Bad_Cats

If someone did this then they would have to distribute this on the sly which as we all know would one day not be sly any more.

Which then leaves the question what incentive, if any, does anyone have to do this? Certainly not for money and most certainly not for the notoriety since that would only come with legal trouble.

There are exceptions to all this. FreeWPC has enabled new code on some games which has had limited release like Demolition Man. And for old DE, Chad redid the code for DESW and is currently working on new code for JP. Oliver has also done new or modified rules on a bunch of older games as well.

But for the most part, the short answer to your question is, no there isn't and there likely will never be unless the aforementioned circumstances change.

viperrwk

The other issue with just having replacement ROMs to drop in is that in a lot of machines (Sys11 especially) there isn't much space left to squeeze anything new into. Making very small changes is possible but relies on a deep understanding of the way the code was put together and a lot of manual work, and as viper says is completely unsupported. If the original source code ever surfaces that might help, but that doesn't seem likely at the moment.

It's possible to use a P-ROC to control a Sys11 machine, but just like with BOP 2.0 you're starting over from the programming side of things. If in the re-programming you intend to use Williams IP then you've got to work that through Rick. If you're not planning to use any existing IP and write completely new software, then you're in the clear. So again without jumping through all the hoops, even P-ROC isn't going to get you bugs fixed or minor extensions to the software.

-Mark

Been looking into doing changes to DE Hook due to the great artwork, ok sound, and poor rules. I am a programmer by trade and think it could be a fun personal project.

Here are the issues. Using anything that requires replacing hardware will limit your audience. That means creating a replacement drop in rom.

Simple changes such as fixing the 100 million score rollover, reducing the rooster and banger sound calls, or simple tweaks won't have a space issue. Adding anything new would depend on how much space is left in the CPU ROM. What I have not figured out is if the early System 3 games used a smaller cpu rom vs the later ones. It might be possible to move to a larger rom which would give plenty of room. If someone who burns roms can list the cpu rom for Hook vs say WWF it would be a step in the right direction. The later System 3b (Batman Forever, Frankenstein) may or may not work, I do not have documentation for the hardware changes.

How do you do it? In theory use the debugger version of visual pinball to step through the code and dump a dasm file. Then use a hex editor to edit the original Roms. Another option, use a decompiler edit it, and then a cross compiler. Either way you have to learn assembly for the targeted platform and reverse engineer how the code works. You then test the new code using pinmame before putting it in your own machine. Screwing something up could mean blowing up your machine. Did I mention that you have to buy a rom burner just to test this?

Getting past all this. WPC is fairly well documented for modding. Need to generate a new checksum? There is an app for that. Need to know how 6809 assembly works? There are links to the original manuals. DE stuff? Nothing that I have found. Chad who has done the Star Wars and currently working JP updates probably has a better idea, but I have not heard back from him. All in all this is a very slow, tedious, non-monetarily rewarding process.

I'm with you - the progressive jackpot is what kills most system 11 games for me.

There are ways to minimize its effect on game. For instance when we use Taxi in tournaments we max the value the pops add to the jackpot, max the build timer, and cap the jackpot at like 3 million. This tends to max the jackpot in a ball or two meaning most jackpots collected are worth 3 million points. For HS, someone more knowledgable than us was generous enough to decompile the code and augment the jackpots to a fixed value (750,000, I think).

Both changes helped to balance out the scoring, but ideally I would want the jackpots to start at a base value for all players and each player works to increase their own jackpot value independent of one another. Unfortunately very few system 11's have rules like this. Diner, Whirlwind, and Mousin' Around come to mind.

It'd be great if the high score swipe were operator adjustable i.e turning it off and/or at least making it a double your own score feature rather then a gimme win for the last player, as is i would not call it a level playing field for the minimal changes the tournament mode seems to include.

Also i've noticed no such thing as the jackpot ever getting out of hand on Police Force even on factory settings, rather people ( myself included ) cranking the main ramp ad infinitam making chasing the jackpot pretty much redundant altogether where scoring is concerned.

My suggestion would be to have jackpot as a multiball only feature, where it belongs imo, and completing all the targets to light unlimited millions in the inner ramp for an operator adjustable amount of time so players won't be spending practically all game long aiming for it, the rest of the playfield would get some more utility from this arrangement too.

Whirlwind style mind your own jackpot value would be nice, i agree, especially with these adjustments.

It's only my first owned machine but i can't help but feel they were either out to lunch or under pressure to wrap things up when they settled on this ruleset, which is a bit of a shame because the layout is a real joy to play.

Anyway, since this is all pie in the sky territory anyway i'd focus more on getting somebody to produce replacement inner ramps on a regular basis.

Ah and a decal set that includes the drug rat :3

From what I have read this is usually the case. Longer a game stays in production, the more the code gets updated. Lower production runs are often never finished. The other is when the coder takes it on as a personal project which I believe is part of why lotr is so deep.

Yes but it wasn't like Williams was hurting for resources at the time. And the number of machines produced didn't really affect how many times a game ROM was revised.

When you look at the late 80s and System 11B machines, Williams (and Bally) put out 15 different machines in a 27 month timespan. At least seven different guys are credited for the software on those machines and Larry DeMar who was only credited on one oversaw all the SW development and certainly pitched in whenever necessary on a game.

Some of those games like Cyclone had a large production run (nearly 9,500). Some like Police Force had half that number produced. Yet Cyclone had five ROM revisions and Police Force had four. Bad Cats had five ROM revisions and only 2500 were produced. And you will be hard pressed to find significant differences in the different versions.

The issue wasn't get the game out the door and we'll add to the rules later. It was more the case that you get the game out the door and then fix bugs you find that affect earnings or makes an ops life harder. Sometimes this would involve a rule change but most times not. Back then there was no Internet to distribute code or flash drives/memory making updates easy. If there was a fix it had to get burned to an EPROM and physically mailed out to the op if they didn't have a provision to do it themselves.

viperrwk