Official Williams and Bally software upgrades

I see the first four titles have been announced, but is there anywhere that shows the next set of titles? How is the decision being made as to which titles will be updated, and what the priority of such will be?

soren will you use the initial post in this thread to provide completed/in the works titles so that we don't have to go searching throughout to find current status (of course I assume you will also post new comments freely as you see fit)?

BTW, if requests are being taken mine would be Getaway using L2 as the foundation.

Same, checking the info here though it appears as though L-5 was the base version: http://tiltforums.com/t/seeking-knowledge-on-the-getaway-quirkiness-and-oddities/2942/46

If secret mania was fixed, it really only leaves the "Run The Red Light" animation...I might still be tempted to stay on L-2 in that case though >.>

If there's unused animations in earlier revisions I'm sure they could be added back in (if they're still in the codebase).

As for the ongoing debate regarding making stuff "easy", I say the best thing to do is unlock as many parameters as can be unlocked, with the factory default ones being marked in the new adjustments that would let you tweak them. System 11 did this pretty well, where you could use the presets, but then tweak individual values to your liking.

As for the specific controversy regarding the STTNG guns, like was pointed out, it's not a timer. It's a reaction to switches instead, so to change that would require a (presumably new) counter for the # of times that the guns have activated each of the switches. This is one of those cases where I think the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

I actively dislike the cannons on STTNG for anything other than shooting the start mission shot at the start of multiball. I almost always do not aim for start mission when available if it's battle simulation, and I almost always choose that mode last if I have a choice. I should probably disable my guns.

I've watched a lot of brand new pinball players play STTNG and none of them grasp even rudimentary rules, let alone subtleties. This is actually true for most games, but at least for the early solid states and EM's, everyone was able to tell me a smattering of correct rules just based on what they saw while playing. More telling, they simply didn't care about complexity. The favorite game for rulesets was 4 Square.... everyone got that you shoot 1-2-3-4, over and over. The could SEE it in the middle of the PF. (The other favorite game was Atlantis (the 1989 one) all the women liked that one for the artwork. No one had any idea of the rules though.)

Like here in Oregon where possession of all drugs has been decriminalized. Crazy world.

About getaway there is one user i will support almost blindly. Mr tantrum.

Hating??

We're merely pointing out that you're requesting an arbitrary change. Clearly you're not a coder. It's not like Soren just flicks a switch and changes are made, especially on old hardware. The cannon timing is a non issue to most. You're just going to have to live with that. Sorry. Not hating. Just being honest. I'd rather he focus his energy elsewhere.

Personally, I would be okay with L5 if the "run the red light" display mode was added back (I assume this was taken out purely as a public safety measure, but come on. Who's going to really run a red light just because they are influenced by a display on a pinball machine?) I know L5 has 2-state flippers (assuming you have the hardware) - no biggie to me. It also fixes a couple of bugs in L2: secret mania forgotten ball locks and endless multiball (a rarity for me running L2, but it has occurred). Also, I know that L5 has multi-ball releases from lock during multi-player, but not exactly sure how this plays out in a real game (I rarely play multi-player).

Yes, please! At an age when the best selling video game is GTA, I hope the cool "run the red light" animated pixels can be put back without too much negative impact

I'm running L2 now and I got twice the infinite multiball in 6 months and this is really a pain! The only way out is to turn off the game.

It does end eventually.... But yeah it takes so long that the high scores are easily beatable.

It's an underrun so the ballsave becomes 255 seconds. If you don't want to abort the game in progress, trap up (hell, just hold up the flippers til all three balls are cradled) and time out the ballsaver.

Oooh... thank you for this information, i had no idea. When it happened to me I turned off the machine as I did not want my crazy score to be recorded.

Mathieu

As far as my personal experience, I have not once had either of these issues ever occur in the 5+ years I've owned Getaway (running L-2).

Arabian Nights, the modes need to either be adjustable for difficulty or they get more difficult from first completion to the next and so on. Also that yellow target hidden to the right of the genie should be made as a super jackpot during multiball. And maybe a ball save for a few seconds during harem multiball? Mike

Any updates on work in progress?

following.

Also a +1 for moderate Diner ball save.

Is this a bug, or a "use it or lose it" situation where you have to cash in on that ball?

Can you begin progress to the next RLM on the next ball if you drain with it lit?

No, red line mania can be lit and you'll still have the opportunity to enter the mode on subsequent balls. I suspect a lot of these bugs can appear with multiple players, but yeah I've never seen it myself on L-2 with just one player.

