Looks good! Can you share a DXF/Vector file of this?

Also check for magnetized balls.

I hand made this so there is no digital file of any sort. I am open to suggestions though if I could somehow help people to make them if they wanted.

I had an unexpected ball served to the shooter lane today. I was running a food mode, shot a ball into the beer barrel lock, lock was not lite so it spit the ball out. At around the same time a ball was served to the shooter lane resulting in two balls in play. So it seems as though it was expecting the ball to be locked. I didn’t launch that ball so the end result was me losing the actual ball in play with an outland save present. So things worked itself out but I believe this has happened before.

I've run into this. It's probably either the membrane switches in the barrel lock and/or a magnetized ball. Sometimes it's subtle, but check very carefully for ball magnetism.

See Brenna98's post #881 for the possible fix...good info.

I am wondering what is the logic behind the magnetized ball issue? I do not quite understand it. I am going to guess and say that the thought is that two ball have stuck together in the trough. So the situation could be one ball is on the playfield and five in the ball trough. Except in the trough, trough switch #6 is unexpectedly blocked (and one switch is unexpectedly unblocked, 4,3,2 or 1 etc.).

If we assume all balls in the trough are resting where they should be, and the membrane switch was bad and had detected two ball instead of one. I still do not see how a ball got served to the shooter lane. I would expect the lock to attempt to release two balls (the actual ball and the phantom ball). I do not have any ball lock logic experience on a code writing level though so I do not know how these many possible odd situations are handled.

I did a cover on my beer barrel ramp today and now I can hit the fastest balls up and am getting the Picard maneuver one in a while,worth the effort!

Just played a three player game. Player one had no balls in the beer barrel lock, player two had no balls in the beer barrel lock, player three had two. Player two shot a ball into the beer barrel lock. The game spit the ball out (since lock was not lite), registered a second ball being locked for player two (player two never locked a ball), it also served another to the shooter lane. After both balls drained the game just went haywire completely confused, lights, modes and sounds all out of wack to where the machine just has to be shut down. This game seems way buggy with the lock logic. I am going to enable lock compensation but Jesus H I've never played a machine so buggy..., I am hoping I just have something wrong here that I am just not seeing. Any help is appreciated.

From what I've been told, essentially what happens is that if the game can't figure out exactly where all the balls are at, then it gets confused and exhibits weird behavior. Such as launching balls or releasing them from locks. Bad membrane switches or magnetized balls can both contribute to the game not accurately knowing where all the balls are.

The AP crew is in the thread a lot, and will probably see your posts and reply soon. But either way, I'd recommend opening up a help ticket through API's Tech Support. Because although I haven't been 100% satisfied with my Oktoberfest in all aspects, API's tech support has been very good. Probably the best in the business. They will likely ask you to pull your log files and send them in. This helps them figure out what is causing the weird behavior. But since your Oktoberfest troubles sound exactly like mine. It's almost assuredly lock switches and/or magnetized balls.

Hey thanks for the reply Mike. I enabled lock compensation and it certainly causes some odd behavior. Mostly with the timing of call outs when balls are locked its seems though it did appear to keep proper track of the balls at least during the few games I played. The Mystery insert went red at one point, I have never seen that before. My game just ended (I have been playing two game at a time to see how the game reacts) and when the game was over during the match sequence it went silent for a few seconds then went blasting loud, like really loud. This game is a f*^king mess....

Hi @pinstyle, I'm very sorry that you've been having problems. Certainly what you describe are not normal behaviors, so we need to figure out what's going on with your machine and help you get it fixed. Please submit a support ticket at <https://www.american-pinball.com/support/service/> and our team will work with you to get things sorted out. Thanks for your patience, and looking forward to you being able to enjoy your Oktoberfest smooth and problem-free.

Will do Ferret. Yea I think I have something weird going on. I have no experience with the P3 platform which I am sure isn't helping matters. You have to help me right this ship here, it is such a great game. In the meantime I am going to ditch these balls completely.

Mr. Ferret, can you explain the beer barrel lock? I noticed if I am one letter away from completing Prost when shooting the beer barrel, it will complete that last letter and lock the ball. Today I noticed I was two letters away from Prost and it completed the two letters and locked the ball. Is this normal and do I just have some incredibly easy setting? Lighting one letter per barrel shot seems reasonable, but two is a little nuts. Sorry if this has been covered before but I do not recall seeing it.

