@Soren: is Mousin' Around on the release roadmap?

I am running your original modded ROM and will buy a copy once released thru PPS. I do have one fix request: I am running with the new option to raise the gate once CHEESE is spelled. However, on my machine the ball is getting around the ramp and back to the flipper before the gate is fully raised, allowing the player to shoot the raising gate and eventually knock it off track.

Would it be possible to keep the modified rules, but leave the gate down until the mousehole shot is made? Have the ramp behave the same as the raised gate would in terms of (low) scoring and callouts to shoot the mousehole. This would eliminate the timing issue. Otherwise, I'm going to have to revert to original rules.

Your work on these old programs is greatly appreciated... thanks!

TOTAN, it would be great to adjust the difficulty of the modes, example Sinbad and the Rocs, you only need to hit one pop bumper, it would be nice to make it a little harder. Other modes are pretty easy also and not challenging. Adjusting the difficulty would be a huge improvement.

Don’t get the indignation about wanting to burn ones own ROMs.

Here’s an idea - pretend this announcement never happened. Tada! You can now wait forever for an update you didn’t know was coming and never existed.

I know it’s fashionable to pretend that because copying software doesn’t deprive someone of their copy that it’s a zero loss game, but the cost of intellectual property, programming effort, etc has to be met somewhere.

soren - TAF Gold ROMs without the random awards and configurable magnets would be great.

Do all the games have the rom space, cpu , ram , nvram for that? With the other stuff added in?

They never argued it for it to be free - only that they wouldn't be required to pay for physical roms and shipping they don't need.

Plenty of projects work successfully by tipping/paying the creator without directly purchasing the item from a retailer. This is not the 'only way' -- its just the way WMS/PPS feel they need.

This a made up scenario:

So what happens if I get the new Soren Rev 2 Junk Yard ROM and pay the $15, then there's another update to the ROM, or multiple updates to the ROM? Will there be some sort of reduced upgrade cost or return/trade up thing?

I'll gladly pay Matt's basement for a ROM set, I'm just wondering how future updates are handled or if the releases are a best attempt at a "final release"

Getaway *neeeeeeds* some sort of bug fix/feature merge so that you don't have to pick what to give up when you play a certain version.

It could be treated like a software program update, with a discount for previous update buyers. Honestly though, at $15, I would be fine getting this update and another update at a future time, or two if there is something I want in the version. I will be getting the CFTBL v5, but I have had no issue with the VL-4 I have been using. Had this been $50, I might have thought twice, but at $15, no brainer. Its priced very fair IMO. Also looking forward to a Getaway update ...

and that is where an paid download choice is good with an small cost for people who need to get an chip to get that updated chip.

Hey welcome back! I can't speak for the official Soren/PPS plans, but I believe the intention is to move on to other games and expand. It's going to depend on demand. However an example would be when Chad's Hook 5.0 was released, a glitch was quickly discovered that only affected a handful of certain machines, and 5.01 was released to fix it. I worked with those customers without charging for another chip. It's up to the individual sellers.

Now a few months down the road and Soren is listening to suggestions and puts work into another release I'd say we'd be starting from scratch. If he keeps cranking them out, maybe there is a need for a monthly subscription option lol

Your suggestion / concerns have been noted.

Won't be long. Got my tracking # for it today!

Soren has pretty much leeway to pick the games he wants to update, and runs a quick check with us, but the plan really is to get a number of titles updated, both fixing ugly problems (things that prevent tournament play, severe bug fixes, etc), and/or find interesting features (like the random roadmap with RS) to install. Of course trying to add common fixes (like the LED strobe fix) ... so stay tuned as there is a long list of things that are being queued up - we will talk with Soren, but I think it's good to radio the games that he has on his list so if there are any useful additions from you guys he can consider those before the release.

Getaway is definitely one that needs some fixes

Suggestion, can we get increased difficulty in some of the other tales of terror in Scared Stiff? You can currently adjust the difficulty of crate and coffin multiball and it would be nice to increase the difficulty in the other tales like more pops for the monsters lab, more boney beast ramp shots, more deadheads, and maybe a roaming Leaper shot after the first set of 3 are hit?

LED patch on everything sounds like a good baseline.