Sttng has one huge issue that needs to be fixed and then the game will be perfect in my eyes.

Make the video mode random.

That is all

soren Would you mind elaborating on what this means for the L5 CFTBL ROM?

"Feature adjustement A.2 3 "Multiball" is of no use.
At least as of rev. L-4, the game is not awarding multiball at the Snack bar mystery."

Does this mean L-5 does award Multiball at the Snackbar mystery? I haven't gotten it as a reward yet, but I was just curious if this was implemented. My understanding was that this is a non-reward, similar to the New Car that are never awarded and are just used to tease the player.

However, a New Car reward would be pretty cool for L-6. When you hold both flipper buttons in the Easter egg would be to drive over the Snackbar attendant.

you can have an 2 ball one at an mystery. Just launch an ball and wait for 1st switch hit to kick ball from mystery.
CFTBL has ball saver.

force poker mode

Have a setting for Max number of shuttle runs. After that it doesn't light.

or disable video mode

Max video modes=0 would do that easily. Although this also has to tag into the light holodeck on the launch shot so something would have to replace that.

Could I put in a request for an official rom that lets one turn off the attract sounds in T2?

Does anyone know if the 8.1 hack at IPDB is safe to use on a “real” machine?

Is there a plan to release the tournament roms you already have for games like Mousin Around? There must be at least 15 games that have tournament roms for them that you created but only see about 4 that are officially released.

Yes, I have it installed on mine and the “boom boom” is gone and it’s great!

Hi, I made a tilt audio sound card and I have an error on startup. I have TAFG, TZ, TOM and cpu check if sound card is present but tilt audio have a raspberry which booting fast but not instantly and don’t respond checksum. So there is an error.
Is it possible to modify rom for disable this check on boot? Or modify to add a setting to choose boot check enable/disable.
Perhaps a patcher...

The tilt audio works perfectly after.

Another scoring calculation bug for NGG: I have my ‘special’ set up to award 1M. When this is achieved, no amount is added to the score

This reminds me of a pet peeve of mine. I completely understand the reason for disabling extra balls for tournaments, but why do they (especially on B/W games) make the point "novelty" award for so low a value? It messes up the goal/reward structure.

If a shot/combination/sequence was worthy of an extra ball normally, then in a tournament it should be worth a significant number of points - at least something worth shooting for - not some barely noticeable amount.

don't most WPC games give 0 for EB's (some even auto spot light EB mode) when maxed but DE / SEGA / STERN give points.

Not to diminish the effort that is/was put into these games (having worked in the video game industry for 20 years, I understand all about workload and time pressure), setting the extra ball point value to something more reasonable does not seem like much additional work. Seems like it would be far less work than is done for other tournament mode issues (such as removing "random" awards and such).

I realize this is not a huge deal, just something that has always bothered me. I'm not trying to impugn anyone's work ethic or anything, just trying to make a suggestion for future improvement.

Soren, is there a timeline/schedule of specific releases?

In video modes on some games EB is replaced with BS when at max or EB's set to 0

BS = Big Score

Instead of posting a schedule, perhaps you could just show a list of titles you are working on/considering, without promising any dates or priority, just so we know what games are in the loop.

If possible, that would be awesome!

Yes. And once you give us the title list we are going to post every 15 minutes and ask if you are done yet.....

SOREN, STTNG

Anything you decide to do for the Star Trek, Next Generation, I will purchase from you. Because of your experience, judgement, time and effort improving this classic machine, will only make it better. I'm keeping my machine and will continue to enhance and improve it.

I am not a coder or programmer, so I can't imagine the hours and hours it takes, however hopefully speaking for everyone, and their machines, you are appreciated.

STTNG
* If it's a "easy" thing to add a delay to the auto firing cannons after 3 revolutions, it would be fantastic. Currently working on something with will blow people away when they see it. The great plays (not me) won't care, and the others will love it.
* I understand the are worthwhile issues to be addressed with the scoring and rewarding of gameplay....sounds great.
* Not sure if it's been addressed in the 9 pages of this blog, but is there a software issue when a ball gets lost (NO guys, all the optos everywhere have been replaced, including 90% of all the boards. It's not that, just a flaky thing I have seen. Maybe it's my machine...ok

anyway, thats my 2 cents. Thank you for reading this, and keeping pinball GREAT!

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I suspect the cannon auto firing is not based on a timer, rather it fires based on the switches (if the ball is still in the cannon when the "At Mark" opens then the cannon is fired).

This has been discussed. He just wants it to be easier. Plenty of people said not to screw with it because they like it how it is...