I also had something weird happen that I never heard before. The beer barrel shot grab magnet actually did a double countdown, one audio being about a second behind the other. It was weird..

Shooting the Beer Barrel ramp always spots a letter in PROST if possible. It does this before deciding whether lock is lit, so the dirty little secret is that you can just light 4 letters of PROST and then shoot the ramp, and you'll get your lock.

If you shoot the left orbit and combo that directly into the Beer Barrel ramp, you'll get 2 PROST letters spotted instead of just one.

(There's a similar perk if you combo left orbit -> captive ball: this awards you +1 MagNab, even if that shot isn't currently lit for MagNab.)

I have heard this a couple times... it seems to be very infrequent and doesn't seem to hurt anything, so identifying and fixing it hasn't been a priority. Maybe the player is just drunk and hearing double.

Oh I see, thats a nice perk with the barrel lock. I never noticed about the mag nabs but I haven’t been paying that close attention other than whether or not I have one to use. Have you considered the Prost targets returning to their unlit state after collecting that last letter on a lock? I notice all Prost targets will be lit after that, it seems almost too easy to just freely be able to lock another ball. Or maybe even a difficulty setting?

Yea I played a sh!t ton of games and I have only come across that weird double countdown once.

Settings > Oktoberfest > Beer Barrel Lock Difficulty.

However, the Beer Barrel has a feature where locks can be "stolen" across players and even across games (unless you turn on Settings > Oktoberfest > Release Beer Barrel Locks at Game End, which disables the "across games" feature). What this means is that if you have a ball or two in there and you lock another ball, you qualify locks for whatever is in the barrel, so you may not need to qualify those locks again. PROST stays solidly lit if you don't need to qualify any more locks.

Thanks Ferret, I will have to play around with the lock difficulty. Yea lock stealing is great, i think more games should have this feature or at least an option. It adds another element to the game. My game has always been set to empty locks at the end of each game.

Based on an API reply to my earlier post wanting a lighted version, I think this is "coming soon". I certainly hope and am in on one if so. If nothing in a year, I will try my hand at my own. My idea is to have lit from behind and sequence a bit like KISS.

I wish someone like tilt topper might make a cool one rather than a piece of plastic.

Ferret can you tell me why the game reboots when "Bartender enable" is selected? Non of the tests under this menu seem to work either.

Can you provide some more context to your inquiry? I tried enabling and disabling Otto (Settings > Oktoberfest > Otto), and when enabled, he spun around, generally following the ball during game play... when disabled, he remained still. I had no reboots. This was on the latest code (20.09.23). Can you give specific repro steps for the reboot that you describe? Thanks.

I am on Cabinet Tests menu. Some of these functions seem to not do anything or maybe I do not know how to use them. If I select "bartenderEnable(C15) the game reboots. Otto does follow the ball no matter what selection is selected.

Bar door direction (C8) doesn't seem to do anything
Bar door stepper (C9) doesn't seem to do anything
Bar door sleep (c10) same
Shaker motor (C3) didn't test unfortunately I do not have one yet
Start button (C1) works, flashes when pressed
Backglass (C2) seems to work, flashes when start button is pushed (though stays dark afterwards)
bartender direction (C12) I am guessing this tests whether or not Otto follows the ball?
Knocker (C7) Didn't test do not have a knocker yet
BartenderEnable (C15) scared to select, game reboots lol
Bartender sleep (C11) no idea what this does
BarEnable (C14) doesn't seem to do anything
Cabinet GI (C4) seems to work, flashes when start button pressed
Bartender stepper (C13) I would guess that this would be used to manually move Otto left or right but doesn't seem to do anything

I made it.
Parts are on order for kits that will be available soon. I already made the installation video.

Ewww, yuck. Confirmed and fixed. Thanks for the report!

That item, and several of the others that you remark don't seem to do anything, were actually supposed to be hidden on that list, but the hide flag was not set correctly... that will also be corrected in the next code release.