Only needed on games prior to indy 500 I believe and even some older games home Roms have it added allready. I know whenever I wld order a rom version for my older b/w pins the guy wld add in the non ghosting code for me. Also people wanting all this stuff added... remember these older games were pretty maxed out on code bc of the capabilities of the time. I know sometimes the rom can be expanded like in the wh20 home rom that was doubled in size which is still super small compared to today's pins. So don't expect a ton of changes other than mainly bug fixes and maybe some small rule changes overall. Still huge and awesome and I'm looking fwd to bsd getting done. This is a great project and will really help many games for tournament play.

This a hundred times, it's brutal loosing the ball directly after plunge and go to ball #2 *sigh*. TAF really need a ballsave, make it optional so people can choose.

I think it would be nice if every videomode would be randomised. Right now it's often not a matter of skill but more a matter of 'do you already know the game'. Some people like the idea that they know 'what order it goes', but in home-use I think it'd be way more fun if you don't know beforehand the order in which a videomode puts its wolves (BSD), mines, tunnels(STTNG and IJ), etc.

Wouldnt it be possible to upgrade to the next romsize? I thought some custom roms already do that.

Twilight Zone:
Dead end shot should become the jackpot relight instead of the left ramp.

This is really exciting! ... the only reason I never upgraded Demo Man to the much better "Home rom" is due to the fact the game becomes useless to run onsite, as I do. I even had one guy ask me why "this Demo Man doesn't do <long list of extra features> ?", only answer I could give him was that those features are unofficial and so not available onsite.

Here's hoping some of these fantastic home rom updates can become available to the general public here!

soren is this part of the plan for upgrades? ... providing for coinop with these great updates such as Demo Man, Whitewater ... so on, so on ?

That would be like the most fantastic news!!!!

On WPC games, the WPC ASIC handles ROM paging, to enable large ROMs in CPU's 64 kB address space. But system 11 games do not have such paging logic and are limited to 48 kB (the rest is used by RAM and PIAs).

T2 and IJ have various bugs that could be fixed and it'd be nice if T2 could have balanced scoring and potentially modes or combos to enhance the gameplay.

Would love STTNG to have video mode randomised - is IJ randomised or does it just have several predefined versions that it selects one from?

Monster Bash

I would love to see some sort of Combo rule, even if only to boost mode scoring.

Great episode and interview Ron (and Bruce, Soren, and Zach).

Soren,

When the CFTBL ROM comes in, are there ANY physical adjustments behind the backbox I have to make other than popping the old ROM out and installing the new one?

I saw on PPS page something about dip switch settings and jumpers, and I want to make sure I don't boo-boo something by make such an innocuous install.

Don't have it in my hand yet, but it is headed this way, and I'd like to be prepared.

Page to the ROM is here: http://www.planetarypinball.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=ES-CFTBL-REV5&Category_Code=GS-588

Thanks!

WPC game updates are cool and all, but I’m really excited at the prospect of updating code on System 11 titles as well. So much potential! Earthshaker could use a code update to relight that jackpot (and make the jackpot value consistent, and lessen the ability to spam that center ramp to Max it out.

Whirlwind could use an update to finally make that 3-way combo worth shooting for. Or maybe a routine for 2-way combos?

Maybe an update to Taxi to equalize the jackpot between players and a tournament setting to normalize joyride awards between players as well.

What a time to be alive!! Thanks Soren for your hard work!

Some of these things (taxi for instance) have already been done, by multiple people.

Unfortunately, the main source forum for this type of romhack has been gone for years. I am keeping a catalog of what was changed at:
https://sites.google.com/site/allentownpinball/tournament-rom-mods

I know this doesn't help since you want the actual romfiles, but at least people can be aware of what has happened in the past. It's surely not EVERY mod ever made, so if there's any people know of I've missed, PM details.

I always found the 3-way on Whirlwind worth shooting for just to hear the goofy siren. IIRC it scores 250k and it would be pretty easy to change it to some other score (although the displayed text would be harder to change because the text on whirlwind is encoded differently than most other games.... it's not plaintext)

BSD has an issue where your bonus is lost if you get a tilt warning during a ball drain... which is when you would most often expect a tilt warning to occur.

So does Doctor Who.

