Thanks for all the beers!

You are correct of course. But I do this mostly for my own benefits. To make my games play better, for sure. The technical side of it is great fun -- one small puzzle after another -- but that's not what rocks my boat. I am completely fascinated by the question what makes a game a good game. Stuff like risk-reward, score balance, game progression, multiplayer fairness, varied game play, etc. Maybe one day I will try to design a game from scratch. In the mean time I find that testing different ideas in existing games is a total blast. If you look at the progression of my patches --- Jungle Lord (new tricks), Pembot and TCM --- the changes have become more and more complex. I am looking forward to my next project, which will probably be a WPC.

Therefore, while I really appreciate your tips they are not necessary to keep me motivated. More important has been the input that you provided in this thread. The ideas, and also the feedback on mine, especially from the beta testers. The TCM patch would not be what it is without you!

Occasionally I get asked for the checksums of the patched ROM images for verification that the patching worked correctly. This is not necessary with the xdelta patch format, which uses internal checksum verification. However, since there are other uses for the checksums, here are the MD5 hashes for version JP-1.0:

daf15a5f960368d7ad7e917c124179fd TCM_U26.bin
208f879db303fad4367f2f85a1a7620d TCM_U27.bin

I have implemented most of the changes I want to make but there are a few things on my list left to-do. At the moment, I cannot play my game because the negative side of my high-voltage supply is still bad. Should not be very difficult to fix but I will have to order parts. So this will take a couple of weeks at least, probably longer because work is busy. Since some of the code changes are quite low level, another round of testing will be required. My goal is to send out the test version sometime in June. If all goes well and there are no serious bugs an update sometime in August looks reasonable.

I appreciate the offer! This thread describes the initial symptom and underlying problem (wrongly installed capacitor), as well as the secondary problem I am left with (insufficient voltage in the negative high-voltage side). Let's continue our discussion there.

TCM In The Wild

I'd like to share the following feedback I got as a PM for operators considering the patch:

TCM is working great! I've had it my arcade (along with 43 other pinballs) for the past 4 months. I haven't had any issues.

We added the game back in to our weekly tournament and nobody has complained. Our top tournament players know the differences and think it's fair.

Bad Cats is consistently one of our top played games at $0.50c per game, xxx-xxx plays per month.

I did disable the start-button menu.

If there are other operators running the code, please let me know. I'd like to make a post listing TCM on location.

Awesome! Thank you for letting me know.

Sure thing! Here's the link. Thank you!

When not buzzing I have been preparing a release candidate for version 1.1. One of the features I have not received any feedback on is they way TCM deals with "phantom" fish target hits. That's when the opto wheel of the fish target stops in a position where even the slightest vibration causes the opto to close. With the current code (which is almost completely identical to release version 1.0) I very rarely get any phantom closures any more, which means that the filtering works quite well on my game. Not that I think that I can do very much about this for the next release, but I still would like to know how this filtering has been working on other games.

This is something affecting mainly those who ran the LA-2 ROM before switching to TCM.

I think that this is consistent with my game: 6-7 phantom hits on a ball when the target is in the "phantom position". I consider this acceptable. With LA-2 stock ROM (or TCM AD52 set to WMS LA-2) I would get dozens and dozens of phantom hits on a single ball. If you do not like any phantom switch closures, you can set AD52 to WMS LA-5, which is what is used when you play ME-OW (hard) rules. The downside is that the fish target will be less responsive.

This does not sound normal to me. On my game the wheel gets stuck in the "bad position" maybe once every 30-50 games, not "every few games". If you get phantom hits every few games there is something else that's wrong with it, I think. (See also my next post.)

If you want to test the fish target with the glass off, you must first set AD52 to WMS LA-2 so that you actually see all the switch hits. Then you need to remove the ball from the shooter lane, because all fish switch hits are suppressed until the ball has been launched. You can now move the target and you should get a switch closure for every half rotation of the opto wheel but none otherwise. Perhaps I should make a youtube video that demonstrates how the target should react.

There is another test you can do when you think you are getting phantom hits: stop playing the game, remove the glass. Usually (but not always) you can cause additional phantom hits by bumping the playfield with your fist (not very hard). More importantly, if you move the fish target every so slightly, the phantom hits must disappear. If they don't you have a different problem.

My game used to have the same problem. Drove me nuts. For several months I "solved" the problem by trying to block LED light from interfering with the drop-target optos with cardboard "light guards" and electrical tape. These fixes always worked for a short while (a few hours to a couple of weeks). After several months of this I finally had the great idea of trying to re-seat the target-bank connectors. This solved the problem completely. My light-guard "solution" worked temporarily most likely because every time I fitted a "light guard" I touched the cables and connectors.

If this can happen to the drop target optos, it probably can happen to the fish target, too. So if you have trouble, you should try to reseat that connector as well.

That's how it's supposed to work, one or two is great.

Thanks for the tip about cracked pins --- I'll check that later today.

If you installed the original Williams LA-2 ROMs for the test, you are fine. If you did the test with the TCM patch installed but with the BAD FISH handler set to WMS LA-2, on the other hand, then your test did not do what you thought it did, because even with this setting the software suppresses some switch hits it knows to be bad. For example when the skill shot is active. If you want to really test the hardware and nothing but the hardware, you should first use the switch test from the diagnostics. If that works and you still have doubts, you can install the original LA-2 ROM, which does not filter the switch target at all. For every full rotation of the opto wheel you should get exactly 4 fish target hits, two for the switch closures and two for the switch openings.