Next code release!!!
Awesome
Can't wait

Sounds good Ferret. I hope you guys continue to support this game with updates as needed and do not abandon the game. It is such a great game, I don't think it ever got a fair shake.

American Pinball has a strong history of supporting our games. We've had code updates for all of our games within the past few months ... even our oldest game, Houdini, got a huge update earlier this year. Of course, eventually there comes a time for every product where you've just gotta say, OK, this is it... but we try our best to give our customers a great experience and great value from their purchases.

Thanks for supporting American Pinball!

Has anyone made or found target decals for the duck targets. Thanks.

Hi today i went to SOBER mod but i didn't pay attention to what i have done for that !!!
It was a really good joke and great idea

nothing special, as than it was available on the outlane
and yes, nice "mode"

Has anyone ever made the "Last Call" shot? I find it impossible.

That is one of the two outlane modes. They light on I believe the third earned ball save, but that is adjustable in either direction if you want the outlane mores more or less frequently -- but keep in mind we call that a 'hard save', since you need to complete the mode to actually save the ball, but that mode is pretty fun. One of the steins can make outlane saves easier to earn, so that will get to them a bit more frequently.

I can make it once every three or four times I get that mode. Often the second time in the game is when I'll get it, as you have had a few shots to find the right plunge. The shot became a bit tougher when we changed the opening shot to hit the bar.

Of course we will keep supporting our games. Ferret, Josh and Dave do a good job helping you and everyone on Pinside. Thank you for buying our games.

Cheers
David Fix

thanks

thanks too

Sober is brutal, i’ve gotten to it a few times but haven’t managed to get a grip on it yet.

Everyone I have encounter from the American Pinball team have been great. I am glad to own two of your games so far, both are really fun.

Thank you for your support!

-Michael

I’m having an issue where my coaster ramp won’t lock down. It will pulse when I run the test, but the hold doesn’t work. Any ideas?

Otto spins like the exorcist when the game is in a rest state. I cannot figure out wtf is going on here!! I found a couple of switches that were over sensitive, but nothing major. Here is a picture of the switch test screen when it has been just entered.

5DD98034-3D50-42ED-A8D2-4B139803AEBD (resized).jpeg

Is the left orbit switch stuck? It may be why the ramp isn't locking down, thinking there is a ball behind it.

Ughh, good call! I don't know why I didn't see that after working on it today. I'm going to try to get back to the bar tomorrow and take a look at that switch. Thank you!!

the left orbit switch, which is the lower opto at the start of the orbit/ramp is also the 'ramp down' switch, so if that looks closed to the code, as it does in your switch test, it thinks the ramp is down. Check that the opto are properly connected into the bracket and check that is properly plugged into the opto connection board.

As far as Otto, make sure the 'Bartender Home' switch for Otto is registering when his head rotates, turn his head 360 degrees and see that it registers.

Is this a new machine?

No, this is one of your earlier ones. I need to get back over to the bar and do more investigation. The opto right at the start of the ramp/left orbit was triggering with the slightest of vibration of the ramp flap. I ended up just barely flexing the opto arm to prevent that. In testing with the ball it worked just fine. Obviously not.

As for the bar, I got a replacement from you guys about a year ago. That has been working great up until whatever is going on now. I need to spend more time with it…it is just hard since it is on location.

check the connection to the opto board for a flaky connection as well as the opto alignment on the top side.
If bad, there are replacements available here: https://store.american-pinball.com/products/opto
Use this reference guide to know which plug to check on the board: http://s4.american-pinball.com/img/support/2021-4/Oktoberfest--Quick-Reference-Guide.pdf

Thanks Dave!

Alright, I have figured out what is going on here. My problem was not magnetized balls at all. The coil to my shooter lane was firing a bit too hard. As a result I would get a rebound back into the ball trough. This caused all kinds of issues with the game keeping track of where the balls are. The game seems to have a difficult time when there is any discrepancy in where the balls should be. I did not change out any of the balls. I would question the theory of a magnetized ball causing these issues to begin with. I suppose in certain situations it is possible though the amount of magnetism on a ball is just so weak that it is easily broken. Hopefully this will help someone having similar ball tracking behavior.

I made this video last month, but didn't set it to "public" view. Guess it will be helpful for more than a few people.