Both have been fixed. There's also a setting on BSD to make the mystery just be worth 500k for tournament usage.

I *really* wish the forum that used to host this information was still around! In 2012-2013, no one in the mainstream pinside arena was interested in this stuff. No idea why pinhacks disappeared, but there was tons of information there and fixes/patches for this stuff. It went members-only, then one day, was just gone.

From what I recall from the thread there, the tilt bug is because Bill Pfutzenreuter the programmer of both games liked to roll his own routines instead of using the built-in ones, for whatever reason, and it's just a bug that slipped by.

Here is the wayback machine link for the site, for some reason I always forget to look here for sites.... I'll have to re-read a lot of the stuff there to see if the tilt warning stuff is covered I know there were 2 ways to patch it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170703053552/http://pinhacks.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=4

Oh, and in no way is this archive applicable to whatever Soren's cooking up now - probably doesn't belong in this thread, but a lot of the same issues with games have cropped up over the years and information there might help him/others in formulating their own fixes.

EDIT: Looks like the wayback machine didn't capture all the actual messages just the headers. Bummer but you can see what was being looked at in the past at least!

OK, just ordered CFTBL REV5 from Matt's Arcade, $14.99 with $6 shipping. Looking forward to getting this put in.
Thanks soren for your hard work here. Looking forward to Getaway and others

A real ball save on Funhouse please.

Video modes also should be the same the with different art work. DE / SEGA / STERN reused the same layout from DE GRN way to much

I think the roms for taxi do have an small jackpot window that can be set right now. That more or less makes it the same for all.

Doctor Who has the same bug

Also BSD better recovery from the game losing track of # of balls in play?

I think STTNG video mode indeed can become too hard.
Some games like BSD and DrWho though both can still be played well when they would be random, and it would make it a bit harder and more fun to me. At least that's what I think: of course you, Soren, need to think so as well before changing those .

STTNG mode isn’t hard.
Just draw 4 and your 4 of a kind beats Riker’s boat.

On reflection, yes making STTNG video mode random would make it extremely hard to get the artifact. Alternatively given video mode can played multiple times in a game, would be be possible to increase the speed at which the mode runs for subsequent activations??

Ordered CFTBL from Matt's, $21.00 shipped it's a no brainier. For those who want the link:

https://mattsbasementarcade.com/product/creature-from-the-black-lagoon-pinball-cpu-rom-l-4-u6-bally-williams/?attribute_pa_cpuu6=u6-cpu-rom-v5-0

Just ordered from Matt’s as well. That built in Apple Pay button sold me, easiest ROM order ever!

You can, just send the extra $$ to soren himself.

NGG desperately needs a new ROM edition!! Fix the Q JP, the gofer-up bug, see what else is left unused....

And an 18 hole wizard mode. But that is probably a pipe dream.

Hole-In-One Challenge can move it to or add an Super Hole-In-One Challenge?

Thanks for the recommendations!

Yes my site does support device specific payments like apple pay, googlepay, amazonpay (like you must be on an Iphone or Mac to do applepay).

It also works with some login methods to speed up checkout like facebook, amazon, or stripe. You do not have to create an account to check out...but it can use stored shipping address and payment methods from these accounts, or just checkout as a guest.

I would also like to remind people that Soren did do 3 other titles as well...my orders seem to be heavy on the CFTBL. Junk Yard, Radical, and Roadshow are available as well

Maybe I missed it...does Soren have access to the original source code, or is he modifying the compiled ROM code? The latter seems like it'd be incredibly difficult.

Either way, I intend to jump on the updated creech roms. Good stuff!!

Edit: order placed. I can't wait to get my CFTBL out of the shop and try the new rom!

It has been a few years since I have replaced a CPU ROM in one of my pinball machines so I just want to confirm a few things prior to installing the upgraded CPU ROM chip on my CFTBL.

1. I assume that any custom settings will be lost and I will need to reset them manually once the new CPU ROM chip is installed.
2. Will high scores be reset and if so is there any way to manually enter them once the new CPU ROM has been installed?

Thanks.

Gord

I don't believe that the original tools and systems used for the code creation still exist and Soren has indicated that his modifications are without access to any documentation. So it's impressive work